CHAPTER ONE

‘This is going to hurt, isn’t it?’

Kieron Mellor heard the slight tremor in his voice, and hated himself for it. Why wasn’t he able to cope with this? After what he’d been through recently, it should be a walk in the park.

That’s what he kept telling himself, but he could feel his heart beating fast in his chest.

‘It won’t hurt at all,’ the man in the tattoo-and-piercing parlour said reassuringly. ‘Just a pinprick. Well, two pinpricks. You’ll hardly feel a thing.’

Kieron looked over the guy’s shoulder at the shoppers passing in the mall. The piercing parlour was small – barely the size of his bedroom. With him, the man sitting on a stool facing him and the woman on the cash register, there was hardly enough room to turn around. Sam – Kieron’s best friend – was waiting outside, leaning on the rail running around the balcony and staring down at the crowded expanse of mall.

Down below were the shops selling clothes, electronic goods, expensive handbags and furniture. Down below them was the food court. Up here on the top level were the cheaper places – a comic shop, a place that sold New Age figurines and packs of angel cards, a gents’ hairdressers. And the tattoo and piercing parlour.

The man sitting patiently in front of Kieron wore a tight T-shirt and sported a luxuriant moustache that continued up his cheeks to join his sideburns. He also wore a leather cowboy hat. Tattoos of blue-and-gold fish scales covered his right arm from wrist to shoulder. On his left arm the tattoos were a work in progress: black curves that would be coloured in progressively at some later date. Kieron found himself wondering if the man tattooed himself. Was that even possible? Or did he go to another parlour or get the woman on the till to do it? And why wasn’t it finished yet – had he run out of blue and gold ink?

‘So,’ the man said patiently, ‘are we going to do this, or what?’

Kieron tried to calm his racing thoughts and his racing heart. ‘Yes,’ he said, then, ‘Yes!’ in a louder, firmer voice.

‘And just to confirm – you are sixteen, aren’t you? I have to ask. We don’t pierce anyone younger than that.’

‘Yes,’ Kieron responded. He wasn’t sixteen, but he looked as though he might be. He could see from the man’s expression that he didn’t believe him, but that it didn’t matter. He’d asked, and Kieron had answered.

‘Two snakebite piercings: one on each side, yes?’

‘Yes.’

‘OK.’ He reached over and brushed underneath Kieron’s lower lip with something that looked like a wet wipe and smelled of antiseptic. ‘I’m just going to make a couple of marks with a felt-tip pen. They’ll wash off, but I want to make sure I get the piercings symmetrical.’ He swapped the wet wipe for a pen, leaned forward and touched it twice to Kieron’s face where he had wiped. ‘There’s nothing worse than lopsided piercings.’ He looked critically at the placement. ‘Yes, that should do it.’ Putting the pen on a counter by his side, he picked up a device that looked like a small clamp. In fact, it was a small clamp, as Kieron found out when the man quickly fastened it to his lip over one of the marks. Steadying it with one hand, he scooped something else up.

Kieron closed his eyes and held his breath.

‘Try not to flinch,’ the man said. ‘That thing on your lip has two holes in it – one on either side. I’m going to pass the needle through. The needle is attached to a stud. I’ll remove the clamp, then pull the needle out. It’ll leave the stud behind.’ Kieron felt a sharp pain and a tug on his lip as the needle went through, then some fiddling as the man removed the clamp. He braced himself for a sharper pain as the needle was pulled out, but he hardly felt it. Maybe the wet wipe had some anaesthetic on it and it had just kicked in. A dull ache started up as the man leaned back and gazed at his handiwork.

‘Perfect. You all right? Not going to faint?’

Kieron shook his head. He thought he could taste blood, but he wasn’t sure.

‘Ready for the next one?’

He nodded. Again the clamp was applied to his lip, but this time he didn’t even feel the needle going in, let alone coming out. As the man replaced the clamp on the counter Kieron touched the studs with his tongue – first left and then right. He felt a slight jolt as the tip of his tongue met the cold metal, like a very small electric shock. Experimentally he moved his lips and waggled his jaw. The studs had gone in higher up, so they didn’t clash unless he deliberately rubbed his lower lip against his teeth.

