‘We forgot shower time!’ Capstick shouted, as torchlight caught the instructor’s piercing blue eyes.

The hose ripped so hard that Daniel and Leon buried their heads as the freezing water hit the back of the tent with enough force to rip out its anchors and buckle one of the support rods.

As the tent shot backwards with the twins still inside, Capstick kept blasting until the roof had collapsed and the water trapped inside was more than thirty centimetres deep. Leon tried scrambling towards the exit but the hose blast flipped him on to his back.

When the tent was several metres from its starting position, Capstick pulled out the hose and instead started blasting the powerful jet at the muddy ground. With so much water in the tent, the twins scrambled out in a brown slick, riding a surge from the back of the tent. The hose blasting at the ground left them stumbling blindly towards a wall of mud spray that was rapidly burying their tent, sleeping bags and any prospect of a dry night’s sleep.

‘Sleep tight!’ Capstick beamed, as he finally cut the hose and began strutting backwards to disconnect it from a ground hydrant thirty metres away. ‘Don’t let the bed bugs bite.’

A party was going on by the athletics track across campus. Current staff and agents had been joined by six hundred guests from the organisation’s past. James was a tad drunk as he strolled out of a toilet block, shaking his hands because the paper towels had run out. While a crowd chattered and drank in the centre of the track, he was surprised to see seventeen-year-old Ryan Sharma, sat on the banked area nearby, holding a half-drunk Peroni and staring anxiously at the moon.

James had worked with Ryan on two missions, and knew him too well to walk by. But Ryan’s first reaction was to hide his beer.

‘We’re allowed two marked beers,’ Ryan said, making James smirk.

‘I’m mission control, not a carer,’ James said. ‘Get as drunk as you like, as long as you don’t throw up on me.’

Ryan smiled and took a slug. James was the kind of cool adult he hoped he’d be a few years down the line. ‘I’ve actually got a spare,’ Ryan said.

James took the Peroni and squatted in the slightly damp grass beside Ryan. They both wore their party jackets. Ryan with a tie, James without.

‘Let me guess,’ James said. ‘Girl broke your heart?’

Ryan sighed. ‘Worried about my brothers, actually. They’re on sixty days’ heavy drill and it’s all this big mystery. I have no clue what they did.’

James slugged beer and nodded. ‘It’s all been kept very quiet. Are you certain it’s sixty days?’

‘Zara told me herself.’

‘I never heard of more than twenty-eight before now,’ James said. ‘I didn’t think you got on too well with the twins?’