‘You know,’ she said. ‘The overprotective guy.’

‘I’m not that guy. I know you can handle yourself.’

‘Yeah. I hear that. But that’s not what your face is saying.’

Even so, she had leaned up and kissed me, ignoring the snickers and muttered comments before I headed for the armoury with the others.

Yuichi led the way, and we followed him down a narrow staircase to a low-ceilinged basement half-filled with cardboard boxes and discarded computers. Yuichi stepped towards a steel door at the far end, punching the sequence of numbers scrawled on his hand into a number pad mounted on the wall.

I heard a soft beep, followed by a clunk, and the door swung open to reveal a rack of assault rifles and a considerable number of small black snub-nosed pistols.

Yuichi grabbed a rifle, stuffing two of the pistols into the pockets of his trousers, before kneeling to scoop up an armful of boxed ammunition from a tray on the floor.

‘Me next,’ said Oskar, stepping eagerly forward, while Rozalia and I waited our turn.

We exited Government House as cautiously as we had entered it. The preferred option by far was to avoid any confrontation whatsoever. According to Howes, there were at most a few dozen Patriot agents on the entire island; even so, the chances were high that they’d be better armed than us, and able to call on reinforcements.

The more I thought about it, and about all the things that could or probably would go wrong, the more I didn’t want to think about any of it at all. I looked at the grim faces of my compatriots and decided they were all thinking the same thing.

‘All right,’ said Yuichi, looking around us. ‘I guess we’re good to go.’

We headed back up to the reception area, and I opened a large canvas gardening sack that Yuichi had dug out of a closet in the Mauna Loa. I waited as everyone put their rifles and ammunition inside the sack, until Oskar came before me, his arms full of deadly weaponry.

‘This is fucking madness,’ he exclaimed. ‘If we run into any Pat—’

‘If we run into any Patriots,’ I interrupted him, ‘I’d much prefer to look like a confused and concerned Pathfinder desperately trying to find out what’s going on, instead of a heavily armed maniac.’ I shook the bag, and the rifles inside clanked against each other. ‘These guns are just as a last resort,’ I reminded him, ‘so hurry the hell up. We don’t have all day.’

Oskar shook his head in exasperation, and dropped a rifle and a couple of boxes of ammo into the sack. ‘But I can keep this, right?’ he asked, opening his jacket to indicate a pistol lodged in his waistband.

‘I guess. Just make sure it’s well out of sight.’ I glanced at the others. ‘Same goes for the rest of you.’