‘Finished. Don’t eat or drink anything for half an hour. Come back in two weeks and I’ll replace the studs with rings. All part of the price. Talking of which, if you could pay the lovely Maria there on your way out – thirty pounds, please.’

He stood, and moved past Kieron to a small washbasin. Kieron levered himself to his feet, feeling slightly woozy, and stepped over to where Maria already had her hand out expectantly. He fished around in his pocket for the cash he’d painstakingly saved up from the pocket money his mum gave him and handed it across. It was a lot, but he’d wanted these piercings for ages.

Outside, the cool air hit him. He could feel beads of sweat on his forehead.

‘What do you think?’ he asked as he approached Sam.

His friend frowned. ‘Sorry, what?’

‘Don’t muck around. You heard me.’

Sam smiled. ‘Yeah. Actually they look great. Better than I expected. What do you think your mum’s going to say?’

‘The question is, how long is it going to be until she even notices?’ Kieron could hear the bitterness in his voice and hated himself for it.

‘She’s still doing overtime?’ Sam asked.

‘Every shift she can get. Then she spends the money she makes from the overtime on presents for me because she feels guilty about doing the overtime. What’s that phrase – “vicious circle”? That’s what we’re trapped in.’

Sam nodded. He glanced at Kieron’s piercings again. ‘My sister told me about some guy she had come into Accident and Emergency. He’d had a piercing just like yours, except he’d already had the studs replaced with rings. Apparently he was eating dinner one night and got the fork caught in one of the rings. In his panic to get it out he ended up tearing his lip open. Nasty.’

Thoughts of Sam’s sister Courtney made Kieron’s cheeks feel hot. He knew he was blushing, and didn’t want Sam to see. Trying to change the subject, he said, ‘You’re just jealous. Scare stories aren’t going to put me off.’

‘Hey, if you want to desecrate your own body, you go ahead.’

Kieron bristled. ‘At least I’m desecrating the outside of my body. I’ve seen the amount of highly caffeinated energy drinks you chug every day. Your liver is probably making plans to move out even as we speak.’

Sam frowned. ‘I think I saw that film. Or did I dream it?’

Gazing over the edge of the balcony, Kieron said, ‘See down there? That’s where we were sitting a week ago when we saw Bradley Marshall being attacked.’

Sam nodded. ‘Just think – if we’d been at a different table in the food court, or if we’d decided to go somewhere else or left sooner, we’d never have got involved in all this.’

All this. Simple to say, but when Kieron thought back over what had happened in that past week he felt his head spin. One week ago he’d been a disaffected teen, watching the world pass him by and thinking about how boring and stale everything was. Now he could say that he’d helped an MI6 agent recover a stolen nuclear weapon and prevented several other nuclear weapons being detonated in cities across the Middle East and India. Well, to be fair, he couldn’t say anything of the sort. He’d been sworn to secrecy by the agent in question, Rebecca Wilson – ‘Bex’, as she liked to be known – and nobody would believe him anyway. Apart from Sam, who’d shared the adventure with him.

‘That reminds me,’ he said, ‘Bex is flying in to Newcastle later on today. We need to meet her.’

‘I still can’t believe you can fly from Mumbai to Newcastle,’ Sam said. ‘I’m having a hard time believing you can fly from anywhere to Newcastle.’

‘Technically she had to fly from Mumbai to Delhi first, then catch a connecting flight to Dubai, then another flight to here. She said she wanted to confuse her trail, in case anyone was looking for her. But yeah – there’s loads of flights from Newcastle. You can get to five different places in Lapland, if you want.’

‘Brilliant. I’ll remember that, come Christmas. My mum still has this strange desire to take me to see Santa Claus in his grotto in one of the big department stores. I’ll ask her if we can go to Lapland instead.’ Sam frowned. ‘Hey – you didn’t get the piercings to impress Bex, did you? I mean, that would be a little creepy. You’ve never even met her. In fact, correct me if I’m wrong, but you’ve never even seen her.’

