CHAPTER TWO

Next day, Bex and Bradley hired a nondescript car and headed off to the meeting with Avalon Richardson. It was being held in a location between Reading and London, just off the M4 motorway. According to Google Maps it was just a patch of open ground, covering several square miles, with no buildings or roads. Odd, Bex thought. She’d expected the meeting to be in the MI6 headquarters on the banks of the Thames at Vauxhall, made famous by the James Bond films that MI6 agents simultaneously loved and hated.

‘What do you think this meeting is about?’ Bradley asked during one of their frequent breaks.

‘I’m not sure.’ She shrugged. ‘The email didn’t give away many details. On the surface it’s probably going to be a review of the work we’ve done recently and a discussion about where we go next. Underneath that, I reckon it’s going to be Avalon trying to find out how much we know about her and her links to Blood and Soil.’

Bradley frowned. ‘Is there any chance she’s found out about Kieron and Sam?’

Bex considered for a few moments. ‘I don’t think so,’ she answered eventually. ‘If MI6 knew we’ve been using two teenagers with no security clearance for top-secret work, they’d have fired us straight away. Even if they didn’t prosecute us under the Official Secrets Act or just make us quietly vanish. No, I think we’re clear on that score.’ She sighed. ‘I really just think this is a fishing expedition on Avalon’s part.’

‘It could be another attempt to get us out of the way,’ Bradley pointed out. ‘Bombing our apartment didn’t work, so maybe she’s luring us to some out-of-the-way location so she can have us quietly killed. Or even not-so-quietly, given how isolated it is.’

‘Again, I don’t think so. MI6 seemed to buy it when we told them the police thought it was a gas leak at the flat – I mean, that was actually true. But any more attempts on our lives and Avalon’s bosses are going to get suspicious, which she won’t want. She’ll be thinking that if we do suspect her, we’ve got information – and will have briefed people to send it in if we turn up dead.’

‘Did we do that?’ Bradley asked. ‘I don’t remember doing that. Although it actually sounds like a good idea.’

‘Well, in a sense, we did. Kieron and Sam won’t let it rest if we don’t come back. They’ll get word covertly to Avalon’s bosses, and name her. No, the more I think about it, the more sure I am that she won’t risk direct action.’

At the next stop, near Oxford, Bradley asked, ‘Are we going to explain about my … you know, problems? I mean, if I can’t do the work, then they’re not going to employ us any more, but if they do employ us then I can’t do the work. It’s a vicious circle, as Kieron pointed out.’

Bex took a sip of her coffee. Thinking about what might happen if Bradley didn’t recover made her panicky every time. She wasn’t normally the nervous type, but then she could usually see a way out of bad situations. But with Bradley like this, it was all so uncertain. She didn’t want a new partner, but she might have to consider it. It wasn’t like they could swap places – she was the one with all the undercover training and experience. In the meantime, she had to keep Bradley’s spirits up. If he was going to recover, then he’d need all the positive energy he could muster. So …

‘No,’ she said, with as much firmness as she could manage, ‘we keep quiet about your condition. Hopefully you’ll recover before long, and we’ll be able to work like we used to. Until then …’

When she didn’t go on, he finished her sentence. ‘We use the uncleared teenagers and hope nobody realises, and nothing bad happens to them.’

‘Yes. It’s a plan. I’m not saying it’s a good plan, but it’s a plan.’

Bradley was silent for a while, then said, ‘Do you think it’s all in my mind, Bex? Not being able to use the ARCC kit. I mean, the doctor can’t find any physical problems. Maybe …’ He hesitated. ‘Maybe I’m just, you know, scared. Maybe my brain won’t let me use the kit because it thinks the job is too dangerous for me. Maybe I’ve burned out. Agents do – one minute they’re on the MI6 roster and the next they’ve been taken off as if they never existed.’

She shook her head firmly, if only as a way of trying to convince herself. ‘I don’t believe that for a second, and if you weren’t so affected by this then you wouldn’t believe it either. There is a physical problem at the bottom of it all, and we’re going to find out what it is.’

