Rico didn't approach the service station directly. While she wasn't fully versed in life skills, even she knew that someone coming in from the rear over the children's climbing frames in the dead of night would be remarked as strange by bystanders - not least the problems with that approach being that she'd have to punch through the patio glass, which was locked by that time.

Circling round the building and approaching from the front had its own advantages, anyway. The service station sat in its own bowl, separated from the motorway and the wider countryside by a dense copse of trees, resting in what seemed like a forest glade (at least, until it was buried underneath the tarmac for the car park). In this dark, warm, enclosed space the building shone as a radiant, blazing beacon of bright light; a burnished, brilliant trophy, rotating on its turntable for all to admire from every lavish and scintillating angle.

Rico walked past the service station's truck park, forming a station on the long tarmac processional up to the splendid palace at the height of her route. A dozen lorries sat still alongside each other, their cabins like squat, hulking, thickset beasts looming over the diminutive Rico; headlamps were milky, unblinking eyes and their radiator grilles toothy maws that could swallow her whole. Rico swallowed a little nervously, and concentrated instead on the loads behind the truck bodies. In her mind's eye, twelve cuboids became twelve ranks of soldiers standing firmly to attention, or twelve of those coloured rectangles getting all tangled up in dotted lines on a map whenever their history textbooks came to a famous battle - that settled her mind.

There were a group of lorry drivers smoking and talking quietly amongst themselves under a streetlamp. Like the large, boxy cabins, the drivers were burly sorts with thick, wiry beards – they looked more like members of the Hell's Angels, belonging more on two wheels than twelve. Rico remembered someone saying once that pets resembled their owners, and vice versa.

The drivers turned curious eyes to watch Rico as she walked past, but none of them had the wit to ask what a young child was doing so far away from the service station proper, where ordinary folk would cluster.

The sliding doors parted before Rico as though there were a pair of footmen stepping smartly to admit her. Within was a broad, high-ceilinged hall, with an arched glass roof. The hall proceeded down to a café and restaurant area in a large circular conservatory, looking out to the children's play area beyond; ranged along the length of the hall was a large newsagent's, a small supermarket, a McDonalds, a pharmacy and a small arcade and toilets. All of these stores and facilities were like heaving crowds on either side of the red carpet. The high ceiling was as exalted as the Galleria Vittorio Emmanuele. The tiles on the floor were an off-colour grey from tramped-down dirt, but that only showed what a thriving and bustling hub of humanity this was, like the most sophisticated and urbane metropolises; the people had their heads bowed down low and their faces lined with early-morning fatigue, but how could they not after dancing away the night here, the place where the hot heartbeat of humanity heated you? Rico's eyes shone as she beheld it all, and for long minutes she simply stood in the middle of the hall; each visiting family with tired toddlers hoisted onto their backs and crooked in their arms, each sniffling and bleary unshaven businessman pawing at the pharmacy's cough medicines, each trucker devouring a Big Mac with concentrated gusto, each squabbling couple bickering over a crumpled road map all the way to the café, were fresh facets of a jewel that scintillated in Rico's brimming, loving, life-filled eyes. Rico floated up the tall hall in a state of ecstasy, of communion.

"Hey kid, you lost your parents?"

Rico blinked. A member of staff in a dirty apron was standing over her with some concern.

Rico shook her head. "I don't have any parents anymore, just my big brother, and he's fine."

The cleaner stepped back, suddenly looking embarrassed. "Well, go to your brother alright? Don't lose him."

"Don't worry, I never will." Rico smiled, before turning away to walk to the newsagents. She had come down after being elevated, and now it was only right that she make her offering.

