CHAPTER THREE

Kieron and Sam were at their local leisure centre when everything went wrong.

They had decided that if they were going to spend any more time helping Bex and Bradley then they needed to get fit. Also, if they wanted to seriously try to get a job in intelligence when they got older, then physical fitness was probably a good thing. There were highly fit secret agents, and there were tech nerds supporting them, but a highly fit tech nerd? That was a good thing to have on your CV. Very deployable.

‘Can I help you?’ the girl on the reception desk asked as they nervously approached. Human interaction wasn’t something that either of them liked.

‘We want to go to some kind of get-fit class,’ Kieron said when it became clear that Sam wasn’t going to say anything.

‘OK,’ the girl said. ‘We’ve got a fully equipped fitness centre, but you’ll have to have an assessment before you can use any of the kit – to stop you hurting yourselves.’ She slid two leaflets across the counter. ‘This will tell you the times of the assessments. Fill out the form on the back and hand them in, and we’ll get you access cards.’

‘That’s fine,’ Kieron said. ‘Thanks.’ He had a feeling he recognised the girl. Maybe she’d been at his school, but in a higher year than him. He didn’t want to remind her that she knew him. She was already looking at him and Sam as if she was wondering if their black hair dye would wash off in the swimming pool, leaving a scummy stain around the edge. He didn’t want to see her lip curl as all the memories of the stupid things Kieron had done, and the way that he’d been bullied and laughed at by pretty much everyone, flooded back to her.

‘I fancy some chips,’ Sam said as they turned away. ‘They do great chips in the cafeteria here. With cheese melted on top. That and a frozen drink would go down great right now. And the cafeteria overlooks the swimming pool, so we can watch all the idiots mucking around and showing off.’

As they headed up the stairs towards the cafeteria and the viewing balcony, Kieron said, ‘I’ve never really understood why they sell burgers and chips in a place that’s supposed to be making people healthier. Shouldn’t they be providing salads? Fruit, maybe?’

‘They tried that,’ Sam pointed out. ‘Nobody ordered the salads or the fruit. It all had to be thrown away. Everyone complained about the absence of greasy fast food. People are strange that way.’ He glanced at Kieron. ‘If you want fruit or salad, make a complaint.’

‘Maybe later.’

While they were sitting waiting for their food to arrive, the ARCC kit bleeped.

‘It’s Bex,’ Kieron said to Sam as he pressed the Link button on the glasses. ‘Probably giving us an update on the meeting with her boss.’

Once he had his own glasses on, a picture of what Bex was seeing through hers appeared as a semi-transparent overlay on Kieron’s field of vision. It looked like Bex was in the process of pulling the glasses out of her pocket – the picture was dark for a moment, and then blurred as she swung the glasses up. He felt a momentary flash of vertigo, but it quickly faded. He’d done this enough over the past few months that he was used to it. As the picture stabilised, and the technology in the glasses compensated for the sudden change in brightness and contrast, he heard her voice in his ear saying, ‘Kieron? Can you hear me?’

‘Yes. Is the –’

‘Listen,’ she interrupted, just as he realised with horror that he was looking at a scene of chaos, with people throwing bricks and stones, the flickering orange-and-yellow glare of flames illuminating everything. ‘We need help, urgently.’

‘What do you want me to do?’ Kieron took a deep breath, getting ready for whatever came next. He realised that Sam had straightened up in his seat and was paying attention.

‘We’re in some kind of agent-training place. There’s a fake riot going on, but it’s turned real. We need urgent help to get out.’

‘OK. Wait a moment.’ Kieron manipulated virtual menus and buttons projected into his eyes that only he could see, scrolling through the options and selecting what he needed by making small gestures with his fingers that the sensors in the glasses picked up.

‘Right. The GPS chip in your glasses says you’re in Berkshire, near the M4. The standard maps just have fields and woods where you are. I’m switching to the classified maps. Yes, I’ve got you. The secret MI6 database of training locations has something there. It’s called the Burnt Hill Environmental Training Area. It’s been used since the fifties to get agents used to high-risk environments.’

