“My, how attractive,” Zafi laughed. “Look what I can do.” She pulled off her glove and pressed her palm flat against her eye. She twisted her hand, which made a weird sucking noise. Then she pulled her palm away and her eyeball popped out. It bounced around on the end of her optic nerve halfway down her cheek. She beamed with glee.
“Wow.” Felix was so impressed that his voice quivered. Zafi calmly popped her eye back into its socket and flicked her hair behind her ear.
“Jimmy, look at this,” Felix insisted. “It’s so cool.”
But Jimmy wasn’t paying attention. He was examining the window to confirm what he suspected: the frame had been lubricated with some kind of grease. Zafi had opened the window expertly and with less noise than a shadow. But Jimmy didn’t stop to admire her work.
He looked back at Zafi. Why did she look like she was about to smile, Jimmy wondered. Didn’t she take any of this seriously? It was as if the corners of her mouth couldn’t help curling upwards.
With the lights on, it was obvious that there was no green stripe on her chest. Instead, three vertical stripes formed an emblem just as powerful and just as proud. In his night-vision, Jimmy had assumed they were green, but one was blue, one white and one red. It was the Tricolore – the French flag. That seemed to answer the question of who she worked for.
Jimmy realised that because the French Secret Service, the DGSE, had helped him, relations between Britain and France were worse than they had been for centuries. In fact, both had threatened war. Jimmy was starting to see that if Zafi was an enemy of Neo-democratic Britain, she could be an important ally for him. His curiosity became urgent now.
“Hey, you two lovebirds,” he began, “stop messing about. I need to know what’s going on.”
“Didn’t you see what she did with her eye?” Felix panted. Jimmy ignored him.
“What’s this ‘conversation’ you wanted to have with me?” he insisted. But before Zafi could answer, Georgie marched towards the door.
“I wouldn’t bother fetching your mother,” Zafi whispered. “She’s a little drowsy at the moment.”
Georgie turned to her with horror on her face. Jimmy felt a double layer of confusion – first was a lurch of panic for his mother’s safety, but beneath it came a reassuring warmth. To his programmed side, it made perfect sense. Felix’s cry for help. The crash of the bed on the floor – the other people in the house must have been drugged somehow to keep them out of the way. Assigned Zafi’s mission, he would have done the same. As the thought ran through his head, Zafi explained it to the others.
“I sent some sleeping gas under the necessary windows before I came through yours.”
Georgie looked at Zafi with a mixture of disbelief and anger. Then she marched out of the room anyway.
“Doesn’t she trust me?” Zafi asked with a cheeky sparkle in her eye.
That was enough for Jimmy. How dare she make a joke of it, he thought. Didn’t she realise she was playing with people’s lives? And she hadn’t even started to explain what she was doing there. Jimmy gripped Zafi’s shoulders and held her down on the bed.
“How can you do all this?” he hissed, his eyes only centimetres from hers. His face was turning red, but Zafi’s only reaction was to open her eyes wide and give a little smile.
“What a silly question,” she replied, ever so gently. “The same way you can, Jimmy Coates. I’m a genetically programmed—”
“No, I mean, how can you bring yourself to do it?” Jimmy was really seething now. “Don’t you realise that attacking innocent people, drugging them, even killing them – it’s wrong.”
“It might be wrong,” Zafi whispered back, “but it’s not me doing it, is it? It’s nothing to do with me. I watch it happen. Maybe I’m sad about it, maybe not. It’s not my responsibility.”
Jimmy wanted to scream right in her face. He felt like tearing her to shreds on the spot, but instead his grip melted to nothing. He slipped off her. If he’d demanded any more answers, he might have had to admit to himself that he envied her.
Georgie came back into the room. She didn’t look happy. “I can’t wake Mum,” she announced.
“What about my parents?” Felix asked.
“I can’t wake any of them, OK? It’s like they’re hibernating or something.”
“They’ll be asleep for a few more hours,” Zafi said, sitting up and flicking her hair behind her ear. “They’ll be fine by lunchtime.”
Jimmy wanted to get up and reassure his big sister, but he was still distracted by a small question at the back of his mind – what would he be capable of if nothing was his responsibility?
Georgie started the questioning again. “You’d better explain what’s going on.”
Zafi sighed. “But this is so much fun,” she said, too brightly. “It’s like a sleepover.”
Felix almost laughed, but only because he was nervous.
“I work for France,” Zafi continued with a shrug. “My government expects that Britain and France might be drawn into a war.”
“What?” Georgie gasped. “Why?”
Jimmy cut in to explain. “Yesterday, the French sent a fighter jet into British airspace.”
“Only after NJ7 bombed a French farmhouse,” Zafi added.
“But that wasn’t to attack France,” Jimmy sighed. “It’s where we’d been hiding. NJ7 were trying to get us.”
“Well, all they’ve got for themselves is trouble.”
Zafi and Jimmy stared at each other.
“I’ve come to invite you to join the right side,” Zafi announced.
“You want me to work for France against Britain – in a war?” Jimmy tried to keep his voice as calm as possible. Zafi nodded.
“Who says there’s going to be a war?” Felix asked. “That’s rubbish. Nobody’s loony enough to start a war.”
Jimmy wished his friend was right, but he was far from sure. He walked over to the window. It was still open from when Zafi had sneaked in. For a second, he hesitated. Perhaps something in his head was suggesting he could escape into the night and disappear forever. It only lasted a second. He slid the window shut. It closed as silently as it had opened for Zafi, but to Jimmy it felt like the portcullis on a castle coming down to trap him inside.
Did she expect him to give an answer straight away? He had already put everybody he loved in mortal danger to avoid working as an assassin for one government. Surely it was madness of the French to think he would kill for them.
So why was he still thinking about it? And why was his hand shaking?
“I came to you before,” he began eventually. “To the DGSE, I mean. When we needed your help. I offered to co-operate then.”
“To co-operate?” Zafi questioned. “Or to join us?”
“I offered information. But Uno Stovorsky said he didn’t need it. And he never suggested that I work for you.”
“The DGSE didn’t need you then, did we.” Zafi explained haughtily. “We had me.” At that she gave a sly chuckle. “But yesterday changed things. France needs you now.”
Jimmy couldn’t order any of his thoughts. “I don’t understand,” he started quietly. “I thought there were only two of us. Me and Mitchell. We’re both English. How come you’re