After walking up and down the aisles a few times she found that book that the bomb squad has asked for – it had been difficult to find because it was right up on the top row of one of the shelves and she had had to jump up to get it – fortunately no-one had seemed to twig to the sight of an adolescent girl bouncing up a good seven feet from standing. Amores of the Ambassador, the title read. The frontispiece was a photograph of a very dark and elaborately-carved desk, the sort of grand furniture you might expect to find during a public tour of an old noble's mansion. Behind it, and framed by a tall window with heavy red drapes, were a man and a woman in modern suits. They were standing very close together, so much so that they were nearly bumping into each other. It didn't look very practical for reading that thick piece of parchment with old fancy curly writing that was lain out over the desk. Very odd. Rico had a curious flick through the book, seeing lots of unusual words which made her feel funny.

The strange sensations were a little discomfiting – once the novelty had subsided the giddy detachment was alarming, a loss of reference and security. Rico anchored herself back to the ground by closing the book and slipping it into her hand-basket. She busied herself with the rest of the shop, although the Sudoku For You Vol. IV that Henrietta had asked for didn't create the same weird, loopy, quivery, shimmery feelings, despite being another book, one that was even bigger than the last one. Rico couldn't explain why, but she felt vaguely disappointed about that fact.

The rest of the items that the other girls wanted formed the usual assortment of fizzy pop, bubblegum, chocolate, sweets and sugary snacks, and Rico gathered them all up with genuine glee, their bright, crinkly packaging reflecting the newsagent's lights and making her feel like a pirate queen scooping up a beach of crystal rocks and precious stones.

"This is rather grown-up for a young bo—er, girl, isn't it?" The checkout lady said curiously about the bomb squad's book once Rico had delivered that night's swag to her. The strange tone in her voice only mutated further when she recognised Rico's actual sex.

"I don't know. It's not for me, it's for a friend." Rico explained.

"Right." The other staff member manning the checkout tills, a boy in his late teens, sniggered openly at Rico's words as he bagged up a copy of Travel Scrabble for a haggard-looking mother. It was said almost with a sense of paternal pride at seeing an adolescent learn her first dodge.

The lady turned the book over in her hands a couple of times, and then with a grimace she slid it over her till's barcode reader. Evidently the desire to improve her sales bounty won out over moral instruction to the new generation, and she contented herself with a philosophical sigh and an internal monologue about how the world was sliding into calamity and apostasy.


They never did a handout on the same night as a sweets run – too much activity was likely to arouse too much suspicion, and it was a precaution in case a perimeter alarm had been tripped, or a runner inadvertently passed through someone's peripheral vision, and the link to an impromptu 'slumber party' was made.

Besides, as fun and exciting as the handouts were, there was even better entertainment to be had today. They all clustered onto the roof to watch.

"Squad, will, turn, to the right in – WAIT FOR IT ILIRIA! – in threes! Riiiiiiiiiiiiiight... turn! RIGHT! RIGHT YOU NIMROD! An even choice and you came up odd! DO IT AGAIN!"

Elio Alboreto stopped dead in his tracks. He'd read stories about the whiff of cordite and baccarite suddenly transporting stress-disorder sufferers back to a state of shellshock; the fading echo of the shout bounced back off the walls and slammed into his face like a left hook. It knocked him reeling to miserable days of square-bashing in the pissing rain, harangued by an apoplectic corporal.

It had been arranged that the New Kid, Avise Mancini, was to be given all of the second-generation girls for a session – even though the cyborgs were programmed to be obedient and should have been much easier to handle than over a hundred unruly squaddies, procedure was still insistent on him demonstrating his command ability; another tick in a box, a brick in the road along the way to becoming a full handler. The arrangement hadn't troubled Elio too much – leaving Marisa for a few hours allowed him to catch-up with some overdue paperwork and get a gym session which he'd been missing out on lately. While he'd been pounding on the treadmill he'd wondered if this was how parents felt when they dropped off their kids with Grandma and Grandad for a weekend away...

...but the weird sense of relief began to slide into dread when he heard those sounds, and became aware of just what he'd consigned Marisa to.

Elio hurried towards the source of the sound, arriving at the tarmac square beneath the cyborg dormitories.

Seven second-generation cyborgs – Petrushka, Iliria, Giliana, Vanessa, Alba, Kara and the younger Marisa the odd-one-out at the back – were arranged into four paired ranks.