Through his earpiece, he heard something explode, and the sound of Bradley swearing.

‘The history lesson is much appreciated,’ Bex said, ‘but we do need that map.’

‘I’m calling one up right now. OK, I’ve got you. Yeah, it’s an entire town that doesn’t exist on the standard maps. You’re at the junction of three streets.’

‘And they’re all blocked off by fake rioters and the Army,’ she said. ‘Is there any way out? We need to get back to the car park.’

Kieron selected the centre of the map with the tip of a finger and moved it around, before zooming in with a two-fingered gesture. ‘Can you see a house on a corner with an alleyway alongside it, running between it and the next building? Probably to your right.’

‘Ye-es,’ she said.

‘Can you get to that alley?’

‘One way or another,’ she said grimly.

Kieron switched the view in his glasses to show what Bex saw, keeping the map minimised in one corner of his vision in case he needed it again – which he almost certainly would.

‘What’s happening?’ Sam asked.

‘I’ll tell you in a minute.’

He watched as the point of view of Bex’s glasses swung around to focus on a house nearby. There was indeed an alleyway running along the side, between it and the next house – probably a way of getting to the gardens at the back. The view surged forward as Bex ran towards the house. A brick flashed past her face, making Kieron flinch reflexively, and the picture suddenly jerked. All Kieron could hear was shouting and random explosions. A woman’s face suddenly appeared from Bex’s left-hand side. Everything from her eyes downwards was covered by a scarf with a grinning skull-face motif on it, while her eyes themselves were wide and scary. She held a metal pipe in her right hand. She raised the pipe threateningly, preparing to bring it down on Bex’s head.

Kieron watched as Bex punched the rioter in the nose. The woman fell backwards, blood staining the skull-kerchief. The metal pipe clattered to the floor. Bex bent down and picked it up.

Bex’s head swivelled around as she looked for Bradley. Kieron saw that Bradley had his arm around the neck of another rioter. As Kieron watched, the rioter slumped to the ground, unconscious, and Bradley let him go.

Bex’s arm appeared in the picture. She grabbed Bradley and pulled him with her. Her head turned back as if to see where they were going.

It seemed to Kieron that his two friends were running through hell. Bodies lay on the ground, writhing and choking, while smoke kept on drifting past and obscuring the scene. Everything was lit by flames. He could see soldiers in the distance, approaching with their weapons raised. They wore gas masks. It was like something from a first-person shooter computer game, set in some kind of post-apocalyptic environment, but this was England, this was now, and his friends were there.

‘This is carrying realism too far,’ he said.

‘Tell me about it,’ Bex muttered.

Shockingly, shots echoed between the buildings. Some of the rioters that Bex and Bradley were pushing past flinched or ducked, while others ran.

Kieron could hear the pounding of Bex’s shoes on the road as she and Bradley sprinted away from the crowd of rioters. The picture in the ARCC glasses bounced up and down. The alleyway grew large in the picture, and then they were inside it, in shadow, and Kieron felt himself relax.

‘Two portions of cheesy chips!’ a voice said. Kieron jerked his head sideways, surprised. He hadn’t known anyone was there. The serving lady from the cafe stood beside him, holding two plates.

‘Thanks,’ Sam said. ‘If you could just put them down on the table, please.’

The woman seemed to be staring at Kieron. ‘Is he all right?’

‘Don’t worry about him. It’s Tourette’s syndrome. He’s on medication though.’

Kieron felt as if he ought to be defending himself, but what was happening in Burnt Hill village was more urgent. He let himself get pulled back into that world again, even though the smell of the melted cheese wafting past his nose along with the smoke he could see from the fires formed a surreal juxtaposition.

Bex’s gaze was directed out at the road, where three of the rioters stood together, arguing. One of them pointed over to the alleyway.

‘They are targeting us!’ Bex muttered. ‘Up until now I’d hoped it was just a mistake, but –’

‘You’d better get going,’ Kieron said as the pair started walking towards the mouth of the alley. ‘You’ll end up in the back gardens. Go right to the far end. There’s a pathway there that leads all the way along the back of the gardens, parallel to the road. Turn right and head that way.’