‘If it kills us,’ he said.

‘Well, hopefully it won’t be necessary to go that far.’

The last leg of the journey took them along the M4. Just before Reading the route planner on Bradley’s phone directed them to take a junction that didn’t actually exist. As they approached the place they were supposed to turn off, Bradley said, ‘What do we do? I mean, there’s been no signs for any junction. We can’t just come off on the hard shoulder – can we?’

Bex was just about to answer when they saw a sign showing a side road coming off the motorway. ‘Service Road Only’ it said, in red letters.

‘That just means some kind of construction site. Building a new road or something,’ she pointed out.

‘Yes …’ Bradley sounded intrigued. ‘But that sign’s dusty and rain-streaked. It’s been there for years.’ He pointed off to his left, where the side road curved away from the motorway. ‘And look – there’s lights on poles along there. Since when did a service road leading to a construction site have proper lights? Usually they’re temporary things on masts powered by a generator.’

‘Let’s find out.’ Bex slowed down, turned the wheel and took the car down the service road. She’d expected it to be bumpy, but it was properly tarmacked.

She followed the road over a bank of earth, putting them out of sight of the motorway.

A minute or so later, they found themselves approaching a checkpoint with a barrier. A uniformed security guard waved them to a stop while a second one stood nearby, watching. Bex couldn’t help noticing the diagonal straps across their chests. They were both well-built, muscular, with close-cropped hair and faded blue eyes. Special Forces operatives on secondment to MI6, probably.

‘I bet they’ve got semi-automatic weapons behind their backs,’ she said as she gradually braked.

‘I’m not taking that bet,’ Bradley said.

The first security guard moved closer, while his companion stayed put, one hand held behind his back so he could bring his weapon into play if Bex or Bradley made the slightest suspicious move. ‘Are you lost, ma’am?’ he asked after Bex had wound her window down.

‘We have a meeting,’ Bex said. She gestured past the barrier. ‘Somewhere that way.’

The guard nodded, unsurprised. Presumably this happened a fair amount. ‘Names?’

‘Rebecca Wilson and Bradley Marshall.’

He must have had the list of expected visitors already memorised, because he just said, ‘That’s fine. Are you OK if I do a retinal scan?’

‘No problems,’ she said.

As the guard unclipped a small device from his belt, Bradley muttered, ‘What would happen if it wasn’t OK with us?’

‘Shut up,’ she hissed.

The guard held up a small device like a mobile phone. ‘Please stare into the lens,’ he said. Bex obeyed. A bright flash obscured her vision for a moment. As it was fading into a green patch, then a smaller red patch, she heard the guard say, ‘Identity confirmed. Now you, sir.’

‘If I must,’ Bradley said, lowering the window on his side.

Another flash, and: ‘Your identity is confirmed as well. Thank you. Please keep driving for a mile, then park in the area indicated. Someone will be there to meet you.’

The barrier rose, and Bex slowly drove onwards, smiling at the guard as the car passed him by. He didn’t smile back. From what Bex knew of Special Forces operatives, he would have that same uninterested expression on his face if he was shooting someone. Even just off the M4 motorway.

The road led in a gradual curve across the countryside. Wild grasses grew to head height on either side, seedpods bobbing on top of the long stems like tiny heads, shielding from view whatever was beyond them. After a few minutes the road widened out into a car park. Maybe twenty cars were there, along with two coaches – all relatively common, relatively anonymous brands of vehicle.

‘It’s not like the movies, where secret agents drive Aston Martins, Lotus Esprits and Ferraris,’ Bradley lamented. ‘Ours is the best car here, and it’s a rented Skoda!’

Bex found a convenient spot and parked. As they got out, she noticed in the distance a set of buildings – two storeys, with tiled roofs. They looked just like houses, as if a modern estate had been plonked down in the middle of nowhere.

A soldier in camouflage gear emerged from the grasses beside them, his weapon in full view. The pretence was gone now – they were in a secret establishment, with the guards to prove it.

The soldier indicated a path that led through the grasses towards the housing estate. ‘Please follow the marked route.’