And Avise – Elio stopped for a moment despite himself. Avise looked magnificent. He was clad in full dress uniform, a swagger-stick snapped into place under one arm. His jacket and trousers were pressed so sharply it was as if he was not part of the world, but cut himself out of it with every movement. His shoes were bulled so brightly that you could have criticised him for being out of uniform, as they gleamed as white to the eye. The feathers on his hat were black, but not dull, rather shining like onyx.

The face below it was a knotted purple.

"'Eff! 'Aight! 'Eff! 'Aight! 'Eff! 'Aight! 'Efffffffff... STOP! Alba, are you a dancer? No? Petrushka is the dancer isn't she? Yes? Yes! Are you trying to upstage your comrade? No, she says. So, why are your feet skittering about like some Hollywood musical? What do we do when we're out of step? What? We don't start singin' in the rain, unless you want a punishment detail this evening! What do we do? We 'perform' a check pace! AGAIN!"

"A spot of drill, eh?" Elio tried to josh Alfonso, but it was a hollow, false humour, a sad, flimsy pretence that Elio could not give his heart to filling.

"Drill?" Alfonso shook his head, his eyes open and stark, incredulous and appalled. "Mr. Alboreto, this is the Eleventh Battle of the Isonzo."

In their ranks the girls had been assembled into bars, and the square had become their cell. They watched the girls conduct a few wheels around the corners of the square. They seemed to do it competently enough, curling at the correct angles and maintaining the same distance between each other's positions in the squad, but their taskmaster was evidently dissatisfied, bringing them stumbling and shuffling to a halt with another indignant yell.

"YOU ARE THE PRIDE OF ITALY!" Avise screamed, his voice momentarily slipping into a shrill screech, such was its unrestrained violence. "HAVE YOU NO SELF-RESPECT? YOU ARE KILLERS! SUPERMEN!" He leaned in close to Illiria. "QUEEN BITCH OF EUROPE!" Flecks of spittle splashed across Illiria's cheek – she added a snotty sniffle to it, on the verge of breaking down in tears.

Avise stepped back, his cheeks visibly tinged purple, and he had to suck in great gallons of breath before continuing. "And yet here you are, shambling along, knuckles scraping along the ground like a herd of troglodytes." Avise literally slapped his own face and dragged his glove down his face in an appalled, dismayed expression, before raising his head to shout again. "You are cyborgs! You are incredible! You are magnificent! So where is your pride? You should strut before these insignificant peons!" Avise gesticulated wildly towards the spectators. "Now gets your backs straight, throw your legs out, and show me some SWAGGER!"

The girls were visibly cringing, crumbling from the onslaught like bunkers cracking under sustained bombardment – except for one pouting figure at the back.

"Stop shouting at me" Marisa muttered.

"Right!" Avise swivelled like a Dalek mid-stride and his hand shot out with a laser's exactness to clamp around Marisa's ear. The cyborg emitted a yelp of surprise, which became a squeal of pain when in the very next step Avise started pulling her over towards the spectators. Elio blinked, not quite believing what she was seeing. The last Padanian to get within arm's reach of Marisa had had his limbs broken in twenty-eight separate places and she'd played his vertebrae like a harpsichord – but here sheer surprise had completely confounded her. It was all she could do to not trip over herself and fall as she stumbled behind Avise.

"Alboreto!" Avise barked. "Discipline your brat for giving me backchat!" After detaching his grip and brusquely depositing the stunned, stumbling cyborg in front of Elio, Avise swept back around and marched over to the other girls, his steel-capped boots snapping off of the tarmac like gunshot reports. Elio could tell that Marisa, by her act of defiance, had won the ardent blood-loyalty of the rest of the second generation 'til the fall of Valhalla – granting them the sweet merciful respite of a few seconds' sagging while Avise's back was turned.

Marisa herself struggled to regain some dignity from the inglorious episode by running her hand through her hair and patting down her clothes as though it was an inconsequential scuffle rather than an abject humiliation. Rubbing and wincing at her sore ear, she looked up at her handler and gave him the smirk of partners in crime. "My feet were cramping! Great to get away from that garbage!" She said, unnecessarily loudly.