Kieron watched as Bex did what he’d suggested, moving along the side of the house, but rather than head down the edge of the garden she moved into it, pulling Bradley with her to French windows. As Bex’s head turned Kieron could briefly see inside the building, where bare walls and a bare concrete floor made a mockery of the relative realism outside.

‘What are you doing?’ Kieron asked. ‘They’re right behind you!’

‘I know. We can’t make it to the car with them following us. They might call for reinforcements, or have our path blocked off by their friends. I have to deal with them.’ She turned her head briefly to look at Bradley. Over Bradley’s shoulder Kieron could see a small grassy rectangle of garden, with a shed at the end. Grass grew through the wheels of an overturned plastic kid’s bike. The bright orange and green seemed strangely out of place.

‘I’ll take the first one, you take the second,’ she said urgently. ‘Then whoever’s quickest gets to take out the third one.’

‘Oh joy,’ Bradley said. The grimness of his expression belied the levity of his words.

Just as Bex swung her head back, Kieron saw Bradley bend down to pick something up from the lawn.

Running footsteps echoed down the alley. A man in jeans and a denim jacket appeared. Just as he saw Bex and tried to skid to a halt, she swung the metal pipe at him. The rioter ducked desperately, and the pipe hit the wall, sending shards of brick flying. Bex backed away, and the man lunged towards her. He held a kind of knife in his hand – Kieron recognised it from computer games, and from the hard kids at school who hung around the bike sheds, smoking. It was a balisong – although people called them ‘butterfly knives’ – where the handle could split into two hinged halves that rotated to cover the blade. The hard kids used to do tricks with them, flipping the hinged bits back and forth across their knuckles, and suddenly exposing the blade.

Kieron was fleetingly aware that a second figure had slipped past the first one, heading for Bradley.

The knife flashed up towards Bex’s face, but she brought the metal pipe up into the man’s wrist. He screamed and dropped the weapon. His arm seemed to Kieron to be bent at an odd angle.

Bex jabbed him in the face with the end of the pipe and he fell backwards.

She glanced sideways briefly to check on Bradley. He was fighting the second rioter. His opponent had a longer knife, the kind the media like to call a ‘zombie knife’, while Bradley had a garden rake. It didn’t seem to Kieron like a fair competition.

Something moved in the corner of the glasses’ field of view. Bex moved her head backwards just as the end of a concrete post flashed past her. The third rioter stood at the corner of the house, holding what looked like a stave he’d pulled off a park fence. His face was contorted into a vicious snarl. As he yanked the concrete stave up for another attempt at bashing Bex’s brains out, she stepped forward, swinging her pipe around so she could hold it at both ends horizontally in front of her. Her assailant was having problems manoeuvring the heavy stave, and before he could swing it around and down again Bex stepped forward and jerked her bar straight up, into his chin.

His head snapped back and he staggered away into the alley. Kieron thought he saw the man falling in a heap, but Bex was turning to look at Bradley again.

The result was: garden rake 1, zombie knife 0. Bradley’s attacker lay clumsily over the abandoned bike. It seemed like a very uncomfortable position, but Kieron assumed that he was unconscious, so he probably didn’t care.

‘We need to run,’ Bex said breathlessly. ‘Kieron, what’s the quickest route to the car park?’

‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I’ve got a better idea.’ With a couple of quick flicks of his fingers he overlaid the houses with the blueprints of the village as a kind of glowing wireframe diagram. The edges of the houses, the boundaries of the gardens and the tops and bottoms of the fences between them were all marked in green and blue – but underneath, as he had hoped, red lines showed what was buried underground. Not water pipes, sewage pipes or electrical cables, as there would have been in a real village, but access tunnels, CCTV wiring and even entire subterranean rooms.

‘Can you see a round metal plate on the ground near the house?’ he asked urgently. He saw something strangely like a submarine’s conning tower leading down from the plate into the network of tunnels and rooms beneath, and hoped it was as clear to her as to him.

