Copyright

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2015

HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,

1 London Bridge Street

London, SE1 9GF

The HarperCollins website address is: www.harpercollins.co.uk

Copyright © John McNally 2015

Cover illustration © Paul Young

Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers 2015

John McNally asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007521654

Ebook Edition © MAY 2015 ISBN: 9780007521647

Version: 2015-05-27

To my mother and father, with love

and thanks for all the books.

And the Lord said unto Moses, Say unto Aaron, Stretch out thy rod, and smite the dust of the land, that it may become lice throughout all the land of Egypt. And they did so; for Aaron stretched out his hand with his rod, and smote the dust of the earth, and it became lice in man, and in beast; all the dust of the land became lice throughout all the land of Egypt.

Exodus 8:16-19

Carbon will take over.

Mildred Dresselhaus

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Part One

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Part Two

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Part Three

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Part Four

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Footnotes

Books by John McNally

About the Publisher

September 28 23:58 (GMT+1). Hook Hall, Surrey, UK.

Midnight in the heart of England. The witching hour. In the woods an owl screeched, then ripped through a mouse, beak blood-wet in the moonlight.

The great old house of Hook Hall stood empty. It had not been used as a home since the day it had been requisitioned by Her Majesty’s Government to become the top secret headquarters of the Global Non-governmental Threat Response Committeefn1. It lay now at the heart of a complex of modern laboratories and military installations that spread around it in the darkness like the still, silent courtiers of a grand old lady.

The silence did not last. A low hum penetrated the dark and along the great drive the largest of the buildings began to glow.

Inside the cathedral-like space, the massive Central Field Analysis Chamber (CFAC), power surged and a great stone circle of particle accelerators, each the size of a shipping container, came to life.

“My Henge,” as Dr Al Allenby, the dishevelled genius behind the machine, called it. “Everyone should have a Henge.”

From the windows of a laboratory overlooking the henge a very small boy sent up a mad private prayer.

Finn (full name Infinity Drake) was about to turn thirteen. He had sand-coloured hair that grew in several directions at once (like his father’s) and deep blue eyes (like his mother’s). He had been orphaned two years before. He was into gaming, mad science and most lethal pastimes, like any other boy. But unlike any other boy, thanks to getting caught up in Operation Scarlattifn2 the previous spring, Finn was now only 9. 8mm tall.

With a deafening electrostatic crack and hum, white lightning began to spin like candyfloss around the core, the hoop of accelerators whipping up a cyclone of pure energy. With one last push they would form a perfect subatomic magnetic field.

Perched above the Henge, crammed into his cockpit command pod, Dr Allenby (known to all as Al), recited the snatch of poetry he used to remember the crucial sequencing equations he kept secret from the world –

“But at my back I always hear

Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near

And yonder all before us lie

Deserts of vast eternity …”

(… adding in his head: where B is acceleration and E opens and closes brackets and where all other vowels are disregarded).

Several calculations ran at once inside his brain and in an instant he typed a series of numbers into his control terminal … WHOOOOOOOMMMM!

The spun lighting became a continuous arc, then, with a flash, the Hot Area was created – a throbbing orb of white light within which the distance between the nucleus of any atom and its electrons would be reduced, thus shrinking all matter to a fraction of its original size. Called the Boldklubfn3 process, it was a remarkable feat of physics that only Al really understood.

“OH YEAH, BABY!” he cried, incongruous given the surroundings and the presence of so many distinguished scientists, soldiers and political functionaries.

His boss, Commander James Clayton-King, Chairman of the Global Non-governmental Threat Committee, sighed and briefly lowered his eyelids.

It had taken months longer than Al had anticipated to reach this point and there had been many mistakes along the way, but finally he thought they’d got it right. In a few moments he would be able to prove that he could shrink a living mammal, then reverse the process and successfully return it to its normal size. Alive. Countless tests had been run with countless objects – up to and including living plants.

All that remained was a live mammal test.

A white mouse had been selected, sedated and encased in monitoring devices.

It had been named ‘Fluffy’.

It was for his nephew Finn, and his three Operation Scarlatti team mates, that Al had worked so hard day and night in the hope of being able to return them to their normal size.

A technician up in the Control Gallery, on a command from Al, started the conveyor that fed items into the Hot Area. Fluffy moved along the belt and slipped into the perfect light.

Finn watched, transfixed, as the Hot Area rippled and the white mouse was reduced to ‘nano’ scale, just a 150th of its original size, just like Finn. Next, the process would be reversed, bringing Fluffy back to normal ‘macro’ scale. If it worked, the four nano-humans, including Finn, would be resized next.

They watched the show together, hopes looping the loop.

“Come on, Fluffy,” whispered Captain Kelly of the SAS from where he stood beside Finn – six foot six of muscle and scar-tissue, currently reduced to 13mm, and so convinced the experiment would work he’d booked a flight to Scotland where he planned to spend the next few weeks sailing around the Western Isles accompanied by a crate of whisky.

“Kick it, Fluff!” agreed 11mm-high Delta Salazar from behind her Aviator shades – the best and coolest pilot in the US Air Force. She’d grown as close to her nano-colleagues as she had to anybody in her life, but she couldn’t wait to fly back home to see her younger sister, Carla.

Even 10mm-high Engineer Stubbs, ancient and given to doom and gloom, had boiled an egg in case things went well (party food would just upset his stomach).

“Reverse the polarity!” cried Al.

Finn’s heart beat like a drum. He could not wait to be big again, to open a door, to hug his stupid dog, Yo-yo, to kick a ball around with his best friend Hudson. To—

Suddenly everything went purple as his view of the action was eclipsed by a gigantic, well-preserved lady of sixty-four in matching top and slacks.

“Now, does anybody want more Welshcakes?”

“GRANDMA! GET OUT OF THE WAY!” Finn screamed.

Nobody in the universe had a more uncanny ability to interrupt than Finn’s grandma – and Al’s mother – Violet Allenby. She was drawn like a magnet to hoover in front of any given TV and always asked too loudly who was on the phone.

“Oh, am I in the way?” she said, towering over them like a colossus.

“YEEEEES!” Finn wailed until she moved along to offer yet more cake to the technical staff, her way of taking her mind off everything that could possibly go wrong.

The Henge reappeared just as Al cut the power to the Hot Area, everyone watching as the spinning cyclone evaporated into a million specks of light.

As the sparkles faded Fluffy’s test rig was revealed at centre of the Henge … at full size.

There were whoops from technicians. A smattering of applause.

“Yes!” shouted Finn.

Delta got him in a headlock-come-hug.

Kelly began to dance a jig, then got Stubbs in a headlock too.

Out in the CFAC Al popped the perspex lid on his command pod and hurried down the ladder.

Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep … went an alarm.

Al ran into the middle of the Henge.

Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep …

Fluffy was very still.

Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep …

Al examined her.

Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep …

Seeing the angle of his uncle’s shoulders, Finn knew at once.

Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep …

Fluffy was dead.

September 29 07:04 (Local GMT+8). Song Island, Taiwan (disputed).

Dawn broke over the South China Sea.

Song Island stood roughly 150 miles southwest of Taiwan and 150 miles southeast of Hong Kong, part of a forgotten archipelago – uninhabited, untouched, undisturbed, except for the occasional visit from a mad nationalist or a passing naval patrol. Three countries lay claim to Song and it had been the subject of a United Nations disputed territory process since 1948, though Song’s file lay at the very bottom of the pile, uncared for by a diplomatic community with better things to do. After all, it was just a Karst Limestone sugarloaf – a big conical rock stuck like a sore thumb out of the deepest azure ocean, baked by the sun and whipped by typhoons, with barely a scrap of life upon its rocky surface. True, there were some nesting seabirds, patches of vegetation, but mostly it was just a sheer 200-metre column of barren, bare rock …

… within though?

Kaparis settled down. There was nothing quite like moving into a new HQ: they always had that irresistible ‘new top secret operations facility’ smell. And this place, even Kaparis had to admit, was special. The creation of his eccentric personal architect, Thömson-Lavoisiér, it boasted 2km of tunnels, bunkers and laboratories built into the seabed, a submersible weapons platform, a sub-aquatic escape vehicle and – the pièce de résistance – a personal recumbent operations chamber for Kaparis and the iron lung he’d spent his life in since he was totally paralysed by a medical ‘accident’ in 2001.

The chamber was set into the sugarloaf itself and featured not only ‘the usual’ domed screen array and cranial panopticon (allowing a 360 degree field of vision and eye-track control of all screens) but also: a window. Unremarkable, until you realised the whole chamber could move up and down like an elevator within the stick of rock. Kaparis could enjoy a commanding view of the South China Sea and the surrounding islands one minute, then descend to a point six metres below sea level to watch the local sharks the next.

All in all he was delighted. His eyes spun round the opticon as he sought out his butler.

“Heywood?”

“Yes, Master?” Heywood stepped forward – bald, immaculate.

“What do you think to something local for dinner?”

“Of course, Master.”

Heywood pressed a button. For mood music, Kaparis flicked his eyes across the screen array and called up a performance of The Mikado by Gilbert and Sullivan.

The sharks circled.

A portal opened on the seabed and an official of the Taiwanese Coastguard – who had attempted to report his superiors for accepting bribes to keep clear of the island – was expelled. He began to swim desperately for the surface.

The sharks exposed their teeth, then expressed their delight … in the only way they knew how. And the chorus sang –

“Behold the Lord High Executioner

A personage of noble rank and title

A dignified and potent officer

Whose functions are particularly vital!

Defer! Defer!

To the noble lord, to the noble lord

To the Lord High Executioner!”

Blood bloomed through the waters and what remained of the coastguard official drifted down to the ocean floor.

Kaparis ordered his chamber to rise then checked the progress of his agent in Shanghai via a live video feed. It was all so nearly over, the Vector Program so nearly complete. He could imagine the weight lifting from his shoulders. The long months of struggle, the long months of effort and excellence in his secret factories beneath the deserts of Niger had resulted in the production of fifty-two of the most devilishly sophisticated robots ever conceived.

Finally he was on the road to recovery, putting distance between himself and the memory of Infinity Drake and all the damage he’d managed to inflict during the Scarlatti episode.

Finally, he was to master mankind and take over the world …

All that remained was to enjoy the yields of his genius. As the chamber broke the surface of the water, sunlight flooded in and momentarily Kaparis felt free again, as free as the Booby Birds and Great Crested Terns now wheeling around the rocks. And in that moment he forgot himself and a thought bubbled up through his mind: I … am … happy …

Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep …

An alarm sounded.

