GMT scrunches up her face. ‘Could be ’68, ’72. Might not even be a leap, guys. Le Temps is an Annual. He could choose anything.’

‘Millennia said I’d destroyed a CENTURY of work.’

MC2 wriggles his body. He wants to disappear, appear, but can’t. ‘She founded the centre 2000, it’s now 2100. 2100 don’t work.’

He holds his hands up to the sky like he’s trying to catch rain. GMT’s raising her eyebrows like she’s asking me a question. I take a deep breath like I’m going to run the 100 metres.

‘What if it’s 1900?’

No one moves. I tap the digits into the box followed by MM. Nothing happens. Then we hear a creaking noise and the floor starts moving under our feet like a lift. A hidden shaft!

‘Maestro, Elle!’ says MC2 as we slowly descend to Minus 2 and the voices increase in volume until they turn into teens. The missing Leaplings!

It takes a little while to see properly; it’s so much darker down here. The walls are brown and the lighting isn’t so bright. There are lots of machines that make it look like a factory. It must be where they do the meat-packing. The Leaplings look like normal teenagers except they stare at us without blinking and are wearing brown jumpsuits the colour of sacks and are standing behind the machines. But the machines haven’t been turned on. No one says anything. They stopped talking as soon as we landed. Then a very short boy with black electric-shock hair steps forward.

‘I’m Jack. Have you come to give us food? Have you come to give us food?’

‘Far out,’ says GMT. ‘He’s looping speech. You only do that when you get stuck in a year too long. How long you guys been down here?’

The Leaplings say nothing. They don’t know. How do you count the days when you’re looping with no watch?

There are SEVEN missing Leaplings: Jack, who must be 4-leap even though he’s tiny, who was kidnapped from Leap 2044, the same trip Kwesi was on; three friends who came from 2032 called Yola, Lola and Shola who did illegal leaps from their day school; and three other Leap teens who were born in leap years they hated so couldn’t wait to escape but got rounded up and forced to work here. They squint at us like people who’ve just got out of bed, and even when they turn their heads they do it in slow motion like robots. Le Temps must have threatened to shoot them with his Chronophone if they didn’t work in his factory. I want to ask them lots of questions, like why didn’t they leap to escape, but what actually comes out of my mouth is:

‘Did Le Temps steal your DNA so you can’t leap any more?’