"I have told you before to be respectful to other staff." Elio said coldly. "You can do forty laps of the building behind me to make up for what you're missing over there."

Marisa laughed, but when Elio's stern gaze didn't change, her mouth fell open, appalled. "What?"

Elio only jerked his head to one side to indicate Marisa's direction, with a click of the tongue to set the horse off on a trot. Marisa replied with a lengthy, lingering, hurt look of betrayal and then jogged off, in a slumping, unhappy gait.

Elio watched his cyborg go until she had turned around the corner of the building and gone out of sight. He sighed sadly as he turned back to the grim exhibition of the second generation not so much being drilled as cored out. He didn't really approve of Avise's... training methodology ("Petrushka you can prance about the piano room all day like some nutcracking fairy so why can't you MARK TIME?"), and quietly resented Avise's for putting him in a situation where he had to chastise Marisa in the first place. Still, as obnoxiously as he had given it Avise did have a point in that cyborgs were expected to show deference to other adult staff, even if the only one who could order them was their handler; in the absence of proper conditioning Marisa sometimes needed her boundaries marked out. Elio also couldn't help but be hooked by a creeping curiosity jostling him to find out just where Avise thought that he was heading with this... display.

"Shoulders - back! Heads - up! Legs – forward! Thumbs – on – knuckles! GILIANA STOP TICK-TOCKING! What are you, one of Triela's TEDDIES? Filling you full of stuffing instead of top-tier tech would be a damn sight more USSEEEEFFFUUUULLLL!"

The cyborgs battled their way across the square until they had reached the corner closest to the assembled watchers. Avise shouted that the girls would "do honour to their handlers" and had them march across the front of the group of watchers.

"Salute to the riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiggghhhhttt... SALUTE!"

Petrushka was so utterly intimidated by Avise's booming presence that she instinctively looked left towards him and the source of the command instead. Without missing a beat, Avise had the squad carry on, about face on the march at the far end of the square, and then pass back across the way they came and salute the gathered crowd from the left instead.

Six pairs of eyes, desperate for release, looked towards their handlers with pleading entreaty. Elio felt his legs tremble. It was like a line of battleships tacking across to deliver broadsides at him.

The torment was not perpetrated for much longer – even volcanoes blow out eventually, and Avise was reaching the last sputter of toxic ash. "Useless. Absolutely useless. Worse than useless, because being subjected to it did me physical harm. I would weep, but there aren't enough tears. You slovenliness brings shame to your sex, to your handlers, to your Agency and your Republic that you are pledged to defend." He bowed his head momentarily, as though to hide a sob. "This ends now. If this farce is perpetrated any further then I would lose my composure and shame myself, and it demeans this honourable Agency enough that you have comprehensively and irredeemably disgraced yourselves with your squalid conduct." His voice was genuinely cracked and choked, on the verge of tears.

"You will be dismissed" Avise whispered, laden with unvoiced anguish, a weight which crushed the breath out of your lungs.

The girls began to move apart.

"HAVE I TAUGHT YOU NOTHING?"

Elio saw a pair of Section One agents walking along the path at the far end of the square instinctively throw themselves down to take cover from the incoming artillery.

The cyborgs shuffled back into their ranks again, standing with their legs apart and their hands together behind their backs, with their heads bowed.

"Squad!"

Heads shot up with enough speed to give the cyborg whiplash. Backs became ram-rod straight so as to crack a few vertebrae.

"Squad... 'SHUN!"

"In!" Half a dozen hoarse, croaking voices bleated as they stamped their legs together.

"Squad, will, retire. Diiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiissssssss... MISSSED!"

Two ranks of three rotated ninety degrees to the right. Two ranks of three stamped their right feet. Two ranks of three took three strides from the left foot. Two ranks of three then promptly expired.

