Travels Through An Imaginary Landscape

Having relayed our instructions to Secretary Pokrovsky’s driver we soon found ourselves winging our way across the frozen city to a set of apartment buildings very like those we had spent the afternoon searching through. Here Olga Fyedorovna shared a fourth floor flat with a nursery school-mistress in an atmosphere of contented domesticity that only served to make Secretary Pokrovsky’s determination to find her a husband seem all the more misguided. Continue reading →

On leaving the restaurant we discovered that the temperature, which had scarcely risen above freezing all day, had dropped considerably and soft flakes of snow swirled around in the crisp night air. We scrambled gratefully into Secretary Pokrovsky’s waiting car, an enormous black boxy machine, and the driver set off at once. The journey was brief; it seemed no time at all before we were pulling up outside an enormous neo-classical building where the lights ablaze in the upper-storey windows dappled the icy canal opposite with reflected light. Continue reading →

It’s amazing the effect a single piece of officially signed and stamped paper can have when it comes to poking your nose in where it might not be wanted. The residents of the apartment buildings that crowded around the Tsarskoe Selo Railway Station received us in as many different ways as their respective moods dictated. We were alternately smiled at and growled at, puzzled over, grunted at and moaned about. But not one of them, once presented with Secretary Pokrovsky’s letter of authority, was willing to take the risk of refusing us entry to their property. Continue reading →

“I’m James Mason.”

“No, I’m James Mason.”

“I tell you, I’m James Mason.” Continue reading →

Once a somewhat bemused authorisation to investigate the corridors beneath The Hub had been secured from Governor Old, it wasn’t long before our search for the hidden door finally bore fruit. Michael and I found it hiding in plain sight in the middle of a long bare corridor and, with the aid of a hammer we liberated from a janitor’s closet, we soon had another set of coordinates removed from the inter-dimensional travel device. Our mission finally completed we headed upstairs to find that dawn was just breaking. Feeling a little worn out from all our exertions of the previous night it seemed like a good idea to grab a bite of breakfast in The Hub before heading off in search of the next marker on the device. Continue reading →

At a signal from their leader Van Damm’s guards lined the five of us up and we got ready to move off in something of a daze. I can’t speak for the others but I was finding the developments of the last few hours, which had taken me from engaging in an innocent poke around behind the scenes of a futuristic airport to joining a secret conspiracy against an evil corporation to facing imminent evisceration in return for my part in said conspiracy, had been so swift and drastic that it was hard to keep up. And perhaps, truth be told, I was still smarting just a touch from the failure of my ‘undercover reporter’ ruse, a ploy which seemed to have been shot down with unwarranted ease for what had seemed at the time such a brilliant idea. Continue reading →

Our three musketeers swiftly let us in on their plan for exposing the dark secrets of The Hub. The black holdall, it transpired, carried digital recording equipment which Porthos and Athos were to use to film the plight of the stricken passengers. Meanwhile, Aramis intended to hack into the communications network situated in an office just down the hall so that the images, once uploaded, could be simultaneously broadcast across every screen and noticeboard within the complex. By working through the night when the offices were empty they figured they would be in a position by morning to ensure every passenger in the airport woke up to irrefutable evidence of the risks they were running in the name of corporate greed. Continue reading →

By the time we had followed Athos through the door into the other ward, pausing just long enough to allow Porthos to collect the black holdall, she had already found what – or rather who – she was looking for. We found her standing by the bed of a man in his early thirties, clutching his hand and fighting back tears. Aramis and Porthos looked almost more uncomfortable than Michael and I at being confronted with this unexpected display of strong emotion and for a moment we all hovered awkwardly by the door, unsure whether we ought to go over and offer comfort or hold back and respect her grief. Continue reading →