I set off at a steady pace, ploughing through the increasingly packed corridors, and Molly and the Armourer stuck close behind me. There was a growing sense of panic on the air. My first instinct was to armour up, but I couldn’t do that. It would just have upset all the other Droods who didn’t have their armour anymore, because of me.

I felt like shouting, Look, it seemed like a good idea at the time, okay?

“Who do you think is behind this?” said Molly, squeezing in close beside me. “Manifest Destiny, maybe? Could Truman have finally got his act together?”

“Unlikely,” I said. “We’d have heard something.”

“Could be the prime minister,” said the Armourer. “Expressing his displeasure at having his best secret agents sent back to him in boxes.”

“If they’d been able to capture me, then the Hall might have been next,” I said. “But after what I did to his best bright-eyed boys, he’s probably still hiding under his desk and whimpering. No, this could be any of the groups we were just discussing, keen to get their preemptive strikes in first. Look, save your breath for running, people. We need to know what we’re getting into before we show our faces outside.”

The Operations Room was way over in the south wing, so we were all seriously short of breath by the time we got there. The halls and passageways were increasingly deserted and abandoned, eerily silent. It was a relief to get to Operations, and hear voices talking in a calm, professional way. The Ops Room is a high-tech centre designed to oversee all the Hall’s defences, from sensors to shields to all our various weapons systems. It took the three of us a few minutes to get through the strict security protocols, and then Molly and the Armourer and I hurried into Operations and the great steel door hissed shut behind us, cutting off the clamour of the alarms. The quiet was a blessed relief, and I took a long, deep breath to steady myself.

I’d never been to Operations before; it was mostly put together after I left home. Unlike the War Room, Operations is a much more modest affair. Just a reasonably sized room packed full of computers and other assorted baffling high tech, tended by a dozen or so technicians, under the head of Operations. There was no hurry or bustle or sense of urgency here; men and women sat calmly at their workstations, doing their jobs efficiently and professionally. These people hadn’t forgotten what it was to be a Drood. They kept their heads in an emergency because that was what had been drilled into them; because decisions made in this Room could affect the safety of the whole family.