‘True,’ Kieron said defensively, ‘but with that kit we found when Bradley was kidnapped, I’ve pretty much been seeing everything she sees – at least when she’s wearing her ARCC glasses. I’ve kind of shared her head with her.’

‘Now that is creepy,’ Sam said.

‘It’s all been very innocent,’ Kieron protested. ‘And no, I didn’t get the piercings to impress her. I don’t feel any need to impress her. I think of her more like a big sister.’

‘That’s even creepier,’ Sam said, grimacing. ‘I had to share a bedroom with Courtney when she was living at home. I’ve seen things you wouldn’t believe. Never again.’

‘Vietnam-style flashbacks?’

‘Post-traumatic stress disorder,’ Sam replied.

‘Bex is going to want to see Bradley as soon as possible,’ Kieron said. ‘Is your sister in, or off working? It could get a little awkward otherwise.’

Sam was silent for a few moments before replying – probably replaying, like Kieron, seeing Bex’s partner Bradley black out in Sam’s sister’s flat, face-planting on the carpet with a heavy thud. He’d recovered quickly, but not before they’d phoned for an ambulance. Ignoring his protests, they’d taken him to the local A & E, giving a fake name so that he couldn’t be identified or tracked later. After an X-ray of his skull, an EEG of his brainwaves and an ECG of the electrical activity of his heart, the doctors had decided that they didn’t know what had happened. ‘Probably as isolated ischemic event,’ one of them said, with the confidence of someone who’d considered all the evidence and come to a difficult conclusion. Kieron had been using the ARCC glasses while the doctor had been talking, and had quickly discovered from the Internet that an isolated ischemic event was just fancy medical talk for a temporary restriction of the blood supply to the brain. Basically, they were describing what had happened but using longer words. Kieron was keen to press for a full MRI scan of Bradley’s skull, but Bradley himself at that point decided to walk out – or stagger out, as he couldn’t quite keep his balance. Kieron and Sam had had little choice but to leave too, to make sure he didn’t fall in front of a bus or something.

‘Courtney’s working a twelve-hour shift,’ Sam said eventually. ‘We’ll have the flat to ourselves.’

‘That’s good. Courtney might be looking after Bradley, but she still doesn’t know what he really does for a living.’ Kieron probed the right-hand metal stud with his tongue again, fascinated by the feeling of something alien in his mouth. It felt huge – the size of a pea – but he knew that was just the sensitivity of his tongue playing tricks.

‘What time is Bex’s flight arriving?’ Sam asked.

‘About five o’clock.’ Kieron checked his watch. ‘We’d better get going.’

Sam smiled at him. ‘What do you think Bex’ll make of the piercings?’

‘I told you, I didn’t get them to impress her,’ Kieron said quickly.

‘You sure?’

‘I got them because I wanted them! No, really, I did!’

Actually Kieron was feeling more nervous about meeting her than he liked to admit. They had shared so much together in such an intense way, and over such a short time, but he had never seen her face, and in so many ways they were complete strangers to each other.

‘Ice-cream shakes first, for old times’ sake?’ Sam said, punching his arm.

He smiled. ‘Why not?’

They got their shakes and headed out of the shopping mall and towards Newcastle Central Station. The Metro train to the airport took just under half an hour. They got some strange looks from the other passengers. Apparently two boys, one lanky with facial piercings and one shorter and stockier; both dressed in ripped black jeans and baggy black hoodies; one with dyed black hair hanging in front of his eyes and the other with dyed blue hair of an identical length; both drinking ice-cream shakes through striped straws, were an unusual sight. They certainly didn’t look like typical airport travellers. They looked like what they were – greebs – although almost anyone looking at them would have called them ‘emos’ without realising the gulf of difference between the two tribes.

‘Look at them, looking at us,’ Sam said in a low voice. ‘All dressed the same, in their suits and ties and their shiny leather shoes, with their expensive rucksacks that have never seen a mountainside or a forest in their lives. It’s like they’re wearing a uniform.’

