‘My dad was more than a decent soldier. He was everything to me.’

‘And now he’s a decomposed skeleton scattered across your living room floor. Along with your useless mum. And your aunt, and your uncle, and eight-year-old Alfie. Still, it was nice that we kept the whole family in one place after we killed them.’

‘Not the whole family,’ snarled Ewan. ‘You should have killed one more.’

‘Oh dear. We missed the retard.’

‘Yeah. And don’t you regret it now?’

He turned around, expecting Alex to be grinning. Instead, he was worried.

‘Only for the next few minutes,’ said Marshall. ‘Because that’s the thing with rats who chew at computer wires. They’re too stupid to know when they’ve spent too much time chewing. And one flash later, they’re dead.’

Ewan heard running footsteps.

‘Any last words I can pass on to Grant?’ asked Marshall with a laugh.

‘Yeah,’ said Ewan with his eyes pointed at the CCTV camera. ‘Tell him his daughter’s a great kisser.’

Ewan hung up the phone, grabbed his assault rifle, and ran to the nearest clone’s body. He plucked the keycard from its pocket, assuming Salter’s to have been deactivated. Then he ran to the computer screen. So close. So close.

‘A great kisser?’ said Alex. ‘Seriously?’

‘I shouldn’t have said that. It was disrespectful to talk about her that way.’

‘You mean you and Shannon are—’

‘When we leave,’ Ewan interrupted, ‘we split up. Whichever one of us reaches the experiment chamber first, burn it to the ground.’

A dozen pairs of footsteps grew louder.

The progress bar vanished, replaced with the shape of a little green tick.

Half an hour to bring down an empire. Starting right now.

‘Go!’ he screamed at Alex, who picked up his printed papers and charged for the exit. The two Underdogs fled the Central Research Headquarters like murderers from a crime scene, with five clone bodies in their wake.

We don’t stand a chance.

But I’m fighting anyway. W e didn’t survive the last year by respecting the odds.

Chapter 19

Kate’s night had been boring. Under normal circumstances, boring missions were good. Less action meant fewer people got hurt.

But not tonight. Things needed to happen tonight.

She understood why McCormick insisted on walking up the stairwell rather than running. But she felt like a child wanting to run towards an ice cream van, tethered to a grandparent who couldn’t run along with her.

She stood at the exit to Floor S, her handgun pointed towards the door handle just in case. After a short while McCormick arrived behind her, and it was time for his next mission: ascending the steps to Floor R.

W ill we even reach Floor B by midnight?