The bubble burst.

September 29 07:22 (Local GMT+8). Kung Fu Noodles, Concession#22, Food Hall D, Sector 9, Forbidden City Industrial Progress Zone, Shanghai, China.

The food hall was vast. At dozens of outlets staff in ridiculous paper hats served hundreds of customers, night workers just off shift. The air was hot and street-food aromatic.

Baptiste spotted the plain-clothes cop as soon as he walked in – neat, serious, casually checking out the handful of westerners in the food hall. Including Baptiste. The cop glanced down at a palmtop screen, then immediately walked across the seating area towards him.

As he approached, Baptiste touched his phone and initiated emergency contact. His free hand felt instinctively for the fountain pen in the front pocket of his bag.

The cop flashed his ID and said something in Mandarin Chinese.

Instantly, Song Island relayed a translation back to an audio device embedded behind Baptiste’s ear. “He’s asking your name.”

“Jaan Baptiste.”

Baptiste. It had started as a nickname. Many religious scenes remained on the walls of the Kaparis seminary, a school for Tyros housed in an abandoned monastery high in the Carpathian Mountains, including an icon of John the Baptist. With greasy hair that dripped as far as his shoulders and a soft-as-silk teenage beard ‘Baptiste’ was a dead ringer for the dead saint. Aged between twelve and seventeen, the Tyros were the foot soldiers of Kaparis, secretly selected from care institutions across the world and brought to the Carpathians for training and NRPfn1 indoctrination.

“Passport?” the cop asked, in English now.

“At hotel.” Baptiste answered in a Bulgarian accent, mentally checking off the six ways he could kill the cop with his bare hands.

“Hotel name?”

“Tiger Star.”

“This just received by Shanghai Police Command …” Kaparis heard Li Jun report.

From her bank of screens at the edge of his operations chamber, Li Jun posted the image of Baptiste that the cop had just sent to his headquarters. She was an unassuming young Tyro who had became Kaparis’s chief technologist.

Kaparis seethed.

“Happy …” His brief moment of sentiment had been punished. By fate. The following moments would determine the outcome of the entire project.

What to do?

There was a fifty-fifty chance Baptiste would be exposed as his agent. Half the world’s security services were on the lookout for the Tyros and their telltale retinal scarring. Baptiste’s cover could be blown. But if they aborted the Vector operation now and started again they would waste months, years even, of careful planning and preparation.

How close were they? Never been closer. Fifty-one of the fifty-two bots were already in place. The last bot, the one full of executable fn2 data, was about to be released. The brain of the entire operation. The ace.

What to do?

You make your own luck, ‘they’ say, but fate, according to Kaparis, was different. Fate you have to assault, coerce. Kaparis prided himself on being its master. One of the very few. Like a god on Mount Olympus.

He felt a delicious shiver.

“Play the ace.”

“Have you visited this restaurant before?” the cop asked.

“I do not remember,” said Baptiste.

The cop pulled up a grainy CCTV image on his palmtop screen of Baptiste at the Kung Fu Noodle counter.

“This is you last week. Six times in the last month. Come with me,” the cop said, leading him out of the food hall and into the back seat of an unmarked police car. Baptiste reached instinctively into his bag. He was not yet under arrest. The cop got in the front and picked up the radio, waiting for his orders.

But Baptiste received his first.

“Release it. Complete Vector at all costs.”

Baptiste relaxed. The point of action had arrived. He took a luxury Mont Blanc pen out of his bag and flipped off the top, as if he were about to make a note.

The Prime Executable Bot woke.

XE.CUTE.BOT52:BORN

An order came in from Kaparis Command on Song Island.

KAPCOMM>>XE.CUTE TERMINATE LIFE FORM LOCATION COORDINATES: 4578377/46294769

XE.CUTE.BOT52:KILL

The cop finished his radio message and turned his head to speak to Baptiste, but before the first word made it out of his mouth –

Ttzxch.

The smallest sound as it entered his brain.

The tiniest entry wound at the temple.

His face went into spasm, then froze.

September 29 10:14 (GMT+1). Hook Hall, Surrey, UK.

The morning after the night before was 150 times more disappointing than any previous morning at nano-scale.

Finn, Delta, Kelly and Stubbs sat in silence at a tiny table that had been specially made for them and stared at nothing in particular for a good long while.

The Sons of Scarlatti (one technically a daughter) as they liked to call themselves, lived in an ‘apartment block’ fashioned from cellular seed trays that sat inside a biohazard bubble, which protected them from insects and other threats, inside Laboratory One. It was known as the nano-compound. First they were going to be there a week. Then they were told twelve days. Then three weeks “tops”.

So far, five months had passed.

On the upside, the longer they’d waited for the one thing they wanted most, the more they got of everything else. They could come and go as they pleased from the biosphere (as long as they followed elaborate safety procedures) and anything they wanted could be shrunk in the new accelerator array, so they enjoyed the finest foods, consumer goods and high-end leisure activities. Finn had his own private zoo full of his favourite insects, a laboratory and a skate park, and there was even a ski slope inside a macro freezer in Lab Two. Best of all a perspex-covered road and model rail network had been laid that allowed them safe access to the entire complex. Finn had been gifted a red Mini to drive around, which he adored (even though its speed had been restricted at Grandma’s insistence).

But right now none of that helped.

Various people had already called to reassure them: Grandma, Commander King and, over a video link, the Prime Minister. Even Hudson had been sent for. Not many kids could ruin the ‘jeans and hoodie’ look, but with his long hair, massive glasses and uncomfortable expression, Hudson was one of a kind. He was in on the Boldklub secret because he’d been dragged into the climax of operation Scarlatti and proved himself an unlikely hero.

“What a bummer … That’s so rubbish. Bet you were looking forward to being tall again?” said Hudson when he arrived.

“Mmmm,” said Kelly, looking round for a gun to shoot him with.

“It must really eat away at the back of your minds …” Hudson mused.

At which point Delta politely asked that they be left alone “to suck things up a while”.

“At least he didn’t offer to write one of his poemsfn1,” said Finn when the nano-team were alone again.

Stubbs grunted. “We are at the very margins of human comprehension. We might be stuck here for years and years …”

“What do you know, old fool!” Delta said to Stubbs.

“Quite a lot, actually,” said Stubbs defensively.

Doubt stirred like a great black eel in the pit of Finn’s gut.

Be yourself. Trust yourself. Just keep going. These had been his mother’s Big Three rules. But how could you be yourself when you were stuck in the wrong-sized body? What was the use of trusting yourself when you were totally dependent on other people? And how could you just keep going when you were so obviously stuck? When he’d complained about this to Christabel, their local vicar and a good friend since his mother’s funeral, she’d said, “Use it. Just like your mum left you three lessons, see what lessons you can learn from what you’re going through.”

All he’d learned so far was that the more you wanted something, the further away it got.

“I expect you’ve had better birthdays, Finn,” said Stubbs, looking more than ever like a dejected tortoise.

Kelly gave a hollow laugh and slapped the old man on the back for being such a grouch. Stubbs could fix anything, but didn’t have much clue when it came to ‘being a human being’.

“Thanks – it’s not until tomorrow,” said Finn.

“Hey – a birthday is still a birthday. What do you want to do?” asked Delta, trying to brighten things up. She didn’t normally do ‘close’ but her younger sister Carla was the same age as Finn so he’d become a de facto younger brother.

Finn shrugged. What was there to celebrate at 9mm? He didn’t even get to skip school. Instead he was attending via Skype, Hudson dutifully carrying him around on a laptop (the official explanation for Finn’s absence being he had a highly-contagious skin disease). Grandma insisted on the arrangement. “So he can live a normal life, like any other boy,” she had said, to which Finn responded, “IN WHAT POSSIBLE WAY COULD MY LIFE BE CONSIDERED NORMAL! I’M NINE MILLIMETRES TALL!”

“At least you lot get to go to work …” Finn complained.

There was a military research project that Finn wasn’t really supposed to know about called the ‘nCraft’. One great problem of being a centimetre tall was the time it took to cover even a modest distance and a new vehicle was being developed to take full advantage of the massively improved power-to-mass ratios at nano-scale. Al disapproved of any military application of his technology but Finn knew, that out of sheer boredom, Stubbs and the others had been working on it.

They felt for him.

“Don’t sulk, you’ll get over this! You can get over anything,” said Kelly. “You know how many cars I’d stolen by the time I was thirteen? I spent half my teens in youth custody – and look at me now!” he boasted, opening his massive, battle-scarred arms as if he was a model citizen.

“This is what I tell Carla,” said Delta. “Between thirteen and seventeen you do a lot of suffering, then life gets much, much better.”

“Oh great,” said Finn, sarcastically.

“People always say things like that to teenagers,” said Stubbs, “but as I recall you never really get over the trauma of your teens. The bullying … the heartache … the loneliness …”

“The being nine millimetres tall …” added Finn.

“Hey! If I got over a childhood in a Philadelphia children’s home, you can get over this. You just need a little help and support – am I right?” said Delta, glaring at Kelly and Stubbs.

“She’s right,” said Kelly, then added generously, “and if you need things livening up, just say the word! One of us can always tie you to the train tracks, or shoot at you …”

“I could drop you out of a plane?” offered Delta.

“Or ostracise him. Mental cruelty,” added Stubbs.

“You’d really do that for me? Thanks, guys,” said Finn, smiling at last.

A pulse came from Finn’s nPhonefn2.

He opened the pack and checked the screen.

U there? Skype?

“What’s wrong? You look like death.”

The girl who on a daily basis filled his Skype screen with dark hair, bright eyes and wisecracks, peered into the lens at him, suspicious.

“Wrong? Nothing’s wrong,” said Finn, wondering how Carla’s emotional radar could possibly work at this distance.

The background usually showed her bedroom in the States, but right now he was looking at a hotel room in Kunming, China, where Carla was on tour with the Pennsylvania Youth Orchestra. Her luggage and a cello case lay on the bed behind her.

What she saw from China was a mock barrack room that had been built especially within the nano-compound. Carla thought Delta was stuck at an airbase in England working on a secret project and that Finn was just a kid who lived on the base with his uncle. They had hit it off as soon as Delta had introduced them, not so much soul mates as complementary opposites. Carla knew everything Finn didn’t know – and much he didn’t want to know – about art and life, and Finn knew everything she didn’t know about the natural world.

What Carla also didn’t know was that everyone she saw on camera was about a centimetre tall.

