When Lucy and Wolf got out of the elevator there was another man waiting to meet them. He was dressed in the same way as the receptionist from downstairs, with a white shirt and silver pants. He carried a clipboard and wore a pair of thick-rimmed glasses.

“Follow me please,” he said.

“Look,” said Lucy. “I’m just here to pick up an address. Couldn’t I simply—”

“Follow me, please,” said the man again.

Lucy shrugged. She and Wolf followed the man around a very shiny gallery with many identical white doors. Wolf thought it was a good thing he wasn’t afraid of heights. He could see the reception desk quite a long way below him. And above him were scores of identical levels. This whole building had been underground until very recently, but nothing was shabby or dirty. What on earth was going on? Why had he been asked to come here? It didn’t feel like an office building or a military facility. Wolf could smell chemicals, and everything was so clean. It was almost as if this was a laboratory.

They followed the man through a gleaming white door that opened onto a corridor with gleaming white tiles on the floor and the same on the ceiling. At the third door on the right the man stopped. He knocked, and then pushed the door open.

“The last two,” he said to someone.

“Thank you, Aiden,” said the someone. It was a deep man’s voice.

Wolf followed Lucy into the room. It was, like the rest of the building, stark and white. There was a large round table in the center of the room, lit harshly with fluorescent lights. Wolf had never seen a real fluorescent light before. There was lots of neon left over from the olden days, but no one made bulbs for fluorescent lights now.

“Good,” said the deep voice. Its owner was wearing a suit made out of the same silver material as everyone else here. It was almost as if whoever had designed the uniforms didn’t know what would be appropriate for somebody to wear in real life.

“I’m here because I want to save my grandmother,” a boy a bit older than Wolf was saying. “She’s really ill. Someone phoned and said if I completed this program there’d be a place on a trial for her. A new medicine. We’ll try anything.”

Wolf and Lucy took the last two seats at the table.

The man in the suit made a note, and then nodded at the next person after the boy who had just spoken. It was a slight girl with bright-blond hair.

“My village has no food,” she said. “It hasn’t rained for three years. Nobody cares. Everyone thinks it’s natural for areas like mine to have these droughts, but they were unknown fifty years ago. If I complete the program, I’ve been promised an irrigation system.”