‘Did I mention,’ Bradley muttered as they entered what was almost a tunnel of grass, with the seedpods on top seeming to bend towards them, ‘that I get hay fever?’

‘Only several thousand times since I met you. Try not to sneeze. You might set one of the guards off, and I don’t mean with an asthma attack.’

Two more soldiers stood at the end of the path, but Bex was more interested in the buildings. Yes, they were houses, but now she and Bradley were closer she could see they were empty inside, with holes where the windows would have been. There was no variation – every house had been painted the same colour. Some of them had children’s toys and play equipment scattered in the small front gardens, where the grass had been cut short, but they looked like they’d never been used. The whole place had an eerie, unreal atmosphere, like a film set.

‘You hear about villages out on Salisbury Plain that were taken over by the Army during World War Two for training, and the inhabitants relocated,’ Bradley murmured. ‘Is this one of them?’

‘It looks like something similar,’ Bex said, ‘but the buildings are too new for it to be an old village. And there’s no sign that anyone ever lived here. No, this place was built specially.’

‘What for?’ he asked.

‘I’m not sure,’ she said.

One of the soldiers gestured towards the empty buildings. ‘Number forty-seven, Lapwing Crescent,’ he said. ‘Go down Sparrow, then right into Falcon and left into Lapwing. She’s waiting for you.’ He stepped towards them and held out two yellow laminated cards on yellow lanyards. ‘Wear these. They’ll tell everyone you’re off limits.’

‘Off limits to what?’ Bradley asked as he took the lanyards, but the soldier just stepped back.

Cars were parked along the main road into the village, but they looked like they’d been bought at a breaker’s yard and towed to where they now rested. Several of them had flat tyres, and one was missing a door.

‘Burn marks on the tarmac,’ Bradley observed as they walked along the pleasantly named Sparrow Road. He handed Bex her yellow card and lanyard.

‘But no burnt-out cars,’ Bex replied, slipping the lanyard over her neck. In fact, the cars that were there had mostly been placed over the burnt areas. ‘This must be a riot training area for MI6. Agents working undercover in some countries – usually the Eastern European ones – get caught up in riots sometimes. They probably train here so they know what it feels like to actually be in the middle of one. It’s not a pleasant experience, having police using water cannons against you, and petrol bombs going off. If you’ve never been through it, then you might freeze, but if you’ve had the training then you can think more rationally about ways out.’

‘So they fake riots. With what, Army regiments providing the fake rioters and fake police?’

‘Pretty much,’ Bex said, trying to imagine the street filled with rioters throwing rocks, bricks and petrol bombs, and soldiers trying to force them back. She’d never been in that kind of situation herself, and she never wanted to be.

They came to the junction and turned right into Falcon Road. The street was as empty as the one before, and the air was just as still, just as silent, but to Bex it felt like an expectant silence, as if something was about to happen. Like the moment between an orchestra conductor raising his baton to start an overture and bringing it down to trigger the musicians. She checked over her shoulder. She couldn’t see anyone watching them, but she had a feeling they were being observed nevertheless. Probably security cameras everywhere. ‘It would be fun for them,’ she added. ‘Infantrymen always like a good punch-up.’

She glanced at the houses as they passed. Some of them had doors and some didn’t, but the ones that were there looked like they’d received a lot of abuse over the years. Most of them had heel marks where they’d been kicked in, or dents in the wood, and some of them were hanging off one hinge.

Some of the walls had red streaks on them. For a second she thought it was blood, then she realised there was a more likely answer.

‘Ah – lipstick rounds,’ she said.

‘What?’ Bradley glanced at her, confused.

She nodded towards the marks. ‘Lipstick rounds. Bullets made out of the same material as lipsticks. They can’t kill you, because they disintegrate if they hit you straight on, but they hurt, and they leave a mark. Obviously they don’t want to use proper ammunition here. Too dangerous.’

