Suddenly, her entire aspect changed. Her lip quivered, and she hung her head. Albert had never imagined she could have looked so, so guilty.

‘I’m … I’m sorry!’ she stammered.

Marcus looked at her. Or rather, looked through her. Or maybe he always looked at people like that. ‘No matter. You are here now.’

At that she coloured, her jaw jutting out, a tear blazing a solitary path down her cheek. Somehow, she still managed to look fierce. ‘Well, that’s no thanks to you, is it? Where were you?’

The man said nothing.

June came up to them and looked at Marcus. ‘Where have you been? They said you were missing, that nobody had seen you for weeks, that you’d taken to the tunnels again.’

He nodded. ‘Looking for her.’

‘That’s what I told them.’

He shrugged. Albert got the feeling that there was a lot more behind the exchange that he hadn’t got. That she wasn’t happy to see the man was clear, but there was something else too. Like she’d actually been asking him something else entirely. She turned to Albert. ‘All right, let’s get you both inside now, where it’s safe. It’s getting light now.’

She was right. The black of the night was fading to a light blue tone. Overhead, a defiant moon hung on in the sky, refusing to give way, even as the rosy fingers of the sun strained to burst forth from behind the clouds, tingeing them with pink. The first rays of morning bounced off the ocean of metal and stone that surrounded them, painting everything a pale, translucent hue. There was not a hint of motion as far as the eye could see in any direction. It was surreal, as if the wasteland all around was all the world there was, and they were the only people in that world.

‘Come on, everyone,’ said June. ‘Time to—’ she broke off, frowning. ‘Where’s Ollie?’

Albert looked around to where he had last seen Ollie standing. The fat man was nowhere to be seen. Albert blinked, and as he did, as if on cue, he heard an unmistakable voice from somewhere on the left.

‘Aha! Got you, my lad!’

They heard a muffled yelp, followed by the sound of a short scuffle. A very short scuffle; it couldn’t have lasted more than two or three seconds at the most. A moment later, Ollie reappeared from behind a large mound of debris on the left, holding a weedy, dirty-looking man in what seemed to be a grip of iron judging by the franticness and futility of the way he was struggling.

Marcus turned to one of the men crowded around them, fixing him with his bottomless black eyes. ‘I thought you had scanned the area.’

‘Only for machines,’ said the man.