‘Yes. You want us to go down into the sewers?’

‘Not sewers. It’s a tunnel, probably part of a network for the trainers to get from place to place without getting involved in the riot. Nobody will expect you to go down there!’

‘I wasn’t expecting to go down there,’ Bex muttered. ‘Good work.’

Kieron watched as she pulled the manhole cover away. ‘OK,’ she said, ‘there’s a metal ladder bolted to what looks like old brickwork. Bradley, you go first. I’ll follow and pull the cover back so nobody knows where we’ve gone.’

Within a few moments they were both climbing down a shaft in the darkness of the world beneath Burnt Hill village. Kieron switched to an infra-red view to compensate for the darkness – but recoiled with a horrified ‘Urgh!’ when Bex reached the bottom of the ladder and turned around.

‘What?’ Bex said urgently. ‘What is it?’

‘Er, nothing,’ he muttered. ‘Sorry. It was something at my end, not yours.’

Actually, it wasn’t. What he’d seen, the moment he switched to infra-red vision, was a phalanx of rats retreating down the tunnel. Some of them looked to be the size of small dogs, but that was probably just a trick of the sensors, which showed everything in shades of red and white. The rats kept turning around as they ran and showing their teeth, like black needles against the glowing heat of their mouths.

‘Are you sure it’s nothing? Only I can hear rustling up ahead.’

‘Just the noise of air moving through the tunnel; keep going straight ahead,’ he went on, trying to make his voice sound normal and unworried. ‘Keep a hand on the wall. You’re heading towards the car park.’

‘Bradley,’ Bex said, squeezing past him, ‘Kieron’s going to guide me. You grab hold of my belt so we don’t get separated in the darkness.’

‘Are you sure that rustling is just air?’ Bradley asked. ‘Only it sounds more like –’

‘Just air!’ Kieron insisted. ‘Keep moving!’

The viewpoint of Bex’s ARCC glasses moved along the tunnel. Now it really was like a computer game, Kieron thought nervously. The infra-red sensors only showed him heat sources, and with the rats having run ahead far enough that he couldn’t see them, all that was registering was the glow of Bex’s hand as she ran it along the wall. Everything else was darkness. Kieron ran through the available options on the ARCC kit, looking for a different way of displaying the scene. He discovered that there was something called a ‘Low Light Intensifier’, so he switched to that instead. And wished he hadn’t.

‘Oh my God!’ he exclaimed involuntarily, as the red-and-white picture shifted to shades of green, revealing thousands of cockroaches scuttling along the brick tunnel walls, only just managing to avoid Bex’s moving fingers. Trying to control the sick feeling in his stomach, Kieron realised that he hadn’t seen them on the infra-red sensor because, obviously, they didn’t have warm blood. They were as cold as the tunnel walls. He wasn’t sure where the meagre light that was feeding the low-light sensor was coming from – maybe narrow ventilation ducts in the roof of the tunnel, or maybe luminescent fungi for all he knew – but he wished he hadn’t shifted to that view. But now he knew it was there, he couldn’t shift away. The constant scurrying of the cockroaches was too horribly hypnotic.

‘What?’ Bex asked ominously. ‘More stuff happening at your end?’

‘Ye-es,’ he said, knowing how unconvincing he sounded. ‘It’s a little bit fraught here right now. Just keep on moving forward.’ He had to bite down on a squeal as a cockroach that looked like it was the size of a Yu-Gi-Oh! card ran up the wall just a millimetre or so in front of Bex’s fingers, its long antennae trailing to either side. She obviously wasn’t convinced by his reassurance, because she glanced around wildly, even though she couldn’t see anything, and Kieron felt a sick chill run through him as he saw that the entire tunnel roof above her was a seething mass of insects as well.

‘You’re just about to enter a room,’ he said, breathing steadily to calm himself down. ‘You’ll lose the wall, but just keep walking straight forward. I’ll guide you.’