‘Except that I can see bullet holes,’ Bradley said. ‘Look over there at number 12, and there at number 16. They’ve been filled in with mortar, but they’re there. Some of these cars have got bullet holes in the doors. And that one – the windscreen has a hole through it. They must use live rounds sometimes.’ He tapped the yellow card hanging around his neck ‘I’m glad we’ve got these. I’m guessing they give us free passage. Anyone wearing one of these is safe from the riot.’

They turned again, left this time, into Lapwing Crescent. Again there was nobody around. It was like the end of the world had occurred and nobody had told them.

‘It’s like a zombie computer game,’ Bradley murmured.

‘I’ll take your word for it,’ Bex replied. She wasn’t a gamer, but suddenly she couldn’t shake the mental image of dead bodies suddenly appearing in the shadowed doorways and stumbling towards them, arms outstretched. ‘You couldn’t have just kept that thought inside, could you?’ she added. ‘You had to say it.’

Number 47 was located about halfway around the crescent. They hesitated in the gateway, waiting to see if anything happened, if anyone appeared, but all was silent. Not necessarily peaceful – the sense of imminent danger pervaded everything – but quiet.

‘Here goes,’ Bex said, and walked into the shadows of the dead house.

The hallway was illuminated by a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling, and the walls were streaked with the red slashes of lipstick rounds. Ahead of her she saw a kitchen area; to her left, stairs leading upwards; to her right, a doorway. And behind her, Bradley.

She went right, into what she assumed was a living room.

Avalon Richardson sat in the centre of the room, behind a large oak desk that looked massively out of place in that small suburban house. She wore a sharp business suit, and her hair was piled up in an elaborate hairdo. She was older than Bex remembered, and less mousy. She looked every inch the professional MI6 officer, right down to the top-of-the-range laptop on the desk in front of her. A yellow badge hung from her neck on a lanyard. Two men in dark suits stood behind her, also wearing yellow badges. They looked every inch the professional MI6 bodyguards. Bex knew that fifteen seconds after leaving the room she wouldn’t be able to remember their faces. But they would remember hers, and Bradley’s.

‘Thank you for making the journey, Rebecca,’ Avalon Richardson said calmly. ‘Please, come in. And you, Bradley. I’m Avalon.’

Bex noticed there were no seats in the room apart from the one Avalon sat in. This, then, was what the military called ‘an interview without coffee’. She and Bradley were meant to feel uncomfortable.

‘I apologise for my hair,’ Avalon said, ‘but there’s an event I’ve got to be at tonight, and it’s posh. Never mind.’ She smiled, and glanced from Bex to Bradley and back. ‘So – I thought it was time we got together and compared notes on your work for the SIS Technology-Enhanced Remote Reinforcement unit. How are things going? How are you finding your work?’

‘Wonderful,’ Bex answered. ‘We’ve been kept busy, but the jobs have been interesting.’

‘And you’ve done very well,’ Avalon said. She consulted something on the screen in front of her. ‘The Mumbai mission went off in an unexpected direction, but you coped admirably, and bringing Todd Zanderbergen down provided Her Majesty’s Government with a lot of points on the international stage. It’s always good to have leverage with our American cousins, and they were very embarrassed by Zanderbergen’s unauthorised activities.’

‘That’s good to know,’ Bex said neutrally.

‘When you were in India,’ Avalon continued casually, ‘did you get involved with any other groups? We know, for instance, that a billionaire entrepreneur named Anoup Patel had people in the area as well. We’re very interested in his activities.’

Bex remembered Anoup Patel clearly, but she wasn’t going to admit it. He was a philanthropist who was trying to rid the world of weapons of mass destruction by collecting them himself, but working with him had been nothing to do with MI6, and completely at odds with what Blood and Soil wanted. ‘Was it his people who took the briefcase I was meant to be watching?’ she asked, hoping her face didn’t give anything away.

‘No,’ Avalon said. ‘What about any … other groups?’

Bex shook her head. ‘Not that I remember.’

Bex thought she could hear a noise outside the house, although she wasn’t sure what it was. Voices, perhaps.

