The secret bank was an ugly and expensive slab of glass and steel in the City of London. It pretended to be something respectable in finance but it gave itself away with the lack of a sign and the dark tinted windows. There was nothing welcoming about the face it showed to the street.

'Where’s the door?' said Sorrow, staring at the building from under the awning of a coffee shop on the other side of the street.

'The main entrance is from the underground car park. They use number plate recognition cameras to screen the cars. We can’t get in that way without stealing a car. There is a street level entrance. The last window on the right is really a door. It’s only used for deliveries to the office,' said Seven.

'You going to call in a delivery?' said Sorrow.

'I don’t have to. We’re standing outside the home of the best cinnamon roll in London. It’s more addictive than crack. They only bake them in the morning and people queue halfway down the street to get them. If you want one with your afternoon coffee you need to have an account, you need to commit to buying one daily , and you need to pay extra, and if you do that they’ll even deliver.'

'So we’re going to follow the delivery in?' said Sorrow.

'I am. I need to go in alone,' said Seven.

'Not happening,' said Sorrow.

'Give me a chance to get them to talk. They may not like me but at least they know me. They’re not going to talk in front of you. You can listen in on whatever devices you’ve planted on me.'

'Excuse me?' said Sorrow.

'I’ve been a gentleman about it,' he said but she cut him off.

'You do impressions too? Is there no end to your talents.'

'I haven’t looked for them. I haven’t employed countermeasures but I know you must have something on me because you’re not stupid.'

She glared at him. It was a good glare. He could see the calculations behind it. She didn’t know yet if she could trust him. She couldn’t know if he trusted her. 'Fine,' she said eventually, 'but if this is some spy bullshit and you’re planning on ditching me know that I will find you and I will break some fingers to remind you not to try it again.'

'How many fingers?' said Seven.

'Let’s just leave it at some. The more trouble you give me the more fingers I break. I promise to do your trigger finger last,' said Sorrow.

'I believe you.'

'What’s the signal if it all goes tits up?' she said.

'If I scream you come running,' he said.

'You know what I mean. We call it a rescue word. The word you say so that I know to come get you but they don’t know you’ve tipped someone off.'

'We use each other’s code names. So if you hear me offer my sorrowful apologies you’ll know it’s time to start hitting things,' he said.

Sorrow reached into the inside pocket of her coat for her tiny earbud receiver.

'If you’ll excuse me, I think that’s my cue,' said Seven, looking through the window of the coffee shop.

#

Sorrow seated the tiny receiver in her ear as she watched Seven enter the coffee shop and strike up a conversation with the staff. She didn’t need the bud to hear him ask if that was Roger’s cinnamon roll or say that it was alright for some, getting everything delivered like they were too good to get off their arse and pick up their own coffee.

Sorrow appreciated his technique. Seven didn’t exactly flirt with the delivery girl. Flirting would have made her wary that he was just another tosser in a suit. Somehow he made common cause with her. They were just two working stiffs dealing with the small annoyances of life. So it didn’t seem like he was following the girl across the street. It was just that his coffee was ready at the exact moment she was leaving. Which might have had something to do with her taking her time so she could check out his arse whenever she thought he wasn’t looking.

His sudden discovery that he couldn’t find his key card in his pocket just as she buzzed to be let in with the delivery looked completely natural. It probably helped that he was swapping the too-hot take-out coffee cup from hand to hand as he searched his pockets. The girl held the door open for him without being asked.

Sorrow pulled out her yPhone and tapped the ‘passive listening’ icon as she crossed the road. Her charge didn’t need to know that his yPhone was linked to hers and that his other two phones had been hijacked by the yPhone the moment it got close to them.

Sorrow took up position close by the door. If there was trouble she’d need to kick her way in quickly. She heard his breath in her ear as if he was standing next to her. He was panting. Then there was a grunt of effort and for a fleeting moment she was convinced that he was in there fucking the delivery girl.

The window next to her burst outward as a man in a suit arched through it on his way to the pavement. He did not get up.

