‘Okay,’ Jack said. ‘Zoe. You, me and the palemen are gonna take on this silverman and distract him. While we do that, Lily and Easton, you’re going to get past him by hanging from the gutter of this bridge like those Vandals just did.’

‘But Dad . . .’ Lily protested.

‘No, kiddo, this is how we have to do things in here. If we get held up in any way, Zoe, Easton and I will play decoy for you. We keep the traps and the other players busy while you move on to the next stage of the maze. Then, hopefully, we catch up.’

‘What if you don’t catch up?’

Jack gave her a look. ‘Then you’ll have to go on alone. Easton? If past experience is any guide, as soon as we get close to that silver dude, he’s going to come alive and be very hard to handle. Can you order your boys to take him on?’

Easton pointed to three of his palemen: ‘You three. If that silverman moves, attack him.’

In a corner of his mind, Jack wondered why Easton hadn’t ordered all four of the palemen to do this.

Then Easton addressed the fourth and last paleman, the one with the smile-shaped scratch on its metal face, Smiley.

‘You,’ Easton said softly, ‘protect him and her.’

And Easton pointed at Jack and Zoe.

He had just given them a bodyguard.

Then Jack stepped forward and, as expected, the silverman raised its head, coming alive, and the first three palemen charged at it and the battle commenced.

As soon as the palemen charged, Jack raised his Desert Eagle and fired it at the silverman’s head.

The shot hit the chrome automaton right in the forehead, causing its head to snap back briefly.

But then the creature’s head just rose again.

As its eyeless face glared back at Jack, he saw that the bullet impact had left a tiny indentation in its metal brow, but the shot hadn’t dropped the silverman.

‘Damn.’

He knew from prior experience that his special bullets ‘killed’ a bronzeman with a direct shot to the head.

But this was a silverman and they were more advanced than the bronzemen; better fighters, with tougher skin, harder to kill. Clearly, one special bullet to its head wasn’t enough.

Zoe joined in with some shots of her own and their booming rounds pinged off the shiny chrome head, kicking up sparks.

While their bullets didn’t penetrate the silverman’s head, their barrage of gunfire did knock its head around, which enabled the three palemen to get in close and launch themselves at it.

‘Lily! Easton!’ Jack called. ‘Go now!’

Lily and Easton quickly climbed over the gutter of the bridge and, hanging by their fingers, moved hand-over-hand down its length while the palemen fought the silverman.