Man from U.N.C.L.E. Section VII

Illya’s Folly

It was too late to turn back now.  If the fumes from the lab didn’t catch up with him then the guards surely would.  They had gas masks to protect them, and he… well, he’d broken a rule and not had a plan when the impulse to blow up a THRUSH satrapy had struck.

Napoleon might have stopped him, might have come up with something brilliant to substitute for his own bad timing, but the American wasn’t here.  Illya had gone off without him, left in a huff because his partner let himself get distracted again by a pretty face.

Illya knew better than to act on his own in situations like this.  Napoleon was the strategist.  Damn it!  He knew better.

None of that mattered right now.  Hindsight was useless, as was the distance he was putting between himself and the approaching crowd of THRUSH personnel.  It seemed that no matter where he ran, every door was locked and the entrance was farther away than it had been before.  The explosion Illya set had apparently triggered something unstable in the lab, something that was chasing him down and threatening to end what had been, up to now, a very promising career.