'Well, shit,' said Sorrow. She took a moment to check on the prone figure. He was breathing. She checked for a pulse and found it was strong and steady. She checked his airway was clear then rolled him into the recovery position. He had an egg sized swelling on the back of his head and she doubted he’d be coming round any time soon.

Sorrow didn’t bother with the door and leapt through the shattered window.

Seven was beset by three large guys in suits. They had the look of bouncers or low rent bodyguards about them. Seven was already bleeding from a split eyebrow that suggested that one of them had got in a lucky hit.

As Sorrow approached one of the three staggered away from Seven, blood flowing from his nose in the aftermath of a perfectly executed elbow strike. The bleeding man spotted Sorrow and, assuming she was the easier target, raised his fist. Sorrow punched him on the bridge of his already broken nose and he dropped to the floor.

Seven shouldered one of the others into the wall then smacked the man’s head against the wall till he stopped struggling. The last was trying to pin Seven’s arm but his technique was weak.

Sorrow peeled the man’s fingers from Seven’s arm. Judging by his screams she’d probably broken a couple in the process. The bouncer tried for a head butt. He missed his aim and knocked himself out on her chin. The impact briefly had her seeing stars.

Sorrow leaned against the wall while her vision cleared. Seven tended to his bleeding eyebrow.

The lift dinged. The delivery girl stepped out. She looked around at the three men unconscious on the floor, at the shattered window, at Sorrow grinning at her, at Seven holding a handkerchief against his spit eyebrow.

The girl fled.

'And I thought you were on a promise there,' said Sorrow.

'She was too young for me anyway,' said Seven.

Sorrow filed that information away. The girl had looked at least 18, maybe 20.

'Tell me again how they’d be happy to speak to you alone but not if you brought a stranger,' said Sorrow.

'There have been issues,' said Seven.

'We keeping these mooks alive so one of them will talk?' said Sorrow.

'That was the plan but they’re not looking talkative. How about the one that went through the window?'

'He’s not dead but he landed on his head so he’s not going to be awake for a while.'

'Why do they always have to pick the hard way?' said Seven.

'Shall I go and find someone to question?' said Sorrow.

'I thought this was my investigation?'

'You’re the investigator. I’m the blunt instrument. Point me at the bad guys and let me do my thing.'

'There are offices upstairs. We’ll take the stairs. I don’t trust lifts in a building like this,' said Seven.

Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

'I get you. Not using the lift is like rule two in the Department guide to assaulting an enemy base,' said Sorrow.

'What’s rule one?'

'Rule one is always assume it’s a trap because it usually is.'

#

Sorrow led the way up the emergency stairs. Number Seven followed, drawing his gun and fitting the sound suppressor as they went.

The ground floor was double height because of the mezzanine balcony. They were four flights up before they got to the first fire door. It was locked.

'Skeleton Key?' said Seven.

'I need a keyhole to use that. This thing needs something with an RFID chip in it. You want this floor or do you want to go higher? I usually find the arsehole in charge is nearer the top of the building,' said Sorrow.

'We could skip to the top floor but if we don’t clear the rest of the building we could find our exit route cut off,' said Seven.

'Let’s go straight to the top. Let me worry about the exit route,' said Sorrow.

Seven wondered if this was a trap. Was she setting him up? Was she encouraging him to follow his own worst instincts to just charge straight for the head of the beast and cut it off so she could drop him in it and get him killed?

No. He couldn’t keep thinking like that. She was going to notice his hesitation. He had to act like he trusted her.

'Penultimate floor,' he said.

'I get you. Cause they’re bankers. We don’t want the people in charge. We want the ones that actually know what’s going on.'

Sorrow kept up the kind of pace that Seven would normally appreciate in a companion. But not when he was nursing a couple of cracked ribs. He tried to keep up with the two steps at a time sprint but after another two floors he was flagging.

She didn’t say anything about it but blessed him with an apologetic smile and slowed down.

Three floors after that he stopped her.

'This one.' He expected her to kick the door in or perhaps shoot the door lock out. She had to have a gun somewhere on her even if he couldn’t see where it was.

Sorrow grabbed the door handle and ripped the entire lock assembly right out of the heavy fire door.

