Smell A Rat update #10

The Shard had its own station, about ten stops and a line change away from Kingsby.
The train to the Shard hadn’t been so nice this time and the suitcase that Milo had to carry with him had reduced the already cramped carriage to a total crush.
This was the kind of thing that put him off moving sewerside.
Nonetheless, the journey had at least been fairly swift and Floyd now had time to relax as much as he could and set up for the mission ahead.
The station for The Shard was quite unusual in that it didn’t actually lead directly into the building.
At least, not by any conventional way.
The humans had set the building up to be pretty impenetrable to rodents - by design or otherwise -  and so it had taken pathfinder teams working around the clock during the building’s construction and for months afterwards to work out routes and spaces that London’s smaller inhabitants could use.
Consequently, the platform for The Shard actually led them to an unused storage space that was near the skyscraper but not actually part of it; from there, mice and rats alike would have to carefully head to the official rodent entrance, situated within a large and particularly dull-looking crate.
It was cold in the store room and poorly lit, forcing him to squint as he explained what semblance of a plan he had to Milo.
“Alright. I’ve made my mind up on this: we’re going to try to capture her alive, but the moment she becomes anything like more trouble than she’s worth, we just put her down there and then and have done with this whole thing. Sound good?”
Milo nodded as he knelt down to the suitcase and flicked it open.
“Sounds about right to me. Do you reckon we’ll get a strong enough signal up there?”
Milo gestured to the contents of the suitcase and Floyd nodded, then reached out to take the radio out of the suitcase.
A small pair of microphones and earpieces similar to the ones he was accustomed to seeing on telephones came out of the top compartment, and Floyd handed a set to Milo before he lifted the actual radio out.
The unit wasn’t much smaller than he was, but nonetheless, it ran on a tiny internal battery and was able to send and receive radio signals to and from their individual kits.
If not for this rather bulky little thing, he and Milo would have to go everywhere together or agree to meet up somewhere. The only other alternative would be to carry a bulky all-in-one unit each, which would be just about as discreet as a firework display.
Floyd turned it on and pushed a button on it to connect it to MI6, then spoke as clearly as he could into his mouthpiece, “Ugly ducking calling home, come in Mother Goose.”
Of course, Kevin answered and his ever-cheerful speech decimated the otherwise perfect quiet. “Mother Goose copies good. I’ll be here for you guys, just call in whatever you need and I’ll get it to you. Over.”
Floyd turned to Milo and shrugged, “Thanks, Mother Goose, we’ll keep you posted. Ugly Duckling Out.”
He put his microphone and speaker into his pockets and took hold of the radio, then dragged it over to a corner behind some old boxes of soup and left it there.
A particularly large spider didn’t seem too happy about him putting it there, but at least that told him that the storeroom was indeed almost completely unused by humans and therefore the station and its users were about as safe as they could be, this close to the human domain.
“Alright MIlo. You ready?”
Milo nodded and pulled on his gloves, then leaned in to kiss him.
Neither of them wanted to say it, but it was pretty obvious from the way he did it that Milo meant that to be a kiss goodbye.
In case one of them didn’t make it.

He felt profoundly uncomfortable walking into the big box and down the stairs that had been carved out by whole teams of rodents into the main foyer for The Shard.
As the foyer above was used by humans that poured in and out of the massive skyscraper, so the many rodents of London all congregated in an equally glamorous grand foyer, or about as glamorous as was possible with the materials and resources available to rodents.
Single LED lights inset in the ceiling bathed the cavernous room in cold white light and light grey paint covered the bare walls while on the floor, tiny pieces of garishly coloured plastic had been set in the concrete to form a mosaic that depicted a rather affluent young rat woman holding a suitcase, ready either to go somewhere important, or do something important.
She was up to something important though, and that was the main thing.
Without noticing it, he began holding and fiddling with his old Pathfinders’ identification badge: MI6 saw fit to have him keep that years ago, so that he would have a genuine piece of I.D. to use whenever he went out within the UK.
The problem was, he now felt guilty masquerading as a pathfinder around the building, because he knew just how many pathfinders had all met their demise in order for the rodents of London to be able to use it, and he knew first-hand just how much it hurt to see a fellow pathfinder die on the job in a dog’s jaw or beneath a human’s boot.
The human drill didn’t work.
Milo shot him a look of compassion; he’d explained all of this to him years ago in a drunken stupor, so Milo knew exactly how he felt about using his I.D as part of his disguise.
Consciously, he stopped fiddling with the badge and with a deep breath, he composed himself in order to speak to the young lady mouse on the reception desk.
She looked fairly astute as she tended to the documents on her desk and had unusually large ears and short-trimmed whiskers, as was the fashion among women of her age and wore a flattering, but professional-looking black outfit over her well groomed white fur.
They came up to her together and gave her a friendly nod to signal that they wanted to speak to her.
She turned her attention to them fairly quickly and Milo took the moment that her attention was directed to Floyd to scan over the guest register; subtly, he tapped on his foot to indicate he’d found her.
“Good afternoon gentlemen, how can I help you today?”
She spoke with a fairly calm and clipped tone and Floyd found it endearing, but quickly, he washed her pleasant tones out of his mind and produced his identification badge for her to inspect.
He went to start speaking quickly, taking only the briefest of glances at Milo, who was trying to glean as much further information as he could from the unguarded paperwork on her desk.
However, the receptionist spoke first.
“Oh. I thought we were given the all-clear last week. Has there been another incident?”
Her tone was now much different: she retained her clear and calm delivery, but rising behind it was a clear nasal intonation and a slight waver in her voice.
It upset him to hear that sound; it was a sound he’d hoped he would never have to hear again since he joined MI6.
He decided to be kind to her and told her the more pleasant of the two lies he usually went with.
“No. No more incidents, but we’re here on follow-up duty - make sure no poison’s been left out and disarm any traps that might have been put down. Can’t be too careful.”
The receptionist seemed to cheer up a bit as he said that and so he continued, glancing again at Milo as he did so, to see the quick hand gestures he was making to signal the number of the room that Angela was staying in.
“We were told it’s likely there’s fresh poison been put out on floor thirty six so we’d like to check that out first and go through the building from there, if that’s okay?”
The receptionist nodded her understanding and handed him a master key, then pointed to a large pair of doors.
“Stairs and lifts are through there. Thanks for doing this for us.”
Milo thanked her for her time and Floyd did the same and they left quickly, so that she could get back to her work.
Floyd heard her start to cry as he opened the big main doors.