I took my seat at the table next to Jake. I noticed a splodge of porridge caked on the right thigh of my jeans. I scrubbed at it with a babywipe from my bag. Since having Gigi I’d never been more grateful for the Platform’s relaxed dress code. Once, when Gigi had a bad chest infection and I’d been up with her throughout the night, I turned up at the Platform half-asleep wearing tracksuit bottoms, a stained top and a mum bun. Jake had asked what the undercover homeless mission I was going out on was.

I didn’t bother trying to explain to him there were many different definitions of mum chic.

Hattie cleared his throat as he looked down at us all. If he stretched I was sure he could easily place both hands on the meeting room’s peeling ceiling. ‘We’re about to go on lockdown. There’s a Snake in our midst and agents and informants are dying thanks to this traitor. For the first time in Eight’s history the Committee have decreed that all active missions need to be shut down.’

The Committee ran the country. A group of unknown individuals who made the decisions. The Prime Minister and Parliament were a front to give the appearance of democratic control. But they were all just puppets acting out the Committee’s orders.

‘What you don’t know is that we will be the only unit still in operation.’

‘Oh no, darlin’. Really? I just booked tickets to ComicCon.’ This was Pixie.

Hattie pressed a couple of buttons on his laptop and what looked like a website homepage was projected onto the whiteboard. Against a black background was ‘The Tenebris Network’ written in large red font. Underneath was the tagline, ‘Discreet online recruitment services for all your personnel needs’.

‘This is our newest threat. Because of them we have seven dead and counting. Whistle have been tasked with locating and eliminating the Snake working for Tenebris before they undertake further damage.’

Whistle was our unit name. Hattie had renamed us this upon his appointment as unit leader. He felt ‘clean as a whistle’ was a fitting nod to a unit that had been tarred by our previous unit leader’s traitorous actions. It was no surprise the Committee had chosen Whistle to find this latest Snake. After all they’d put us through the Committee could trust us to be clean. And we’d come up against a Snake before and won.

Robin frowned as he read the whiteboard. ‘Online recruitment services? So Tenebris is a kind of LinkedIn? Although I don’t get how a networking website can get any of us killed?’