TimeBomb: The TimeBomb Trilogy: Book 1 by Scott K. Andrews Page B

radio in but don’t wait for back-up. Engage and destroy on sight.’
    The five faceless drones walked smoothly, without hurry but also without pause. They broke apart and kept moving in different directions without conferring, moving and thinking as one. As they walked away a thought occurred to their master.
    ‘I shall remain here at the main desk until contact is made,’ he shouted. Then, more quietly, ‘Don’t want to get myself shot, do I.’
    ‘What is a labratree?’
    Simon the guard looked confused, though whether he was puzzled by the question, or by the fact that it had been asked at all, was hard for Dora to say. ‘I’m sorry, miss?’ he replied, his voice rich with an accent that Dora found strange but not unpleasing. Wherever he was from, it was far from Cornwall.
    ‘This place. His lordship said it was the “central labratree”. I do not understand what those words mean.’
    ‘Um, well, it’s a laboratory,’ said Simon, confused by her confusion. ‘Where they do science and stuff.’
    ‘Séance? Ah, I understand,’ replied the girl with a firm nod of the head designed to make her seem resolute and sensible rather than terrified and confused. ‘This is a place of magic.’
    The guard laughed. ‘Might as well be, for all the sense I can make out of it.’
    Dora decided that she liked Simon and, realising that the lab was not going to reveal any of its secrets to her, she turned her attention to him.
    ‘Where are you from?’ she asked bluntly as she sat on a stool close to the door where he stood, no longer at attention.
    ‘Dulwich, miss.’
    Dora shook her head. ‘I do not know this place. And I am not your mistress, my name is Dora.’
    ‘Um, Dulwich’s in London. So I’m a Londoner, I reckon.’
    ‘London.’ Dora spoke the name as if it were a curse. For some of the boys in her village – and some of the girls too – London had signified excitement and adventure. Her older brother, James, had run off to London on his fifteenth birthday and nothing had been heard of him since. But for Dora it had represented everything she wished to avoid. He father had once told her of a visit to the capital that he had made when he was a young boy, seeking his fortune. To hear him tell it, London was a squalid place of filth, disease and moral decay. It was also populated by strange peoples from around the world, which Dora supposed explained the boy’s aspect. She had heard of blackamores but Simon was the first she had ever encountered. She resisted the urge to approach him and touch his face and hair, feeling that it would be rude to give in to her curiosity.
    ‘I have never been to London,’ she said. ‘What is it like?’
    Simon shrugged. ‘Like it is on the telly really. My part of town was banged up, yeah. No money, lots of drugs and gangs and shit. But, you know, it’s home. My mum and my sis are still there. It’s all right, I s’pose. But when I got this job, I can’t lie, I was happy to get out.’
    Dora made a mental list of all the things she had not understood about Simon’s answer and began to work through them one by one.
    ‘What is telly?’ she asked.
    As they approached a lobby that marked the junction of two wings of the building, the man disguised as Lord Sweetclover shoved Kaz back against the wall and raised a finger to his lips. They heard heavy footsteps echoing down the corridor ahead of them. Kaz held his breath, desperate to make no sound as their unseen pursuer stalked them.
    Steve reached down and grabbed the gun Kaz was carrying. Kaz held on tight and scowled his refusal to let go, but Steve whispered, ‘Play prisoner.’ Kaz reluctantly relinquished the weapon, which Steve shoved in his pocket before grabbing him by the shoulder and pushing him forward, out into the lobby and plain sight.
    The footsteps had been made by a short, wide man encased head to toe in riot armour. Upon noticing Kaz and Steve, the guard stopped dead and turned to regard them from