The sounds of the underground...
Good fortune has allowed MI6s team of enhanced individuals to track the mysterious Hound of Hyde Park to a disused underground station that was repurposed during the war as Churchill’s war bunker. As some of the team eat a hearty breakfast, two of them are scouting out the area. MI6s team consists of Alfie Baldrick, the one man rifle section; Mimi Dubois, maĆ®tresse of skills; Madeline Forsyth, the living shadow; and Sven Hyse, the Norwegian shapeshifter.
London, England, June 1948
Madeline and I revert out of our shadow forms within the small room at the rear of the ground floor and inspect the back door of the empty station entrance. We discover that it had recently, in the last couple of years, been altered and now acts more like a stable door with the bottom half only held closed by a stiff resistance spring. I turn into shadow once again and slip under the door and back into the empty passage outside, I walk out to the main road and look up and down but can’t see any sign of Charlie and the car. After five minutes of waiting I shrug my shoulders and head back in. I inform Madeline that they have disappeared and she suggests that we head down alone and scout out the tunnels below.And so, drawing our silenced pistols, we slide down the wall of the corkscrew staircase until we reach a wide tunnel opening up from the stairwell twenty yards down. I push out with my senses but do not get any returns, giving Madeline the all clear signal she slides down onto the floor of the wide tunnel and checks for tracks. She discovers that the tunnel has definitely been used recently but she cannot find any trace of the hound. We agree to head further down the spiral staircase and another five yards down at the bottom we find another tunnel heading off in the same direction as the one above. We follow the same procedure and discover the same to be true, no sign of any enhanced but definite sign of activity within the tunnel. Not wishing to progress any further without Sven’s tracking expertise we slid back up the spiral staircase towards the entrance.
Madeline and I wait in the shadows of the alleyway that runs down the side of the disused underground station entrance. Eventually, the car pulls up and Alfie and Sven climb out. As they do I hear Alfie say;
What do you mean that you don’t eat meat? Is that some kind of medical condition?
Sven turns a withering glare on Alfie, and Corporal Baldrick suddenly finds something very interesting on the sole of his shoe. Madeline and I lead the others to the rear door and Sven manages to push the bottom half of the door open, but it does take some considerable effort proving that the hound must have great strength. Once inside Sven starts to cast about for tracks, while he is searching he pauses and listens intently, he turns to the rest of us and says;
It is as if the building is breathing! Air rushing in and out.I don’t know about the others, but that definitely sent shivers up my spine. Sven finds several large dog prints in the dust, telling us that they are about a week old and that they are heading in both directions. He also discovers evidence of shoe prints, but is unable to determine if they were together with the hound. As a group we headed slowly downwards, at the first of the tunnels Sven confirms that it has definitely been used within the last few weeks, we continue down the stairs to the lower tunnel and Sven finds large paw prints heading off into the darkness.
Madeline takes point and uses her ability to create darkness to push a wall of dark in front of the rest of us while Alfie and Sven move slowly along the tunnel using Sven’s torch to follow the tracks of the giant beast. When the tunnel turns ninety degrees to the right Sven confirms that the hound has definitely been moving backwards and forwards along this route, as he is checking I push out with my senses once again and again I get no returns other than the rest of the team. After forty yards we find an opening to the left, and as we reach it Alfie remarks that he can feel the building breathing again. It was then that we heard the long, low, baleful howl echoing through the tunnels.
I quickly push out with my senses and get an enhanced return eighty yards ahead and ten yards down. I check again a moment later and am relieved when i realise that it is not moving. As it is at the very edge of my range I take a couple of steps forwards and push out once again with my power. I am shocked when I get three enhanced returns, and quickly whisper to the others what I have discovered. Madeline suggests that I try and discover what the enhanced powers are and so I focus on the first return and push harder with my senses. I manage to establish full contact and am able to ascertain that the strongest enhanced power is that of invisibility. I switch to the other two contacts and push them in the same way and discover that they are all invisible.
Having relayed that somewhat disconcerting information to the rest of the team, Madeline convinces me to push again and discover what else the beasts are enhanced with. I do so and discover that they also have a powerful bite as well as dark vision. Fearful of alerting the beasts to my mental presence, I pull my power back and Madeline and I resume show form and continue to slide along the ceiling of the tunnel leaving Alfie and Sven in the darkness. The tunnel runs for one hundred yards and then turns sharply to the right where there are stairs descending. I push out with my senses once again and confirm that the three enhanced have not moved from their previous position, I whisper to Madeline that they may be in cages.
