Take Back The City - Part One of the 'Life in London Town' series

7 - A Night at Holborn

“…I am about to send out a number of Search and Rescue teams up to the surface, which will be joined by a number of groups led by leading Brigade operatives from Leicester Square, Tottenham Court Road and Charing Cross, who will be performing a similar task. I have sent out messengers telling these teams to be on the surface in fifteen minutes…”

     I arrived at Victor’s tiny office just as the lactic acid which had accumulated during the pursuit finally began to dissolve away whatever muscles were left in my legs and replace them with a lump of lead. His unusually loud, dignified tones – tones of voice I’d never heard from him before – were diffusing through the concrete walls which split his tiny office from the corridor outside, suggesting that I’d better wait before I asked for entry. ‘Good,’ I thought. At least I’d have a little time to compose myself before begging for entry.

    “…A number of Brigade operatives, all involved in the retreat from either Piccadilly Circus or Oxford Circus, are still trapped on the surface, missing but not presumed dead. Many of these missing operatives are usually based here at Holborn and include many from the brigade which I am personally in charge of, including Operatives Will Carter-Gladstone, Oscar Cannizaro, Patrick Oxendon and Nox Devereux…”

   “Victor!”

   I burst into the room as soon as the sound of my name passed through the wall and into my ears. Rather strangely, the only person present within the confines of the dusty, cluttered old office was Victor himself, perched in front on a tiny camcorder with a cracked case and a dust-smothered screen. He wasn't exactly a tall man, but nevertheless he towered over me; even kneeling down, he was a good inch taller than me. His clothes looked even more ragged than mine despite the fact that he had escaped Piccadilly Circus without having to fight his way back across the West End, and his dark hair, which he had slicked back with hair oil in the same way my Dad used to, had flopped into a pool on his head with straggling waterfalls draping around his eyes. As soon as I walked in, his eyes rose to greet me, lighting up as they distinguished my face.

   “Nox!” he panted as he pulled himself up to hug the life out of me. “Thank God you’re okay!” His voice was a far cry from the confident, eloquent tone that I heard while waiting outside. He sounded rather timid, unconfident and a little breathless – far more like the Victor I knew than the Victor I heard talking from outside the door.

   “What were you doing in front of that camcorder?” I inquired as his arms finally slipped from the hug. “Seems a little strange, listening you talk to nobody, y’know.”

    “It’s just a little hobby of mine,” Victor replied, placing the camcorder in a brown, battered duffel bag beneath a metal workmen’s’ shelf. “Nobody else is capturing the action around here,” he continued. “This is history, Nox. You see tons of archive footage of World War Two and of the Iraq War, for example, so why should this conflict be any different?”

    “You make a good point...”

    “Besides,” he interrupted, “I’ve got to do something until that arsehead Captain Jamieson stops bossing everyone around and constantly shoving me in the doghouse. He can’t bear the sight of me. Jamieson’s never willing to listen to my advice, despite the fact that I’m the only one here with any bloody military training.” His face turned a little red with anger and frustration; it was uncontrollable, an irrational emotion for an otherwise perfectly rational argument. “Correct me if I’m wrong, Nox, but I thought there was a bloody war on! Surely if there was one person who you’d want to take advice from during a war, it would be from the one person who has actually been trained to fight in a war! I was a Private in the British Army, for crying out loud! I've served Queen and Country! I'm pretty damn sure he hasn't had that experience, despite his insistence on the title of Captain. He was, is, and never will be Captain of anything!”