‘Yes,’ Kieron said, amused that Sam failed to see the inherent irony, ‘thank heavens we’re dressed as individuals.’ What he thought, but didn’t say, was that the only forest they’d seen had been through the window of a bus, and the only time they’d ever seen a real mountain had been on TV.

At Newcastle Airport they followed the signs to arrivals. Kieron noticed that a couple of security guards tracked them for a while, checking on what they were doing. Sam had noticed it too.

‘As if terrorists would dress like us,’ he said dismissively. ‘Stupid!’

‘I think it’s more likely they think we’re smuggling drugs,’ Kieron pointed out, ‘or meeting someone who is.’

‘That’s just profiling – you can’t target somebody based on appearance! I’m appalled! What about my human rights?’

‘Yeah,’ Kieron said, ‘you tell them.’ He paused, then added, ‘You haven’t got any of those highly caffeinated energy drinks on you, have you? I only ask in case they decide to strip-search you.’

‘Very funny. Not.’

They stopped to consult a screen, hanging from a pillar, which provided a list of the anticipated arrivals. The next flight from Dubai was on time, landing in half an hour. Ignoring the security guards who orbited them at range, they settled down on the seating in the arrivals area to wait. Over to one side, the passengers arriving on various aircraft from far-flung destinations emerged, blinking, from an archway and were herded along a fenced-off section of flooring before joining the throng of excited relatives and uniformed chauffeurs waiting to greet them. Some of the relatives held balloons and tiny flags; the chauffeurs had signs with the names of their passengers written in marker pen on them. Like some sort of capitalist obstacle course, the last thing the arriving passengers had to go through was a duty-free area selling various bottles of spirits, perfumes and multi-packs of cigarettes.

‘Who designed these seats?’ Sam demanded to know as he squirmed around trying to get comfortable. ‘You can’t lie flat on them – the armrests stop you. I could have done better in TED classes back at school.’

‘I think that’s the point,’ Kieron replied. ‘They don’t want people stretched out, dribbling and snoring. Makes the place look untidy.’

‘But this is the one place you’d want to do that! If you’ve got a four-hour gap between arriving and departing, what else are you going to do? Sit upright with your arms folded, staring straight ahead?’

Kieron looked around. ‘I think you’re supposed to buy expensive stuff in the shops to pass the time.’

About five minutes before Bex’s aircraft landed, he took the ARCC glasses and earpiece out of his pocket and slipped them on. The glasses looked just like anything you could get from an opticians, but the lenses were not only clear glass, they acted as miniature computer screens, projecting information and relaying to the wearer whatever was being seen by the glasses they were linked to – which, in Kieron’s case was Bex. She wouldn’t be wearing them on the flight of course – there were rules about having transmitting equipment switched on when the aircraft was in the air – but he suspected she’d put them on as soon as it landed. He was right – seven minutes later he heard a bell-like chime in his ear and the glasses sprang to life. A rectangular screen, partially transparent, so he could still see the arrivals hall through it, appeared in the centre of his field of vision. It showed the back of an aircraft seat, with a built-in screen displaying a crude world map with a silhouette of an aircraft sitting right over Newcastle. Given the relative scales, the aircraft pretty much obliterated the whole of the UK.

Kieron’s discreet earpiece suddenly poured static into his ear, followed by a woman’s voice saying, ‘… now landed at Newcastle International Airport. The temperature outside is seven degrees Celsius, with a good chance of rain.’

That pretty much summed up Newcastle, Kieron thought.

‘Please do not unfasten your seat belt until the captain has turned off the signs. Thank you for flying with us, and we look forward to seeing you again.’

‘Not if I can help it,’ Bex’s voice muttered.

‘Bad flight?’ Kieron queried.

‘Cramped seat, tasteless food, babies crying, but I had a lovely chat with the woman beside me … Kieron?’ Bex said. ‘Are you at the airport?’

‘Is that Bex?’ Sam asked. ‘Is she there? Say hello for me.’