'Exactly how strong are you?' said Seven.

'How do you expect me to answer that?' said Sorrow. 'Even if I could put a number on it you wouldn’t know how to apply the number.'

'Can you lift my car?' he said.

'Probably but leverage is a problem. I could certainly roll it. Can we just go with I’m considerably stronger than you?' she said.

Seven thought about if for a moment then shrugged. This wasn’t the time.

'Give me your phone for a minute,' said Sorrow.

Seven passed the yPhone over. She set up a video call and used the camera on his phone and the screen on her own to check that the corridor was clear. 'Which way?' she said as she passed the phone back to him.

He pointed and she advanced along the empty corridor to the next junction. Seven held his phone around the corner to check and Sorrow looked at her phone screen. She frowned and sucked air through her teeth.

'So much for stealth.' She turned her phone to show him a narrow foyer packed with large men in cheap suits milling about and looking at the lift doors. 'Cause that is full of bastards.'

'We can’t avoid it,' he said. 'The people I need are in the offices at the other end.'

'I don’t suppose I can persuade you to stay here while I deal with the mooks?' said Sorrow.

'What do you think?' he said.

'Just stay behind me and try not to get shot.' She charged around the corner without waiting for a reply. Seven ran to keep up.

'Hello boys. Form an orderly line and I will personally deliver your individualised arse kicking,' she said as she bore down on the nearest man. She punched him in the face and Seven heard the distinctive crack of a zygomatic arch* breaking. The man crumpled to the ground.

The second man tried to throw a punch at her but she ducked under his arm and punched him in the stomach. The blow came upward and under his rib cage. The man seemed to deflate as all the air left his body. He dropped to the floor and lay in a pool of his own drool clutching his stomach and presumably regretting most of his life choices.

The third man got much closer to actually hitting her. She blocked the incoming blow with enough force to drive his arm through the plasterboard of the wall. She struck him in the centre of the face with the heel of her other hand and he dropped. Seven was sure that he had heard the man’s septum, and possibly front teeth, shatter as she hit him.

The fourth man got a hand on his gun and instantly regretted it. That meant there was a hard surface behind his hand when she kicked it. The gun dropped to the floor. He tried to reach for it with his broken fingers but Sorrow shoulder-charged him into the wall.

Seven caught up with her in time for the fifth man to get his gun clear of the shoulder holster that he had clearly never practised speed drawing from. Sorrow grabbed the man’s gun arm, pulling him towards her. He was off balance and she spun him on the spot and aimed his gun arm at the man behind him, the sixth man.

The sixth man panicked. Which was unfortunate for his friend because the sixth man was panicking with a cocked and loaded gun in his hand. He fired desperately hitting the fifth man in the chest a couple of times before the recoil carried his arm upwards and he emptied the gun into the ceiling. Sorrow stripped the gun from the hand of her human shield and hurled his body at the man who’d shot him.

That gave the seventh man time to get his gun out and aim it at Sorrow. Which didn’t do him any good because Seven shot him in the face.

The sixth man tried to get out from under the body and reload at the same time. Sorrow advanced on him in an unhurried way. She stomped down on his crotch while making eye contact with the eighth and final man. He dropped his gun, put his hands behind his head and turned to face the wall.

'Good boy,' said Sorrow and put a hand on the back of his neck. 'Do we need to talk to this guy?' she said.

'We might. If his bosses won’t talk,' said Seven. He collected the still unloaded gun from the man on the floor.

'Congratulations, good boy, you have earned the right to remain conscious. Now take us to your leaders.'

'Specifically, take us to see Roger,' said Seven.

The man led them through the double doors and into the aggressively stylish office suite beyond. With guns safely out of sight and Sorrow’s hand resting on the back of their guide’s neck they could pass for normal people but the office staff had heard the gunfire and they were clearly on edge.

Seven could see people cowering behind desks in the private offices and there were a few on their phones, presumably calling the police.

