He couldn’t connect with any of the Institute’s female field agents. They were too competitive, or too traumatised, or too haunted . . . there was always something. So JC lived alone and told himself he preferred it that way. He kept himself as busy as possible, so he wouldn’t have to tell himself that too often.

He did love his work. It was fascinating. Always something new.

Genuinely intrigued and delighted, he watched the posters change. His work never let him down.

Further away from JC than simple distance could account for, Happy went bouncing through empty white-tiled corridors, peering this way and that with wide, wondering eyes. He’d dosed himself with a wide variety of pills, and he was really rocking and rolling by then. There was a spring in his step and iron in his spine, and his thoughts were racing at a thousand miles a second. His experienced brain could handle a dozen conflicting chemistries at once and still know which way was up. Happy was grinning fiercely, his eyes barely blinking at all, and he was waiting for something nasty to show itself, so he could leap on it with loud cries and wrestle it to the ground before giving it a good kicking.

A properly medicated Happy could walk up to a banshee and ask if it knew any show tunes.

His psychic shields were still firmly in place, not even touched by the various chemicals fighting it out for supremacy in his battered grey cells. Happy took drugs to give him an edge, not to hide behind. Or at least, that was what he told himself.

He stopped at an intersection and spun round and round on his toes, his head up as though testing the air, listening for sounds only he could hear. He’d been nagged for some time by a constant feeling there was someone behind him; but no matter how quickly he turned around, there was never anyone there. Happy reined in his raging thoughts with an iron will unsuspected by the rest of his team and stood very still. There was definitely someone, or something, down in the corridors with him. He didn’t need his telepathy to tell him that. He sniffed loudly, giggled briefly, and rubbed his dry hands together. It was times like this he wished he carried a really big gun. Or even a really big stick. With nails in it.

Many people asked, and not a few demanded to know, why Happy needed to take so many pills. A few, with some experience of telepathy, said they understood; but they didn’t, really. Happy only ever took what he needed to make himself brave, smart, or strong enough to be able to do his job properly, so he could strike back at those aspects of the world that had made his life such a misery from an early age.

Revenge is always the best comfort.