Avalon’s eyes narrowed slightly, an indication that she didn’t believe the answer she’d been given. ‘We received intelligence that a … fascist group were in Mumbai at the same time. Did you see any of them?’

Bex shook her head, trying to look innocent. ‘No. Maybe they were there on holiday.’

Avalon looked at her screen again. ‘And the Zanderbergen mission, in America. Did you take anyone else with you?’

‘Just me,’ Bex lied. She felt a shiver run through her. Avalon obviously had some inkling that Kieron and Sam had been involved, but not enough to confront Bex directly. ‘I remember there were a couple of English kids staying in the same hotel,’ she went on, as if the thought had only just occurred to her. ‘Maybe you’re thinking of them.’

‘Hmmm. And what about Italy? What can you tell me about that mission?’

It was a trick question. Italy hadn’t been a mission – it had been an attempt to stop the people who had been employed to kill her and Bradley. Employed by the woman sitting across the table.

Bex put on an expression of exaggerated confusion. ‘There was no Italian mission. I think you must have given that to a different team.’ Time to go on the attack, just a little bit. ‘It must be so hard, keeping all those missions straight in your mind,’ she went on with mock-sympathy. ‘I don’t know how you do it. It’s not surprising they get mixed up sometimes.’

A smile flickered across Avalon’s face, but there was no humour in it. Bex had seen the same kind of smile on crocodiles in the Florida Everglades as they drifted away from the banks towards her small, fragile boat. ‘Oh, I don’t get confused,’ she said. ‘Not ever.’ She turned her penetrating gaze on Bradley. ‘You’ve been very quiet, Bradley. How did that explosion in your apartment affect you psychologically?’

Before Bradley could answer, an electronic beeping sound from outside filled the air. Some kind of warning, perhaps? Bex glanced at the window, then at Avalon.

‘Don’t worry about that,’ Avalon said with a dismissive wave of her hand. ‘It’s just one of the riot exercises starting up. We have some trainees who are being run through the experience to toughen them up. So, Bradley, your reaction to the explosion? Did it affect you badly?’

Bex felt Bradley shrug. ‘It’s just one of those things, isn’t it? Old buildings are prone to gas leaks. I’m just glad that nobody was killed. Thank God we weren’t there.’

Good answer, Bex thought.

‘You don’t think it was a deliberate attempt on your lives?’ Avalon pressed.

‘I doubt it,’ Bradley said calmly. ‘I mean, there was another explosion in Newcastle city centre, wasn’t there? I guess there must have been some problem with the gas supply. And who knew where we were living?’ He paused, then said, ‘I mean, if there was some kind of terrorist threat then you would have received intelligence reports about it, wouldn’t you? And you would have warned us.’

Careful. Don’t push her too hard, Bex thought. She tried to project the warning telepathically though the air towards Bradley. She didn’t know whether he’d picked it up or not, but he didn’t say anything further.

‘Perhaps we ought to get you both checked out by an MI6 doctor,’ Avalon said, her expression one of exaggerated concern.

‘No need,’ Bex said. ‘We’ve both been examined by an independent doctor. And don’t worry, we paid for it ourselves. You won’t get the bill.’

Avalon smiled thinly. ‘Well, make sure you provide us with the address of the place you’re living now, just for our records. Are you still in Newcastle?’

‘I’ll send you an email with the address,’ Bex said, ignoring the question. She thought could hear shouting from outside the bare shell of the house. Shouting, and the chanting of slogans, except that she couldn’t make out what was being said. And she thought she could smell smoke.

‘Fine. Well, that’s about all. I just wanted to touch base, make sure that you were both all right and happy.’ Her face creased into a slight frown, as if she had only just remembered something trivial. ‘Oh yes – while you’re here, perhaps we should check over your ARCC equipment. My technicians are upstairs. They can give it a quick once-over, see if there are any little tweaks they can make to improve its efficiency.’ She held out a hand expectantly. ‘It won’t take long.’

