It was the only moment in a year of warfare when everyone unanimously listened to him. Everyone except Kate. There was no sensitive, heartfelt goodbye from his girlfriend as she was manhandled across the car park. But that was OK. They could each have died in a hundred ways in the war against Nicholas Grant, and almost none of the others would have held decent farewells either.

The last of Oakenfold’s free students gathered a hundred metres away from the shield, staring back at their friend while they still could. Not too far away, Mark was in place.

They’re not going to leave me. Reinforcements are heading right this way to kill them, and they still won’t leave.

I have to do this right now.

Raj had stepped back far enough.

The view before him looked completely normal. As if he were just leaving school in the dark. He looked at the metal border points, and judged the distance.

God , I love you but I’m terrified. Please… just please…

His brain ran out of thoughts, and for the first time in fifteen years he surrendered to his impulses.

Raj Singh took a long run-up, and leapt through the shield.

Chapter 8

Ewan heard a rumbling boom from the distant shield. Raj was backlit with a red curtain of air as the metal supports in his spine exploded and ripped open his back. Smaller explosions went off around his body wherever metal could be found on his clothes, with a sizeable fireball on his right wrist. Ewan couldn’t see whether his metal watch had blown his hand off, but it made little difference. Raj’s misshapen body landed on the tarmac of the car park, the top half of his torso at a right angle to his abdomen. After the shield faded, Ewan could make out a blood-coloured mist hanging over him. Mark bent down, took one look at Raj’s face, and turned around to walk away. No extra bullets would be required.

‘You’re going to hate me for this,’ said Jack, ‘but we have to run, and we all know it.’

Ewan did hate him for it. But at that moment he hated everyone and everything, including himself and anything that was good about him. Twelve Underdogs had become eleven, seven Oakenfold students had become six, Britain’s last army had lost every advantage that Raj had brought to it, and Kate was becoming too much to handle.

‘What the hell are we still doing here?’ asked Mark when he arrived back.

‘Splitting up,’ Ewan muttered, disgusted that people were turning to him for leadership while a devastating cocktail of bereavement and PDA clouded his judgement. ‘We’ve got about a minute before clones start arriving, and we can’t all be in the same place. Mark, you take Kate and Simon. I’ll take Jack and Gracie.’

‘Why?’