“Something is definitely wrong.”

“I lost a pet,” said Finn for cover.

“A pet? They let you have pets on an airbase?” she said, sceptical.

“Only a mouse.”

“A mouse? What was its name?”

“Fluffy. It doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it matters. I had a hamster die on me; it nearly broke my heart. Does Delta know?”

“Sure. She told me ‘life is much better than you think’.”

“How patronising! They think we’re just kids! They have no idea what ‘life’ is like for us,” bemoaned Carla, who enjoyed being disgusted with her sister and with grown-ups in general.

“What happened? Was it old age?” she asked, gently.

“No, my uncle killed it,” said Finn. “It was late, they’d been drinking, a fight broke out …”

She laughed despite herself.

“Oh HA HA – you’re avoiding your emotions.”

There was a call off-screen. “Carla, we have to go!”

“OK!” she shouted back, and turned to Finn.

“That’s it. We’re going to the airport. You should have seen this place we passed – there’s this actual dwarf world here! A theme park full of little people to gawp at. Can you imagine anything so cruel?”

“Honestly, I can’t,” Finn said without a hint of irony.

Finn wished he was going with her, wished he was going anywhere, with anybody.

Carla grabbed her things and went to shut down the screen, then paused and confessed, “You know, I often wonder if you two are locked-up in some theme park – isn’t that the weirdest thing?”

“Ha! Why?” Finn stalled.

“I don’t know, the crazy stories and everything. Plus I’ve never even seen outside this barrack room …”

“Well it is a secret base,” said Finn.

“Exactly. Always the big mystery with you two!”

“Carla!” called the voice off-screen again, and she waved goodbye.

Phew, thought Finn.

As Finn walked out of the fake barrack room back into the nano-compound, Delta, Kelly and Stubbs suddenly stopped talking. He hated when grown-ups did that.

“What?” said Finn. “What were you talking about?”

“Nothing,” said Delta.

“Liar,” said Finn.

“We said the main thing is we’ve got to stick together as a team. Everything takes time,” said Kelly.

“I know,” said Finn. At least he could be sure of that.

“Your uncle will eventually find the answer,” said Stubbs, almost reluctantly.

“You better believe it!” came a familiar booming voice, as a shadow, like a huge cloud, fell across them.

The four tiny figures looked up at the giant, praying for good news.

“I just don’t know what the answer is yet,” Al finished, to a chorus of sighs. “Now, who’s up for Sunday lunch?”

For want of anything better to do, Finn agreed to spend Sunday at Grandma’s with Al and they razzed along the country lanes between Hook Hall and the village of Langmere in Al’s incomparable De Tomaso Mangusta sports carfn3, happily outrunning the Mercedes of the security detail and scattering autumn leaves.

Finn sat in a nano-den (or ‘nDen’ as Al liked to call them) that was clipped to Al’s top pocket.

A way had to be found for the nano-crew to be housed, heard and taken out of the lab complex from time to time and nDens were the answer. This particular nDen was a typically eccentric choice of Al’s: a vintage Sony Walkman cassette player. About the size of a book, it had been adapted to hold nano-humans: there was a sofa, tinted glass for them to see out of, a line to Al through the earphones, and a built-in loudspeaker for when they needed to make themselves more widely heard.

“Tell me what went wrong with Fluffy. Maybe I can help,” said Finn.

“About three grams,” said Al.

“Three grams?” said Finn.

“That’s right,” said Al. “We reduced Fluffy, then we rescaled Fluffy – in perfect form, every atom, every molecule in the right place – and yet … somehow Fluffy ends up stone cold dead and three grams lighter. It’s as if the electrical relationships and reactions that run a body – the stuff of life – somehow disappeared. We just have to isolate why, what, where and when, and then we’ll be able to do something about it. But at the moment we haven’t got a clue – just three missing grams.”

The conversation continued as they walked through the woods with Grandma later that afternoon – another headache for the Security Service. Al was thought to be a prime target for kidnap, but Grandma refused any extra security. For her there was no appeasing villainy – and no mystery in Al’s missing three grams, either.

“The three grams are obviously the Soul,” said Grandma. “The divine.”

“Mother! As the wife of one scientist, the mother of two more and as a medical professional, do you really think that—”

“Don’t you dare be rude about simple faith!” squawked Grandma. “People have the right to experience mystery!”

“Let’s not have this argument again!” Finn pleaded, as it was one that had ruined at least three mealtimes a week for most of his life.

Yap! agreed Yo-yo, running ahead and making Finn wish he’d opted to ride with him instead. He often did this, sitting in the fur just under Yo-yo’s ear, guiding him with simple commands. Yo-yo was the best, most uncoordinated mongrel ever born. He couldn’t fathom the mystery of Finn’s physical disappearance – just as he couldn’t fathom what clouds were – but he could still smell Finn and hear him, which was all he needed.

Grandma and Al lowered their guards, warily.

“If it isn’t supernatural, what’s your best guess on the missing three grams?” Finn asked Al from the nDen.

“My best guess is there’s a relationship between dark matter, the speed of light and the timing of electrochemical reactions within a body,” said Al.

“Dark matter?” said Grandma.

“Yes, dark matter, also known as dark energy. It’s mystery stuff that makes up nearly all of the Universe, but no one knows what it is or how it works. No one except us. We have discovered that when you shrink ordinary matter – atoms and stuff – there must be a proportionate shrinking of dark matter, otherwise you’d be incredibly heavy; as heavy as you were when you were big.”

“But where is it?”

“Who knows? It’s unobservable, we can’t even begin to experiment – and without experiment we are nothing but apes groping around in our own excrement.”

“Charming!” said Grandma.

“Think of dark matter as a shadow – in this case, a shadow that makes up ninety-five per cent of our weight. When you get smaller, the shadow gets smaller. But that’s just a guess.”

“Didn’t my dad work on dark matter?” asked Finn.

Grandma stiffened and called to Yo-yo, who had reached the house and was scratching at the back door.

Grandma didn’t like to talk about Finn’s dad, Ethan Drake, who had disappeared in a lab accident before Finn was born, fire consuming him so completely that only the sphaleritefn4 stone he wore around his neck was recovered. The same stone – that Finn’s mother had worn until she died of cancer two years ago – now hung around Al’s giant neck, next to the nDen.

“Nobody knows exactly what your dad was doing just before he passed away,” said Al. “We have some of his notes from around then, but your mum had just had you and most of his assistants were sitting exams.”

“I didn’t know he’d left notes. Can I read them?” said Finn.

Al frowned. He’d spent the best part of thirteen years crawling all over them. He could probably recite them.

“Tea! We must get in and put the kettle on before it gets dark,” Grandma interrupted, trying to move things on.

But Al was in the moment, and it was clearly an uncomfortable one.

“They’re complicated, Finn. A mess, in fact. Lots of stuff that looks like answers but isn’t. It’s not what you want,” he said, cryptic and awkward.

“And cake! We have plenty of cake,” Grandma said, taking out her keys to let them in.

“What’s that supposed to mean? Will you show me or not?” said Finn.

“Maybe. One day.”

“Sherry!” concluded Grandma, hurrying them into the house.

By the time they got back to Lab One it was late.

Al opened the Sony Walkman and said goodnight to Finn at the edge of the nano-compound.

“We’ll try the experiment again tomorrow, and every day, till we get it right,” he said, winking and walking away.

Finn took comfort as he watched him go. His uncle might wear glasses held together with tape, but he was reassuringly massive, in brain as well as bulk.

Everything was dark and Finn supposed the others had already gone to bed.

Then he heard a voice.

“Feeling any better, Noob?” Delta asked, using her nickname for Finn.

Suddenly – POP! – all the lights came on at once, dazzling him.

“What the …?!”

As Finn’s eyes adjusted to the light, he could make out three figures, some balloons, and … a Thing.

“Surprise!”

September 29 22:58 (GMT+1). Hook Hall, Surrey, UK.

Delta slapped Finn on the back.

“Happy nearly-birthday!” grinned Kelly.

“Thought we’d cheer you up,” said Stubbs, deadpan.

They stood back and let Finn take in the Thing.

The others had been testing it for the last month. He’d glimpsed parts of it before, designs on-screen, but he’d never seen the whole thing.

“The nCraft?” said Finn.

“I see you’ve been paying attention,” said Kelly.

“Say hello to the X1 Experimental Nano-thruster,” murmured Stubbs, reverentially.

Delta bit her lip excitedly, like they had pulled off the best birthday surprise ever.

“Guy’s a genius,” said Kelly, roughing Stubbs’s remaining hair.

“It’s fast as a whip and can turn on a pin!” said Delta.

“It’s –” Finn tried to put it into words – “a little ugly.”

Three faces fell at once. He thought Kelly would cry or hit him. “This isn’t a beauty contest!” he yelled.

It was, thought Finn, like one of those weird deep-sea fish that had evolved in the perpetual gloom of an ocean trench. Roughly the size of a limousine at their scale, it had a gawping front grill like a great mouth and two headlamp eyes. It had multiple stubby wings and rudders that looked like fins, and a tail section with a scorched and nasty-looking exhaust, and its underside was regularly pockmarked with clusters of small thruster units.

“I’m not being mean,” said Finn, apologetically. “I’m just saying it looks like an ugly bug and when you go into production—”

“It’s the prototype!” shouted Kelly. “You think we’d let you near one of the new X2 models?”

“So shallow,” sighed Delta.

“Hey, I’m still twelve –” Finn checked his watch – “just. I’m meant to be shallow!”

“Well then I don’t suppose for one moment,” said Stubbs, “you’ll be wanting a go.”

And with that he flicked a switch on the outside of the craft. Computers and gyroscopes woke within, turbines turned over and the Bug came alive. Lights blazed all over its body and it floated off the ground, suspended on a cushion of air, flexing its tail and wings to keep absolutely steady.

“Wow,” said Finn, gobsmacked.

“We’ve ‘borrowed’ it for one night only. Not a word to anyone, especially not to Al,” warned Kelly.

“Note the extraordinary stability,” Stubbs began, gearing up to explain the technicalities. “A central jet runs a compressor that feeds cold gas rockets all over the body controlled by an intelligent thrust-vectoring syst—”

“OK, OK, I want a go!” said Finn.

With a high-pitched hum from the jet engine beneath them and the hiss of collective thrusters, they rose steadily towards the roof of the Central Field Analysis Chamber. On top of the Bug was an open cab with four seats, a roll cage, a windscreen and some crude controls. It was like sitting in a fat flying sports car, thought Finn, yet with a ride so gentle they might have been in a bubble. There was also a mount for an M249 Minimi light machine gun, to defend themselves against insects and any other threat they might face in the outside world.