Bex had no intention of handing the ARCC glasses or the earpieces over to Avalon Richardson. If they were taken out of her and Bradley’s sight, then the very least that would happen was that a tracking device would be hidden inside, and probably a bug as well that would send any information seen or heard by the glasses directly to Avalon. Worse: her pet technicians might be able to get into the cloud storage system the ARCC kit used, and access the files from their recent missions, and that would be a disaster. There were a lot of things there that Bex did not want Avalon to see. And if all of that wasn’t enough, Bex and Bradley had designed and built that equipment themselves. The last thing they wanted was MI6 ripping off their hard work.

‘Oh,’ she said with exaggerated surprise, ‘I’m sorry, but we didn’t bring the kit with us. If we’re not on a mission we keep it in secure storage, just so it doesn’t get accidentally broken. If you’d said you wanted to check it over then obviously we’d have put it in the car, but we assumed you wouldn’t want any covert recording devices on a top-secret MI6 site.’

‘So you left it all behind?’ Avalon’s voice was suddenly cold.

‘Yes.’

‘In Newcastle?’

‘Near where we’re living now,’ Bex said, hoping it sounded like she was being helpful without actually giving away the fact they were actually still in Newcastle.

‘That’s a shame.’ Avalon looked at Bex, then Bradley, and the expression on her face was suddenly emotionless and calculating. A shiver ran down Bex’s spine as she realised that Avalon was almost certainly debating whether to believe her or whether to have her bodyguards search them. And if they were searched, the kit would be found. Despite what she’d told Avalon, Bex always made sure that she had her glasses and earpiece with her. Bradley would normally carry his part of the kit with him, except that his state of health meant that Kieron currently had it, back in – yes – Newcastle.

‘A shame,’ Avalon said eventually. ‘Well, we’ll just have to make another appointment so it can be checked over.’ She smiled. ‘Thank you so much for coming in. I hate to hurry you out, but as I said, I have an appointment tonight. My helicopter is out back, waiting for me. So nice to see you both.’

Avalon looked down at her laptop screen. It was about as clear a dismissal as Bex had ever received.

‘Thank you for your time,’ she replied quietly, then turned to go. Bradley glanced at her, raised an eyebrow, and then followed her out into the hall.

Another of Avalon’s black-suited bodyguards stood by the front door. He opened it for them to leave, and Bex suddenly saw what was happening outside. A crowd of men wearing balaclavas, or scarves around their faces, were running past the front garden of the house. The noise of yelling and cursing filled the air.

‘Will we be OK going out there?’ Bradley asked nervously as the bodyguard gestured them towards the door.

‘Perfectly.’ He reached up to tug at his yellow badge. ‘These things will protect you. It’s like being invisible. You can just walk through the crowd and it’ll part in front of you and close up again behind you. You’re invulnerable.’

‘Presumably the rocks and the petrol bombs just bounce off us,’ Bradley said, and smiled. The bodyguard didn’t react.

‘That’s very reassuring. Thanks,’ Bex said.

She and Bradley exited the house and started walking down the path towards the garden gate. The crowd of fake rioters was still running past. There must have been hundreds of them, all shouting slogans and insults. It was hard not to get spooked. Bex tried to pretend that it was all happening on a TV screen in front of her. A very big, high-definition TV screen.

A sudden explosion off to her left made her jerk her head around and stare down the street. A cloud of vapour suddenly hid the fake rioters from sight. Smoke grenades? Tear gas? Whatever it was, she was glad that she and Bradley were headed in the other direction.

With some trepidation, Bex stepped out from the relative safety of the garden and onto the pavement. The fake rioters running past her didn’t even seem to notice her. The bodyguard had been right: the yellow cards and lanyards worked like some kind of protective amulet. They might just as well have been invisible.

Bradley joined her. ‘This is weird,’ he said. Bex almost couldn’t hear him over the shouting of the crowd; she had to read his lips.

‘Just walk calmly back to where we left the car,’ she shouted.

