Macy waits at the station, clutching information vital to world security. But is the light at the end of the tunnel, a glimpse of hope, or the oncoming train?
The trains rattle within the tube tunnel, like teeth inside a shaken skull. Seven minutes till my next tube. Seven minutes too long.
It’s the in-between hour – after office, pre-nightclub. I look along the grimy platform at the handful of dead-eyed passengers scrolling through phones, or watching rats play chicken with the trains on the tracks. Could one of them be a company agent? Charged with securing my silence? Instead of blood, regret courses through me. Why did I have to discover the truth?
“Macy!” a voice calls. “I didn’t know you got this train!” Everett, one of my colleagues at Greenworks, moves my way, smiling. Tall, toned, with symmetrical features, he sets my heart racing – for all the wrong reasons.
“Yes, this is my train.”
“Which station do you go to?”
“Hampstead.” My brain is too frozen to lie.
“I’m Camden Town!” He says it like a contestant on a quiz show hoping for a prize. Is it true? Or just a story so he can linger, waiting for an opportunity to … what? I step back from the edge, vertigo reshaping my surroundings.
A raven-haired woman in a black-ribbed coat glances at me. A pudgy man, cheeks razor-red from the cold, looks away as I catch his eye. Are they watching me? “Have you lived there long?” Everett asks. When I stare blankly, he adds: “In Hampstead?” “A while.”
Everett’s barely noticed me before, yet here he is small-talking like a late-night hopeful at an office Christmas party.
Surely it’s no coincidence him showing up here the night I took the secret video. I shouldn’t have done it, I know, but I suspected my boss at Greenworks, Gavin McClain – dubbed McClean by the media – was planning to downsize.
I wanted to know whether I’d be among those cut. Since COVID-19, the public’s appetite for all things green had nosedived. Publicly, McClean vowed to soldier on with his green agenda. But, I’d heard him remark privately that people were sick of sacrifice and environmental concerns would be dead in the water for sometime. So I left my phone video recording in the conference room, hoping to know the truth. And learned more than I cared to know.
“You know what they say,” McClean told his head of security, throwing darts at a board bearing a photo of a grey-haired woman – his main adversary. “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, Purchase tracts of land in cold places,” he instructed his colleague. “They’ll be holiday destinations and farms of the future.” They discussed a plan to realise the profits on those investments sooner – a liquid he was developing in his labs to speed up global warming. “I gave the environment my best shot,” said McClean. His final dart landed between the woman’s eyes. “But why should I starve while the world burns?”
After replaying the video a dozen times, I dialled the government. “MI5 please.” An agent was coming for my memory card in the next five minutes. Mr Bond, I presume?
An icy breeze wafts through the tunnel, loose hairs tickling my face before a train thunders into the tube. Like a synchronised sigh, all the train’s doors open in unison. Passengers step up, or down. Newcomers swarm through doorways, up staircases, leaving only a handful on the platform. Ms Black Coat, and Mr Ruddy-cheeks remain. So does Everett.
“Isn’t this your train?” I ask.
“I’ll get the next one. Keep you company.”
My phone vibrates. I glance down at a text.”McClean knows!” It’s a message from my friend Chelsea, the one person I confided in.
I wonder … if McClean’s content to ruin the world for profit, what would he do to me?
“Any holidays planned?”
Holidays? “I thought I might spend a few days in Derbyshire.”
“Interesting!” Everett exclaims. “I haven’t explored my own country enough. Now’s the time.”
The conversation is beyond stiff. Mummified. Is it possible to die of small talk? If he asks me what I do in my spare time..?
“What do you do in your spare time?”
While he speaks, he’s looking over my shoulder at the red-faced man moving towards. Everett yanks me closer to the platform edge as the man barges past. “Bloody drunks,” Everett mutters.
I glance at the Arrivals board. One minute to go. A breeze tickles my temples, my hair stands on end.
“Macy!” A blonde head weaves through the crowd; it’s my friend, Chelsea. I feel the black-coated woman striding closer, and red-cheeks move sideways. Someone rams my back hard, winding me. But I maintain my footing as the train screams through the station, superfast. Everett has an iron grip on my arm, our eyes lock. A wall of people dismount from the train.
“Let me go. I’ll call the police,” Chelsea’s voice cuts through the hum.
“We are the police,” says the lady in black, pinning Chelsea’s arm behind her back.
As the platform clears, I see the glint of a knife in my friend’s hand, and the hateful look she sends me. Chelsea was McClean’s agent, coming after me?
Red-cheeks boards the train, an ordinary commuter.
Everett flashes his I.D. “MI5. Undercover within Greenworks. You okay?”
I’m shocked the office hottie is an MI5 agent. But more so that Chelsea, my friend, tried to harm me. Ms Black ushers her, through a door I’ve never noticed. I hand Everett the memory card.
“Thank you, Macy. We’ve suspected McClean for some time. Now we have proof. Do you have somewhere to stay for a few days, while we round up his associates? Perhaps an early visit to Derbyshire?”
“But … who will stop global warming now?”
“We’ll all have to do what we can,” he says. “Even if we’re sick of sacrificing. You’ve done your bit today.”
“Can I ask a question?” I call him back. “What do you do in your spare time?”
He grins. “I could tell you. But then I’d have to kill you.”