Meanwhile, McCormick had achieved more than that whole bunch in the five minutes they had spent alone. And somehow, McCormick’s departure from Earth didn’t feel like an extra Underdog scalp. It felt like the world had lost a part of itself. The only man ever to have seen Oliver Roth’s vulnerable side was dead, which was both a distress and a comfort.

Without moving himself from his bed, he kicked off his boots as angrily as he could. It had been more than a year since he last went to bed before midnight, but he just wanted his brain to shut off for the night. The anger infesting his thoughts was unbearable, and it came from a perfect storm of three different sources.

First, the fact that McCormick had seen through him. Roth never had placed his trust in another person. He had plenty of mates at school, but no real friends. And certainly no girlfriend who would expect him to open up. He was neither abused nor loved, and his apathy towards the human race was probably the biggest reason he’d been able to slip so easily into his job.

The second reason for his anger was the obvious one: he had failed the night in every conceivable way. He had let Ewan out of the Experiment Chamber instead of letting him burn. He had been moments too late to stop McCormick from revealing the code to Kate. But his biggest mistake had come from a rare moment of compassion, when he had offered McCormick his shirt back. It had covered up the scar which, in hindsight, must have been where someone had inserted the bomb. Without that shirt, Iain Marshall would have been smart enough to realise what was going on.

Finally, and worst of all, he knew it was too late to change anything about himself. McCormick had tried in vain to bring him away from darkness, but he must have known that Oliver Roth could not be turned. His allies would kill him the moment he became ineffective. Maybe five years earlier, a man like McCormick could have changed him. But even at the young age of fourteen, Roth had already made the decisions that would define the rest of his life. McCormick may have talked about lives being falsely predestined, but Oliver Gabriel Roth would have to remain the murderous assassin forever.

Roth buried his face into the pillow, and took a breath deep enough to rupture a weaker man’s lungs. Whichever way he looked, in his home life and his work life, as an assassin and as a person, as a potential hero and as a certain villain, he was a failure.

Chapter 28

At five o’clock in the morning on the first anniversary of Takeover Day, Ewan was alone in the basement.

My family were murdered a year ago today.