Men and women ran past her, their faces – where they could be seen – distorted with rage. Most of them held sticks, stones and bricks that they waved angrily. Good actors, Bex thought – if they were acting. Maybe they just loved taking part in organised riots. They all managed to pass Bex and Bradley by without touching them, or even looking at them, like a shoal of fish detouring around a rock in the middle of a stream, or a flock of birds – sparrows or lapwings, perhaps – separating to avoid a predatory falcon. She realised then just how deliberate the naming of the roads was, and smiled bitterly. Someone had a strange sense of humour.

Bex and Bradley got to the junction of Lapwing Crescent and Falcon Road. As they turned the corner, Bex heard another explosion; nearer this time. The sides of the houses ahead of them lit up orange and red. She turned to look behind her. Someone must have thrown a petrol bomb: fire had spread out across the street between the rioters and where she assumed the soldiers were, around the curve of the crescent. Some rioters were running up to the edge of the flames and throwing stuff over the top, and towards the soldiers on the other side.

‘Very realistic!’ Bradley yelled.

‘Too realistic for my liking!’ she shouted back. ‘It’s a wonder nobody gets hurt!’

A passing rioter wearing a motorcycle helmet accidentally brushed her with his shoulder as he ran past. Bex turned to watch him, but something suddenly jerked her forward, almost making her fall. It took a moment to realise that the first incident had been a distraction to allow someone else, passing by, to grab her badge and pull it hard. The lanyard snapped, the ends whipping against her cheeks as they were yanked away. She felt Bradley grab hold of her arm, steadying her, and she saw a flash of yellow moving away from her. It vanished as the thief merged with the crowd.

‘Come close to me!’ Bradley shouted. He tried to pull her nearer, so she would be protected by his badge, but even as she moved towards him she saw a hand snatch the laminated yellow card and pull it from his neck. He staggered to one side, tugged by the force.

Bex glanced around wildly. Both badges had gone, vanished into the morass of rioters. Avalon Richardson wanted them vulnerable, and in the middle of an increasingly dangerous situation. That had been her plan from the start!

A crackle of gunfire made her turn her head even as Bradley grabbed her arm to stop her being pulled away by the rioters. Down Falcon Road – the direction they had originally come from, before the meeting, and the direction they needed to go to get to their car – she saw a contingent of soldiers in mottled green camouflage approaching in a line. They all wore gas masks, making them look like some invading alien army, and the rioters were running away from them. The soldiers held semi-automatic rifles, which they aimed above the rioters’ heads. As Bex watched, frozen with the uncertainty of what to do next, the soldiers fired again. A veil of blue smoke swirled around them; the remnant of the gunpowder that propelled the rounds.

‘Lipstick rounds or real bullets?’ Bradley shouted into her ear.

Bex glanced around desperately. Soldiers filled the branch of Falcon Road down which they needed to go to get to their car. The rioters occupied Lapwing Crescent, presumably facing up against another contingent of soldiers on the other side. The only way to go was down the other part of Falcon Road – away from their car, not towards it. She tugged at Bradley’s sleeve to tell him where they were going and turned to move.

More smoke drifted across that part of the road, hiding its length, but even as she took her first step, pulling Bradley with her, an armoured riot van emerged like a whale surfacing from a cloudy sea. A protective grille covered its windscreen and it had a turret on top from which she guessed the local commander would be issuing orders.

Three directions available, and all of them blocked.

Bex froze, her brain desperately cycling through the three options and finding no way through.

Something the size and shape of a tin of beans came hurtling through the smoke. It passed over the top of the armoured van and hit the road, bouncing a few times before landing maybe twenty feet away from Bex and Bradley. It sat there for a moment, then suddenly exploded into a mass of milky white vapour that expanded towards them, hiding the armoured van from sight.

Bex opened her mouth, intending to ask if Bradley had any ideas, because she was fresh out, but before she could make a noise something seemed to rasp the back of her throat. Her nose began to tickle, then itch, and then almost immediately it was as if someone had poured vinegar inside it. She doubled up, coughing, trying to get it out of her lungs.

‘Tear gas!’ Bradley shouted in her ear. ‘We need help!’

Bex tried to say ‘From where?’, but the tear gas had made her throat close up. She could hardly breathe.

Was this it? Was this the end?