‘Holy shit!’ Harry said. ‘I knew you were smart, but that’s insane.’

‘Yay,’ Charlie chirped. ‘I’ll be the smartest kid in the whole damned jail.’

‘You should call a lawyer now,’ Harry said. ‘It could make a huge difference to your chances.’

‘I guess,’ Charlie said.

‘I’ve missed talking to you, Charlie.’

‘Same here,’ Charlie agreed. ‘If we don’t die horrifically from a virus that liquefies our internal organs and makes us drown slowly in our own blood, and I’m not in federal prison, we should totally do coffee.’

‘Sounds like a plan,’ Harry laughed.

‘I need to call Mango and let her know what’s going down,’ Charlie said. ‘But I’d like to thank you properly for tipping us off. I’ve got twenty-five doses of Killer-T vaccine, but no idea how to get one to you in Summerlin.’

‘I don’t live with Kirsten any more. I’ve got my own place in a high rise on Sammy Davis Junior.’

‘North strip?’ Charlie asked brightly. ‘I’m at my foster parents’ on Rancho Circle, maybe a mile and a half away. I drove north to give Ed his vaccine earlier. I stuck to back streets and I didn’t get stopped.’

Harry didn’t seem sure. ‘The fifteen is closed and I can count three … actually four checkpoints from right here on my balcony. But I might be able to run to you, after dark.’

‘I don’t want to put my foster family at any more risk than I have already,’ Charlie said. ‘They’ve all had jabs, but immunity will take a while to build up, and the Brits estimate the vaccine is only ninety-five per cent effective. So here’s what I’ll do:

‘I’m messaging you my address right now. But you’ll need to go down the alley between two wooden fences a couple of doors down. At the end of the alley there’s a scrap of land where the local kids ride bikes and hang. I’ll hide the doses there and message you a photo of the exact position.’

‘OK,’ Harry said, a touch wary.

‘And this way you can still get hold of the vaccine if the Feds come knocking. How many shots do you want?’

‘Me obviously,’ Harry said. ‘My housemate, Matt. Kirsten didn’t like the idea of being alone at her big house in Summerlin, so she’s with her toy boy. It’s a fair distance, but if I can run to Rancho Circle in the dark I can probably get to them too. Is four doses too much?’

‘I’ll give you five in case you think of someone else,’ Charlie said. ‘Ed and my foster family have had their shots; my best friend and my godson have their own supply. I’d hand the spares out to my neighbours, but I had a nightmare convincing Navid and Jan that I wasn’t trying to poison them.’