‘Tragic, right?’ said Grant, seizing McCormick by a clump of his remaining hair and demanding further eye contact. ‘You see yourself as the deliverer of all things good, and the saviour of suffering people, but you and your servants tear apart the lives of the innocent just like I do. Leadership… isn’t it lonely?’

‘I’ve lived my life around friends… I could never be lonely. Not like you.’

‘Your friends are dying out!’ Grant shouted, half laughing. ‘Raj Singh lies dead and decapitated outside his old school. Last month Oliver took away Charlie Coleman. Before that we tortured Daniel Amopoulos to death, before that we found Rachael Watts’ body in the wreckage of a car, and before that Ben Christie—’

‘I get the point.’

He made me raise my voice . Nicholas Grant is getting to me.

‘Spitfire’s Rise gets lonelier with every failed mission,’ Grant whispered into his ear. ‘Your shining stars are flickering out one by one, as if they know their universe is dying. The sky is getting dark, and your house is growing quiet. How long until the last star goes out?’

The first tear ran down McCormick’s cheek, as if it were trying to flee the conversation.

‘Doctor?’ asked Grant. ‘You do have something to say, right?’

McCormick wiped his fingers over his face, and gasped a sentence.

‘The pain of missing someone is always worth it for the joy of having known them. Always.’

‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’

‘It means that even though I miss the friends you killed, I can look back on a year that was far less lonely than yours.’

McCormick had never taken a punch before. Grant’s closed fist struck against his chin, and his head keeled to one side as his brain tried to work out how to balance itself. Grant was yelling something, but no words registered in his mind.

When his sight found its way to the door, two of the three faces were smiling. The odd one out, curiously, was Oliver Roth.

‘You can hit me all you want,’ McCormick rasped, ‘but it won’t change the facts. My friends and I practically took down your empire tonight. Four against infinity, and we’rewinning.’

‘And it’ll all be for nothing in a matter of seconds. A circuit-break alert sounded the moment your little girl fired that sniper bullet, and it even indicated where the break came from. Last I heard, my men were about three minutes away from replacing the Perimeter Point she shot. I don’t know what you think your bomb’s going to do, if it even exists, but it’ll go off ten minutes too late.’

Perimeter Point… Raj was close, calling them ‘ border points ’ .

Raj… another shining star that flickered out under my leadership.