‘That’s what your old friend Mango said,’ Fawn noted. ‘But we part-drowned one of her kiddies, gave her a few behavioural mods and now she’s practically employee of the month.’

As Fawn said this, a white disc rolled across the floor towards the guards.

‘I dropped my Icebreaker,’ Ed said, jumping off the sofa to chase the mint.

‘And who gave you permission to eat?’ Fawn demanded as one of the suited guards stepped forward and shoved Ed towards the couch.

‘Back,’ he ordered firmly.

But Ed stubbornly insisted on picking up the mint and got into a little tussle with the guard.

Charlie was fearful. ‘Ed, sit back on the couch, or they’ll hurt you.’

‘Christ he’s so dumb,’ Fawn said as Ed got pushed on to the sofa. ‘Since you’re so fond of Ed, I might have a taxidermist stuff him and put him on display in your lab. Though he could be a bit of a mutant after we’ve twiddled with his DNA …’

Fawn tipped up her head, laughing helplessly at her own joke.

Then the back half of her office exploded.

68 UNSEEN POTENTIAL

Harry’s dead. Charlie’s on the floor. Fawn is talking about doing nasty things to me. I’m seventeen. Everyone says I’m a big boy now. If I don’t do something, they’ll take me to a place a hundred times worse than Care4Kids.

Ed feared things crawling up his leg, so he’d woken up in a long-sleeved undershirt and jogging bottoms tucked into long soccer socks. His pockets bulged, but Man Bun’s team hadn’t bothered to search him.

This meant the guards didn’t find the Icebreakers, one of which Ed had flicked across the floor as a distraction, or the pair of Charlie’s homemade grenades he’d stuffed down his right-hand pocket as the bad guys stormed in the back at the house.

When the suited guard tried to stop Ed picking up the mint, Ed had slipped one of the little grenades in the guard’s jacket pocket. The guard had just re-joined Man Bun and his colleague at the rear of the office when he noticed the lump in his pocket.

But by then it was too late …

‘What the—’ Fawn yelled, shielding her face as the blast threw her across her own desk.

Charlie had been knocked flat so the blast didn’t hit her so hard, and she jumped up and ripped the cattle prod out of Fawn’s grasp as an alarm sounded and sprinklers fired. The two slate-suited guards had been ripped apart by the grenade blast. Man Bun had been flung backwards, smashing through the glass panes of a bookcase, and splattered with chunks of his former colleagues.