I wake up with my head resting on a familiar chest. I hadn't gone to sleep like that, but there it is. I dimly remember crawling into my own bed and finding it occupied. I had decided to sleep there regardless because, after all, it was my damn bed. Now, Wisdom's hand is on my back, and to my considerable relief I am still wearing all the clothes I started the night in. At least I'm pretty sure I'm relieved... but it's been a while.

"Morning," he says.

"Mmph," I reply and I hear his smile as he brushes hair off my face. God knows what it looks like; it was still wet when I crawled into bed.

"Look, Jay, you need to tell me about last night."

"Mmph," I reply, crumpling my forehead. "Why'd you steal my damn flat?"

"Because I knew where all the bugs were," he replies.

"Because you fitted them," I reply, pretending to be pissy. Actually, I knew where the bugs were, too. I just never cared that much – Ollie didn't call me at home and I didn't have any contact with anyone else that might have been considered a threat. Plus, actually, in my secret soul, I liked being bugged. Go figure.

"I only fitted about half of them," he tells me. "Did you know you had three different systems hooked up in here?"

"Mmph," I say, I still don't care. "So you loop them or what?" I ask, delaying. To loop them is to give the bug a feed of edited material. Repeated stuff from when the flat's empty or full of inconsequential noise. It's not perfect, but it tends to throw people for a while, and let's be honest, it's not like the monitoring is ever going to be high class. It could mostly be done by untrained monkeys. I know. I did it.

"You don't care," he says, accurately. "Spill."

I keep my eyes closed. This is how we used to debrief, and we used to tell the other girls we were debriefing, too. They thought it was hillarious. "Okay, Angie started manifesting," I tell him. "You know she was athletic, right? She was on all sorts of teams and stuff when she was a little kid, but lately it's just been the athletics. And she starts doin' well. And then she was doing really well… and then it got kinda suspicious so the kid eased down, but Clare was like… y'know, that's weird cos she's runnin' an' that, but this kids no' even ou' of breff. Weird, righ'" I pause, still with my eyes closed, imagining it.

"So the kid's manifesting," he states.

"Yeah, an' Clare's worried. An' then they're watching Easties an' this storyline comes on an' it's all 'Oh no, my sons a mutant and manifesting. What do I do?' an' up pops this number like 'If you have been effected by any of the issues' bladibla. So Clare rings, yeah, an' she's given all this abou' genetic samples an' reversin' and levels of mutation…"

"Christ, I thought that advice had gone the way of all things," he says. I can't help but agree. It's like the old chestnut about being gay by choice. I mean, puh-lease. Who ever thought that was likely?

"So they're out there, spinning this about under level three it can be reversible, an' you've got to get tested," I continue. I swear I feel him rolling his eyes. I laugh, although it's not really funny, then I sit up, because this requires some arm waving.

"Fucked innit, but it works, see, coz that's what Clare does. She finks she's doin' right by her little one and the next fing she knows her kid is lifted right out of the classroom." Imagine it. Scares the hell out of me.

"No," he says, his eyes are wide and he's watching the hand waving. I pull my hair over one shoulder and shake my head.

"Yep. Right out of the classroom, y'know. Right out of her school. You would think the teachers might have fuckin' said somefin' but no. Not a bloody word. Gone." Would I have said something? If the men came, with guns and pieces of paper? Would I stop them? Which is more worrying, the guns, or the pieces of paper?

"And when Clare's gone to the police, they've shown her paper work and told her there's nothing they can do. And the school, apparently, was no fucking help. Just said 'the transfer paperwork had been signed by the child's legal guardian' and Clare's all like 'First I heard that that ain't me!'." That isn't what she really said. It's best not to think bout what she'd really said. Or sobbed.

"So yeah, it's fucked," I say brightly and climb out of the bed. "What's for breakfast? I'm fuckin' starving."