Roger had been promoted since Seven’s last visit. The heavy led them to a corner office. Even the outer office where his PA sat was bigger than any other office on the floor. The PA was the same woman Seven remembered from before. Rebecca Jones. A smart woman in every sense. Far brighter than Roger. Clever enough that when the Fraud Squad inevitably caught up with Roger and his bosses she would be able to take her carefully invested salary and leave without a stain on her character.

She frowned when she saw Seven but he could tell she was doing it to suppress a smile. 'I am not giving you your pants back. I won them fair and square.'

'Pants?' said Sorrow.

'Strip poker,' said Seven. 'Is he in?'

'Officially no. He’s not to be disturbed during his afternoon alone time. But I imagine the sound of gunfire might have spoiled his appetite,' said Rebecca.

'If I were you,' said Sorrow, 'I’d find somewhere else to be.'

Rebecca put a hand to her face. 'You know my face is feeling rather sweaty. Very unprofessional. I’d better run to the ladies and fix my make-up. Probably going to take at least 15 minutes.'

'Don’t hurry back on our account,' said Seven. 'I’m sure we’ll find our own way out.'

Roger Eames’ office was vast and decorated in the kind of ostentatiously minimalist style that every overpriced interior designer in London will select if the client has nothing in the way of personality or taste. Roger sat behind his barren desk looking startled but trying to conceal it. The best cinnamon roll in London sat, half eaten, on the desk.

He was an averagely good looking white man of medium height and build and the only remarkable thing about him was an unearned air of confidence. Everything he wore was expensive. None of it was particularly well made. Seven had forgotten how much he disliked the man. Facing him again Seven was reminded of how much of his life he’d spent cleaning up the failures of mediocre, lazy, dishonest arseholes like Roger.

'Hello Roger,' said Seven, 'since when have you been filling your building with armed idiots?'

'Since I heard you were coming after me,' said Roger, his voice shaking only a little.

'And when did you hear that?' said Seven.

'Three days ago. I got a text that said that someone tried to blow you up and you thought it was us.'

'That’s interesting,' said Seven, 'because I had no intention of coming here until this morning. So either you’re lying to me or whoever told you that is neither your friend nor mine. They were hoping that I’d be so angry when I got to you that I’d just kill you and everyone else in the building, assume that I’d solved my problem and go home.'

'I can prove it. I have the phone here,' Roger reached for the mobile phone, sitting on the desk, then clearly thought better of picking it up and instead pointed to it with a spokesmodel flourish.

Seven snatched the phone up. 'I’ll have someone look into it.'

Roger seemed to relax a little.

'But don’t think that concludes our business,' said Seven. Roger’s face fell. 'What have you heard about the explosion at the Special Forces Club?'

'Just the news report that it was a gas explosion. I assumed that was a lie. I haven’t heard any rumours. Just everyone laughing at the idea that it was an accident.'

'Anyone new about? Maybe using black feathers as a signature?'

'Nothing that I’ve heard about but then I wouldn’t hear anything unless they needed money or had some that needed cleaning.'

'Heard anything about debts? Specifically about anyone looking to be repaid. Anyone who feels that I, or any of my friends, owe them something.'

'Nothing like that. Even my bosses wrote off the money that your blond friend borrowed from us. And they haven’t even admitted to me that your other friend stole anything.'

'Wait a minute,' said Sorrow. 'Did the text you got specify that he was coming for you or could it have been about any of them.'

'No it was definitely about him,' said Roger, nodding toward Seven. 'It didn’t mention any of the others.'

Sorrow grabbed Roger’s phone from Seven’s hand and headed for the door.

Seven stared after her for a moment before regaining his composure. 'I may need to speak to you again,' said Seven, 'and if I have trouble finding you, or if I have to deal with more armed idiots, you will not enjoy the conversation.' He turned his back on Roger and hurried after Sorrow.

He caught up with her in the outer office. 'What’s the sudden hurry,' he said, barely above a whisper.

'Three days ago,' said Sorrow.

'What?'

'He got the message before the explosion. The message that you, specifically, would be coming. How did they know you’d survive?'

'Luck?' said Seven.

'You don’t believe that,' said Sorrow. 'I’m handing this phone off to our experts and then getting you to the safe house.'