They had to be careful, the craft was supposedly strictly out of bounds in Lab Three, but the Duty Techs were in Lab Two and Stubbs and Kelly had nobbled some of their monitoring equipment, smuggling the Bug out through the model rail network, first to the nano-compound in Lab One, then into the vast, empty spaces of the CFAC.

Finn was just admiring the view as they rose above the stone circle of particle accelerators when Delta said, “OK, brace,” and punched her arms forward against the dual joysticks.

Finn’s head snapped back and the roof rushed by, his insides galloping hopelessly to catch up with his skeleton, as Delta turned hard to avoid hitting the far wall of the hangar. They shot back across the CFAC at roof level, then dived and … SLAM! Halfway to the ground Delta made the Bug turn 90 degrees without bothering to slow down, the nCraft morphing to deliver thrust at all the right angles at once. Finn was left gasping.

Delta then plunged towards the rows of benches crammed with computers surrounding the accelerator array. Down they went, skimming along the desks, slaloming the accelerators and monitors, whipping up paperwork, then down again to rollercoaster beneath benches and between chair legs, then up again into empty space.

Finn’s mind was spinning. They were not flying: they were motion itself. Pure euphoria battled memories of his terror-flight, trapped on the back of the Scarlatti wasp the previous spring, till – SLAM! – Delta opened up the reverse thrusters and stopped the Bug dead. Finn was thrown forward so hard he thought he was going to bring up his lungs, never mind his dinner.

In sudden stillness, he took a gulp of air and looked at the clock on the lab wall. It was midnight, his birthday: his turn. He grinned.

Finn climbed across and took the controls, and for one minute and forty-nine seconds he had the best birthday ever.

Delta ordered him not to think too much. “Just point and shoot.”

He took hold of the twin sticks, looked at the far wall of the CFAC and pushed them forward.

The Bug shot forward, so he eased back, getting a feel for the power as he coasted the entire length of the building, rising all the time. He felt a surging joy and remembered sitting on his mother’s knee steering her old Citroën 2CV around a beach car park in the rain.

He accelerated and made a turn, arcing back around, just below the roof, then more turns.

Then he began to throw the Bug around like rodeo horse. It was easy. The speed and distance you could cover was awesome and the handling was amazing – it felt as though you had thrust from a thousand places at once.

It felt alive. This was almost better than being big.

He flew up towards the Control Gallery that overlooked the CFAC, then dived and curled to fly around the circle of accelerators like Ben Hur around the circus maximus, laughing and loving it, until …

POP! POP! POP!

For the second time that night he was dazzled by sudden bright lights.

Delta leapt across and snatched the controls from him, pulling the Bug to a halt and leaving them hanging in mid-air, staring down at a group of incoming officials, hurrying across the CFAC towards the gantry steps of the Control Gallery.

“What’s happening?” asked Finn.

“Oh no …” said Stubbs. “King.”

Finn looked over. The great hanger doors of the CFAC were whirring open and Commander King was crossing the chamber, trailing aides and flanked by General Mount of the British High Command on one side and the head of British Intelligence on the other. Then, even more remarkably – VROOOOM! SCREEEEECH! – in roared a 1969 De Tomaso Mangusta, and out hopped Al.

“Good evening, Dr Allenby,” uttered King, trying to ignore the showy entrance.

“Peter. Wendy. Tink,” Al said to the trio. All three, used to his odd sense of humour, ignored it and carried on up the steps.

Finn’s heart was in his mouth, he looked at the others and they were already grinning.

“It’s the G&T. It’s meeting.”

They should have been afraid, they were absent without leave in the Bug. But suddenly the normal rules didn’t seem to apply any more.

After the months of tedium and frustration something was happening.

Nine miles away, Grandma was finding it difficult to sleep. She had been on her way to bed with her cocoa when she’d heard Al’s car pull up in front of the house, only to take off again immediately. Perhaps he’d forgotten something and gone back for it? Perhaps he’d decided to go back to his bed in London for the night? Perhaps anything, really. She’d got into bed and tried to put it out of her mind, but the moment she closed her eyes a maternal sixth sense had kicked in. What if something was wrong?

She called Al. Straight to voicemail. She called Commander King. Straight to voicemail.

She smelt a rat.

DAY ONEfn1 00:03 (GMT+1), September 30. Hook Hall, Surrey, UK.

“HEY!” Kelly called out as they descended. “WHAT’S THE BIG DEAL?”

Al’s head snapped up. Did he hear something? A high-pitched whining? A wasp? No … it was a nano-jet.

“HERE!” came the shout again and Al saw a lit-up fat bumblebee- sized Thing dropping towards him.

“Woah!” Al shouted. “We’ve got the nano-crew in the house! Nobody move!”

Everybody in the CFAC, from Commander King down, froze. This shouldn’t be happening. The nano-crew was supposed to be tracked at all times.

Al held out his hand and the Bug landed on it. Four tiny figures disembarked and were quickly surrounded by angry giants.

“I can explain …” Kelly started.

“What the hell?!” Al said. “I was about to come and wake you all. And you, young man,” he said to Finn, “aren’t supposed to know this vehicle even exists!”

“It’s his birthday present! We were just taking the kid for a ride!” said Kelly.

“I’m telling my mum!” Al said.

This sent a bolt of fear through Finn.

“That’s a top-secret, prototype nano-vehicle of incalculable value and you have just put all your lives in danger,” Commander King hissed from on high.

“Ah, nuts. He’s thirteen years old. What were you doing at thirteen?” said Delta.

“I was at Eton,” said Commander King.

“This country needs a revolution,” said Kelly.

“We don’t have the time,” said Commander King, turning smartly to lead the way up the gantry. “Come.”

They entered the Control Gallery as it was blinking to life, the place crammed with computers and control systems. Various members of the Global Non-governmental Threat Response Committee were already settling themselves around a giant horseshoe-shaped table.

As Al sat, he placed the Bug on the table in front of him then carefully transferred all four of the crew to the Sony Walkman nDen, which he hooked to his top pocket and tapped to switch on the loudspeaker.

Commander King called the meeting to order with the words: “Lock us down”.

Doors locked and blinds whirred down across the long gallery windows. Numerous screens switched on, showing live feed images of the UK Prime Minister and the other world leaders who sat on the G&T. For the first time in ages, Finn tasted danger and, with only a hint of guilt, felt a growing excitement.

Commander King turned to the main screen. On it appeared the two most powerful men in China: the President of the People’s Republic and his security chief, Bo Zhang.

“Zaoshang hao daren.” Commander King addressed the President with courtly authority.

“Good morning from Beijing,” replied the President in perfect English.

“Mr President,” King began, “on behalf of the Global Non-govern—”

“Yeah, it’s late here,” Al interrupted. “Let’s skip the diplomatics and catch up at Christmas instead. What have we got?”

“Thank you, Dr Allenby,” sighed King, and ordered: “Slide.”

A picture appeared on the central screen.

It was of a Chinese police officer inside his car.

Dead.

“Shanghai, China, twenty-four hours ago. A dead police officer with no obvious sign of injury. He’d been running a simple ID and security check on a young foreigner.”

Blurred CCTV footage appeared on-screen.

“White Caucasian male, false Belgian passport, no fingerprints, nothing to trace. We think late teens. He popped up enough times on both the Airport and Forbidden City CCTV systems to provoke a routine stop-and-search enquiry.”

“The Forbidden City? I’ve been there with Her Majesty the Queen and it is most certainly not in Shanghai,” asserted the Prime Minister with idiotic certainty. “It’s in Beijing – look it up.”

“Correct, the Forbidden City was the Imperial Palace of Chinese emperors for centuries, but it’s also the name of the 23rd Industrial Progress Zone of Shanghai, a massive purpose-built, high-tech hub to the South of the city.”

Pictures flashed up on-screen of a factory complex, miles of production lines, thousands of masked workers in shiny white facilities; then of the whole huge industrial area from the air – laid out like a complex crop circle. A diagram was then overlaid, illustrating the layout and adding numbers.

“Genius!” said Al.

“It’s a picture of Pi!” Finn called out, delighted.

“Correct,” King said. “The city is laid out as a circle divided into tenths. The ratcheting out of each arc, or sector, expresses the number Pi in multiples of one tenths of a rotation, thus – 3.141592654 recurring – the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter.”

“You worked that out?” said Al, amazed at Finn’s insight.

“We got shown it once in class,” Finn admitted.

“It’s the densest area of computer manufacturing in the world and the site of several advanced research plants,” King continued. “A newspaper dubbed it the Forbidden City when it was being built and the name stuck. Nearly every piece of technology we’re using and communicating on now was produced in China, much of it here –” he pointed to the screen – “in the world’s hardware hub.”

King returned to the picture of the dead policeman, then turned to the video feed from China.

“Secretary Zhang?”

Bo Zhang rose, poised, proud and perfect, mind as sharp as the creases in his uniform – the most powerful man in the world under forty, with some 10 million security personnel under his command. He was uncomfortable having to defer to a foreigner, but his President was a founding signatory of the G&T (which Bo had only that morning learned the existence of).

“Commander,” he began, in perfect English, “Officer Ju intercepted the suspect in a food hall in sector 9 of the Forbidden City at 7:22am yesterday morning. CCTV analysis shows he’d travelled directly into the Forbidden City from Shanghai Airport six times over the previous five weeks. When questioned, the suspect contradicted this surveillance information and Officer Ju made a decision to bring him in. Last contact by radio was at 7:24am. An assault of some kind then took place. There were no marks on the body apart from a pinprick wound on the right temple. When the cranium was opened, massive nerve damage was observed in a clear path from the wound.”

An animation flashed up, a revolving 3D CAT scan of a human head, with broad red lines marking the projectile’s devastating progress through the brain.

It was like a child’s scribble inside someone’s head, thought Finn, and it reminded him of something …

“No weapon known to our analysts could have caused such damage. Given the global strategic importance of the Forbidden City complex, this committee was informed.”

“Weird …” Al said, and got up to look more closely.

“What could have done this?” asked the UK Prime Minister.

“The most extraordinary bullet in history …” Al muttered as he studied the diagram. “How big was the projectile?”

“One point five millimetres square,” Bo Zhang replied.

Then Finn remembered. “It’s like what a grub would do to an apple! Or if a human botfly gets trapped in a human skull and eats and eats through the brain till the person goes mad and eventually dies.”