Moments later Bex and Bradley walked into a large room whose boundaries were marked by glowing red lines on Kieron’s glasses, although on the low-light display it just looked like a large dark space, a cave maybe. As they crossed it – Bex instinctively holding her hands in front of her in case she walked into something – Kieron saw chairs and the edge of a table come into view.

‘Argh!’ Bex gasped, and waved her hand in front of her face.

‘What is it?’ Bradley asked from behind her.

‘Cobweb,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry.’

‘There are spiders down here?’ Bradley queried. His voice sounded edgy. ‘How big? Only I wouldn’t have signed up for this mission if I’d known there were spiders involved.’

‘I can’t see any spiders,’ Kieron said truthfully. He could only see cockroaches. Thousands of cockroaches. Maybe they’d eaten all the spiders. But as long as Bradley didn’t ask about cockroaches, everything would be fine.

Bex and Bradley had made it about halfway across the underground room when Kieron thought he saw something moving ahead of them. The trouble was that the low-light sensor made it difficult to see anything at distance if there was no light source at all– which there wasn’t in the middle of the room. He touched a virtual button on the screen of his glasses to switch the sensor to infra-red. Shades of green and black gave way to glaring red, white and blue.

Something sat in the middle of the floor, maybe fifteen feet away from Bex, and she was getting closer to it by the moment. For a heartbeat Kieron thought it was a cushion, abandoned by some previous occupant of the room, but then it opened its mouth.

It was a rat – the biggest Kieron had ever seen. The biggest down there by far. King of the rats. It had obviously decided to turn around and make a stand against these invaders of its dark kingdom.

Bex was maybe five steps away.

And she couldn’t see it.

Kieron thought he could tell, from the way the image wobbled back and forth, which of Bex’s feet was on the ground at any moment. Judging his moment carefully, waiting until her left foot was just coming into contact with the ground,’ he said calmly, ‘Stick your right foot out now, like you’re drop-kicking a rugby ball.’

Bex didn’t ask why. She just swung her right leg forward. Kieron saw her foot appear at the bottom of the image, travelling in a perfect arc. It hit the rat just as the creature was about to spring forward. Instead its head snapped back, and it flew like a missile into the distance.

‘What the hell was that?’ Bex gasped.

‘I’ll tell you later.’

In the stark colours of the infra-red sensor, Kieron saw a wave of smaller rats converge on their injured king. As it vanished beneath them Kieron switched back to low light.

‘A lot later,’ he added.

As Bex passed the mass of struggling rats she must have known something was there, because she swerved slightly to avoid them. Kieron switched his attention to what was ahead. His two friends were almost across the room now, and the glowing green lines of the schematic display indicated that there was a doorway ahead.

‘Careful,’ Kieron warned. ‘The tunnel starts up again just ahead. You’re heading right for it. Don’t deviate.’

Bex went straight into the tunnel without hesitation and kept moving. ‘Still OK, Bradley?’ she queried, head turning reflexively to look over her shoulder even though as far as she was concerned everything was darkness. By contrast, Kieron was treated to a close-up of Bradley’s face. The agent looked scared. Maybe the physical problems he’d had over the past few months since being beaten up and tortured by Blood and Soil had taken their toll mentally. Maybe he just really didn’t like the idea of spiders. Maybe he just really didn’t like being out in the field and exposed. Whatever it was, he looked like he was close to cracking.

Which was why Kieron decided not to mention the massive cockroach on top of his head. As he watched, horrified, the cockroach’s long antennae drooped forward and brushed against Bradley’s forehead. Bradley frowned, and swept his hand back across his hair, knocking the cockroach off.

‘I hate cobwebs,’ he muttered, just as Bex turned her attention back to what was in front of her, and Kieron lost the image.

Now that things seemed to be running smoothly – insects excepted – Kieron reached out a hand to where he thought his frozen drink might be.

‘If you’re reaching for your drink, it’s three inches to your right,’ Sam said from somewhere in front of him. ‘If you’re doing something with the glasses, then I can’t help.’

Kieron’s fingertips touched the freezing-cold cardboard cup. He picked it up and took a drink from it. The coldness slaked his thirst and the sugar gave him an immediate energy boost. ‘Thanks, mate,’ he said.

