was outraged by the lack of fear. He brought the earring up to the man’s face and examined the sharp tip at the back. “I’ll appoint this in your eye unless you tell me where Miss Bennett is.”
The man didn’t flinch. For a second the only movement was the throbbing of a vein in his temple. “She’s in a meeting.” A smile crept up the man’s cheeks.
Mitchell pretended to stab the earring downwards, but stopped short. The man blinked and tried to pull away, but he was at the mercy of a thirteen-year-old boy. Mitchell felt the man’s breathing quicken.
“Try again,” Mitchell hissed. “I won’t be pretending next time.”
The answer came almost straight away, but in a smug whisper: “Dr Higgins’ old office.”
Mitchell rolled to one side and pushed himself up, launching into a run. He wove through the tunnels again, with a diamond earring in his fist and blood covering one arm.
“Did you lie to me?” he barked as soon as he turned the corner into Dr Higgins’ office. Miss Bennett was facing away from him, pencil and notepad in hand, studying one of the charts on the wall. The room was lined with computers and in the centre was a large empty desk. Miss Bennett’s curves were silhouetted against the wall. There was a green stripe down the back of her stilettos.
“Welcome back, Mitchell.” She sounded almost bored and didn’t turn round. “Been sightseeing?”
“Where’s my brother?” choked Mitchell. “Is he alive?” He edged round the room towards her and at last she turned to face him. The smile on her face offered no comfort.
“What do you think?” she asked.
Mitchell couldn’t hold back his temper any more. “Tell me the truth or I’ll rip you apart.”
“You’ve made a very basic mistake,” Miss Bennett stated clearly.
“My mistake was trusting you.”
“It’s worse than trusting me, I’m afraid.” For an instant, her cheeks seemed to flush with excitement. “You’ve underestimated me.”
Still staring at Mitchell, she reached behind her and tapped a key on the keyboard of a computer. Suddenly, a blinding strobe light flashed from the monitor. Mitchell’s hands rushed to his face, but it was too late. He was temporarily blinded. Then he felt a vicious stab on his forehead. It knocked all sense of balance out of him. He tumbled to his knees. After a few moments, he could see again, but he just dropped his head and looked to the floor.
Miss Bennett took a deep breath. “Mitchell Glenthorne, I don’t respond well to threats. In future you will raise all your enquiries with the appropriate courtesy.” Mitchell made no response. Miss Bennett bent down low. She placed a finger under Mitchell’s chin and raised his face to meet hers. Her perfume coated Mitchell’s nostrils. “I mean you’ll say please and thank you,” she whispered. To Mitchell it felt like the most terrifying telling off he could have imagined.
He couldn’t believe it. With such a powerful assassin inside him, surely he could have sprung up and taken control. He heard a distant calling in his head, urging him to resist. But the fight was gone from his heart. He had no real reason to challenge Miss Bennett. She was one of the few people in his life who had treated him well.
“If we hadn’t told you your brother was dead,” she explained gently, “you would never have agreed to work for us, would you?” Mitchell shook his head. “And that would have been the real tragedy, wouldn’t it? Because, you see, this is where you belong.”
“So you killed him, not me?” Mitchell asked meekly. A release of energy surged through him – was that relief?
Miss Bennett took him by the shoulder and helped him to his feet. “No,” she replied. “Nobody killed him.”
Mitchell’s relief froze. The news should have made him happy, but it didn’t. Instead, he could feel anxiety creeping through him, stiffening every muscle.
“You came close,” Miss Bennett went on, “but NJ7 doctors are keeping him alive for their own purposes.”
Mitchell felt a jolt of anger. His cheeks grew hot and his hands trembled slightly. But it was anger at himself. How could he have behaved like this? He was an assassin working for the finest espionage organisation in the world. It was time to annihilate his old feelings. He clenched his teeth and forced himself to stand tall, looking straight at Miss Bennett. This was his family now.
“You sent agents after me,” he said, holding his voice steady. “Just now, when I was hiding on the Underground, I mean. Why didn’t they bring me in?”
“I knew you’d come back,” Miss Bennett countered, obviously trying to sound casual about it. “You’re not like that other one, Jimmy Coates. I had agents keeping an eye on you just to make sure you didn’t cause any trouble, but I thought you deserved some time to yourself. You’ve worked very hard. Now, isn’t it good that I trusted you?” She smiled a feline smile, then pulled out a mobile phone from her suit jacket and punched a few keys.
“But while you’ve been away, some of us have been working,” she added. “There’s someone you need to meet.”
A few seconds later there were footsteps in the corridor. Then in walked a short man in his mid-twenties, who had a blood-soaked rag clutched to his ear and a look of deep resentment on his face.
“This,” Miss Bennett announced grandly, “is the man who is going to end the Jimmy Coates affair and bring order back to Britain’s Neo-democratic project.” She held out an arm in welcome. “Mitchell, meet the new head of NJ7’s technological team, Ark Stanton.”
“Yeah,” grunted the man. “We already met, thanks.”
CHAPTER FIVE – THE REFLEX PLAN
Mitchell couldn’t help laughing. This was clearly a man who liked to be smartly turned out. There’s only so much you can do to look good when there’s blood pouring out of one ripped earlobe. Apart from that, he looked like an artist had sculpted his head out of olive-brown clay and stuck on two flints of slate for his eyes. It was a perfectly proportioned face, even down to the impeccably neat layer of stubble.
“What the hell happened to your ear, Stanton?” Miss Bennett asked.
“Just an experiment that went wrong.” He glared at Mitchell, his Irish accent a little stronger than before.
“I think this belongs to you,” Mitchell announced casually, holding out a diamond earring. Ark Stanton pocketed it abruptly.
It didn’t take long for the man to find some bandages and patch up his ear properly. Then he pulled a mirror from Dr Higgins’ old desk and wiped most of the blood from his face. His shirt was almost completely red, blending in with the worn, leather worktop.
“Well?” barked Miss Bennett. “What have you got for me? I’ve been told you’re a genius.” Before Stanton could even smile, she added, “I never trust what I’m told.”
In response, Stanton could only