“A what?” asked the Head of British Security in disgust.

“A human botfly,” came the voice from the box on Al’s top pocket. “I’ve always wanted one. How long was he under attack?”

“Less than two minutes. Who am I addressing?” asked Bo, confused.

“One of the nano subjects,” explained King.

Al popped open the Sony Walkman before a camera to reveal the four tiny people ranged across the sofa. They waved. Bo, who had been frankly disbelieving of their existence to this point, gave the tiniest nod back.

“But an insect didn’t do this,” said King, returning to task. “This is the suspect arriving on a flight from Macau.” He called up an image of a man in an airport security line. “And this is his hand luggage.”

An X-Ray image of his bag appeared. King zoomed in on a bright but tiny dot that seemed to be inside the top of a pen. Al went right up close and screwed up his eyes.

From the nDen it looked like nothing Finn had ever seen. A piece of magnified metal plankton. A black shell, some kind of square eye, a whip-like antenna, an ugly open hole (a mouth?) with a protruding rail and dangling beneath: spilled steel guts, tentacles, tools and connectors. A sharp squid of a thing.

“A robot?” Finn wondered aloud.

Al took off his glasses and gave them a clean.

“Whatever it is,” said Al, “it’s been shrunk.”

There was an awful silence.

“Are you sure?” asked the Prime Minister, appalled.

“Well, I can’t see exactly, but it looks like an incredibly sophisticated machine. The only way, in my opinion, to engineer something like that would be to build it at full size and subject it to the Boldklub shrinking process. Kaparis escaped Scarlatti with a chunk of my crucial Boldklub sequencing codefn2. We always suspected he had an accelerator, maybe he’s figured out enough to take it this far. He won’t have cracked the key fractal equations, and I doubt he’s anywhere near shrinking living things, but crude, rude, oily machines he may have mastered.”

Everyone but Bo Zhang knew who he was talking about.

“You have a suspect?” Bo asked.

King called up an image of a young, able bodied, jackal-handsome Kaparis trying to avoid a camera flash in Basel, Switzerland in 1994. Jet black eyes, jaw taut with suppressed anger.

“David Anthony Pytor Kaparis,” said King. “Born 1965. A brilliant young scientist brought low by a nervous breakdown following the collapse of a crackpot theory of super-organisms. Went into banking and finance for a decade till he was paralysed as the result of some kind of accident circa 2000 and confined to an iron lung. He disappeared into the criminal underworld from where he rigged the markets and caused the financial crash of 2008, making himself the world’s first trillionaire in the process. Bent on world domination. He was the man behind the Scarlatti emergency and is the global public enemy par excellence.”

“You think Kaparis would attack again so soon?” said the Prime Minister.

“Who else?” said Al as he studied the photograph. “Who else would have the audacity to imagine it, let alone the resources to pull it off?”

“Can we take another look at the killer?” asked Finn.

A copy of a false Belgian passport flashed up. A bearded face, hard and determined.

“Check his eyes,” said Finn, sitting forward.

The shot zoomed in. Up close the iris was pure photo-shop blue.

“The iris in this shot has been erased and retouched,” said Finn. “He’s one of Them.”

“The two Kaparis field agents we recovered during Operation Scarlatti showed severe damage to the cornea,” Commander King explained to Bo, “with scar tissue running through the optic nerve into the brain, consistent with the insertion of some kind of probe. We suspect some kind of brain conditioning. Here the scarring has been disguised.”

“What’s Kaparis doing in China? What’s he after?” asked Kelly.

“Industrial espionage?” the Head of Intelligence suggested.

“But only the tech is built in Shanghai. The design work goes on in Silicon Valley – that’s where a spy would be,” said General Mount.

Commander King turned and addressed Bo Zhang again. “Not to be indelicate, but is it true there’s a new supercomputer at Qin Research at the heart of the Forbidden City? The ‘Shen Yu’? A quantum computer that’s being tested as we speak?”

Bo Zhang said nothing, but there was thunder behind his eyes. Someone would suffer for this.

The Chinese President simply nodded. “A perfectly legitimate research project.”

“A what computer?” asked Finn.

“A quantum computer,” said Commander King, “designed to take advantage of the strange behaviour of matter at the quantum level – super-positioning, or the ability to be in two states at once. A single ‘bit’ of conventional computer memory either holds a 0 or a 1. A single ‘qubit’ in a quantum dot can be both 1 and 0 at the same time. In theory that makes it capable of processing contradictory information and thinking for itself – at 4000 times the speed of conventional computers.”

“Thinking for itself? As if it were alive?” said Finn.

“Correct,” said Commander King.

“Governments and companies waste buckets of money on them so that clever young researchers can ask them ‘what’s the meaning of life?’ and so on. They have had no useful application thus far,” said the Head of Intelligence with contempt.

“Only because at the moment so much conventional computing is needed to figure out what they’re saying,” said Al.

“We don’t want Dr Kaparis anywhere near this technology,” insisted King.

“If that’s what he’s after. We know nothing for certain,” insisted General Mount.

“True,” agreed Al. “It’s speculation at this stage.”

“So what’s the next stage?” asked the Prime Minister.

Al pondered a moment.

“This kid has made six visits, so we have to assume he’s released six nano-bots of the kind pictured here. Only one of them has to get inside your quantum computer and at the very least Kaparis will have stolen its design. And that’s probably only the start of it. We have to stop him.”

“But how?” asked Bo Zhang.

Then Al said the words Finn was virtually bursting for him to say.

“If there are half a dozen nano-bots flying about, they’ll show up plain as day on our nano-radar rigsfn3. I say we go out there. We find them, then we destroy them.”

“We can hunt them down in the new nCraft …” said Delta, almost breathless.

“YES!” said Finn.

Tap tap tap! came a knocking from the main door. Tap tap tap!

One by one, committee members turned to see what was happening. There, pressed up against the blacked-out 20mm-thick bulletproof glass was a face. The peering, distinctive, concerned face of a woman in an overcoat and slippers.

Grandma.

She was rapping on the glass with the handle of her umbrella and saying quite distinctly – “NO!”

DAY ONE 21:56 (LOCAL GMT+8). The Forbidden City, Shanghai. Nano-Botmass:*52

XE.CUTE.BOT52:GO

The colossal black concrete barn that housed the Shen Yu quantum computer lay at the very heart of the Forbidden City.

After tunnelling out of the dead policeman’s brain, the XE. bot had flown through the Forbidden City and located the barn, entered its air-conditioning system, then spent many hours eating through layers of dust-filter membrane.

Once through the filters, the XE. bot flew along through six metres of aluminium ducting finally to emerge inside the Shen Yu Hall itself.

XE.CUTE.BOT52:STOP

Ranks of hyper-servers were arranged like city blocks over an area the size of a football pitch.

The XE. bot hovered, mapping the Hall and aligning itself.

At the very centre of the server blocks stood the Quantum Hub itself.

XE.CUTE.BOT52:GO

The XE. bot flew directly to the Quantum Hub. It landed on a pipe through which liquid nitrogen coolant was being pumped. It cut into the pipe and entered the liquid, sealing the breach with an expanding polymer plug, and allowing itself to be pumped along into the quantum core.

Inside it raised its body shell and flew into the crystal cluster at the great quantum computer’s heart, exposing its own crystal core to the perfect light – photonic nano-beam laser light – and captured it. Stole it.

The light of life.

And the XE. became a new thing.

Infected with intelligence.

It navigated its way back out through the coolant pipes, leaving the Quantum Hub unharmed and intact.

Then it thought:

I CAN FLY.

And the bot flew. It flew up to the ceiling, back the way it came, squeezing out through the air filters into the night and across the rooftops of the Forbidden City, a secret fire dancing within. A fire that would spread.

SEE XE.CUTE FLY.

The bot flew all the way back to Food Hall D in Sector 9, all the way back to the Kung Fu Noodles concession.

I STOP.

It waited near the ceiling until the cash tray of Till Number 3 was opened by the cashier, then it dropped into it before it was closed again.

I SEEK.

When the cash tray closed, the bot crawled through a seam in the housing at the back of the tray and inside the till. Into its electronics. It made its way to a position on the till’s circuit board near the power supply unit.

I FIND.

There it found the fifty-one other bots of the Vector Program, arranged and interlinked into a production suite, waiting for it. The final piece of their jigsaw.

The XE.CUTE bot connected itself to the head of the assembly.

Then it established a communications link with Kaparis Command on Song Island via the secure Confetti fn1 network.

Then it instructed the Vector assembly suite to start self-replicating.

XE.CUTECONNEXBOT(ALL)> RUN

SEE VECTOR RUN …

Kaparis watched data dart to and fro across his screens.

He glowed.

A quantum mind was at work within the crystal belly of the XE.CUTE bot. It could think in a way that would allow it to operate without constant instruction. It could adapt. Survive.

It could pass on its stolen light.

Success … Kaparis let himself savour it a moment. All his victories were private. Selfish.

Exactly how he liked it.

The fifty-two prime bots would replicate themselves, then replicate themselves again, then replicate themselves again – on and on ad infinitum. And every time a bot was made, a tiny crystal would be created too, just a few atoms thick, and that crystal would glow with the same photonic light that the Prime XE.CUTE bot had just stolen.

It would allow that bot to think, would allow it to make a simple choicefn2. It might make a wrong choice and be destroyed, any number of bots might, but eventually one would make the right choice and the community of bots as a whole would learn and progress.

All that was needed was an inexhaustible supply of bots.

DAY ONE 17:54 (GMT+1). Hook Hall, Surrey, UK.

For eighteen hours after the G&T meeting broke up, Hook Hall was in full swing.

Secretary Bo Zhang and Commander King quickly struck up a bureaucratic rapport. King would take overall control, with Bo Zhang in charge of implementation. A Hook Hall team was to fly out to Shanghai and set up nano-radar in the Forbidden City, with cover particularly thick around the Shen Yu experimental quantum plant. Suitable headquarters and accommodation would be found. Signatories to the G&T agreement the world over were informed that a preliminary investigation was taking place and that the threat level was judged AMBER.

A team of technicians in the CFAC prepared to fire-up Al’s Henge for the second time in twenty-four hours in order to shrink more radar systems and nano-supplies.

Stubbs supervised final adjustments to two brand new X2 nCraft – aka ‘Skimmers’ (way prettier than the Ugly Bug, like torpedoes crossed with flying fish) – while Kelly and Delta stocked up on supplies and went through tactical and fallback procedures with military planners, both loving the ‘mission focus’ after so many months idle.

