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

17 - Operation Acre Begins

      The screech of metal sliding across metal struck upon the eardrums of every single Brigade operative upon the train as it flew along the undulating terrain of the tunnels. Every so often, the sharp, syncopated doof-doof of the wheels rolling through the miniscule gaps in the running wheels synchronised itself with my heartbeat, creating an unholy rhythm that shook my every bone and forced every hair on end. With one hand clamped firmly around the dead man’s handle, I commanded the train onwards along the line with nothing to guide me except the dim lights mounted upon the front of the train and the rare flashes of electricity that rose from the conductor rail as we passed over it. The journey to the Circus was less than a mile long – about three minutes, at any rate – but the adrenalin – undiluted adrenalin – coursing through every single millimetre of my body made the journey feel like an irreversible journey to the end of time, space and the universe. As first Covent Garden, and then Leicester Square stations blew past us as muddled streaks of orange, white and purple, I could feel my hand loosening its grip on the dead man’s handle. I wanted to lift off. If I released the pressure, this whole nightmare would be over. The last little bit of sanity I had left kept yelling ‘Lift off. LIFT OFF!’ at an ever increasing rate, increasing with the rate of the doof-doof of the rails, increasing with every beat of my rushing heart, increasing with every single painful passing second. ‘LIFT OFF!’ my consciousness cried. ‘FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, LIFT OFF!’

   I could see the lights of Piccadilly Circus Station drawing ever closer. The lights on the front of the train began to mingle and mix with the fluorescent lights of the station which, for some reason, seemed much brighter than the ones we’d all left behind at Holborn. The platforms were almost entirely clean, sterile even, looking as if nobody but the cleaning staff had been anywhere near the place in decades. As reassuring as it was to know that there wasn’t a guard of Faceless here to blast the train into oblivion as soon as we arrived, I couldn’t help having more than a little bit of a bad feeling about all of this.

   I smacked a button upon the dashboard of the train. A middle-aged woman began to speak:

   “The next station is Piccadilly Circus. Change for the Bakerloo Line.”

   The automated announcer’s voice was a surprisingly comfortable one to hear. Monotonous as it could sometimes be, it did conjure up at least a couple of seconds worth of memory of the Underground as it once was and the pleasure trips my parents and I would take around the town. I let the sound wrap itself around me like a protective cocoon.

   “This is a Piccadilly Line service to Heathrow Terminals 1, 2, 3 and 5.”

   Except it wasn’t. Within a few seconds, the train would be rumbling into the platform at Piccadilly Circus, the last call for all of us today but, we hoped, not the last stop we ever made.

   The train ground to an abrupt halt. I extinguished the lights on the front of the train so as not to disturb anyone waiting for us upon the platform, and then poked my head around the grey door linking the driver’s cab to the rest of the first carriage.

    “Are we all prepared?” I asked gallantly.

    “Yes,” was the answer I received, but it was rather less enthusiastic than I’d hoped it would be. Most of the clustered rabble in the first carriage were chatting amongst themselves in a way that better befitted a group of students about to sit an exam than a group about to be led into battle.

   “I hope you lot won’t be this unenthusiastic once we’re on the platform,” I moaned sternly. “You lot should have been preparing rather than nattering amongst yourselves.”

   “This is comforting for us,” replied a jet-black haired young man, talking whilst reclining in his seat in much the same way a stoner would. “Being social helps us relax. Much like Sonya helps you relax.”