Malik walks up to a steel elevator and pushes his thumb against a glass panel. The elevator doors open and we step inside. It hums and clunks and my legs feel wobbly as it rises. We emerge with a ping into a stark white hallway. Malik strides up to a heavy-looking steel door and stares into a video screen to one side. A red laser flickers across his eyeball. Silence. Then a sequence of bolts thunk in the door and it swings open. The door is reinforced metal, thick and chunky. It looks bomb-proof. Malik steps inside. I linger a second, then follow.

From the future-scape outside, I now feel as if I’m stepping into a sophisticated members club from bygone days. Our footsteps drum over polished wooden floors, the lighting is low and the temperature moderated. Dispersed through the room are discreet clusters of plush leather chairs arranged around dark coffee tables. A ceiling fan whirs. We choose a table and slip into leather seats, wordlessly. Ensconced in the chair, I turn my gaze on the room. It’s empty. Opposite us, I scan a curved serving bar, and I realise I was wrong. The club isn’t empty after all. Behind the bar, it watches us.

“It” consists of a patchwork of gleaming metal panels, bolted and welded together. Its eyes look like self-adjusting camera lenses. No mouth.

In any other circumstance, this would freak me out.

It doesn’t now.

“That’s a robot,” I say.

Malik laughs. “You really don’t miss anything, do you?”

I look at him. His hair is coal-black and dishevelled. His eyes, dark and brooding. His cheeks, so carved he looks like he’s sucking a sweet. He grins and raps the table with his knuckle and I watch the robot move out from behind the bar towards us. Its lower half is a solid metal block, culminating in an exhaust that hammers an almost-silent blast of air downward. Like the Thunderbird, it floats.

“So?” Malik says. “What would you like?”

I put my hands on the table, palms down, and look at him. “I’d like answers.”

“I recommend the full English.”

I draw a deep breath and exhale. “What are we doing here, Malik?”

“Eating.”

I shake my head. “Not hungry.”

“Suit yourself.” Malik hands the robot the menus. “One full English with everything and don’t hold back on the sauce and…uh, two coffees.”

The robot clutches the menus between articulated fingers and floats to the bar.

“So,” Malik says, looking at me. “You want answers.”

“I think I’m entitled.”

“Looks that way.”

“Let me play this back for you, Malik. I see you on the Tube before Bea’s taken. You follow me home. You almost get me killed on the back of a hover-bike. Then you bring me here to meet ‘the others,’ but all I see is a floating robot.”