I gave Wallace one last look before I walked past Casey and back out of the house. I think, now that I’ve had time to consider it, than Wallace is frightened of Casey. Perhaps even more frightened of him than of the Patriots. Maybe if I’d had more time I could have persuaded Wallace to turn against him, to stop whatever it is he’s planning. But I knew all I needed to do was bide my time until Bramnik got back from the Authority and I could set the facts out for him. In the meantime, there would, I felt sure, be other opportunities to speak with Wallace, to try to persuade him to my side.

Eventually the date came when Bramnik had told me he’d back, except he never appeared. I made up an excuse to go and ask for him at the base compound and, as is often the case, I got nothing like a straight answer. Plus ça change, right?

So I figured I could wait if Bramnik was late getting back. Except he didn’t show up the next day, or the next. And at the time of writing, it’s been weeks, and still no word of when he’s getting back.

Worse, I haven’t seen sight or sound of either Casey or Wallace in all that time. The morning after confronting Wallace, I asked around and discovered that both he and Casey had been volunteered at short notice for a long-term mission.

I went looking for Casey’s portable transfer stage with an eye to packing it up, but they had been there already. It was gone, disappeared from that house.

I thought, then, about calling a meeting with the other Pathfinders to tell them what I knew. But at the same time I knew now that we would be going up against the Patriots. If they could make all this happen right under Bramnik’s nose, who knew what might happen to us if the Patriots decided we were a serious threat to them? Particularly when the man supposedly in charge of us was constantly absent from the island. Or maybe Greenbrooke had recruited moles other than Casey.

It was only yesterday that I finally realized that I had not in fact been nearly paranoid enough. Someone had been in our home, Chloe. They’d done a good job of hiding it, but I could tell. A couple of things weren’t quite where I’d left them. Some of my diaries weren’t in the right order; that’s when I knew that the Patriots were watching me, that Casey had told them I was a threat.