The door was booted open to reveal the soldier’s silhouette, and he pointed his rifle straight at McCormick’s face. With tears falling from his eyes, McCormick spoke his final words into the radio.

‘They got me. But the data server’s gone. You know what you need to do. One-nine-two,double-three-seven, at half past ten. Win this war, my friends.’

The human switched on the light. He was younger than McCormick had imagined. He signalled for McCormick to drop his assault rifle and radio, an order which he obeyed. The assassin shot the radio to the sound of Kate’s screams, breathed in to bark a command, but his voice was lost in the following explosions. The three acid grenades spilled their fizzling payload over the hull of the generator. Before his captor knew what had happened, the room around them, the whole of Floor P, and the entire Citadel were plunged into darkness.

‘Bonus points…’ McCormick whispered to himself.

In the dark, it was easier for him to imagine the scene across the rest of New London. Everything from their munitions factories to their clone training facilities would have shut down in an instant. The vehicle port they had entered through would only have been lit by the dim sky outside. Clones in computer rooms might have watched their screens go blank a split-second before the lightbulbs followed. High-ranking human officers on Floor A would have felt under threat for the first time in a year.

The fizzling noises stopped at McCormick’s side. The acid had burned itself out.

‘You know,’ the boy hissed, coming into view again as he flicked the switch on his rifle torch. ‘I was going to kill you, doctor. I was going to spread the guts of the great Joseph McCormick all across this room, and stick your miserable head on the spike of an electric fence for all your pansy little friends to see.’

‘I’m sure you’ll get your chance.’

‘You’re damned right I will. Make no mistake, you old fart – the only reason you’re still breathing is that code I heard you mention. I want answers.’

Of course that’s why I’m alive. Why do you think I shouted it loud enough for you to hear?

An angry voice yelled through the soldier’s battery-powered radio.

‘Oliver! The whole of Floor A just lost its electricity! What the hell’s going on?’

‘Good news and bad news, Nick… the data servers and the power room have gone to hardware heaven. But I’ve got you a prize that’ll make it more than worth it.’

‘You killed McCormick.’

McCormick took the optimism in Nicholas Grant’s voice as a huge compliment.

‘Not yet. He was shouting a code into his radio for some kind of detonator. He doesn’t get to die until I know what it means.’

‘Outstanding. Bring him to me so I can extract the answers myself.’