This section was originally planned for after Steve made his final call to Thiebert from the stadium. Basically I’m stuck and I need to back up a little…therefore the section below has to go to be replaced by a much swifter time constrained version of the rescue (as the story begins to hurtle like a drunken midget towards the explosive climax etc etc)
I removed it because: –
a) The point about no-one knowing where Al was except Theibert really fucked up my plan of Al and Steve returning to the base.
b) The pace is a little odd – I feel that the last few paragraphs brought it down a little, as though I was having to build the story back up again at a point where it needs to start entering the final stages.
I like the last paragraph. This may crop up again in the new text…
Anyway, here it is:
Al, standing in another car park. Unlike the stadium car park, this was almost empty with just a few lonely cars sticking around, probably[1] night workers from the refinery. All is quiet. The Refinery itself is nothing short of massive, a behemoth that beacons all eyes towards it like gravity.
Al had made his call to Thiebert, and like Steve, his plan is to wait for another call. Meanwhile he had to sit here with his head throbbing and the wind that threw itself around the exposed area with something short of unadulterated abandon making him shiver despite the heat.
At some point, he surmised, someone is going to glance at a security monitor and notice him stood next to a horse sized cockroach wearing large saddlebags. Why don’t I, he thought sourly, wear a pink neon dress and shoot fireworks from my fingers. Only a few hundred yards he could see the entrance to the complex; a small office next to a purely ceremonial security. Inside the office the plasma flutter of a television would inspire nothing but the utmost confidence in the potential approaching terrorist.
He considered the plan he had swiftly conjured back in the cave, and all that had been set in motion. It had more holes than a golf-course designed for OCD sufferers. One of these holes, he now realised, meant that the only person who knew his location was Thiebert. Steve couldn’t collect him once he tag-teamed with the Nipper, which meant…what? That Steve was on his own in rescuing the others? That Al just sits here and wait for events to resolve themselves? What about the bug and its deadly cargo – was there a chance Theibert could trigger the bug and its explosives the second it all went south? Probably.
Al sighed, folder his arms and looked upon the night sky, where stars and nebulae and moons and gasses all fought to dominate the black canvas with their crazy, beautiful art – such a difference to his home planet. Just the one sun and moon, thank you very much. Goosepimples raced up his arms and ended up as a tingle at the nape of his neck, the same it always did every time he remembered that he would never look upon that particular patch of sky again.
[1] a guess
