‘I… I just wish we could push the reset button… go back to before he collapsed and do things differently…’

Ewan shivered. His mentor’s collapse at Spitfire’s Rise felt like a month ago.

‘We screwed up the whole week!’ Kate wailed. ‘Raj is dead, Alex has been cloned, Lorraine’s almost worked herself to death and now we’ve lost McCormick! And unless we get to Floor B, it’ll all be for nothing!’

‘All the more reason to get up there and finish this,’ came Alex’s voice, both through the radio and somewhere in the audible distance. He was close. ‘By all rights we should be dead by now. And if Raj were here, he’d say there’s a God-given reason we’re still alive. Let’s prove him right, OK?’

‘Alex,’ Ewan called out across the corridor. Stumbling noises came from a small distance away, and they spent the next thirty seconds ignoring Kate’s cries and bringing themselves towards each other, using their voices to navigate through the dark.

‘Good to see you again, mate,’ said Alex once he came close.

‘Alex, you can’t even see me.’

Alex dared to laugh, and tried to pat Ewan on the shoulder. Instead, he hit Ewan’s head.

‘Missing your helmet?’

‘Lost it in the Experiment Chamber. Traded it for a gas mask.’

‘Huh, well done. Whereabouts is K—’

Alex was interrupted by a message that echoed through every radio in the Citadel, including the bodies spread across their Floor E corridor.

‘Calling all soldiers,’ said Iain Marshall, ‘there is a special guard priority in place for the next fifteen minutes, along the stairwell from 58F to 58P. All nearby units must abandon their posts and guard all stairwell entrances and exits. That’s 58F to 58P. Do so now.’

Alex let out a delighted laugh.

‘McCormick’s alive!’

‘That’s a bloody quick conclusion to jump to.’

‘No, think about it. What’s so special about Floors F and P? The stairwells go up to F, and McCormick was captured on P!’

It sounded realistic enough. Ewan nodded, although Alex would not see it in the dark.

‘And if you don’t believe me,’ Alex finished, ‘call Lorraine and Shannon. I bet Stairwell 58 is right next to that place he was attacking! He’s being taken up to the big guns… probably because of Kate’s detonator.’

*

McCormick – helpless, unarmed, and exhausted after the long climb – was half a storey away from Floor F. His only consolation had been enjoyment at keeping Oliver Roth behind him like a car stuck behind a tractor.

At the top of the stairwell, waiting for the prisoner who had led a war against them for a year, wiped out every scrap of AME research and reduced New London to torchlight, stood Iain Marshall and Nathaniel Pearce. Their faces were difficult to read in the shallow light beams, but they weren’t happy.