“Better now?” said JC.

“You have no idea,” said Happy, mopping roughly at his face with a surprisingly clean handkerchief. “One of these days, the strain of doing that will kill me, and maybe then I’ll get some rest.”

“We couldn’t do this without you,” said JC.

It was as close to an apology as Happy was going to get, and he knew it. He sniffed loudly and looked around him.

“Ugly place, this, in more ways than one. I mean, did they have a competition, and this colour scheme won? I’ve been locked up in cheerier institutions than this. And they had piped music.”

Happy grinned suddenly. “Anyone want to say It’s quiet, too quiet? I mean, it is traditional.”

JC laughed briefly and went striding around the empty lobby, looking closely at everything and running his hands over the silent ticket machines. He paced back and forth, on the trail of something only he could sense, his head up like a hound on the scent, sniffing for invisible clues. His eyes gleamed, and he grinned widely. JC was on the job and having the time of his life, as always.

Melody, meanwhile, ignored them both with the ease of long practice. She was only interested in the various pieces of high-tech equipment she’d brought with her, piled precariously high onto an unsteady trolley. She just knew the Institute technicians had damaged something when they loaded the trolley up; they always did. No-one understood or appreciated her precious machines like she did. She wouldn’t be happy until she’d set up base somewhere and could reassure herself that everything was working properly. She ran through her check-list again, making sure nothing had been left behind.

She paid no attention to what JC and Happy were doing. She trusted them to hold up their end. Inasmuch as she trusted anything that wasn’t a machine. You could fix machines when they went wrong . . . She dimly realised they’d stopped bickering, and she looked around, fists on her hips.

“Yes, fine,” she said. “Don’t do anything to help, will you? I can handle all this vitally important and extremely heavy equipment myself. Unaided.”

JC shot her an amused glance. “You know very well you don’t like us touching your toys, Melody. In fact, you have been known to stab at our hands with pointy things if you even think we’re going to touch something.”

“That’s because you always break them! You two could break an anvil merely by looking at it! You break more of my things than the things we go after. What I meant was, I need your help to get this trolley up and over the closed ticket barriers. Unless you have some clever trick to get us past them.”

JC smiled at her pityingly, took out his travel card, and slapped it against the clearly indicated contact point. The barriers sprang open.