Elio remembered his time in Yemen during the Ogaden War, and relieving soldiers emerging from a bunker after hours of constant bombardment. He also remembered seeing an SIS analyst have to get up and leave after reading reports of rape camps during the Romanian Mineriad. None of it even approached this. These girls had been utterly and comprehensively destroyed. Even though they had been set free, they didn't sprint away, or caper, cavort and cartwheel in relief. The girls stumbled, leaden legs staggering bow-legged and arms hanging limp as though held on only by fraying tendons, their faces as drained as their spirits. They described an aimless, wandering course to the parade edge and fell off it, slumping down onto the grass, spent. Petrushka collided with Iliria along the way, but there were no complaints or remonstrations – they just both creaked their heads towards each other and stared past each other's shoulders, not able to muster the energy to go far enough to meet each other's eyes.

The flower of Italian defence policy had been demolished far more effectively than terrorist bomb.

Everyone's head turned from the settling detritus... to Avise.

Walking their way...!

The assembled crowd flinched instinctively from Avise as he came to a stop before them. It wasn't only the formidable martial splendour of his uniform which overwhelmed their more casual attire – they were buffeted backwards by the waves of suppressed violence which pulsed from Avise like a heat-haze of aggression.

Avise took off his hat, gave the feathers a quick brush with his sleeve, then pulled off his gloves and dropped all three items down onto the ground with a light pat of leather.

"Afternoon, everyone!" Avise cried brightly, with a warm, welcoming smile. "I think that it's coming up to lunch. Shall we all head over as a group, a bit of nice espirit to perk us all up, eh? What's on today, anyway?"

There was only the wet click of moisture and film as everyone blinked at him dumbly.

"Oh, haven't they put up a menu today? A bit inconvenient." Avise pouted.

"Letting a bit of steam off there eh, Mancini?" Amadeo said suddenly, in a bluff tone that was a disdainful criticism. "Things getting you down lately, needed to beat it out?"

"Down?" Avise looked genuinely confused, before he chuckled lightly. "Amadeo, what on Earth would give you that idea? Things have been great this past week."

"Idea?" Amadeo was so astonished at, and uncomprehending of, Avise's current incongruously light manner that it came out almost as a shout. "You were screaming at those kids so much we were almost taking bets on you having an aneurysm!"

"Your head looked as though it was going to pop like a champagne cork!" Nihad exclaimed.

"Well, of course it did." Avise looked baffled at their surprise, as though it was impossible to entertain any other notion. "I was doing drill."

There was a moment's fish-slapped silence.

Olga's eyes dilated and contracted again as she struggled to absorb the concept of how something conveyed with such vivid and fervent emotion could still be so insincere. "You mean... all that screaming and shouting and swearing and stamping... was an... an act?"

Avise picked out Elio from amongst the throng and gave him a despairing look, as though he expected the handler to be the only one who understood him. "Come on," Avise admonished the staff, "I know that some have you have been in the Army! I mean, what else am I to do? Mince about flapping my wrists and asking them to take a step to right if they'd be so kind and if it fit in with their busy schedules?"

"More than a few officers would do it that way, yeah." An anonymous voice murmured from the back. An involuntary spasm of sniggers rippled through everyone.

A shock of black passed in front of Avise's eyes at the jibe, but he managed to clench his jaw and grind down the desire to bite back.

Reading both Avise and the crowd with a quick scan, Elio bit his lip and leaned forward to prevent a souring of the atmosphere. "So, those girls were pretty dismal, eh?" He said gregariously loudly, elbowing past Marco and Hilshire to put himself at the front and directly in Avise's view. "Women can never find their way about, hah hah hah!"

Elio heard Priscilla mutter "chauvinist pig" behind his back and he could imagine her tossing her head and rolling her eyes, but some disdain from a bit of laddish humour (and she'd have already forgotten about it by the end of the day anyway) was preferable to the sometimes-tetchy Mancini losing his rag in front of too many spectators and showing up his bad side.

