“I’m about to,” Skulduggery said. “He made you unexceptional, Ryan. He made you normal. As normal as he could. And in doing so, he has single-handedly proven how exceptional normal people can be. When we were at Deacon’s apartment, you could have run and left Valkyrie and myself to fight them off ourselves. But you turned back. You turned back to help. You stood up to terrifying people who want to kill the world, who would snap you in two and tear you apart and not lose one wink of sleep over it, and you did so without training or magic. You did so because you are a good person, and you have true courage. You have the kind of courage Deacon Maybury himself never had. He made you the most normal boy he could, and inadvertently he made you so much better than he could ever hope to be.”

“Oh,” Valkyrie said, “well… OK, that’s better than I thought it was going to be. How are you feeling now, Ryan?”

Ryan looked at her. “I’m feeling pretty special, actually,” he said, and she laughed.

Skulduggery pressed his thumbs into the wall, and a large section slid to one side. Instead of the mass of wires that Ryan expected, however, there was a carving of the key in the centre of what looked like a complicated metal maze.

“Oh, good,” Skulduggery said.

Valkyrie peered closer. “Is it going to be easy to dismantle?”

“Not in the slightest.”

“Do you think you can manage it?”

Skulduggery tapped his chin. “Only with an inordinate amount of luck.”

“So we should probably wait for an expert.”

“Good God, no,” Skulduggery said, jerking his head around. “Where’s the fun in that?”

“But… but if you get it wrong, we might all die.”

“Yes, that is true, but I probably won’t get it wrong.”

Valkyrie’s eyes flickered to Ryan, then back to Skulduggery. “You probably won’t?”

“The odds are in my favour.”

“Really?”

“Almost.”

“I vote we wait for an expert.”

“But that might take twenty minutes or longer, Valkyrie.”

“So? It’s not like it’s counting down or anything. We have all the time in the world.”

“And there’s no time like the present. Ryan, I’m going to need you to press your hand against the carving. I’ll guide you every step of the way from then on.”

Valkyrie’s tone was firm. “Skulduggery. We are calling this in and then we’re waiting for a bomb-disposal expert.”

“What will he know that I don’t?”

“About the disposal of bombs? Lots.”

Skulduggery waved a hand dismissively. “Bombs are simple things. They’re designed to go off. What we have to do in order to thwart the bomb is to stop it from going off. What could be more straightforward?”

Valkyrie’s fingers closed round Ryan’s wrist and she pulled him away. “We are waiting for an expert.”