‘You don’t get it, Iain. Tonight I saw that man storm his way through the HPFC, blowing up rooms and slaughtering clones, and even when I had him at gunpoint he kept talking over his radio! This guy’s not afraid to die.’

‘Everyone’s afraid to die, Oliver,’ laughed Pearce, ‘even you.’

‘Some people love victory more than their own lives. I give you my word, if that man had to choose between survival and victory, he’d choose victory.’

That’s not admiration in his voice, is it?

‘And he’d still be afraid, and it’d still show,’ finished Marshall. ‘You don’t survive as a face-to-face arms dealer without learning how to read people, my boy. Now go, your prisoner’s waiting.’

McCormick heard the sound of Roth’s assault rifle clattering to the floor, almost as if it had been thrown down in frustration. Then the door opened, and Roth readied his hands for work.

Oliver Roth and Joseph McCormick – two titans of the Great British Civil War – found themselves alone in a small room, lit with the glow of two portable lights. And for the first time that evening, McCormick was able to take a proper look at the assassin, without the distraction of a firearm being pointed at his face.

The fourteen-year-old boy in front of him looked just like that: a fourteen-year-old boy, except in military uniform. There was even a handsomeness to Oliver Roth that McCormick had not imagined before meeting him: an endearing spread of freckles and a rusty, deepened shade of red in his hair – the type of shade that protected boys from ginger jokes, and gave them Norse warrior-like appeal once they grew up. McCormick also noticed a keen, inquisitive default expression on the boy’s face, as if once upon a time he had been enthusiastic about learning for learning’s sake, and a pair of eyes beneath stern eyebrows that held an expression of confidence usually reserved for those wiser than their years.

McCormick had seen the same expressions, mannerisms and character in several young people he had once known and loved – teenagers who had never been corrupted like the person before him. In another world, or a world inhabited by fewer negative role models, Oliver Roth could have made a fine young man.

McCormick interlocked his fingers behind the back of his head, and failed to suppress his nervous hiccups.

‘Clothes off,’ commanded Roth, ‘down to your underwear.’

‘You’re not afraid of seeing an old man’s body?’

‘I’ve seen messier sights. And this is your own fault, you know. You could have just wandered through a friendly X-ray machine, like one of those old airport scanners, and then been on your way. But now you’re getting humiliated.’

McCormick checked his watch as he removed it. It was almost five past ten.

I only need to go twenty-five minutes without breaking and telling them . I can do this.