It had the desired effect – with something else to distract him, Avise calmed down quickly and the angry face faded as though it was never there. He shrugged in response to Elio. "No, they weren't that bad actually. Yeah, they're a bit scrappy, and there's plenty of rough edges, but it's their first time after all – it's only to be expected. Still, for novices they were pretty on-the-ball – I suppose that cyborg co-ordination has more than good PR behind it after all!" Avise chortled. "They did well – really, honestly, very well – that's why I let them off twenty minutes early."

Marianna's composure cracked with a spurting, half-choked cackle, and she had to turn and walk away before she erupted into manic hysterics.

Avise looked genuinely confused. "Was that some in-joke that I've not been invited into yet?"

Everyone assured him that it had been an impressive display, and began to drift off, citing desires to wrap up some paperwork or deposit their weapons before lunch began properly.

As Avise turned away to head back to the adult dormitories and change back into his dayclothes, something tickling his peripheral vision caused him to bring his head up to look at the roof of one of the surrounding buildings. Half a dozen little bobbing balls of heads were balanced on the edge of the parapet.

Avise pointed a finger at his own face, then spread two fingers out into a V to direct attention to his eyes. He then rotated a hand so that his finger was pointing towards the building.

I see you.

The heads vanished.

Chuckling to himself, Avise brought his gaze back down to ground level, and espied Elio through the dispersing crowd, just about to disappear around the corner of another building. Avise jogged up to the handler, shouting a hello.

"Hullo, Alboreto, wait a moment!" He panted as he came up to the handler.

Elio grimaced, but smiled as he turned around to Avise. "Yes, Mancini, how can I help you?"

"I was just wondering what you thought of that just now. Was I making a good use of the cyborgs? I know I'm a little rusty; it's usually the sergeant's job to do drill, but if I'm to be a handler I ought to keep up my versatility. What'd you recommend?"

Elio was a little startled to see that Avise was actually looking to him for approval. He could detect a glint of admiration in the corner of Avise's eyes – even though Avise was an officer and Elio was Other Ranks, Elio's status as a grizzled veteran and as special forces was not a little awe-inspiring in the (relatively) younger man. "I was hoping that it'd impress you." Avise said, a little plaintively, feeling small in comparison to the hardened victor in front of him.

"Oh, Mancini..." Elio shook his head, finding the idea that he had a fan baffling, not least when that fan looked as though he was about to be presented before the President. "Just because we do drill doesn't mean that we like it!"

"Yeah, I guess." Avise twisted his lips as he reflected on it. "It's important and I wouldn't give it up, but everyone finds it a bit of a bind. Still, we all have to do our chores, otherwise we'd be living in pigsties."

Elio marvelled at the man walking alongside him. It was genuinely astonishing to see his changed manner, how... loose he seemed, as though someone had taken a screwdriver to him and eased off the tension that had been straining his joints on the parade square. It was as though he was a wholly different person.

"Did you ever picture yourself ending up at place like this, Mancini?" Elio ventured carefully, prodding forward to see if could trace out a better image of the other man.

Avise looked about him before responding. "Well, everyone likes the idea of being a secret agent, don't they? The elite engineer who adjusts the cogs of society behind the facade. It's a thrill to be here, although to be honest I never expected it. I've ended up where Providence has guided me – thank God I've had the sense to follow. I never even expected to end up in the Army, let alone the Agency, but once I started in it I was glad that I did."

"How did that come about?" Elio was genuinely curious. All of the prattle about fate and faith was par for the course with those religious types and Elio had learned to tune that redundant noise out, but the nugget of detail that Avise – known by everyone to be a particularly enthusiastic soldier, as if the display on the parade square could leave anyone in any doubt of that – never had any particular martial calling intrigued him.

"It's nothing complicated. After my dad died an Army scholarship was the only way I could fund university," Avise explained, "and even that was a secondary option. For a while I actually through that I might have the Vocation. That was back when I was seventeen, not long before I wrapped up school. I was even reading the pamphlets about the priesthood at the back of church."