‘What?’ Bex queried.

‘Nothing. I was talking to Sam. But there’s a side tunnel coming up ahead, to your right. You need to go right on my mark.’

‘Turning right, Bradley,’ Bex warned her partner. ‘Be ready.’

‘Turn in three … two … one … Now!’ Kieron said.

On cue, Bex turned right. Presumably Bradley followed her, because neither of them said anything and Kieron couldn’t hear the sound of the man running into the corner brickwork.

As there were no obvious obstructions ahead, he zoomed in on the schematic so he could see what was coming up. ‘Another ladder, bolted to the left-hand side of the tunnel. It leads right up to where I think the car park is.’

‘Brilliant!’ He could hear the relief in Bex’s voice. ‘Not sure how much more of this I can do.’

‘OK, stop. Turn left. Reach out your hand. The ladder is just there.’

He saw Bex’s hand clutch at the faint outline of the ladder, as revealed by the low-light sensor. ‘Bradley,’ she said, ‘keep one hand on my belt, then when I’m far enough above you just reach forward and grab the rung. I’ll see you at the top.’

Kieron watched nervously as she started climbing. He could see a ghostly image of the brickwork behind the ladder; more like the memory of a wall than an actual wall. The image in the glasses grew brighter as Bex climbed – maybe light was squeezing around the edges of the iron cover above her and illuminating the scene.

‘Got it,’ Bradley called from behind. ‘I’m coming up.’

Bex kept moving upwards, but as Kieron watched, something odd seemed to be happening. He could see her hands clearly, and the rungs of the ladder, but the brickwork behind seemed to be growing fainter, and getting further away.

And then, as the grating of metal on brick sounded through the ARCC kit’s microphones, he realised the terrible truth.

The ladder was pulling away from the wall. The bolts that secured it towards the top must have rusted with age, or the brickwork around them had crumbled.

‘The ladder’s coming off the wall!’ he cried.

Bex’s reached her right hand up as high as it could go, passing several rungs. She looked upwards.

‘I can’t see anything! How close am I to the top?’

Kieron could see a dim, sketchy outline a few inches above her grasping fingers. ‘Just a little bit further!’

More grating of metal on brick, louder now.

‘Bex,’ Bradley called, ‘something’s happening, and it’s not good!’

‘I know. Trying to solve it now!’

Bex sped up, lunging up the shaft. Her fingers pressed against the cover as her feet pushed down hard against the rungs, even as they continued to pull away from the wall. A ring of intense white light appeared above her like the moment of an eclipse. To Bradley it probably looked as if she’d suddenly developed an angelic halo. Kieron hoped the sudden glare didn’t distract him into losing his grip.

‘Reach up and grab my belt again!’ she called as she slid the cover to one side. ‘I’ll support you!’

As Kieron watched, unable to take a breath, Bex sprang upwards, half-emerging from the manhole and into bright sunlight. She thrust her elbows out sideways, bracing herself against Bradley’s weight.

Which suddenly almost dragged her back into the manhole. Her elbows slammed onto the ground and her shoulders nearly vanished back into the darkness. For a seemingly endless moment Kieron thought she was going to fall backwards, but then Bradley’s right hand appeared and grabbed the side of the manhole. His left hand followed. With whatever purchase he had left on the rungs of the failing ladder, Bradley pushed himself and Bex out of the hole and onto the surrounding grass and dirt. Kieron heard a screech of metal against brick, followed by a clattering as the ladder finally gave way. There was a final, distant, bang!

Bex stared up at the blue sky and the passing clouds. Kieron had to do the same; his view was slaved to hers. He could tell by the way the view shook that she was breathing heavily, and he thought she might be trembling. Eventually she turned her head to look at Bradley, who had rolled to one side. Cobwebs and dust had turned him grey.

‘You can be honest now,’ he groaned. ‘There were spiders, weren’t there?’

She exhaled long and loud, then said, ‘We can’t afford to hang around. They’ll assume we’re trying to make it back to the car. They’ll try to cut us off.’