In southwest France, as a precaution, eleven members of the Equipe Bleu of the Commando Hubertfn1 cancelled a long lunch and a game of pétanque as they were scrambled to join the special operations vessel A645 Alizé then 200 miles West of French Polynesia, now diverting north to Chinese waters.

And Finn …

Finn spent his thirteenth birthday struggling against a Gale Force 7 sulk.

Grandma held a unique position within Hook Hall set up by dint of being Al’s mother, Finn’s grandmother, and Totally Formidable (she’d spent half a lifetime caring for the criminally insane as Lead Nurse at Broadmoor, the UK’s most high-security hospital) and there was absolutely no way she was going to let Finn go on the mission with the rest of the nano-crew. She hated her grandson to be unhappy, but it was preferable to him being dead.

And Finn certainly was unhappy. He had refused to ‘go’ to school with Hudson, refused to help any of the crew or Al with their preparations, even refused to accept a Skype call from Carla (as she had the audacity to be in China herself, if a good 1000 miles south of Shanghai).

He spent most of the day in his nano-room, torturing himself by checking out epic Chinese bugs online. He had a classic green praying mantis in his collection already, but China boasted extraordinary multi-coloured versions, striped like tigers and poised like kung fu masters ten times his size. Not that he was going to see one. Not that he was going to see anything …

He reappeared at teatime to make one last desperate appeal.

“I am going!” he demanded.

“No!” repeated Grandma.

“It’s not fair!” said Finn.

“Nothing is fair,” Al confirmed, “but this is just an exploratory investigation.”

“So I’m involved in everything we do – but I’m dropped as soon as anything exciting happens?!” said Finn. “Everybody is going to be there!”

“I’ll still be here!” said Grandma. “And Hudson’s coming for a birthday sleepover!”

“No he isn’t! I’m going to China! I have medals from three countries! Look around, do you see any Scarlatti wasps?” asked Finn.

“Firstly,” said Al, wagging his finger, “you weren’t meant to be involved in Scarlatti. That was an accident from which we’re still trying to recover and, secondly, think of me, Grandma and Yo-yo. We nearly lost you once, we’re not going through that again.”

“Hear hear!” agreed Grandma. “God saves the world one soul at a time, and you’re next.”

“I’M THIRTEEN YEARS OLD AND NINE MILLIMETRES TALL – GIVE ME A BREAK!”

“And we’re not going to make it worse for you by allowing you to get killed!” Al replied.

Finn threw an empty nano-water bottle up at him. It bounced off his chest.

“Come on,” pleaded Al. “If this is a real attack, and it’s probably not, but if it is? Kaparis is behind it.”

“It’s YOU he wants, Finn. That ridiculous man …” said Grandma, having to repack Al’s bag to cope with the thought.

“When a man that crazy, that powerful, is focused on taking over the world – that’s bad enough,” said Al. “But when he’s gunning for revenge against a thirteen-year-old boy? Let’s not go there.”

“I’ve already beaten him once and I’m not afraid of death!” said Finn.

“Infinity!” cried Grandma.

Al snapped his fingers and pointed straight down at him. “That’s the Drake family problem right there – like father like son. No temporal fear. On the Allenby side, we live in constant terror. Your mother was the only one of us with any guts.”

“So – what, I’m always going to be hostage to your feelings?! You’re going to leave me behind all my life, I’m never going to be allowed to do anything, is that it?” Finn was so angry he thought he might burst.

“Yes,” confirmed Grandma.

“No!” said Al, “because Kaparis will soon be caught and you will soon be macro again and we’re all going to live happily ever after.”

“Oh yeah? When exactly – and how about the truth for once. Because you’ve been promising that for a while and all we’ve got so far is a dead mouse!”

Finn stormed back towards the seed tray tower block.

Al sighed. “Finn, stop … Truth is, there is a possibility that we may never be able to bring you guys back to size,” Al said.

A moment stretched in silence. Finn felt weak at the knees. It felt strange having someone speak your worst fear out loud.

“But it’s one possibility out of many,” said Al, leaning into the compound. “I want you to look at me …”

Finn looked up into Al’s clear, crazed, curious eyes.

“Your father used to say ‘we are bound only by the speed of light and our imagination’ and no matter what it takes, I will find a solution and bring you back – so help me Richard Feynman.”fn2

Grandma appeared over Al’s shoulder, eyes filling for all three of them. “Before he could walk or talk your Uncle Al could work a television remote control. He’ll find a way to fix things.”

Al paused. “You are precious to us, see … And we’re never going to put you at risk again.”

Finn bowed his head, resigned. While they loved him he was their prisoner; that’s just the way it was with families.

“And stop behaving as if it’s the end of the world,” insisted Grandma. “This is not an ‘end of the world’ situation – it’s term time.”

When it came time for goodbyes it was all a bit of a rush.

“Happy birthday, kiddo,” said Kelly and scuffed Finn’s hair, offering his great block of a fist to bump – an action that usually deteriorated into a punch to the side of Finn’s head as Kelly pretended to forget how to do it. “Sorry you’re not coming with us.”

“No you’re not,” said Finn, taking the punch.

“True,” Kelly lied. “But someone has to stay at mission control.”

“Think yourself lucky,” said Stubbs. “I don’t travel well at all.”

“We’re supposed to be a team!” said Finn.

“And you’re supposed to be thirteen years old,” said Delta, hugging him. “What matters most is you staying in one piece.”

Finn watched them climb aboard a model train bound for the CFAC exit.

“We’ll be back before you know it!” said Delta.

“I’m not going to think about any of you!” Finn called as they pulled away. “I’ve got Yo-yo, I know he loves me!”

“Yo-yo doesn’t love you,” came Al’s voice from on high, “he’s just the dumbest connection of nerve endings, protein and hair ever thrown together by a random universe.”

Al saluted and winked.

“Text me updates – and Skype as well – and bring me back a kung-fu mantis, not just a green one but something special! And don’t you dare have any fun!” Finn yelled.

“Moi?” grinned Al, all innocent.

“Sir, the Commander is waiting,” called a technician.

Al’s last words were, “Look after Grandma!”

Then Finn watched his uncle disappear.

Up on a monitor he saw him getting hurried across the CFAC to a waiting chopper. Soon they’d all be on an overnight flight to Shanghai. Power was leaking from the building.

At least he and Hudson could spend the rest of his birthday repeatedly blasting their way through successive digital war zones while consuming snack food. It would give him time to process his emotions and the events of the day. There are limits on everything when you’re thirteen years old, he thought … A thought immediately interrupted by—

WHUMP! The sides of the biosphere shook.

“Hey. Birthday greetings,” said Hudson.

Without fail, and despite repeated warnings about vibration, Hudson would chuck down his school bag whenever he came into the lab, sending a minor shockwave through the nano-compound that could shake Finn clean out of bed.

Hudson collapsed into the beanbag next to the compound, fringe flopping over the top of his glasses as he emitted the latest playground gossip. “Guess what? Skeggy’s older sister took him to get a tattoo of a phoenix but his mum found out and stopped it halfway so now it just looks like a chicken with worms coming out of its butt.”

He stopped at the sound of the helicopters overhead.

“Hey, where’s everybody going?”

“Secret mission. Can’t say or I’d have to kill you,” said Finn.

“I thought we were meant to be a team?” said Hudson, indignant.

“Tell me about it,” said Finn.

“We are a team!” said Grandma, catching the end of the exchange as she bustled into the lab, dragging Hudson’s sack of sleepover bedding after her. “We’re the three musketeers! It’s me, you and Hudson!”

Yap! added Yo-yo, bouncing in her wake.

“And Yo-yo. And guess what I’ve got tickets for?” Grandma looked very pleased with herself.

“What?” Finn hardly dared ask.

“Bulb Expo! Tomorrow!”

“Bulb Expo?” said Finn.

“Turns out Commander King is very senior in the Royal Horticultural Society and he’s given me three tickets. We’ll have a marvellous time!”

“Is it a light show?” asked Hudson

“No, silly,” said Grandma, “it’s garden bulbs! Like The X Factor for flowers.”

Garden bulbs? Finn felt something snap inside.

“I am not going to a poxy flower show!” he yelled.

“Nonsense. I can’t just go with Hudson. We can’t be two musketeers, we must be three!”

“Yes you can – he can tell you about his butt worms.”

“Goodness. Have you got worms, Hudson?” asked Grandma.

Hudson looked stricken.

“Not me!” cried Hudson. “Skeggy!”

“Who on earth is ‘Skeggy’?”

Hudson regarded her in terror, knowing he was about to undergo ruthless cross-examination.

Finn was about to storm back to his quarters when suddenly he was struck by a brilliant idea.

“Hold on,” said Finn. “Grandma, where exactly is this flower show?”

“Chelsea.”

He was going to do it …

Because he had learned a lesson after all today – you have to take your chances …

Kaparis received intelligence reports of helicopters heading north from Hook Hall towards Heathrow and the holding of a China Airlines flight.

Tedious, he thought and felt a tingle of irritation.

They must have spotted Baptiste was one of his and decided to act. They would be too late, of course.

Should he bring bot distribution forward? He had the time. He would soon have the numbers.

Or maybe he just needed to create a little distraction?

To muddy the waters and give Allenby a shock he would never forget?

“Prepare a Viper squad,” he ordered Li Jun.

Two and a half hours later, Dr Allenby, Commander King and the thirty-three other members of the Hook Hall detachment were cruising at 35,000 feet in a Boeing 747 bound for Shanghai. The evening meal had been served and the cabin lights had been dimmed.

The flight would take eleven hours and they would move seven hours forward in time. Al was reading The Art of War by the ancient Chinese warrior, Sun Tzu, to get into the right mood. “The General who wins makes many calculations in his temple before the battle is fought,” he informed anyone who’d listen.

Out of the window the endless night passed, deep with secrets.

DAY TWO 07:00 (LOCAL GMT+8). Cash Till#3, Kung Fu Noodles, The Forbidden City, Shanghai. Nano-Botmass:*25765

SEE VECTOR RUN …

Sparks flew as carbon was fed into spark gaps at one end of the production suite. It was consumed, worked and transformed as it was drawn along an assembly line.

*25766 …

An instruction from an XE.CUTE bot at the head of each suite determined which of the fifty-two types of bot would be replicated.

*25767 …

There were now forty-three production suites fixed like leeches to the electronic innards of the cash till, each a miniature factory, each running at full capacity. Eleven more were partially constructed across cash tills #2 and #3.

