The Dictator

Chapter Fifteen

Alina weaved her way through the crowd, but Flynn got there before she could. When she finally reached the pair, Miles was already telling what he had done.

"I put poison in the coffee." he said, grinning like a hyena. "I needed to test how fast acting that stuff was." He saw Alina coming purposefully towards him. "Alina, how quickly did she collapse after she drunk it."
"Immediately." Alina replied. "What... What did it do?" Miles smiled like a smug crocodile.
"I won't bother you with scientific details, but basically it knocked her out." Alina breathed a sigh of relief, as Flynn asked another question in a suspicious voice.
"So she'll be okay?" Miles just stood and grinned at him.
"Yes, for then next five minutes or so. Then she'll die.

Alina wanted to scream at him and shake him. She could see a maniacal glint in his emotionless brown eyes. She would have started towards him, had she not glanced at Flynn and followed his steady grey gase. With a restrained gasp, she looked and saw a lump in Miles pocket. A lump in the shape of a pistol. Shocked and terrified, she wondered were Miles could have grabbed a gun from. This wasn't America, and Miles wasn't even sixteen. Then Miles spoke again. "I need you two down in the lab." he said, confidently. Flynn looked a him, an alarmed glint in his eye.
"You haven't got the uranium yet?" he asked, in a guarded to tone. Miles shook his head and laughed.
"Not quite yet. I just want to show you something.

They followed Miles to the lunch hall. Earlier it had been full of chattering munching students, but now dark silence echoed off the tall white wall that stood like blank sentry. Miles opened a small trapdoor in the corner of the room, and together they all descended into the square of darkness and found themselves in one of the now-familiar gloomy passages. Slime dripped from the grimy walls as Miles lead them through the dim mase to a square room, smaller than the main lab yet still of a considerable size.

In the centre of the room, secured by snaking ropes to an old wooden chair, sat a boy. He had close-cropped blonde hair and wide clueless blue eyes. He looked extremely young, innocent and surprised as he stared around at dinghy room he was in. Then he tried to move his legs, looking down in horror as he noticed the cords binding them to the chair. Alina looked up at Flynn. He was staring horrified at the kid in front of them, and almost flinched when Miles turned triumphantly towards them. "Jack has finished developing the hydrax gas. All thats left is for us to test it, and we can make a start on the FBI." he paused for a second or two, then added with cruel irony "Or should I say an end?"

Alina opened her mouth as Miles turned away from her, trying to think of something to say that wouldn't end up with her being the one tied to the chair.
"Who is he?" she asked Miles, referring to the petrified kid in the chair. Miles just shrugged.
"Some kid, off the street. No clue who he is. I got him here using the knockout gas, so he may be a little confused." his eyes dropped to the grey controller in his hand. "There's glass between us, so the gas can't touch us", he said calmly then brought his thumb down on the red button of doom. Greeny-grey gas hissed out of a hidden pipe, concealing the chair. Flynn looked away as a shrill scream of pain and terror was cut off by a sickeningly sizzling sound. Eagerly, Miles pressed the red button again and the deadly wreath of cloud evaporated. In the room, now sat a pile of acid-burned wooden debris that was the remains of the chair. And curled around the wooden ruts, in an extremely painful-looking position was a skeleton.

Miles nodded in satisfaction. "That should sort out the FBI." he said happily. Alina noticed that there was not the slightest glimpse of regret in his crazy brown eyes. Flynn didn't even look at him. His horrified gase still rested on the pearly white bones of the ghostly skeleton. He turned to Alina, and whispered in the gravest of grave tones.
"Told you it was nasty stuff." his eyes couldn't quite catch her gase.