‘Just banter, Ben,’ she says, standing up. ‘I didn’t mean anything by it.’

He exhales slowly and closes his eyes for a second as the world turns back on its fucked-up axis. ‘Sorry.’

‘It’s fine,’ she says so gently and again in such contrast to how she speaks to Malcolm, Konrad and Roland. ‘We’ll get through this. I promise.’

‘How can you know?’

‘Because,’ she says with a slow smile, ‘you’re Ben Ryder . . .’

‘Ah don’t,’ he groans. ‘Don’t say that.’

‘Trust me, you don’t know what you’re capable of.’

‘I do, and being a soldier dressed in black isn’t it.’

‘They play that footage in police tactical training schools all over the world . . .’

‘What footage?’

‘From Holborn. What you did on the platform that day.’

‘Why?’

‘To show the level that’s required.’

‘Level? What level? I was fucking terrified. I must have tripped over like ten times and missed nearly every shot . . . it was awful . . .’

‘Not that,’ she says. ‘That’s training. Firing guns and fighting people comes from training, but what you did was from instinct. I bet it felt slow to you, right?’ She smiles when he nods. ‘It wasn’t slow. It was over like that,’ she says, clicking her fingers. ‘Couple of minutes and it’s done. That’s how fast you were and you identified each target in order of priority. Yeah you were sloppy and yeah you fell over, but you didn’t have lightweight, breathable tactical boots and months of hard training behind you but you still did it. You stopped them. Same as you stopped that gang . . .’ She stops and flashes a dazzling grin of white teeth. ‘I’ve been in a fight with Harry Madden and Ben Ryder . . . and those things you said to Roland yesterday . . .’

‘It wasn’t like that,’ Ben starts as Harry bustles back into the room.

‘Got ’em,’ Harry booms. ‘Now these,’ he says, proudly holding a pair of heavy-looking, battered old leather boots, ‘are proper boots. Feel the weight of them.’ He hands them to Ben. ‘Eh? Feel that?’

‘They’re really heavy,’ Ben says dutifully.

‘How’re you supposed to stamp a man’s head in wearing them things?’ he asks, flapping a disdainful hand at the modern boots. ‘You’d hurt your foot,’ he adds, nodding seriously. ‘And a sore foot is no joke.’

‘Get changed and we’ll go outside,’ Safa says, scooping her pile up.

‘Outside?’ Ben asks, rising from the chair. ‘What about the bacteria?’

‘Oh, they’ve got a decontamination thingy by the back door.’

‘Technical,’ Ben says.

‘S’what I said,’ Safa says. ‘Malcolm and Konrad know how it works.’

‘What about the wildlife? There’s dinosaurs out there . . . big fucking dinosaurs.’

‘You’ll be fine,’ she says with a smile as she walks into her room. ‘We’ll feed Harry to them if we get trapped.’

‘Roger,’ Harry says, walking into his room and closing the door.