Elio arched his eyebrows in surprise – and that reaction was, in itself, surprising. He hadn't really been expecting to be astonished by the mumming moron Mancini having pretensions of poncing about as some pontificating pastor. Still, when it was actually laid out before Elio plainly like that, he couldn't deny that from priest to fighting soldier and dubious spy constituted quite a radical career change, a wide swing which felt unbalanced and strange. Elio decided to grasp the nettle. "So, what happened?" He asked plainly.

"Crocetta Maffucci from 6J happened. Four times. And I enjoyed it too much to think that I could spend the next sixty years doing without."

Elio threw his head back and laughed openly and uproariously. Maybe Avise was human after all.

Marisa jogged past them both. "Thirty-three." She pouted sullenly.


"Alright everyone!" Rico squealed with glee, practically dancing on the table as she swung the bag up to hold it aloft. "Come and get it!"

Rico's face was alight, the attention flooding into her from all the girls a surge of fuel stoking a fire. Her shining delight was blinding, and spurred by the eager shouts from all the other members of the sly snacking syndicate, she span about in place, whirling around like a catherine wheel, sparks dancing off of her gleaming eyes and open smile.

"Henrietta gets a bag of Creme Eggs" – Rico tossed it overarm like a grenade belt – "and her puzzle book!" Sudoku For You Vol. IV span across the room like a Frisbee. There was a chorus of applause as Henrietta neatly fielded both in each hand.

"Chiara has two sticks of Toblerone!" Rico dropped the bag to her feet, reached into it with both arms, and then pulled out each bar with slow, exaggerated care. Gripping them at their ends, with a sudden yell of an impassioned call to war she leapt down onto the floor, flexing her knees and bunching her thighs with the impact and then launching herself straight at Chiara. The room descended into a raucous ring of cheering, clapping, screaming and laughing as Chiara and Rico sparred around the table, Rico wielding the Toblerones as though they were truncheons, each swing punctuated by a vicious cry of kendo spirit while Chiara swung and floated her head around each strike – however, any display of artful skill was undermined as she had to spend just as much time glancing each blow off of her shielding forearms. They'd foot-shuffled and back-stepped two circuits of the room when Rico sensed that interest was waning – and she didn't want to melt the chocolate and give Chiara formless slop either. Rico stepped back, making an elaborate show of mustering herself before charging forward with a two-fingered thrust. Recognising the telegraphed move, Chiara neatly stepped aside and plucked the long bars from Rico's grasp as she stormed past, the neat manoeuvre inspiring a final burst of applause from the appreciative audience.

Despite all of the energy expended in the duelling demonstration, Rico's star was undimmed and she immediately vaulted back onto the table.

"Claes has her bag of chocolate raisins, six Vicks Inhalers and a tube of lip salve!"

Several girls eyed Claes strangely. Claes sniffed haughtily and turned her nose up in an arch expression, as though she was considering higher matters than whatever the scurrilous gossip of the plebs might insinuate. "It's an experiment" she sniffed, and offered no further comment.

"Honey roasted peanuts for Triela!"

Triela accepted the three packets which landed before her, and immediately broke one open, playing the deep amber glazing of each nut along her tongue before crunching through them. Thus occupied, she watched the rest of the handout party with a thoughtful air.

It was odd, but making a big event of the handouts actually made it safer. Silvia had condensed the wet pearl of precious wisdom on one of her infrequent visits to the compound from her Bologna station, for maintenance. If the girls had scampered about with satchels clutched tightly under their arms and furtively sneaking glances about, then it would have been immediately suspicious – but making a grand show of a "study group" or suchlike occasion took attention away, because no-one would be conducting secret business so obviously. Hiding in plain sight – it was so elementary a double-bluff that it invariably worked, simply because no-one thought about it or dismissed it for its simplicity. The trouble with spies getting entangled in their dense webs of Machiavellian intrigue is that they lost the wood for the trees, and looked for complexity where there was none.

Triela's attention was drawn back to Rico when her tone of voice changed suddenly, abruptly dropping from her deliriously fervent squeals to a dissonant note of hesitation.

