Jack froze, but smiled. Perhaps Ewan had been his usual stealthy self and arrived without them noticing.

Well, we spent a whole minute hugging with our eyes away from the window. A parade of clowns could have wandered through the front door , as long as they weren’t too noisy .

All the same, it was better to be careful. The thump could have been nothing, like the half-dozen thumps at Spitfire’s Rise each night. Or it could have been something.

Jack reached the foot of the stairs, which joined on to the living room. He crept across towards the doorway to the hall and poked his head around. After a long, tense silence, Jack was relieved when he saw a familiar figure walk out from the kitchen. After almost a year living under the same roof, he recognised his companion immediately.

But…

What the hell is Alex doing here?

The clear and obvious figure of Alex Ginelli, tall, black and muscular, edged into the hallway with slow, calculating steps. He peered around with hawk eyes and a bad-tempered expression, his submachine gun held in a way that did not suggest self-defence.

Jack didn’t know the correct response, but he knew it had to be an instant one. Alex was a friend, but something seemed wrong with him – even without the obvious question of why he had abandoned his post at comms. Unwilling to raise his weapon and uncomfortable with breaking his silence, Jack withdrew his head from the corridor and looked for a place to shelter. He slipped towards the back wall of the living room to duck behind the television. It seemed like a decent place to keep an eye on things.

Alex stepped into the living room and took a look around. He seemed focused on learning where the entrances and exits were.

It didn’t seem right. Alex knew this house just as well as Jack: he had been here that same night, and slept upstairs in little Matthew’s bed.

Then a second Alex Ginelli followed him into the room.

What the everloving crap in a handbasket…

The two Alexes walked into the most well-lit part of the living room, and Jack noticed the navy blue shade on their uniform.

The obvious question entered Jack’s mind, but there was no time to think about how the hell Alex had been cloned. A third Alex entered the living room, a third submachine gun in his hands.

Jack, sheltered in the dark with his feet tangled in the snake-pit of television wires, would not jump up and shoot. He had given his assault rifle to Gracie out of social awkwardness, and his handgun was semiautomatic: one bullet per trigger pull. One moment of hesitation or one bad shot, and three submachine guns would answer back. He would have to wait until they turned their backs on him.

The first Alex cast his gaze up the stairs.