LITMIR.BIZ

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mouth. “Ha! Joking!” Zafi exploded into laughter. “Your faces are hilarious.”

      Felix and Jimmy both let out a huge sigh of relief.

      “I don’t think that’s funny!” Georgie shrieked.

      “It was quite funny,” Felix suggested. “Not as funny as me obviously.”

      “So it’s OK if I don’t, you know…” Jimmy asked.

      “Of course,” Zafi replied, her voice light and almost squeaky. “You won’t work for us, but that’s OK because we know that you are no friend of NJ7.”

      “I’d never work for them, don’t worry.” At last Jimmy started to relax. He almost felt like himself again.

      “But NJ7 won’t have any distractions now,” Zafi warned him. “I can’t throw them off your trail any more. And if I can find you, they can find you. Get out of the country as quick as you can.” She opened the door and was framed by the darkness in the rest of the building. “Maybe we’ll meet again.”

      To his surprise, Jimmy was sad that this girl was leaving. There was so much she might have been able to tell him. He was suddenly overcome by the urge to know everything about her. Had she also grown up thinking she was a normal child? Or had she always known that she was only 38 per cent human? She seemed a lot happier with it than Jimmy was. Did she have parents? Were they, like Jimmy’s, agents of the Government’s intelligence services? And had they kept it a secret?

      With all this blurring his thoughts, Jimmy found it hard to say anything – even a simple goodbye. Zafi reached into her pocket.

      “I’ll rewire the power supply outside on my way out,” she announced casually. Her hand emerged holding the remote control clicker that had turned on the lights in the room. “Something to remember me by.” She tossed it at Jimmy, who caught it in a daze.

      “Don’t you need it?” Felix called out, but Zafi was already floating down the stairs, making hardly a sound. She glanced over her shoulder, her hair catching the streak of light through the banisters.

      “I’ll make another one.”

      Jimmy, Georgie and Felix were unable to move. They were stunned. Zafi had come in like a whirlwind and left as much devastation. She had made so little noise – they didn’t even hear the front door closing after her – and she displayed all the clinical killing instincts of a highly trained assassin. Yet her eyes had sparkled, her physique was delicate, her voice was soft and high, with a giggle that reminded Jimmy of the most annoying girls in his year at school.

      While Jimmy was trying to fathom out how he felt, Felix reached across and swiped the gadget from his open palm. He clicked the lights on and off a couple of times.

      “Cool,” he muttered under his breath. Then he asked, “Do you think we’ll, you know, see her again?”

      Jimmy didn’t answer. His gut was telling him that he hoped they would. But, at the same time, he could hear a stern voice in his head. It told him that if he ever did see Zafi Sauvage again, it could only mean that he was in trouble.

      Jimmy, Felix and Georgie didn’t bother going back to bed. There was no way any of them would have been able to sleep anyway. They were buzzing with adrenaline from Zafi’s visit. Instead, the three of them took their duvets down to the living room. Felix turned on the TV.

      “Chris will go ballistic when he hears about what happened tonight,” he said.

      “Do you think he’s OK?” Georgie asked Jimmy. “And Saffron?” There was no reply. “Well? Do you?”

      Jimmy exploded with frustration. “I don’t know, do I? How is any of us meant to know?”

      “All right, calm down, psycho.” Georgie threw up her hands.

      Jimmy mumbled an apology. He could picture Christopher Viggo’s face as the man had driven off into the darkness the night before. With him had been his girlfriend, Saffron Walden, dying from an NJ7 bullet. Jimmy had already gone over and over it in his mind – hospitals were out because they were covered in security cameras, and they’d report a bullet wound to the police straight away. So unless Viggo knew a surgeon nearby who was also a so-called ‘enemy’ of Britain, Jimmy had no idea how Saffron was going to survive.

      He curled up on the sofa, wishing his morbid thoughts would go away. Saffron and Viggo had done so much to help Jimmy. Viggo used to be an NJ7 agent himself, but he’d fled thirteen years earlier because of the evil of one man: Ares Hollingdale. From being Director of NJ7, Hollingdale had risen to become Prime Minister – but an undemocratic one. He’d used NJ7 to secure his position at the head of a dictatorship. And the population did nothing to stop him.

      Sometimes, it seemed like Viggo and Saffron were the only sane people in Britain – at least, the only ones who were fighting for democracy.

      Gradually, Jimmy’s attention returned to the TV.

      “The new Prime Minister, Ian Coates, is about to land in Washington DC to meet with the American President, Alphonsus Grogan.” The newsreader was a woman with a vacant stare and a half-smile permanently on her lips. “The first item on their agenda will be American support for Britain in any possible military action against France, following French incursion into British airspace yesterday afternoon.”

      With every mention of the Prime Minister, Jimmy felt something rumble in his belly. He forced it down and told himself it was hunger.

      “Ian Coates will first meet with the President at the White House,” the newsreader went on, “before touring the cities of the East Coast of America. He will address the UN Security Council in New York in four days’ time to present the case for Britain’s legal right to retaliate against France.”

      Usually, the last thing Jimmy would have wanted to do was watch the news. But everything had changed. Now it was urgent that they all knew what the Government was doing. This was their enemy.

      “I can’t believe that’s our dad,” Georgie muttered.

      Jimmy didn’t answer. Not ‘our’ dad, he thought. ‘Your’ dad. He felt a sting in his throat and wiped the back of his hand across his eyes. When he looked up, he saw his own face on the TV screen. It was the same old school photograph that Jimmy had seen on TV the day before.

      “…still thought to be behind the murder of Ares Hollingdale,” the reporter was saying, “and still on the run.” The camera zoomed in on Jimmy’s eyes.

      “It’s all right,” Felix stated calmly. “You don’t really look like that.”

      “It’s all right?” Georgie exclaimed. “How is it ‘all right’ that they’re telling the whole country that Jimmy murdered the last Prime Minister?” Jimmy shrunk into himself. He just wished they didn’t have to talk about it.

      In the last few weeks he had learned not to trust what came out of the TV. He could almost see the puppet-strings attached to the limbs of the newsreaders, and Miss Bennett somewhere, just out of shot, dictating every word that was said.

      “Anyway,” Georgie piped up again, furious, “NJ7 knows Jimmy didn’t do it – because they did it.”

      “What?” Felix asked. “You think Miss Bennett sent someone from NJ7 to kill their own Prime Minister?”

      “Maybe. Hollingdale was sadistic and cruel and probably crazy. Maybe they’d had enough and wanted Dad to take over.”

      Hardly realising he was speaking, Jimmy cut in. “He had it coming,” he snarled.

      All three of them looked at each other, shocked at what Jimmy had said, even if it was true. Was it him or his programming that was spitting out such venomous thoughts? Jimmy couldn’t get any more words out of his mouth. He could feel his lips trembling, but there was nothing more to say.

      The only sound was the drone of the television and the incessant ticking

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