Lili gave him a disbelieving smile. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Well, nice to meet you, nobody,’ she said. ‘Maybe we can do it again someday.’ She looked around the room. ‘On second thoughts …’

She followed the policeman out of the hall via the kitchen. Max, Lukas, Abby and Sami followed Woody and Angel to the main exit. The hall was still swarming with military personnel, but their work here was done.

20

Train Hard, Fight Easy

Outside the school, it was chaos. Soldiers herded the hostages out of the school grounds towards some medical tents that had been set up in the street outside. There was shouting and tears. Sirens blared. A line of police officers struggled to keep families and journalists behind the cordon. There were several ambulances. Max saw Jack being carried into one of them on a stretcher bed.

They had less than a minute to take it all in. Woody and Angel ushered them hurriedly back into the white van that had brought them here. Max sensed that they didn’t want anybody on the outside to see them, or ask who they were.

The recruits wore haunted, shell-shocked expressions, as though they couldn’t quite believe what had just happened. They sat silently in the van as it pulled away from the school and left the area. The seat where Jack should have been sitting was noticeably empty. Although none of them spoke, they all, at some point, glanced at that empty seat. Max knew they were all thinking the same thing: it could have been any of them being stretchered into the ambulance.

‘Is he going to be okay?’ Lukas asked after they had been travelling for five minutes.

Woody and Angel looked at Hector, as if expecting him to reply. When he didn’t, Angel spoke. ‘We don’t know,’ she said. ‘But we don’t expect him to return to Valley House.’

There was a moment of quiet as they digested that news. The others looked as shocked as Max felt.

It was Abby who broke the silence. ‘So that’s me, Sami and Lukas on the team,’ she said. ‘Our five-person team is looking kind of depleted, wouldn’t you say?’ When none of the Watchers replied, she said, ‘If only we knew somebody else who was up to this kind of work, huh?’

They watched Hector. Were they thinking the same as Max: that he had been the most active member of their group during the siege? But if Hector intended to change his mind about him, he showed no sign of it. He stared impassively straight ahead.

‘Does anybody have anything to eat?’ Abby asked of nobody in particular.