LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER ONE – THE VISITOR

      Jimmy’s eyes opened before he even realised he was awake. His head was throbbing – another nightmare that vanished before he could grasp it. When he was asleep, his programming took over his brain completely. It grew like a vine, reaching into every part of his psyche. It spread dangerous knowledge and developed his amazing skills. Day by day Jimmy found himself becoming more lethal – and there was nothing he could do about it. Time was turning him into a killer.

      What had woken him, he wondered. Judging by the eerie half-light it was the early hours of the morning. Jimmy didn’t dare move his head from the pillow in case someone was watching him, but he listened, analysing every sound. He felt a familiar agitation in his chest – a paranoia he could never shake off. It was part of his nature now and he had learned to trust in it.

      His right calf twitched under the duvet. Was that a sign? It could be nothing. He realised that his muscles probably trained while he slept. How long had it been since NJ7, the most covert and advanced military intelligence agency in the world, had burst into his house to take him away? It felt like forever, but might not even have been more than a fortnight.

      Since then, he’d had to live with the knowledge that NJ7 had manipulated human genetics to grow him – an organic assassin, designed to reach active-service capability when he was eighteen. It was crazy. Jimmy still thought of himself as a normal human boy. But he was far from normal. He was only 38 per cent human.

      He pictured millions of tiny electric pulses emanating from his brain to the tips of each limb, making them ever more resilient. But the sensation he had now was something more than just his programming.

      A drop in temperature. There was a draught from somewhere. The window had been shut when they went to bed. Jimmy was facing away from it now, so he couldn’t check it. But how could anybody have broken the window without waking everybody?

      He scanned what he could see of the room, his eyes quickly enhancing every shape, enabling him to see in the semi-dark. Three beds stuck out into the middle of the room, their headboards against the wall. In the bed next to Jimmy’s, his friend Felix Muzbeke was fast asleep. A slow thread of drool trailed from his lips, glistening like a spider’s web in the rain.

      Out of the corner of his eye, Jimmy could discern the end of the third bed. His sister’s feet made a reassuring bump in the duvet. OK, he thought, so Felix and Georgie haven’t been abducted. That’s a good start.

      Jimmy was constantly aware that it wasn’t just his own life under threat. As well as Georgie and Felix, there was Jimmy’s mother. They’d all arrived at the Bed and Breakfast the night before, on the run from NJ7. Felix’s parents, Neil and Olivia, had already been in hiding there.

      Deep inside, Jimmy’s human self was now starting to wake up. With this came a surge of anger, brought on by the thought of his own father – or at least the man he had always believed was his father. The man’s words would never leave Jimmy’s head: “You’re not my son.” To him, Jimmy was nothing but an enemy of the State. He had been ever since overcoming his programming and refusing to kill for NJ7. Now Ian Coates, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, wanted him eliminated.

      Then Jimmy heard it. A sound so faint that Felix’s drooling almost drowned it out. Immediately, an image popped into Jimmy’s head that identified the noise – grease trickling down wood. It told him two things. One: the room had definitely been breached. Two: whoever had broken in was highly dangerous.

      They’ve found me, he thought. Terror shook his entire body, but with it came a blast of confidence – the artificial self-assurance of his programming. It seemed to flick away the fear. Before he could even think about it, Jimmy exploded into action.

      He kicked his right leg up and back, sending his duvet flying towards the window. It wrapped itself around an approaching figure. In the same movement, Jimmy flipped up into a handstand by his pillow – just in time. The intruder slammed the duvet back on to the mattress, then rolled to his feet on the other side of the bed.

      Jimmy used his bare feet to push himself off the wall. He cartwheeled over and landed, standing, opposite his attacker. They had both moved without a sound. Felix and Georgie hadn’t stirred. Now, for the first time, Jimmy was able to look at the person who had broken in. He was small – only just taller than Jimmy,

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