Three storeys below, on the roadside, we steal through the shadows, hugging the walls. We find an iron gate and Malik waves his hand over a screen and the metal slides open. We slink past him into the gloom of an underground parking space.

The screams die. All we hear now is the squeak of our shoes on cement.

Here is a row of hover-bikes, just like the Dyson Thunderbird.

Malik jumps on one and Akuji commandeers a second and Vidhan a third. He points to the bike next to him. “This one,” he says. “It’s automatic.”

I snatch a leather jacket from hooks on the wall. Then I leap onto the saddle and turn the key already in the ignition. I grab hold of the handlebars. The bike shudders, makes a guttural throaty sound. Then it slides a little and settles on a cushion of air. I pull on the helmet hooked over the handlebar.

Immediately, the sound is muted. Far away.

The others streak off and I pull back the throttle with my right hand and the motor whumps and a hot blast of air slams out behind me. I belt after them. We slam through the parking space, thump up the ramp and blast out onto the road, fishtailing across the tarmac. We pull low through corners and bomb fast on the straights. I turn my head to my shoulder and see no sign of Reapers following. I hold on with everything I’ve got, feeling the solid strength of the bike under me. Malik flies ahead. Then Akuji. Followed by me and Vidhan. Fear hammers a frantic urgency into the way I ride. But the bike goes easily, smoothly, the gears shifting automatically. All I need to do is brake, accelerate, and steer through the wrecked city of Londra.

We hit the waterless Thames and throw left onto Embankment.

We follow the river east, past Waterloo Bridge, Temple and Blackfriars.

The names are the same, the buildings aren’t.

On the opposite side of the river, I see the Bankside power station, which in Sol is the Tate Modern art museum. Here it’s a hard-working power plant, pumping giant clouds of white effluent into the air. We skim past the Tower of London, reduced almost to rubble. Tower Bridge is a wreck. Parts of the structure have sheared away and lie mangled in the putrid waters below. We blast onward, past a stinking dump with seagulls wheeling in the sky, then sink into a deserted tunnel. In the dark, the engines roar and the tunnel walls make a cocoon of the sound.

Soon we’re up and out on the other side and we fly away from the city. We hit a two-lane road that skirts a bleak series of grim suburbs. We’re heading south now, towards the Channel—and France—far away.