The squashed bullets were lying at the foot of the wall on Will’s side, vibrating slightly with the movement of the train. It was hard to tell in the darkness but it looked like Will had been using hollow-point ammunition, designed to expand upon hitting its target. It’s not much good at getting through armour or shields but leaves very nasty wounds in a living body, making it the kind of bullet you use for shooting someone whom you don’t expect to be well protected and whom you really aren’t interested in taking alive. “Are you done?” I asked.

Will pulled out a clip and began reloading. As he did he spoke sideways to Captain America. “Got anything that’ll blow through that?”

Captain America gave Will a disbelieving look. “On a train?”

“Wait,” Anne said. “You’re the one who set that bomb?”

“Uh . . .”

“How could you do that?” Anne demanded. “You could have killed everyone in the flat!”

“It wasn’t aimed at the room you were in,” Captain America said, but he sounded defensive.

“Not aimed—! You dropped the roof on my head! If Alex hadn’t gotten me out of the way it would have crushed me!”

“Wait,” the Chinese kid said uneasily. “You were in the living room.”

“I moved!” Anne was nearly shouting, which was quite something from her. “Don’t any of you realise what you’re doing? You can’t just play around with this! People are going to die!”

“That’s the idea,” Will said curtly. “Get out of the way and you won’t be one of them.”

“How can you still think you’re the good guys when you do things like this?” Anne demanded. “You’re going to—”

Will had put away his handgun and shortsword. Now he held his hand out to Captain America, who reached into what looked like thin air. I felt the flicker of space magic as Captain America pulled two full-sized submachine guns out of a portal so faint as to be almost invisible, handing one to Will and keeping the other for himself. Dimensional storage, I thought. So that’s where they keep getting those weapons from.

Will cocked the gun and levelled it at Anne. “I’m not asking,” he said in a flat voice. “Verus murdered my sister and I’m going to kill him for it. Get in the way and I’ll do the same to you.”