BooksBarbecue
Back Extracted
Chapters (45)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Page
  3. Contents
  4. Prologue
  5. 2046
  6. One
  7. Two
  8. Three
  9. Four
  10. Five
  11. Six
  12. Seven
  13. Eight
  14. Nine
  15. Ten
  16. Eleven
  17. Twelve
  18. Thirteen
  19. Fourteen
  20. Fifteen
  21. Sixteen
  22. Seventeen
  23. Eighteen
  24. Nineteen
  25. Twenty
  26. Twenty-One
  27. Twenty-Two
  28. Twenty-Three
  29. Twenty-Four
  30. Twenty-Five
  31. Twenty-Six
  32. Twenty-Seven
  33. Twenty-Eight
  34. Twenty-Nine
  35. Thirty
  36. Thirty-One
  37. Thirty-Two
  38. Thirty-Three
  39. Thirty-Four
  40. Thirty-Five
  41. Thirty-Six
  42. Thirty-Seven
  43. Thirty-Eight
  44. Thirty-Nine
  45. About the Author

‘Fuck’s sake,’ Ben growls, petulant and getting irritated. His mood plummets down to despair then back up with a flash of rage that has him locking eyes on Harry for a second before Ben blinks away and shuffles impatiently. Ben is losing it. His mind is going. He can’t cope. He can’t be here. The walls are suffocating him. He feels trapped.

‘I have to go,’ Ben whispers, staring round with a chest starting to rise and fall quickly. ‘I can’t be here.’ His mind whirls and spins. His heart beats faster. A rush of adrenaline, then fear and dejection. ‘Please . . . can I go? Safa said I can go.’

Still Harry stares. Harry doesn’t blink or move apart from lifting that fucking cup a few inches to sip with a noise like nails down a blackboard. Ben takes a breath and forces a calm tone into his voice. ‘Harry, Safa said I can go . . . stop sipping that fucking . . .’ Ben wants to ram it into his bearded face. He wants to rage and smash and destroy everything and himself at the same time.

‘Where’s Safa?’ Ben asks instead, sounding like a child. He turns and heads for the door. Harry doesn’t go after him. Ben will find Safa or Roland and make them take him back. He will go through that blue light and walk into the flames of the train explosion without a second thought.

Ben stops and sags. The door is locked. He pushes it. Pulls it. Hits it and kicks it. He hammers his fists on it but it doesn’t yield and no one comes to open it. Ben stalks back into the room and grabs a chair that is slammed against the door but nothing happens. The chair is solid wood. The door is solid metal. Rage builds. Ben swings the chair from the side, then overhead. He does it again and again until the chair breaks apart but the door remains intact.

‘WHAT?’ Ben screams as he turns to Harry, but the big man stands sipping from that cup.

‘WHAT?’ Ben screams and rages and picks up a chair leg that he grips while he walks towards Harry. ‘Open the fucking door,’ Ben growls, pointing the chair leg at him.

Harry sips. Ben kicks chairs and turns a table over. He throws more chairs across the room as his mind crumbles into tiny pieces. He wants to tear his own eyes out. He wants to rip his tongue out and gouge his wrists open until he finds a vein then sink down into oblivion. Ben wants to cry and scream but Harry just slurps from that coffee cup and stares at him.