Take Back The City - Part One of the 'Life in London Town' series

6 - Centre Point

I finally emerged from Soho a full hour after I’d entered. I leant out from behind a hoarding that tried its best to conceal the cranes and diggers that were, until our battle with the Faceless began three years ago, being used to rebuild Tottenham Court Road Station, and saw the battle-hardened faces of two of my closest comrades leaning against the concrete banks of the nondistinct grey ramp straddling Saint Giles' High Street which marked the entrance to the slender white quill of Centre Point Tower. The figures were recognisable as Will Carter-Gladstone  and Oscar Cannizaro, two of the four boys who made up our Brigade, but only just. Both had visible wounds of varying shades of red and black imprinted harshly into their skin as if they had been branded cattle and both struggled to keep their backs upright as they sat with their backs slumped upon the concrete ramp and their blackened eyes open as I cautiously approached them.

    “Oscar!” I called into the still, stale air. “Will! I made it!”

   Oscar leant slowly upwards and showed me a frail thumbs-up as I began to walk towards him. Ordinarily, he was tall and relatively rugged man in his early twenties, but as I saw him at that moment he looked as if he was on Death's door, stooped over the flagstones of St Giles High Street like a crippled old-age pensioner in need of a new hip.  I began to feel a little piece of the unbearable pain he was feeling penetrate my weary body too, but it only served to strengthen me. I picked up the pace and ran towards them in a kind of limping gallop, and flopped onto the gum and cigarette-butt covered pavement below the concrete ledge, exhausted and, surprisingly, a little breathless.

    “You,” began Oscar, struggling to form his mouth into the shapes needed to produce the words he meant to utter. “You made it, then.”

    “Just about,” I responded. “I didn’t know I had such low ammunition supplies. I’m just glad you made it out of the ambush alive." I shuffled about on the flagstones of the pavement to make myself a little more comfortable. "What were you doing above ground, anyway?” I asked, curiously. “What happened after the order to retreat was issued at the Circus?”

    Will leaned his head around Oscar’s sizable frame. "We-" he began, but I cut him off almost immediately.

"I'd much rather hear this from Oscar, thank you." I exclaimed. Will slumped back onto the concrete like a spoilt child denied a packet of sweets, and Oscar picked up the story.

    “We were due to take the Central back to Holborn and call it a night," he began, pausing to catch his breath and stop his consciousness being forced into submission," but we were forced up to street level by attackers occupying the platforms at Piccadilly." he continued, trying with all his might to continue despite the physical agony speech was bestowing upon him. "We were forced to the surface and had to make our way back by foot."

   “That still doesn’t explain how you ended up at Seven Dials, though, does it.”

    Oscar continued. “Will and I thought it might be safer not to take the main roads back through the West End,” he panted. "We thought it'd be best to keep away from crowds, especially considering we were still so close to the axis of the Underground lines, just because we thought that any large group of us would be su-"

    "Would be what, Oscar?" I asked, my voice full of almost maternal concern. "Come on. You're almost there."

    "Would be suspect to attack," he added, trying to recover his vitality between sentences by taking yet larger swigs of filthy air. "Unfortunately, we lost our way," he gasped. "We were dashing around like beheaded chickens, trying..."

    I encouraged him on as he tried to suck in all of the air that remained in the thick soup of gases enshrouding us. His cruelly arched back was almost bent double by the pain and the weariness he felt, which seemed to be shutting down every muscle in his almost broken body one by one.