‘Sam says hi,’ Kieron said. ‘Yes, I’m here. We’re both here, in arrivals.’

‘Great. I’ll be out in a few minutes, assuming there are no queues at passport control.’ She hesitated. ‘How are you? Recovered from what happened at the … place where you … did that thing?’

She was being careful in case anyone was listening, but Kieron knew what she meant. She wanted to know if he’d recovered from setting fire to a base used by neo-fascists and electrocuting one of them before the man could shoot him. That place, and that thing.

‘Yeah,’ he said, and actually it was the truth. It wasn’t as if his mind was pretending it was all a dream or something; he knew what had happened, and he knew what he’d done, but he was proud of it. The memories hadn’t caused any mental trauma that he could detect. ‘Yeah, I’m fine. Really good, actually.’

‘And Sam?’

Sam had been caught up in it as well – taken prisoner by the fascist organisation Blood and Soil in fact. ‘He’s OK. Just a bit grumpy.’

In his earpiece Kieron heard the voice of the stewardess say, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, you can now –’ The rest of her words were lost in the sound of several hundred people all trying to stand up at once and open the overhead luggage bins.

‘– Bradley?’ Kieron heard Bex ask.

‘Sorry – I couldn’t hear what you said.’

She raised her voice to be heard above the din in the cabin. ‘I said, “How’s Bradley?”’

‘He’s … OK.’

‘Just “OK”?’ He could hear the worry in her voice.

‘Headaches, some blurriness of vision. Oh, and the blackouts of course.’

‘I need to see him straight away.’ Bex had stood up now, and was wriggling her way past other passengers to get off the aircraft.

‘We assumed you would. It’s twenty-five minutes back to town on the Metro, then a forty-five minute bus ride to Sam’s sister’s place. We can’t use the van,’ he added apologetically. ‘If Sam gets caught driving it, we’re really in trouble.’

‘I am not taking the train, or the bus,’ Bex said firmly, walking out of the aircraft into the connecting corridor that led to the terminal. ‘I’ll hire a car. Something anonymous.’

‘Oh,’ Kieron said. That hadn’t occurred to him. ‘Maybe we shouldn’t have bought return tickets.’

He and Sam gravitated towards the barrier that separated the new arrivals from those greeting them. Every now and then he heard excited squeals as people who hadn’t met face to face for years suddenly saw each other. His eye was caught by a young guy, hopping from one foot to another in anticipation as he scanned the faces of everyone coming through. As Kieron watched he saw an Asian girl come through the arch. She saw the young man, and the adoration on their faces as they ran towards each other made Kieron’s heart burn. Would anyone ever feel that way about him?

‘Do you think she might buy us something from that duty-free shop?’ Sam asked.

‘What?’

‘Bex. She’s got to go past all those bottles of spirits before she gets to us. Could you maybe ask her to pick us up a bottle of amaretto? I mean, surely we’re owed something for saving the world?’

Kieron shook his head in disbelief. ‘Of all the things you could ask for, you want amaretto?’

‘Yeah. So? It tastes like marzipan. I like marzipan.’

‘I am not asking her to buy us drinks, but if I did it would be something more sophisticated than amaretto.’ He wondered what a freelance agent working for MI6 might drink. ‘A ten-year-old single-malt whisky maybe.’

Sam snorted. ‘You wouldn’t be able to tell good whisky from the blended stuff they sell at petrol stations.’

The translucent image in Kieron’s ARCC glasses indicated that Bex was heading towards what might be the arrivals arch as viewed from the other side. He moved to the far end of the barrier so he could catch her eye as she moved into the main arrivals area. He’d seen her a couple of times, in mirrors and windows, so he knew he’d recognise her.

For a few seconds his brain was paralysed by a bizarre double vision – he could see the faces of people coming towards him, looking tired from the flight but happy to have landed, at the same time as he was seeing the backs of their heads in the ARCC image. He struggled for a moment to make sense of what he was seeing, and where he was actually seeing it from. And then the people moved left or right, creating a gap, and he found himself simultaneously looking at a young woman who was looking back at him quizzically and looking at himself through her eyes. Or her glasses.

