At least I now had two guns. I tucked one into the side pocket of my bag and held the other. I flung the bag over my shoulder and pulled the locker-room door shut, typing a code into the door’s keypad that locked it from both the inside and outside.

Things had gone quiet down the corridor.

Had the mirror man’s shout alerted them? Were they waiting for me? I reached into my bag and pulled out Gigi’s beloved Elsa doll. I leaned round the corner and flung it down the corridor. I heard the sound of her plastic head hitting the floor as she burst into: ‘Let it go, let it goo—’ Bang bang bang. Her high-pitched plea was cut off by the sound of gunfire.

There were definitely two guns. Maybe even three.

Thanks, Elsa, you did not die in vain.

I made a mental note to Amazon one-click a replacement. If I survived tonight I was going to need to make sure I didn’t have to deal with an incandescent toddler missing her favourite doll tomorrow.

Now what?

Two to three Ghosts. Armed. And those were only the ones I heard. There could be more.

I didn’t want to get shot again.

I didn’t need another scar to have to hide for the summer.

Another story to create for a concerned husband.

I had to use everything I had to my advantage. And the fact I knew the battleground was a major one.

The Platform’s fusebox was fixed to the wall next to the locker room. It was a frequented area. Due to the intense nature of our interrogation techniques, the lights often flickered and fused. The two Ghosts I had locked into the locker room didn’t have night-vision goggles so it was a fair guess their colleagues wouldn’t either.

I opened the fusebox and flicked every switch. All the lights went out.

Shouts on my right from the corridor and offices and from back past the canteen. Jesus. How many of them were there?

While I was at the back of the canteen, chomping through my sandwich, worrying about what to donate to the school tombola, they must have walked straight past without seeing me.

Inside my bag was a small dinosaur torch of Gigi’s. I couldn’t risk turning it on in the corridor. I felt my way from the fuse box towards our office. I needed to get the hard drive from Robin’s desk and break protocol by copying its contents, and everything else we had on the mission, onto our server. Right now the risk of exposing the info to our network was lower than the risk of losing the intel altogether.