‘Have you seen anything?’ asked Ewan.

‘I’d have told you if I’d spotted movement,’ said Jack. ‘But now you mention it, I can see those little land-miney things too. But I don’t think they’re actual mines.’

‘How come?’

‘Because they’ve made no effort to hide them. They must be for something else.’

There was a momentary silence. Neither Kate nor any of the other students came up with any ideas.

‘We’ll keep searching,’ Kate said. ‘We’re almost at Paul’s office.’

Even after a year it still felt good to call the head teacher ‘Paul’ instead of ‘Mr Dale’. Special education had always been less formal in those ways, and it had been the ideal refuge for teenagers who had been traumatised in schools full of Misses and Misters in posh suits.

‘Speaking of Paul,’ said Mark, ‘I wonder if we’ve found him.’

Kate looked around, and saw nothing. Then she looked down and noticed the skeleton a metre from her toes.

She shuddered, but held herself together and kept silent.

It was the remains of an adult. Presumably a staff member. Or perhaps an adult student, since Oakenfold catered for nineteen-year-olds too. But Kate didn’t like to think of people in James’ year dying in their school.

I know your birthday ended three hours ago, she thought, but happy birthday,James. I hope it was one that you liked.

‘I don’t even know what happened to Paul,’ she whispered. ‘He might have survived. I… I know who this is.’

A cutlery knife lay next to the wall, less than a metre from the skeleton. Judit had made the mistake of threatening a clone with a weapon, so she had been executed instead of captured. But Kate hadn’t hung around to watch. She just ran.

At the other end of the school, a small group of staff members had shepherded the students through the back exit into the outdoor play area. It was normally reserved for the Block One students – those who were profoundly disabled – but that morning it was open to everyone. Kate had followed, looking for her friends in the crowd, finding only Chloe and Sally. She made it through the exit doors, and her heart leapt with relief at seeing James rocking himself next to the swings. When he saw her, his rocking and grunting had not stopped. But he had reached out towards her with a nervous stimming hand. It was love, in the kind of way only James could show, and that nervous stimming hand had been etched into Kate’s memory ever since.

Mark and Joe Horn were already attacking the fence. It was a sturdy fence, deliberately designed to keep people like them inside, but when half a dozen others joined in it didn’t take longer than a minute.

The staff members didn’t follow. Presumably they had got themselves captured trying to save more students.