Geraint was crying. So was Pixie. They were sat in the meeting room holding hands on the table, tears rolling down their cheeks.

‘Come on, you two. Lovers’ tiff?’ I was trying to be upbeat.

But I could feel it in the air.

Something bad.

Jake was pacing alongside the table on his phone.

‘I understand. I get it.’ He hung up and looked at me. ‘It’s Robin.’

I looked again at Pixie and Geraint, and at Jake staring at me. ‘No . . .’ I gripped the back of the plastic chair in front of me.

‘They took him.’

‘I . . . Are we sure?’

‘He didn’t come in this morning and he wasn’t answering his phone. I went round to his place. His bed was unslept in. G used CCTV to track his route home from here. Four Ghosts grabbed him ten minutes down the road and bundled him into a van.’ Jake threw his phone down on the table. ‘He didn’t have a chance.’

‘Do we know if . . .’ I couldn’t finish. My head was spinning. This couldn’t be right.

Jake walked up to me and put his hand on my shoulders. ‘We have to be realistic. They got him. And they have no reason to keep him alive. We need to presume he’s gone.’

I stared down at the floor. I knew whatever I was feeling now, Jake would be too. We’d worked with Robin for three years. We’d trained him together.

Just not well enough.

We should’ve seen this coming.

Why didn’t we see this coming?

Tenebris’s raid on Eight had failed. They couldn’t get our hardware so they got one of us. They must’ve sent more Ghosts to watch the Platform’s exits. Robin was the only one who always left out the street-level door. He lived within walking distance from the Platform. It was harder to spot who we were when we merged with the many weary commuters all heading home on the underground.

Tenebris didn’t need our laptops and our hard drives if they got to someone who knew what was on them.

And made them talk.

I shuddered.

‘Pixie and G have been doing a search for the van’s number plate. We got two hits on the CCTV. One at a garage in Vauxhall last night and one by the M3 in the early hours.’

‘I’m coming with you.’

‘No, Lex. The mission comes first. It’s a long shot that we can track this van down.’ He leaned towards me and spoke softly. ‘They’ve had him for sixteen hours. You know the drill.’

I did.

They’d taken him to find out what we knew. And when they got it, or even if they didn’t, they would dispose of him. They couldn’t have loose trails. They had no reason to keep him alive. I bit my lip.