At first, there were plenty of people. She rode the rails beneath London, watching the bright partygoers, the late shoppers, the tourists get on and off. It was wonderfully mundane. She could be assured that in the midst of this regular human activity nothing bad could burst out and assault her, not men with guns, not monsters.

Later, her carriage was half empty, everyone out having fun and not yet ready to come home. The screech of the brakes, the chimes and trills of the doors, the rising electric pitch of the motor as the train moved off—all seemed to fall into a grand void waiting somewhere beneath, each sound increasingly sepulchral. Lee huddled in her seat, sole occupant of her row. At the far end of the carriage, half a dozen suited men were on their way to or from business drinks, but when one of them glanced her way she imagined guns in hidden holsters. They didn’t look like professional mobsters, but…what did she know?

Maybe the podgy guy was half a dozen weasels in a man suit.

She barked out a horrified laugh, and then they were all staring at her. She wanted to get off, right now, right here. If only the train would stop, she’d force the doors, she’d…

With a squealing metal sound the train lurched to a halt between stations. Maybe they needed to let the train ahead cruise out of Farringdon before they could shunt in. She looked out of the window and there was only a busy darkness, the suggestions of ranked cables and pipes that might be the infrastructure of the Underground, or might lead down to twisting warrens where the rodent-people lived. Their world had that same unfinished, industrial look, made for function and not aesthetics. The dark writhed just beyond her view, full of motion: hairy, sneaking, snaking bodies. The glints could be her carriage’s lights reflected in the thick glass, or gleams from the lenses of the rat-weasels’ gas masks.

They could be out there. Surely they were out there. This subterfuge with the trains hadn’t shaken them from her trail. She’d played right into their hands.

With a tortured groan the train was moving. Lee was rigid in her seat. She’d seen them. She knew she’d seen them. And she also knew they hadn’t been there. It was her imagination conjuring things from the dark.

“You all right?”

One of the suited men was leaning over her. She whimpered, deep in her throat. He was probably only trying to be kind. He didn’t deserve to be screamed at, kicked. She thought of him later, dumbly watching the crazy girl who’d pelted through the doors the moment they’d opened. Last time he’d try to help someone, probably. On the street outside Farringdon station, she leant against the wall and tried to get her breathing under control.