The ‘him’ that he saw shocked him – a skinny teenager with an acne flush on his cheeks and nose and black hair that hung in a fringe across his eyes. Did his clothes really hang off him like that? Were his boots really that clompy?

With an effort, he stared through the image at the girl. She was as tall as him, with brown hair pulled back into a ponytail, startlingly green eyes and a smattering of freckles across her nose. She had a rucksack slung casually over one shoulder and she towed a small, wheeled hard-shell suitcase behind her. She came to a halt in front of him. The corner of her mouth twitched into a half-smile.

He wanted to say something important, meaningful, but nothing came to mind. ‘Hi,’ just wasn’t going to do it. Instead he found himself dredging up half-forgotten English lessons, and saying: ‘Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania.’

What? He couldn’t believe he had just said that. And to his horror he could see a look of disbelief appear on Bex’s face. What had he done? But then her disbelief turned to a broad grin. ‘What, jealous Oberon!’ she responded. ‘Fairies, skip hence!’ After hearing her voice through an earpiece for so long with a background of static, he was surprised at how rich and deep it was.

Kieron took a deep breath. He hadn’t blown it!

Sam, standing beside Kieron, frowned. ‘Is that some kind of coded talk?’ he asked.

‘Just breaking the ice,’ Bex said, removing her glasses and taking her micro-earpiece out.

Kieron extended his hand awkwardly, not knowing if she would expect to shake hands, but instead she abruptly stepped forward, let go of the strap of her rucksack and the handle of her suitcase, and gave him a quick hug. Her cheek pressed against his: warm and soft.

‘I feel like I know you but don’t know you,’ she said, stepping back.

‘Long-distance relationships …’ he said. Over her shoulder he saw the English guy and the Asian girl still wrapped in each other’s arms. ‘Hey,’ he went on, forcing a casual tone into his voice, ‘are you hungry? Want to grab a bite to eat?’

‘As long as I can get a coffee and maybe a croissant from some takeaway place, I’ll be OK.’ She glanced at Sam, then stepped closer and gave him a brief hug too. ‘You must be Sam. Thanks for all the help you’ve given us, and the risks you’ve taken.’

Sam shrugged, staring at the ground. ‘Hey, no problem.’

‘Let me take your suitcase.’ Kieron took the handle and started pulling it towards a coffee kiosk. It took just a few minutes to get Bex set up with her coffee and croissant, then she led the way to the car rental desks. There were four of them, all different companies, lined up in a row. Kieron wondered why there had to be so many. Surely they were all offering cars for the same price – otherwise the more expensive ones would have gone out of business.

Arrangements complete, Bex headed towards the car park with Kieron and Sam in tow. Kieron caught up with her. ‘False identity?’ he whispered.

She instinctively looked around to confirm that nobody else was close enough to overhear them, then nodded. ‘I have several. This one isn’t known to my employers at SIS-TERR. I don’t particularly want to alert them to the fact that I’m back in-country. Not until I’ve sorted things out, anyway.’

Sorted things out. A neutral way of referring to the fact that someone in the Secret Intelligence Service’s Technology-Enhanced Remote Reinforcement team was a traitor, working with the extreme fascist group Blood and Soil. Bex obviously wanted to find some way of dealing with the traitor before letting SIS-TERR know that she was back. As far as Kieron knew, she was actually a freelance agent, along with her partner Bradley Marshall. Security-vetted and highly trained, but not officially a member of MI6, she and Bradley could do jobs for MI6 as needed and then conveniently disappear. A cheap and efficient way of managing an increasingly fractured and dangerous world, as far as Kieron could work out.

Once in the car park they headed for the area reserved for hire cars. All of them gleamed as if they were freshly washed – which presumably they were. Kieron stared enviously at the sleek black executive cars that they passed, but Bex stopped by a white Kia.

‘Ooh,’ Sam said. ‘No Aston Martin for us. Agents in a Reasonably Priced Car.’

‘Just get in,’ Kieron growled.

