‘This place looks familiar,’ Alex muttered as they approached the concrete guard post ahead. Ewan looked to its side, and found a semi-cylindrical tunnel that looked familiar to him too.

‘You were here when we broke out of New London last time.’

‘When I broke you out, yeah. Which means we’re just about to hear the dullest voice known to man—’

‘Soldiers in Vehicles 131 to 137,’ came a monotonous voice through the driver’s radio, ‘this is Arnold Salter, deployment director for Vehicle Port Three. Once cleared by security, park in your vehicle’s assigned bay and assist guards with inventory checks. All vehicles, please acknowledge.’

Ewan pressed the communication button on his clone radio, and produced a long beep.

‘Wow,’ said Alex, ‘three weeks since I last heard him speak, and only for a few sentences, and I was busy being an action hero at the time. But I still remember every boring inflection of Salter’s stupid voice.’

Ewan did not comment. After two minutes of waiting for the traffic to move, Alex began to trundle the van along the mile-long road to the vehicle port. The entrance became visible inside the enormous shade of New London, a tiny mouse hole compared to the concrete walls that surrounded it.

Their van drove into the port and they were ensnared by the flurry of clone soldiers running to and fro, transporting the inbound equipment on giant trolleys. Alex found his allocated spot and pulled up his handbrake.

Ewan thought it better to act while the inspection guards were busy with the neighbouring vehicle. He swung his side door open and stepped onto the tarmac, fixing his unbothered expression back in place, and once again masked all fear of the plan going wrong. He met Alex at the van’s rear, where they threw open the back doors.

Ewan and Alex leapt in pretend shock – the kind of shock a clone would feel if the two stowaways among their equipment really had been unexpected.

One of the stowaways was an old man. The other was a young woman. Ewan reached for the pistol in his holster.

His shower of bullets caught the attention of every clone in the vehicle port, and the inspection guards pelted in their direction. By the time they arrived the gunfire had ceased, leaving two blood-spattered bodies among the boxes of paper.

Ewan looked to his right as the flustered lead inspector switched to war mode, and squeezed his radio’s panic button as if trying to crack a walnut with his fingers. Arnold Salter’s reply was so quick that his opening words were lost under the beep.

‘—uards, report situation.’

The main inspector, still deep in war mode with his face reddening and hand muscles tensed, typed something with the communication button on his radio. He was using the clones’ best method of communication – a simplified form of Morse code – but Ewan could not identify what was being said.