Nikolaus scowled as he held onto the young man. He’d heard him blundering through the hallways behind him, and had hoped that he wasn’t being followed. He couldn’t afford to be followed. The mission he was on was too critical, too sensitive. No one was meant to know. Who was this person?

He was about to open his mouth and ask green-eyes directly, but at that very moment he heard an entirely different kind of footfall behind him. Swinging his neck around he scanned the corridor. The sound was close. Two sets of heavy-shod boots thumping along the hall. They were marching almost in-step, the sort of sound everyone can recognise as belonging to officialdom. 

Nikolaus would put money on it being members of the metropolitan patrol. He’d run up against them in previous visits and knew the telltale signs. His luck was getting worse and worse today!

He daren’t be seen! Even if they didn’t recognise him immediately, it wouldn’t take the patrol long to figure out who he was or who he might be. He stood out like a sore thumb! But then again, as he swung back to his pursuer, so did the man who had followed him. His clothes and demeanour were as out of place in this housing prefab as his were; and green-eyes wasn’t saying a word, still in shock from being caught in the act it seemed.

Making a decision, knowing it would only be moments before the constabulary rounded the nearest corner, Nikolaus tightened his grip on the thin arm his hand was encircling, and casting his eyes about he dragged the temporarily-compliant figure off the stairs and into a nearby alcove. 

Spinning the young man in front of him, he pressed them both into the recessed doorway, as footsteps got louder behind them. He prayed that they wouldn’t be seen, that his dark clothes would hide them, blending them into the drab walls that stretched in every direction.

The mumbled voices of the two booted men rounded the corner, their conversation confirming their identities as municipal patrolmen; probably out rounding up school truants and ‘keeping the peace’ as they say. 

They talked as two people who had walked the beat together many times. There was nothing to suggest they’d been sent here particularly, or that they felt any need to be particularly observant either; and while Nikolaus held his breath and prayed, they did exactly what he was hoping for. The two on patrol never saw the two men pressed into the doorway, they walked blithely by, heading up the staircase that had been so recently vacated and continuing on out of sight and hearing.

After what seemed an age, Nikolaus breathed a sigh of relief, it felt as though he’d been holding his breath forever. It was only then he looked down, tilting his head. He caught his breath again at that moment — although only for a split-second. Staring up at him, from about the level of his chest, were those green-eyes. Eyes staring out of an uncomprehending face. Nikolaus was suddenly too aware of those eyes, and the body he’d squashed against the wall beneath him. He hurriedly stepped back, thanking all that was holy that the young man hadn’t made a peep.

“You were following me!” 

The young man didn’t seem to know what to say to that.

“Are you going to stop now?”

Again, nothing, although the eyes were becoming more guarded by the moment. If he’d been shocked at Nikolaus turning back and catching him on the stairs, the shock was quickly wearing off.

“Well?”

Finally the young man shook himself out of his reverie. “Who are you? What are you doing in this part of the city?” he spat.

“That’s none of your business. Go back home; I’m allowed to go about my business… unhindered.”

The green eyes looked uncertain for a moment then, recognising the truth in Nikolaus’ words, but then a glint came into those eyes. There was intelligence there.

“Then why were we hiding from the patrol?” He had found the logical question, the chink in the armour. The two stared at one another, it seemed like each was waiting for the other to break; and neither were prepared to yield.

“Go home!”

“You first, edge-lander!”

Ah! He’d been found out then. He wasn’t surprised, Nikolaus hadn’t expected to go unnoticed. It had been a vain hope, that coming during the quiet part of the day, to this nondescript level, he might avoid people. He didn’t have to hide it of course, he had a legal permit. But, did the people he was going to see? That was always the worry. Spies and aides and city-employees tracked his every move while he was this side of the fence, this height above the tree-line. That was the problem. How many people had worked to ensure he could slip out of the official reception in order to make this rendezvous? How many had run diversions to make sure he wasn’t followed and that no one would end up being able to track the networks of people within the city that he was here to help? If he didn’t get to them it could be months before another delegation; it had been so long already. 

He’d been caught because of an act of compassion. Looking down at the seething city-sider in front of him, Nikolaus didn’t know what to do. He could tell this stalker wasn’t a spy or an official. A spy or an official would have done a better job; known what they were doing. This person was acting on impulse and instinct. Bad instinct! Basically harmless, apart from the fact that he was a flashing beacon to anyone they might run across. His clothes, his simmering arrogance, he was from the high-levels and the important high-rises. He’d probably never been inside a single apartment in a building like this one. It might be connected by airbridges and travelators to the buildings that he lived in, but they were still a world apart; they might as well have been as far apart as the city was from The Edge.

‘What to do? What to do?’ 

A step from the very top of the stairs brought Nikolaus back to himself. This could be the patrolmen returning. In that moment he made a split-second decision. Grabbing the arm of the young man, he set off once more down the corridor, dragging green-eyes behind him.

“Come on then,” he sighed in a quiet voice. “If I can’t get rid of you, you’ll just have to come along too.”

A pair of bewildered eyes followed him as he led them round one corner, after another. Leading them on a convoluted but well-memorised path. Even a city-sider wouldn’t be able to make sense of this route, let alone remember it. That’s what Nikolaus hoped.