Inside, Bex turned to them. ‘Right – bearing in mind I’ve never been to Newcastle before, which one of you is navigating?’

‘Me!’ Kieron and Sam said at the same time.

Bex sighed. ‘OK, it’s like that is it? No fighting, children. Just tell me where I’m going.’

‘My sister’s flat,’ Sam said from the back seat. ‘That’s where we’ve stashed Bradley.’

‘Is your sister in?’

‘No, she’s at work.’ He paused. ‘She doesn’t know what Bradley really does. She thinks he works in IT. We told her that he got beaten up when he was trying to rescue a girl from being attacked in a park.’

‘That’s good. It’s the kind of thing he would do anyway.’ Bex started the car up and gave the controls a quick once-over. ‘Didn’t you say she was a nurse?’

‘That’s right,’ Kieron said. ‘She’s been looking after Bradley – making sure there wasn’t any permanent damage from the attack and the … the beatings.’

He was watching Bex’s face as he said the words. There wasn’t any change he could put his finger on – no wincing, no frown of concern. Maybe it was some shift in the light shining through the car’s windows, but whoever was responsible for hurting her friend ought to watch out, he thought. She would be coming for them, and she would not be polite.

Except that Kieron had already electrocuted one of them, which ought to get him some brownie points. He smiled to himself.

‘I appreciate what your sister has done, but I need to get Bradley out of there as quickly as possible,’ Bex said. ‘While I was waiting in Delhi and Dubai airports for my connecting flights I did some hunting around on the Internet. I’ve leased a flat in the city centre. We’ll use that as a base for the time being.’ She glanced sideways at Kieron. ‘And by “us”, I mean me and Bradley. We appreciate what you guys have done for us, but I can’t put you at risk any more.’

Kieron’s heart sank. He had known this was coming. ‘Can we still visit?’ he asked.

She smiled a soft smile. ‘Yes, you can visit. But no parties, OK? I know what you teens are like.’ Turning her attention back to manoeuvring the car out of its bay and then out of the car park, she added quietly, ‘After all, it wasn’t that long ago I was a teenager myself, although sometimes it feels like centuries.’

Between them, Kieron and Sam managed to navigate their way back from the airport to the side of Newcastle where Courtney lived. Bex was a good driver – not too fast, but aware of everything around her and able to take advantage of gaps and changes in traffic speed. She kept looking at the rear-view mirror and the side mirrors. Kieron wasn’t sure if she was just driving cautiously or whether she was actively looking for anyone who might be following them. Maybe a bit of both. He suspected that the things agents learned in training became second nature after a while. They lived their lives perpetually watching out for things that were out of the ordinary: warning signs that their world might suddenly turn upside down.

A bit like being a greeb or an emo in a city that didn’t like people who dressed or acted differently, he thought bleakly. Both he and Sam were well used to watching out for signs that any nearby teenagers might suddenly decide to pick on them, call them names, chase them down the street, confront them.

Eventually Bex parked at the side of the road, a few hundred metres past the block where Courtney’s flat was located.

‘Come on then,’ she said, taking a deep breath. ‘Let’s see how he is.’

Sam led them inside and up the stairs to the flat where his sister lived. He delved into his pocket and pulled out a bunch of keys. Kieron watched incredulously as he sorted through them, trying to find the right one.

‘Just out of interest,’ he said, ‘how many places do you live in?’

Sam shot him a dark glance. ‘Just my flat and this place.’

‘So what are the rest of the keys for?’

‘Just – things I’ve picked up along the way. Don’t judge me.’

He finally found the right key. Opening the door, he entered. Kieron and Bex followed.

‘Bradley?’ he called. ‘It’s Sam. I’ve got Kieron and Bex with me.’

No answer.

‘Bradley – are you there?’

Still nothing.

‘Maybe he’s gone out,’ Kieron said cautiously.

Sam walked down the short corridor and pushed open the door to the lounge, Kieron and Bex just behind.

Late-afternoon sunlight shone through the large windows, illuminating Bradley’s body, sprawled face down on the wooden flooring.