She skidded into the room just in time to see Ethan in front of the mirror on the wall. With one hand holding the skin tight around the disc on his temple, he gripped the knife, just about to jab it in.

‘Stop!’ She yanked at his arm. ‘Just stop a minute and think this through.’

She was out of breath.

‘We don’t know anything about this tech, what they’ve programmed into it.’ She gasped, still gripping his arm. ‘You can’t just dig something like that out with a kitchen knife. It could have some sort of self-defence mode; it could, I don’t know, short out and fry your brain if you do it wrong. Please let’s think it through a bit before you do anything.’ She felt his arm relax a bit. ‘Please.’

He dropped his arm.

‘Surely, we’re out of range up here anyway?’ she continued to hold on to him.

He shrugged her off. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘One more night. But if they work tonight, if I have a restful bloody sleep, I am cutting the damn things out first thing in the morning, whether you want to or not.’

‘Agreed.’

Ramming the knife point into the little wooden dresser next to him, Ethan stalked back down the stairs.

Chapter 28

Night. Ethan slept. Thea didn’t.

They’d decided not to bother with the sedative for Moses as they didn’t really know how to dose it and he was handcuffed anyway. There was also a chance that they could get more sense out of him if he was lucid.

They had cobbled together a basic meal from the tins in the cupboards and had eaten it while perched on the kitchen worktops, watching the sleet fatten and slow into snowflakes until it got too dark to see anything. Ethan had insisted on Thea taking the bed and had settled down on some blankets on the floor next to her.

It was normal for her to struggle to nod off.

Normal, normal, normal.

Adrenaline was probably still doing a conga line through her body after the day she’d had. Anyone would struggle to sleep.

Normal.

Anyone.

She would drop off at some point, she told herself. The Sleep Centre was too far away for the tech to work. She would be fine, fine, fine. Fine. She would definitely not end up in a room being held down by too many hands, punctured by a syringe.