Max flung himself towards the crowd of hostages, convinced he was the only one who could stop the impending carnage. He had looked into T7’s eyes. There had been uncertainty in his look. If Max could get in front of him again, maybe he could talk the final target into disarming himself. Or at least delay the inevitable while he tried to come up with something better.

A scream pierced the noise in the hall. As Max ran at the crowd, it parted in front of him. ‘Get down!’ an adult voice shouted from behind him. ‘Everyone get down and cover your heads!’ A few of the child hostages followed his instruction. Others turned to look at who was shouting. The piercing scream had come from a young child with albino-white hair. As the space ahead of Max opened out, he saw what had frightened the kid so much.

It frightened Max too.

Through the settling dust he saw Lili. She was in a space, on her knees, back straight, head high, arms by her side. Behind her was T7. In his left hand was a handgun. It was pressed into the back of Lili’s skull. In his right hand was a cylindrical object, no bigger than a ballpoint pen. It had a button on the top. T7 had pressed it down with his thumb.

The kill switch was activated.

From the corner of his eye, Max saw the awesome figures of the SAS men. ‘Don’t fire!’ he shouted, unsure whether they were patched into his comms. ‘He’s got a kill switch. It’s activated. If you shoot him, it’ll blow.’

Max’s voice echoed around the hall. The child hostages had fallen silent. He felt all their eyes on him, but Max’s attention was firmly on T7.

The target was shaking violently. He was clearly as scared as everybody else. He held the kill switch aloft – a threat to everyone in the room. But he hadn’t detonated it. Did that mean he wasn’t ready to die yet? Max didn’t know.

Max held up both hands, palms outward, to show he was unarmed. ‘It’s me,’ he said. ‘Remember me?’

T7 didn’t speak, but he nodded his head almost imperceptibly.

‘I meant it when I said I’d tell them about you not being like the others,’ Max said. ‘You’re not, are you? You don’t want to die, like them, do you?’

In his peripheral vision, Max saw Lukas, Abby and Sami approaching. They were carrying weapons and he assumed that they’d taken them from the dead targets.

‘Stand back, everyone,’ Max said. ‘Lower your weapons. I know this guy. He’s not like the others. He doesn’t want to do this. Do you, mate?’ He smiled at T7. ‘You want to see your brother again, right? And he wants to see you.’