Gareth and Julian seem to think it's funny. Civil servants shop at Tesco, don't have platinum credit cards, and suffer being eaten alive by cannibals in the course of their duty—and they think it's funny? A vast sense of indignation threatens to overwhelm me. Fucking bastard over-privileged snooty upper-class goatfucking cultists.

"Ooh, look! Shiny!" Gareth has found my NecronomiPod.

"What's that—ooh!" Julian leans over, and they nearly bang their heads together, cooing over the glamour-shedding curves of the JesusPhone. "Wow! Here, let me feel that—"

"Mine! Preciouss! Is it an iPod Touch?"

"No I think it's a—" Julian straightens up suddenly. "It's an iPhone, isn't it? How do you turn it off?"

I lie on the foam pad, a puddle of dizzy throbbing misery.

"Why would you want to switch it off?" Gareth demands.

"Because it's a phone. They can trace them, can't they?"

"Let's see ..." I hear a familiar sound effect as his finger finds the home key. "How does this work—ooh! Wow. What are all these icons?"

"I thought you knew—"

"Yes, but he's been messing with the home screen." Gareth finds the earbuds, untangles the white wires trailing from the jacket pocket. "Let's see what we've got here."

"Guys." Jonquil sounds tense. "We don't have time for this—"

I lie there, trying to be invisible, hoping Gareth is as stupid as he seems.

"It must have an off button somewhere," Julian mumbles. "Shiny ..."

"Mine!" Gareth clutches it possessively. The earbuds are wrapped around his hand, convolvulus climbing.

Jonquil clears her throat: "If you can't switch it off, leave it behind. It's time to go. Now."

"Bah." Julian shakes himself and steps back. Bastard, I think. "Put it down, Gareth—"

"Mine!" Gareth squeaks, and plugs the earbuds into his head as his thumb is inexorably dragged to the NecronomiPod's home button.

"Stop him—" Jonquil is too late, and she and Julian are clearly not B-Team members in my eyes because she steps behind Julian as he grabs up his shotgun and brings it to bear on Gareth—

Who is limned in black, dancing to a different beat as the writhing white wires drill deep into his consciousness through the shortest possible path, drilling and eating and consuming the unauthorized intruder who has had the temerity to plug himself into a device running a Laundry countermeasure suite—

And he's jitterbugging across the floor, a shadowy silhouette of his former self twitching as if he's plugged into a live wire. It only lasts for a couple of seconds, then the 'Pod finishes discharging its lethal load through his brain and Gareth's body drops to the floor, crashing across my legs like a dead weight.

The white earbuds roll away from his corpse, satiated and somehow fat.

"You bastard—" Julian is across the room and the shotgun muzzle is a subway tunnel filling my right eye.

"Stop!"

Julian takes a deep, shuddering breath. The gun doesn't waver.

"Gareth fucked up," Jonquil says shakily.