The clock said 6:14. I know because I stared at it while my wrist dripped onto the counter.
Ambrose: Keep that hand up. Don't let it touch anything.
Then the lights went dim for half a second, like a big machine taking a breath.
Every shutter on the concourse started coming down at once, and a cleaner dropped her mop and ran.
Mabel: Ambrose. Why are the doors closing?
Rennick: Because I asked nicely, love.
He came out of the dark beside the ticket machines. Still no shadow. Just a man-shaped hole in the light.
He crossed the floor faster than my eyes could follow and got a fistful of my cardigan, right at the collar.
Rennick: You're going to hand me that bag, you dumb bitch.
Rennick: Then I'm going to open your throat so every human in this city knows what happens to mouthy ones.
I believed him. That was the awful part. He said it like a man reading out the weather.
He shoved me back into the counter. The wooden edge took me right in the hip.
My wrist left a red smear on his sleeve, and he looked at it like I'd spilled his drink.
Ambrose didn't shout this time. The counter glass cracked where his hand landed.
Ambrose: Tunnels. Mabel, go now.
Ambrose: GO.
So I ran. Not heroically. Like a woman with sensible shoes and absolutely no plan.
The luggage tunnels are porter country. Grey concrete, low roof, pipes that clank.
He got my hair at the first corner and put me into the wall. My cheek hit concrete, and the world went white and ringing.
Rennick: You run like a rabbit. You know that?
Rennick: Here's my promise, sweetheart. I'm going to cut your tits off and leave you in a locker for the cleaner to find.
My hands went cold. Not scared cold. The other cold. The sort where your brain stops taking notes.
Then I remembered what my brother Ned taught me for walking home late, and I jammed my thumb at his eye.
Mabel: Touch me again, you pale piece of shit!
Then a hand closed round my arm, way bigger and way warmer, and hauled me sideways.
Ambrose: This way. Don't look at him. Look at me.
There's a door in that tunnel wall I've walked past about four hundred times. Grey, no handle.
Ambrose put his shoulder to it and it opened like it had been waiting for him.
He shoved me through and slammed it, and the lock went across like a knife sliding into a drawer.
Rennick: I'll find the little bitch! I'll find both of you!
After that there was just the two of us breathing in the dark. Him harder than me, which was saying something.
His hand was flat on the door beside my head, and he was shaking. Ambrose. Shaking.
Ambrose: Where are you hurt?
Mabel: My face. And my wrist. He opened it up again.
He turned my wrist over and pressed the cloth against the split, his thumb resting beside the cut without pressing on it at all.
Ambrose: You're safe. I'm not moving from this door.
And my stupid body, which had just been slammed into a wall, decided that was a fact and stopped shaking.
I'd just been called a dumb bitch and had my cheek opened on concrete, and what I felt was warm.
Like standing under a roof in the rain and knowing the roof is not going anywhere.
Mabel: What do you want? For saving me. There's always a price.
Ambrose: Don't ask me that tonight.
Which is not an answer. I could feel his heart going through his shirt, though, so I let it go.
For now.