*25768 …

Bots crawled and flew through the three cash tills and constantly swapped data and power through long whip-like antennae, bots of every kind and colour, waiting to slot into place to form a new production suite on the crammed motherboards.

*25769 …

Desperate to replicate.

The PRIME XE.CUTE sat at the head of suite #1. Like every other XE.CUTE in the botmass it passed on the photonic light of life as each new bot emerged. With a quantum kiss.

It was endless.

*25770 …

*25771 …

*25772 …

*25773 …

*25774 …

DAY TWO 17:43 (Local GMT+8). Shanghai, China.

The late afternoon sun threw itself off the glass cliff face of a hundred skyscrapers and a twenty-first century metropolis spread out before them like a cloth of gold.

Shanghai. The Pearl of the Orient. The largest city on earth.

Gold, King noted, because sunlight was filtering through a haze of airborne pollutants, through a haze of energy and effort. A city of a thousand cranes, of a million cars, millions more bicycles and countless busy people – yeast in the global economic dough.

The Hook Hall team were transferring from Pudong International Airport into the city aboard twin Z-15 PLA helicopters. From parks and green spaces, tethered dragons curved up towards them, extraordinary stacks of multi-coloured box kites, part of an annual festival. Looking south the team saw the Forbidden City industrial complex laid out before them, a crazy dartboard of radial roads and white-walled factories.

Bo Zhang, who had welcomed them with a faultless snap of a salute, explained that at the centre of the Forbidden City, where security was tightest, were the government and military research institutes and cutting-edge companies such as Qin Research.

“We will establish ourselves at our headquarters and then go to the city,” Bo Zhang explained, and the helicopters banked to fly into the heart of Shanghai.

“Wow …” said Al.

It was clear the Chinese were going to look after them.

The spanking new Siam Towers Hotel was a bejewelled stalagmite: ninety-nine stories of luxury (including a helipad). The top three floors of the hotel had been turned over to the G&T, including the five-star Roof of the World restaurant, which had been transformed into an operational centre that was already up and running. Feeds to world leaders connected on one screen array. On another live CCTV and intelligence feeds from across the city were at their disposal. A huge central table had been set up for the most important players.

There was more to come as they were shown their rooms.

Commander King hated hotel rooms, thought them vulgar, and relied on handmade silk pyjamas for a sense of quality and comfort whenever he was travelling, but even they seemed cheap in the suite he’d been assigned.

Al loved hotel rooms. The minibar, gadgets and gizmos, the complimentary snacks and toiletries. His suite on the ninety-eighth floor did not disappoint. It was fitted out for the super-rich, with three dazzling rooms that boasted an interconnecting tropical fish tank – who could live without one? – and a bed the size of a tax haven from which he could look down on the Shanghai Bund riverfront. The cityscape that bloomed beyond looked like something out of a comic book. It looked like the future.

He must tell Finn. He took a picture, adding:

View from the top – Shanghai. Wish you were here, kiddo.

Then he focused on a little food van parked on a street corner, below. There was a queue. What was it selling? Dim sum? Ice cream?

Whatever it was, Al thought, I’m going to get me some.

A minute later, seized by the moment, he was travelling down the rapid elevator.

DAY TWO 18:16 (Local GMT+8). Song Island, Taiwan (disputed).

Activity increased on Song Island, and not just among the birds battling for nesting space on its craggy outcrops.

“Move fast,” snapped Kaparis.

“Vipers One, Two and Three in position,” reported Li Jun from her bank of screens.

Each Tyro in the field had a direct camera and data feed relaying information back to Song Island.

“Target approaching – hot hot hot,” reported another voice.

“Viper Four, you have visual?”

“Visual,” confirmed Viper Four.

The screen array above Kaparis became a clash of city images as his team closed in.

“Vipers One, Two and Three?” asked Li Jun.

“Visual …” “Visual …” “Check – visual …” came the response.

Kaparis could see the operation coming together, could see his quarry, could see his squad drawn up and ready to strike.

His pulse rose. Microprocessors instructed his iron lung to increase respiration.

“Command?” prompted Li Jun.

“Commence Viper,” ordered Kaparis.

He watched as the Tyros moved as one.

DAY TWO 10:16 (GMT+1). London, UK.

The number 11 bus made its way down the King’s Road, Chelsea, heading towards the Bulb Expo, and up on the top deck Finn was happy, looking out of the window and remembering all the times he was brought up to London as a treat by his mum – to go to the zoo, see a show, or visit Al.

They had taken the bus on Grandma’s insistence and Finn was perched in Grandma’s nDen, an adapted brooch pinned to her coat. He would transfer to an even smaller nDen on Hudson’s baseball jacket (disguised as a button badge that read ‘Be alert – your country needs lerts’) later.

As the bus stopped Hudson rose, nervous. He was not good at breaking rules. He lumped down the stairs of the bus, carrying Grandma’s wicker basket. Three undercover Security Service Officers – ‘Suits’ – followed. The boys’ secret plan was to escort Grandma into the show for the bare minimum of time before being “free to do their own thing” and visit the museums for a couple of hours, or as free as one could be with the Suits hovering. But little did Grandma or the Suits know that hidden in the mouthpiece of Hudson’s asthma inhaler was the X1 nCraft – the Ugly Bug …

They’d bagged it the night before just after lights out. Finn had said, “Hudson. Don’t go to sleep yet. I’ve got an idea for tomorrow.”

“Is it about flowers?” said Hudson.

“No. Ever stolen a car?”

Later, after much debate and reassurance, Finn had directed Hudson to crawl below CCTV range in order to slip into Lab Three where they’d nabbed the Bug. They would both be in terrible trouble if they got caught but, as long as Hudson held his nerve and avoided a major asthma attack, they wouldn’t get caught.

For once Finn was going to be selfish. For once he was going to be free – even if just for an hour. They would find a way for him to board the Bug unseen and, while Hudson made his way around the Science Museum, Finn would fly around London – looping the Albert Hall, racing around Hyde Park and even dive-bombing the Changing of The Guard …

VROOOOOOM!

The moment Hudson and Grandma stepped off the bus Finn heard the screams of over-revved moped engines. In the microsecond blur before the first Vespa hit the curb and knocked Hudson flying, Finn saw all three Suits reach for their guns.

“Grandma!” Finn yelled, but before she could react everything went red, white and blue – SLAM – she hit the pavement and all Finn could hear was screaming, all he could see were shoes and smoke and tyres …

Vespas circled, engines buzzed, gushing out coloured smoke like the Red Arrows – one red, one white, one blue. Each moped was driven by a Tyro, each with a passenger, infrared visors giving them clear vision through the fog.

Kaparis caught sight of Hudson unconscious in the gutter. He could hardly believe it. His pulse leapt, his mouth watered … Drake. Why else would the Allenby woman be dragging the idiot Hudson around London except as a companion? He felt something bloom through his consciousness: Fate. He could almost smell the boy.

“Take her down fast! Get her into the container!”

Tzzzzzooft. Tzzzzzooft.

Silenced bullets spat from sidearms. Down went two of the Suits.

The third stood over Grandma to protect them, yelling into his radio. People on the street were scattering or screaming.

The three Vespa passengers dismounted. One aimed at the last Suit and shot out his knee. The Suit collapsed in agony but returned fire, felling one of the attackers.

Two remained. As they flipped up their visors Finn saw them. Identical twin girls, Thai, but with albino-white skin, flat eyes and fixed grins. One had a scar across her face, the other had chrome spikes sticking through pierced ears and lower lip.

“WHAT on EARTH do you think you are doing?” Grandma thundered at them from the ground.

For a moment they seemed surprised. Then, still grinning, they kicked themselves into the air to assault her.

With a sling-shot of her handbag – WHUMP – Grandma caught Scar in the solar plexis and sprang up. A snap pirouette (learned in the Miss Ellis Ballet School circa 1958) avoided Spike’s incoming fist and was followed up by a D’artagnon-like swipe of the umbrella – DOINK – across her throat.

There was a moment of relative calm as the twin attackers reeled at Grandma’s feet.

“Woah,” said Finn.

But then –

“Go Viper Four!”

Just behind the bus a street sweeper detached himself from his cart and ran towards Grandma, swinging his broom like a majorette, clipping Grandma’s ankles and sending her back to the pavement (she never expected such a thing from a local council employee). Spike and Scar seized her and sprayed something in her face.

“NO!” Finn cried as all three began to manhandle her into the street sweeper’s cart.

He kicked open the nDen and was immediately hit by a sweet chemical smell … then everything slowed down and went black.

ithin minutes all routes out of West London were subject to extensive roadblocks as police scoured the capital looking for the three scooters.

Nobody noticed the street sweeper and his cart emerge from the smoke. His passage south was uninterrupted. When he reached the river he pushed the cart to the end of a jetty and transferred it to a waiting speedboat.

Moments later the boat was cutting through the grey-brown water of the Thames.

DAY TWO 18:38 (Local GMT+8), Roof of the World, Shanghai.

Al headed back up in the elevator surrounded by a team of Chinese State Security Officers who had appeared in alarm while he queued at the ice-cream van.

On the top floor King and Bo Zhang waited for him to arrive. King had been alerted to the misdemeanour – “Allenby has left the building! Without an escort!” – and had agreed to talk to him about his conduct. Eccentricity might be seen as a marker of genius (or just an annoying trait) in Britain, but in China it bore no such association.

Then an emergency call came in and King had to step back and pick up a phone.

The elevator doors slid open and Al stepped out.

“Doctor! I insist we follow security protocols!” said Bo Zhang in polished distress.

“Take a chill pill, or at least get yourself one of these,” said Al, indicating the ice-cream cone. “If we’re going to work together, you have to understand my only rule is – ‘there are no rules’. Frees up the mind, y’know? Helps to think.” Al gestured expansively.

“Your working methods are your own. I am responsible for your personal safety!” snapped Bo Zhang.

From his phone, Commander King cut across them both.

“Gentlemen –” he looked grave – “we have a problem.”

DAY TWO 23:59 (Local GMT+8). Kung Fu Noodles, The Forbidden City, Shanghai. Nano-Botmass:*249994

*249995 …

*249996 …

*249997 …

*249998 …

*249999 …

*250000: NANO-BOTMASS = DISTRIBUTION MASS

Production continued while the datum was transmitted to Song Island.

A response code was received.

Immediately the PRIME XE.CUTE gave the order.

SEE VECTOR DESPATCH.