‘Who?’ Bradley asked. ‘Just out of interest. Is the whole of MI6 after us?’

‘No, just the bits that Avalon Richardson controls. Her and a handful of others. Most of the people in the riot didn’t know or care who we were. Only the person who took our badges, and maybe three or four others, will be searching for us. Come on.’

They got to their feet and looked around. Bex spotted the car park first, just a little way away. Nobody appeared to be standing near their car. They walked quickly across open ground, unlocked it and got in.

Bex started the car and turned it to head for the tarmac road that led back to the secret and yet obvious entrance and exit off the M4. Kieron could tell that she wanted to press the accelerator to the floor and speed as fast as she could, but she restrained herself. The car moved at a sedate five miles per hour along the curving road towards the barrier.

Where one of the sentries was speaking into a walkie-talkie.

‘I think Avalon’s alerted them,’ she said. ‘We could be in trouble. They’re armed and we’re not. Not that we’d shoot them anyway; they’re just following her orders. She’s probably told them that we’ve taken something secret, and they need to hold us until she or her people get here.’ She paused. ‘Kieron, is there anything you can do?’

‘I’ve got an idea,’ he replied cautiously. Quickly he called up several other screens – one showing the view from a nearby motorway camera and one that allowed him to hack into a traffic-management and route-planning system used by many major trucking firms. He selected a passing articulated lorry and pulled its licence plate from the digital recognition system, then fed that into the route-planning software. As he had hoped, that particular lorry was getting real-time traffic updates from the Internet-based system. Rapidly he told it that there had been an accident directly ahead, and the driver should urgently divert onto the side road that would be coming up immediately on his left. All he could do now was hope that the driver was alert enough to see the warning and the redirection and yet not alert enough to question them.

Ponderously, the lorry began to swerve left.

Kieron switched back to the view from Bex’s ARCC glasses. The car was maybe a hundred yards away from the barrier, which was down. The guard still had his radio pressed to his ear.

‘Kieron …’ she said warningly.

‘I know. Wait for it.’

Suddenly, over the top of the slight rise that lay between the barrier and the M4, the articulated lorry hove into view like a dinosaur emerging from a swamp. The driver wasn’t speeding, but he wasn’t expecting a barrier across the road either. His face contorted into an exaggerated mask of shock and he tried to brake, but it was too late. As the armed guards leaped for safety the lorry smashed through the barrier and swerved to one side.

Leaving Bex to calmly drive through in the opposite direction. Shards of plastic and bits of metal crunched beneath her wheels. By the time the guards had got to their feet she was over the rise and heading back onto the M4.

‘Good work, kid,’ she said. ‘We’re heading home.’

‘Yeah,’ Bradley added. ‘Really good work.’

With relief, Kieron swept the glasses from his face. It took a moment or two for his eyes to adjust to the light levels in the cafe and to focus on what was really around him. When he could finally see straight, he realised that everyone at the surrounding tables was staring at him.

‘Computer game,’ he said, tapping the glasses. ‘I won.’

At least five people, including Sam, applauded.

Kieron bowed, feeling his face getting warm with embarrassment, but within a few moments everyone apart from Sam had turned away and got back to whatever they had been doing before he had distracted them. He was just turning his attention back to Sam when the lenses on the ARCC glasses began to flash red, overwhelming his vision and making him suddenly nauseous. He had to put his hands flat on the table to stop himself falling over.

‘What’s wrong?’ Sam asked, concerned.

Kieron’s hands were raised to whip the ARCC glasses off his head when the flashing stopped. Instead he was looking at a blue screen – the same colour as the ‘blue screen of death’ that he sometimes got when his PC crashed at home. In the exact centre he read the words:

CONNECTION LOST. UNABLE TO ESTABLISH LINK TO SECONDARY ARCC EQUIPMENT. PLEASE CHECK LINK.

‘I think we’ve got a problem,’ he said, feeling a mounting sense of dread rising in his chest. ‘And so have Bex and Bradley.’