He was right. Even Albert could see it, although he couldn’t see what reason the man holding the only gun in the tunnel had to be nervous. Kieran’s face was knotted in concentration. A bead of sweat rolled down his temple. The hand holding the blaster shook slightly. ‘Shut up!’ he shouted. ‘Shut up or I’ll—’

He broke off, realizing he was talking to empty air, because Marcus had vanished. One moment he was there, the next he was gone, with only a blur of motion to show where he had disappeared into the shadows on the left. A split second later Kieran cried out as an arm snaked out from behind him and dragged him into the darkness. They heard a gasp, swiftly muted, and then Kieran fell out into the lit corridor and rolled over. He wasn’t moving. A second later, Marcus stepped out of the shadows, calmly tucking the blaster into his waistband. The whole thing had barely lasted five seconds.

‘Kieran! Kieran!’ yelled Colby, falling to his knees beside his comrade. He looked angrily up at Marcus. ‘What have you done?’

Marcus looked at him with those implacable, bottomless black eyes. ‘When he wakes up,’ he said, ‘tell him that next time I will break his neck.’

He turned to Albert and the others. ‘Let’s go.’

And he turned and walked towards the right, off the illuminated corridor, and disappeared into the darkness. Albert, June and Theo looked at each other for a moment. Then, pushing past Colby and his men, they followed him.

Tracing his footsteps into the blackness, they found Marcus waiting for them. ‘We shall wait here for them,’ he said.

‘Who? Them?’ said Theo, sounding incredulous. Albert couldn’t see her face in the dark but he would have bet his last credit she looked that way too. ‘No way they gonna come!’

‘They will come.’

Sure enough, he was right. A few minutes later, Colby and his men stepped into the shadows to join them. All of them—Kieran was there too, looking a trifle disoriented. Both his companions had lit makeshift torches.

‘Put those out. They will not help,’ Marcus said and, turning around, he disappeared into the wall. A moment later, so did June, swiftly followed by Theo. When Albert got to the wall, he realized how.

There was a man-sized hole in the wall of the tunnel, large enough for even the overgrown Kieran to get through, if he turned out to be more flexible than he looked. Albert tried to look through. He couldn’t see anything, which wasn’t surprising—he could barely see anything around where they stood either, despite his eyes beginning to adjust to the darkness. He crouched, preparing to enter the hole.