We quietly slip down the stairs and find ourselves on an empty underground platform, to our left we can see nestled in between where the two staircases descend to the platform is a ramshackle collection of blankets and detritus that looks more like a nest than anything else. While I hold position, Madeline slips quietly along the ceiling and inspects it from above. She can make out the bones of small animals such as rats, cats, and possibly foxes, as well as the larger bones of something the size of a cow. But, obviously, there is no sign of the invisible beasts. Madeline retreats back to me and then we rejoin the others.
In hushed voices we discuss how we can render the beasts visible, and then an idea hits me. While the others are returning to the surface, I slip back down the tunnel towards the beasts. I push out with my senses and make contact with the hound’s mind, once I have made contact I borrow it’s invisibility power. That way, I figured, we would be able to test methods of making the beasts visible to us. I rejoin the others in the abandoned underground stations entrance building and ask what next. The others look around, searching for the source of my disembodied voice. It was then that I realised that the invisibility power of the hounds was always on and could not be disengaged.
We head back to Canning Place Mews and experiment with multiple methods of making me visible, but everything we try just disappears when it touches me. We do discover that this only works out to a distance of about an inch from my body and so we believe that nets will work. While we are practising I ask Alfie if he would allow me to borrow his power to duplicate, he agrees and so while we continue to ascertain how to spot creatures that are invisible, two invisible Mimi duplicates prepare a fabulous dinner for the team. As Alfie is tucking into his dinner with gusto he stops mid-chew and looks up;
My duplicates don't get clothing, does that mean that there are several naked Mimi's walking about?
Alfie seems to break out in a sweat and nervously finishes his meal. That evening the plans for the underground station arrive from Special Agent Philby's smartly dressed assistant and we spread them out on the kitchen table and start to plan our approach. Alfie asks Sven if the hound is similar to the enhanced Mastiffs at Hanslope Park, Sven thinks about this for a while and then says that they are similar but are more probably a Great Dane. We suddenly realise that we haven't reported back to Major Sawdon and so get Alfie to contact Jonny back at Hanslope Park. As Madeline is dictating a long message and Alfie is sending the message to Jonny, who is slowly transcribing it for Sawdon, the telephone rings. On the other end is an impatient Major.
Madeline fully briefs Sawdon on what we have discovered, Sawdon then asks to speak to me so that he can cross question me about what I discovered about the beasts powers. Having interrogated us for all of the information, Major Sawdon informs us that he wants the beasts captured alive. Sven speaks up;
I am happy to capture them, but they deserve some kind of a life and not just locked in cages!
The Major says that he will do what he can to make sure that happens. And so Sven starts to dictate a list of equipment that he believes that we will need to capture them. The Major stops him and asks Sven to get the list transmitted to Corporal Jonny Baldrick, and so that is what Sven does.
London, England, July 1948
It takes a week for the suits at Whitehall to process all of their red tape before the telephone in Canning Place Mews rings. Isy answers it and the voice on the other end of the telephone says;
You have a green light. The truck is on route.
Isy considers this for a moment and then says;
What was that about the light sir?
Taking a very deep breath, Major Sawdon explains the situation to Isy and gets him to inform Alfie who is with the rest of us as we takes shifts in watching the rear door of the underground station. We get Charlie to drive us back and arrive just in time to see a large, unmarked ten wheeler box truck pull up outside the Mews. Half a dozen men jump down from the truck, it is clear from their posture that they are soldiers and one of them introduces himself to Sven and says that they have the items requested in the back of the truck. Sven investigates and finds a pair of large tranquillizer rifles, three large nets, a veterinary case containing enough sedative to knock out an elephant. There are also several slabs of beef, which Sven instantly starts to dose with the sedative.
On the night of the first of July we descend back into the underground station and Sven places the drugged meat at the top of the stairs onto the platform and I watch in shadow form from the ceiling above, while the others retreat down the tunnel. As I wait, the sound of a spine shivering howl echoes through the abandoned station. I push out with my senses and discover that one of the beasts is only thirty yards away. As it draws closer I can hear the snuffling sound of a large hound tracking a scent. I hold my breath.
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