Bot group by bot group, the tiny army, packed so tightly into the three Casio QT6600 cash registers that they were in danger of overheating, began to come to life.

Miniature turbines turned in earnest.

Over the next few hours the bots left their electronic hives. They proceeded to the maximum altitude allowed by the food hall ceiling then drifted down to land on the heads of the workers, crawling down through their hair to hide.

The unwitting workers then carried them back to factories across the Forbidden City. There the bots crawled out of the hair, cut their way through protective hairnets, and flew off in search of fresh electronic circuitry. Having located one another through a simple signal and colour-coding system they formed fifty-two new bot production suites. And began again.

SEE VECTOR MULTIPLY

*250001 …

*250012 …

*250019 …

*250034 …

*250041 …

*250056 …

*250077 …

DAY THREE 11:28 (Local GMT+1). Altitude 30,000 feet, speed 560mph.

Finn was sweating and running – he was lost in a supermarket, he was little, he was calling out, but no one could hear him, and—

A scream woke him. An everlasting dull scream.

Panic shot him to life – darkness, suffocating heat, his weight piled on his shoulders, thick cloth walls pressing in on him – a sack? He gasped in panic and kicked himself around, as he did so the cloth gave way and he got a lungful of fresher air – not a sack. He was in the folds of something …

He breathed some more. Let his panic drain. Still he heard the scream. An engine. A jet engine.

His eyes adjusted to a dim light and detected LED pulses of red and green. He pulled himself up the wall of woollen cloth, Grandma cloth … He could smell home. He had been caught in the hem of her ‘smart-but-not-evening’ skirt.

He reached her knee. She was laid out and strapped into some kind of white crate. Tubes and wires came off her chest and connected to a small life support unit, its LEDs blinking.

Finn ran up her prone body and scrambled over the hissing, humming medical apparatus clustered over her head until he reached her ear.

“GRANDMA!”

Nothing. He yanked on some of the downy hair on her lobe, scaled her soft splendid face and tried to haul open her eyes. She was out cold. Drugged.

Kaparis. The kidnappers had been Tyros, no question. But what did Kaparis want with Grandma? Finn knew the answer; it was in his heart. We love her. Blackmail … The thought of her being hostage to such a man made him sick.

Finn could feel pressure growing in his ears. They popped. The jet was descending. He had to do something.

Down the side of the white crate he could just make out something – a ziplock polythene bag.

Finn headed for it, unclasping Grandma’s RHS visitor badge on the way. He used the pin to puncture the bag, then put both hands in the hole and forced it to split.

Inside were the crazed contents of Grandma’s handbag – notes, nuts, make-up, coins, elastic bands, stamps, dog treats, a small china bell, a Cambridge University snow globe, a cheap string of pearls, an emergency sewing kit, a single cufflink and also everything they needed for their nano-day out – six nRation packsfn1, his nPhone backpack (battery dead) and, crucially, Hudson’s inhaler.

Finn kicked open the cover on the inhaler’s mouthpiece.

There was the concealed Bug, its pockmark thrusters showing through the cotton wool wadding.

Finn pulled away the wadding and climbed on to the Bug. He snapped on the ignition switches and, with a sudden suck, the turbines turned over and the Bug lit up – rising to suspend itself, headlights alive.

He eased it out of the mouthpiece and loaded up the nRations and the nPhone. Instinct told him to haul a pin from the sewing kit too, just in case.

He climbed back aboard and was pulling on the harness when he felt a sudden jolt as the aircraft they were in touched down. There was a fierce braking and rumbling of wheels, loud enough to wake—

“Aaaaaaaargh!”

“Grandma!”

The giant old woman woke in a panic, trying to lash out but constrained by the straps. The whole crate shook.

Finn turned the lights up and shoved the controls forward. The Bug forced its way through the split in the polythene bag, then, thrusters hissing as automatic systems fought to keep it stable, it rose over Grandma’s struggling legs, each the size of a blue whale, and flew up towards her head.

All Grandma saw was a glowing fiend approaching fast.

“Aaaaaaaargh!”

“GRANDMA! It’s ME!” Finn yelled.

Grandma’s terrified, giant eyes fixed upon the Bug.

“Infinity?” she demanded, words muffled by the mask.

He flew nearer to her ear. “We’ve been kidnapped. By Kaparis. But I don’t know where he’s taking us.”

Grandma let out a yodel of distress.

“We’re all right. I’m all right. I don’t even know if he knows I’m here.”

The engine noise wound down and they felt the aircraft stop completely.

“We have to decide what to do,” said Finn. “We need a plan.”

“Don’t do anything!” insisted Grandma.

Metallic clunks were heard as doors were opened. Voices. East Asian.

“Grandma, if they lift the lid on this thing I’ve got to go and get help.”

Footsteps began to draw closer.

Finn put the Bug into whisper mode and probed Grandma’s soft grey hair until he found a hairgrip just behind her ear. “Grandma, keep your eyes closed and play dead. I have to escape and find Al – he’ll rescue you!” he said quietly.

Grandma groaned as if in a deep sleep – a moan of protest.

Finn grabbed the nPhone pack off the back seat of the Bug.

“I’m going to leave the nPhone on your hairgrip. It’s out of battery, but all you need to do is put it by any live wire to charge. Just by being on, it will send a signal so Al will know exactly where you are.”

CLACK! CLACK! The clips holding shut the crate were sprung open.

Finn twisted the Bug out of sight and Grandma snapped her eyes shut in terror.

The lid of the crate lifted and a highway of light opened up down one side of it. Two pale, identical teen heads appeared.

Spike and Scar.

Scar took out a powerful torch and Spike took out a smart phone, studying the screen intently. Nano-radar of some kind? The searchlight started at Grandma’s feet and crept up her body, towards her head.

They’re looking for me, thought Finn.

He watched the light creeping up Grandma towards him. He could hear his heart beat in his chest. He and the Bug were bound to light up any nano-radar. He was a sitting duck. He slapped open the chamber on the M249 machine gun in front of him. There was ammo in the block ready to run.

As the searchlight hit him a bright spot showed up on the screen of Spike’s phone. She shrieked.

Finn gritted his teeth and punched the controls forward, and accelerated towards a spot between Spike and Scar’s ghostly faces, taking them by surprise.

The Bug shot out into the cramped cargo hold, engine SCREEEEEEEEECHING to reverse-thrust before it hit the fuselage, the seat harness nearly tearing through Finn’s shoulders.

“Yaaa!” screamed Scar and dived for a cargo net, grabbing one and brandishing it.

Finn shot back past them, over the large white chest he’d just escaped, slaloming through a landscape of personal luggage and crated cargo, darting around, looking for any kind of exit.

Spike span with her phone until she captured the dot on her screen again. “Zhyaa!”

“It’s on the tracker. Confirmed nano,” reported Li Jun.

“Get it!” hissed Kaparis.

Nano-radar had been fitted into every Tyro phone to track the nano-bot army. They hadn’t been able to search the body properly in the haste to escape London, but now, after hours of waiting, Kaparis congratulated himself. The boy would soon be in his hands.

Scar flew through the cargo after the Bug, agile and vicious, a cat after a bird.

Finn pulled the controls up hard and fast to loop above her, but she cast the cargo net.

THWACK! It caught the edge of the Bug and sent it spinning.

Finn clung to the controls as gyroscopes fought to stabilise the spin.

Scar and Spike leapt as one to grab the spinning, glowing Bug, but as they did so a whole section of the fuselage suddenly shifted.

All three were dazzled.

Bright sunshine.

The cargo bay was opening. Finn, back in control of the Bug, jammed the sticks forward and shot towards the light.

With a hot wet wallop he hit the air of the tropics. Eyes adjusting in the rich sunlight, he flew out beneath the belly of the huge airliner they’d been trapped in, then corkscrewed around until he found himself rising above it.

As he climbed higher, an airport spread out beneath him, its runways ending where they met the sea, while beyond, steep mountains framed skyscrapers that ran in a crest around a natural harbour.

Finn’s mind jumped to the old kung fu films Al used to insist they watched.

And at once he knew exactly where he was …

ong Kong.

The city clung to the hills about the harbour. Cargo ships and junk boats busied themselves on the waters. Old and new, land and sea.

Finn looked back down at the airport runway. Spike and Scar were on the tarmac, searching for him, pointing the radar into the sky. The white crate was already being unloaded on to a forklift.

Grandma …

He had to get help.

At the edge of the artificial island that was the airport, he saw a fast train approaching.

Twenty minutes later Finn was riding the train’s roof as it ran back into the city, like a desperado in the old Wild West, the Bug jammed into an air vent. Finn’s plan was to find a British official – there must be an embassy in Hong Kong – who could make contact with Uncle Al. Though what he would say, and how he would say it, he had no idea.

After another ten minutes of buffeting, the train stopped at a station called Kowloon. Finn recognised the name from a Call of Duty map, and got off.

He floated the Bug out of the station and flew to the top of a road sign where he tried to take in the scene. Dozens of images, sounds, sensations hit him. It was busy. The traffic was busy, the people were busy, the buildings were busy … even the air was busy, infused with aromas of Asian food, exhaust fumes and the sea. Then, penetrating the cacophony around him, Finn heard a tinny, high-pitched, stop-start buzzing.

DZZTZT-ZZZTZTZT-ZTZTZ-TZZZ-ZZZSZ-TSTS-TZZZTZTZ …

He looked up.

Incoming. His least favourite insect: stooped in profile, lazy in flight and responsible for the annual death of half a million people from malaria. A mosquito.

It swung down towards him, body swollen to the size of a Labrador, its wingspan the same as Finn’s height, arrow-thin proboscis pointing at the open side of the Bug, ready to run straight through him … DZZT! DZZZT!

Finn snatched up the pin he’d taken from Grandma’s bag and, using it as a sword, he parried the incoming stinger with a healthy smack, before thrusting forward to nick the mosquito’s swollen abdomen. BOOOSPLOOSSHHH! Its guts – full with blood harvested that morning – burst spectacularly.

Not since Finn had totalled the pinata at Max Campbell’s ninth birthday party had he seen such a multi-coloured explosion. Yuk, he thought, drenched in blood and guts.

But there was no time to recover, straight away …

DZZTZT-ZZZTZTZT-ZTZTZ-TZZZ-ZZZSZ-TSTS-TZZZTZTZ …

A dozen or so more mosquitoes appeared, from all directions, alerted by the smell. Finn aimed and fired the Minimi machine gun – DRRRRTT

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