"Amelia, Bella, Cora, Diana..." she addressed the four members of the Agency bomb squad, who throughout the entire proceedings had stood with their hands folded in front of themselves calmly, their only actions to nod vigorously to signify their appreciation whenever a girl claimed that week's goodies. "I'm sorry, but I only have one thing for the four of you. Did someone forget to copy up the entire shopping list?" Rico was apologetic as she held up Amores of the Ambassador (inspiring gasps from a few of the more clued-in girls).

Cora stepped forward and bowed her head in acknowledgement of Rico's concern. "We are gratified to hear your concern for our welfare, Rico, but we must reassure you that no error has been made, and that none of us are bereft."

Diana followed on from where Cora left off. "No other item particularly animated our interest and we decided amongst each other that it would be selfish to demand more of limited group funds for extraneous paraphernalia."

"You're not wearing sackcloth-and-ashes for our sake, are you all though?" Dona asked with genuine concern (and an odd level of maturity, to Triela's ears). "It'd make sense if it was a box of Quality Street you could all dive your hands into, but it must be difficult to pass around just one thing."

"You don't have to deny yourselves!" Henrietta piped up, with squeaky earnestness, her cheeks colouring a little from the effort – the timid girl found it difficult to make exclamations.

"There is no need for any distress, Henrietta," Amelia explained, "through the sharing of common possessions we merely harmonise our operational rhythm through sharing so as to obtain a state of sublimation and telepathic communion with extrasensory precognition while concentrating on mission priorities."

Henrietta blinked, visibly astonished. "Really?"

"No, Henrietta, that is not the case." Bella shook her head with slow, grave censure. "Amelia is being facetious, which is to say, she is utilising the rhetorical device of sarcasm to mock your gullibility and aggressively denigrate your intellect."

"In actual fact," Cora continued without pause, her voice level and measured in an explanation of calm clinical certainty, "we requested this book because we have found after a period of comparative study that the writing of this authoress is totally hot."

"We have concluded that she is capable of rendering male characters in such a manner that, if they were to be materially real people, we would desire to engage in sexual intercourse with them." Diana said.

A beat passed while this sunk in. Sunk in? Triela's cheeks burnt with shame and embarrassment.

Amelia bowed her head deferentially to the room, and the other three members of the bomb squad, clustering behind her, executed the same measure. "I apologise not only for myself, but on behalf of Bella, Diana, and Cora, for our preemptory manner. It is improper and against the gathering's friendly spirit to depart from it early, but we wish to retire."

Triela's flushed cheeks even showed beneath her darker complexion. "You want to, uh—"

Eight eyes swivelled 38˚ to bring Triela into vision.

Triela, gnawing her lip averted her gaze from the open, unblinking bomb squad. "uh, er... um..."

"We wish to begin arranging a rota for reading the book." Bella stated. "To refrain from utilising what has been purchased would be a waste of our limited funds."

"Oh, yes, ah, of course, um, it's no problem, er, you all go right on ahead." Triela managed.

Bomb squad, 'cline, to the left, two-three.

"Thank you for going out for us, Rico." They all said together.

"That's no trouble!" Rico beamed happily, and waved both her arms emphatically even though the girls were barely twelve feet away. "Have a nice night!"

Nice night--! Triela almost choked in horror. God bless Rico's empty head!

The four girls all made an orderly file out of the room.

"Cannon Fodder." Dona murmured when the door clicked shut.

Put back on balance by the bomb squad's departure, Triela jabbed a hard gaze at Dona out of the corner of her eye. "Donatello!" She chided the younger girl sharply. "That's a bit strong!"

"No, no!" Dona said urgently, keen to explain herself. "I don't mean 'cannon fodder', I mean Cannon Fodder. It's a game," she waggled her fingers downwards in something of a walking gesture, "and y'see, all of your army men are in these little files of four..."

She petered off when the room only responded to her with blank stares that might well have come from the bomb squad themselves.

Dona dropped her hands down in an exasperated sigh. "Rico, can I please have my Twix now?"