The sleeping figure’s face was clear in the glow of the laptop screen. Mark stepped around the other side of him so he would not cast a shadow across his face, and in the blink of an eye his left hand had gripped a batch of hair.

Kate wished she had closed her eyes: by the time the victim had opened his own, the knife had done its work. Mark had cut deep enough for the creature in the chair to be beyond saving, and the sheer panic in his face showed that he knew it. There was enough energy left in him for a gargled groan, and then he was dead.

Kate started to breathe again. Mark’s attention went straight to the laptop.

‘This technology’s pretty complicated by clone standards,’ he said. ‘It’s not the usual numpty-proof system they use in New London.’

Kate had noticed. She had also noticed the lack of a panic button on the man’s radio, and the fact that he had used his vocal cords to let out his final groan. She chose to say nothing. Mark would put the clues together by himself, and react in his own way.

‘Now this is really weird,’ he said. His voice quivered, suggesting to Kate that he had worked out what he had truly done. As predicted, he was trying to ignore it.

‘What’s weird?’ she asked, trying to ignore it too.

‘The AME shield is ready. Just a tap of this button and it goes up.’

Kate walked over to look, careful where she stepped. The carpet beneath grew redder, stickier and more soaked with every heartbeat. There was a progress bar on the laptop screen, 100 per cent complete, waiting for someone to click ‘OK’ and raise a metal-proof shield over Oakenfold Special School. They were one click away from achieving a feat never before seen in the realm of science, and proving that Nathaniel Pearce’s technology could make Grant invincible forever.

But its controller had fallen asleep. In fact, the progress bar said the task had been finished at 12:09 a.m., so he must have been asleep for the last three hours.

It can’t be that simple, can it? She thought. Heroes don’t just win because villains fall asleep, right?

‘I won’t lie,’ said Mark, reaching for the laptop’s power button. ‘I thought this one would be harder.’

‘Don’t switch it off,’ snapped Kate. ‘We need to take a look. This might tell us what we’ll find in New London.’

Mark grunted, and stepped aside. Kate minimised the progress bar – checking, double-checking and triple-checking she was not about to press ‘OK’ – and started to search.