There was a loud detonation and the front door exploded inwards in a cloud of wood splinters and dust. Havisham instantly pushed Heathcliff to the ground and laid herself across him, yelling:

'Take cover!'

She fired her small derringer as a masked man jumped through the smoking doorway firing a machine gun. Havisham's bullet struck home and the figure crumpled in a heap. One of Heathcliff's two minders took rounds in the neck and chest from the first assailant but the second minder pulled out his own sub-machine gun and opened up as more assassins ran in. Linton fainted on the spot, quickly followed by Isabella and Edgar. At least it stopped them screaming. I drew my gun and fired along with the minder and Havisham as another masked figure came through the door; we got him but one of his bullets caught the second bodyguard in the head, and he dropped lifeless to the flags. I crawled across to Havisham and also laid myself across Heathcliff, who whimpered:

'Help me! Don't let them kill me! I don't want to die!'

'Shut up!' yelled Havisham, and Heathcliff was instantly quiet. I looked around. His agent was cowering under a briefcase and the rest of the cast were hiding beneath the oak table. There was a pause.

'What's going on?' I hissed.

'ProCath attack,' murmured Havisham, reloading her pistol in the sudden quiet. 'Support of the young Catherine and hatred of Heathcliff run deep in the BookWorld; usually it's only a lone gunman – I've never seen anything this well coordinated before. I'm going to jump out with Heathcliff; I'll be back for you straight away.'

She mumbled a few words but nothing happened. She tried them again out loud but still nothing.

'The devil take them!' she muttered, pulling her mobile footnoterphone from the folds of her wedding dress. 'They must be using a textual sieve.'

'What's a textual sieve?'

'I don't know – it's never fully explained.'

She looked at the mobile footnoterphone and shook it despairingly.

'Blast! No signal. Where's the nearest footnoterphone?'

'In the kitchen,' replied Nelly Dean, 'next to the bread basket.'

'We have to get word to the Bellman. Thursday, I want you to go to the kitchen—'

But she never got to finish her sentence as a barrage of machine-gun fire struck the house, decimating the windows and shutters; the curtains danced as they were shredded, the plaster erupting off the wall as the shots slammed into it. We kept our heads down as Catherine screamed, Linton woke up only to faint again, Hindley took a swig from a hip flask and Heathcliff convulsed with fear beneath us. After about ten minutes the firing stopped. Dust hung lazily in the air and we were covered with plaster, shards of glass and wood chips.

'Havisham!' said a voice on a bullhorn from outside. 'We wish you no harm! Just surrender Heathcliff and we'll leave you alone!'