As though there was something obscurely loathsome about them that he ought to know, ought to recognise. While he still had time.

JC strode up and down the white-tiled corridors, investigated every platform, and made a point of peering into every single tunnel-mouth. The adrenaline was really buzzing now, and he was grinning widely. He was walking alone, into the face of danger and the heart of the unknown, and he couldn’t have been happier. On every case, he couldn’t wait for the overture to begin, for a chance to come face-to-face with something he’d never seen before. It was the only reason he stayed with the Institute. He couldn’t wait for the supernatural to start its act, reveal its hidden hand, for good or bad, so he could roll up his sleeves and get stuck in. Because once he was actually doing something, he’d be too busy to feel scared.

For all his studiedly calm exterior, JC knew enough about his job to be sensibly cautious. But he also knew, or thought he knew, enough about the situations he faced every day . . . to be pretty sure of what needed doing to put things right. He knew things, had taught himself things, that the rest of his team never knew about, and that the Boss would almost certainly not approve of. JC believed in being prepared, and very heavily armed, at all times; and some of the things he carried in the inner pockets of his marvellous cream suit were officially banned by the Geneva Convention. (Supernatural and Weird Happenings Section.)

He stopped abruptly, half-way down a platform, and looked around. He was almost certain he’d been there before; but everywhere he looked, things seemed subtly different. As though certain details were changing, in slow and sneaky ways, right before his eyes. Someone was playing tricks on him. He walked slowly forward, and the posters on the wall beside him stirred lazily, the details seeming to blur and shimmer, rearranging themselves before his eyes. An ad for the new James Bond movie was suddenly an old propaganda poster from World War II, when whole families huddled together deep in the Underground, sheltering from the bombs of the Blitz. A simple cartoon, backed up by a government admonition to keep your mouth shut in case of spies: Be Like Dad; Keep Mum. The cartoon father-figure turned its simple head and winked an eye at JC. Blood ran from its mouth.