‘ Barbie Girl ’ ?! Seriously?

It made sense. Just two lines of that song made him want to shut down his whole brain, and he had probably told that to Facebook at some point.

But he had found out how to get his memory back.

‘Smoke on the Water’. It was the same song he had spent the last few minutes trying to keep out of his head. He had known his brain was fighting against it, but not consciously realised what it was doing – in the same way that he had known about his memory gap for three weeks, but his brain had avoided thinking about it, so he had never realised.

All he needed to do to switch his memory back on was sing ‘Smoke on the Water’.

The prospect terrified him. It crossed his mind that he might prefer to live in ignorance rather than learn what he had done. But the situation was bigger than him. His friends would suffer if he didn’t do this.

They may have suffered already because of me. But screw it, let’s see what happens.

‘Duh duh duuuh, duh duh duduuuh, duh duh duuuh, duh duh…’

To an outsider, the scene would have looked ridiculous: a grown man sat on a swivel-chair, in an abandoned room above a burned-out clone factory, singing to himself whilst reading and balancing an assault rifle on his lap.

But as the song entered his head, a sleeping part of Alex Ginelli woke up. He was met with the greatest headache of his whole life, as if he had absorbed an entire encyclopaedia in less than a second, and his brain switched over to its other memory stream.

*

Kate had better get out, he had thought to himself as he had clutched his sticky shoulder wound. Otherwise I got trapped here for nothing.

He had not known what had become of Ewan and Charlie. Ewan had aborted the mission and told them to return to Floor Z where Jack was guarding the exit.

A miniature army of clones had surrounded the door of the Alpha Control Room, and his only weapons had been rifles from the control room’s dead clones and their limited ammunition. But twenty minutes had passed, and the army outside had done nothing but wait.

Alex had worked out that his fate would be similar to Daniel’s. If they wanted him dead immediately, they could have invaded and shot him.

The phone mounted to the wall had rung, and Alex had swallowed his fear and answered. ‘Smoke on the Water’ had been the first sound he had heard, and then a soft, soothing voice spoke over it.

‘Alex Ginelli,’ she had said, ‘my name is Gwen Crossland. Listen very carefully. Your life depends on what you do next.’

‘Tell Grant no deal,’ Alex had answered. ‘Ever.’

*