Jessa woke up between her sister and Flynn on John Cane’s too-small-for-three-people-to-sleep-on-comfortably sofa. Rachel was curled up in a firm-looking armchair, and Hugo Fletcher sat on the floor in the corner, leaning onto a pillow sandwiched between the wall and his head. Dr Mortlock took the other corner, with her head neatly tipped backwards against the wall. Bleary eyed and drool-mouthed, Jessa felt relief at having been able to get some rest.

Her eyes focused on the television, muted but active, its colours dancing upon the glassy surface.

A mass of orange. And black. She blinked away the remnants of snooze and pulled herself into cognisance.

“Oh crap!” she exclaimed without thinking. Everyone woke up with a start. “Look!” She grabbed the remote control next to her and pulled the volume up.

“…In case you’re just joining us, we have breaking news that there’s been an explosion at 10 Downing Street. Firefighters on the ground haven’t yet been able to reach the property due to crowding in the streets, but military forces have been deployed and are fighting the blaze from the air. There is currently no word on whether the Prime Minister and his family are safe. The bomb seems to have been a homemade device, thrown by someone in the crowd…”

Everyone stared at the screen. Before long, their surprise subsided into despondent acceptance. Nothing seemed too shocking anymore.

#

Jessa breathed in the steam from the shower. She closed her eyes and stood directly under the head, feeling the force of its hot streams spilling over her scalp and cascading down over her face. She opened her mouth and drew in long, cleansing breaths from John Cane’s flowery tiled bathroom.

Patchoulied, lavendered and waterlillied, she stepped out from the shower and scrunched her clean toes into the fluffy bathmat. Her red-hot skin cooled down quickly in the fresher air outside of the shower confinement.

John had selected a few items of his wife’s clothing to offer Jessa in case she wanted to change, and though she didn’t feel very enthusiastic about the beige slacks, she decided that the slightly-too-big v-neck t-shirt in middle-aged-lady-lilac was better than the sweat-soaked stripy number she’d been sporting before. Disappointed that John hadn’t thought to find her any clean underwear, and too embarrassed to ask for any, she turned her one pair of underpants inside out and pulled them on.

She stared into Mrs Cane’s vanity mirror and took a moment to sniff all the perfumes that stood together, lined up like fragrant little soldiers. She found a relatively inoffensive body lotion and squeezed a dollop into the palm of her hand. She mindlessly smeared the cool white cream over her arms, hands and neck, letting its synthetic aroma and moisture fill her nostrils and pores. Finally, she put on her pendant, cold and metallic against her skin.

She lightly fingered the symbol, and was overcome by the memory of receiving the necklace from her parents on her first day at Winsbury.

Her parents.

She’d been trying not to think about them, but she couldn’t help but wonder how they were. She imagined her mother continuously bursting into tears and her father being sensible and protective. Everything’s going to be fine and dandy, he always said.

Jessa re-joined her colleagues in the living room, towel-squeezing the ends of her hair before they dripped onto her new old shirt.

“Nice top,” Audrey nudged her sister and pointed at the roses and birds embroidered near the collar.

“Ha,” Jessa narrowed her eyes. “Wait ’til you see what he picked out for you. What did I miss?”

“Nothing much, but the reward for someone turning Silas in is now a million pounds,” said Flynn.

“And still no word about the Prime Minister,” Hugo added. “Rachel’s been checking up on satellite maps of the city. It’s getting worse out there. The streets are just packed with people.”

“I think it’s worse than the TV is showing,” Rachel said, swivelling away from the computer to face the group. “Most of the news channels are showing all these localised events, but I’ve set up this feed from social media that’s showing me updates from all over the UK, and it’s happening everywhere. There are user-uploaded photos and videos of police violence, people getting arrested all over the place, this crazy rioting. But we’re only seeing on the news what’s happening in London.”

“How are you seeing social media?” asked Jessa. “I thought Silas took over the internet?”

“He has, mostly. But he’s left the biggest social sites untouched, which of course means people can share pictures and discuss what’s happening. He’s letting people get riled up in the best way they know how. It’s pretty genius. My Soshe feed is going insane.”

“So, what you’re seeing on social media isn’t cohesive with what we’re seeing on the news?” said Hugo.

“I’m sure that’s a calculated move on the part of the news networks,” Dr Mortlock said wryly.

“Agreed,” Audrey said sadly. “It’s probably in the networks’ best interest to make it seem less… you know…”

“Apocalyptic?” Flynn suggested. “Because that’s how it seems if you think that this is happening all over the country.”

Jessa kept her eyes on the screen, watching the replays of footage from all the different angles from the news cameras and their voyeuristic reporting. The bang. The cowering. The smoke. The flames.

“That’s it,” she said. “That’s what we should do.”

“What?” said Flynn.

“If we’re going to stop him, we need something big and powerful. Like an explosion.”

“You want to blow him up?”

“What else can we do? We know where he’s going to be and when. We have some time to figure out all the details and set it up. What do you think?” she turned to Hugo.

“Not the worst idea I’ve ever heard, in theory. I’m sure the military would be getting the SAS ready for some similar action if they knew where he was.”

“But they don’t.”

“An explosion is so destructive,” said Audrey. “What if it brings the whole building down?”

“Then the building comes down.”

“It’ll be full of people, though.”

“Then we can try and make the blast as specific as possible, right? I’m sure I’ve seen them do that in movies.”

“Jessa, this is real life, not Die Hard.”

“I know that, but come on, Audrey! If this is happening everywhere, then in the grand scheme of things, doing a little damage to stop it all, don’t you think it would be worth it?”

“For the greater good,” Flynn said quietly.

“Everyone is so angry about this, though. We can’t be the only people setting out to hurt him. What if there are others planning how to destroy him too?” Rachel wondered aloud. “I mean, what if other people turn up with guns or homemade bombs or something?”

Jessa shook her head. “He’ll see that coming. He knows he’s making a lot of people angry, so he must be expecting them to try something like that. So he must have a way to protect himself. We need an attack he doesn’t expect. We need to get in there first and plant something that he can’t see coming,” she looked back to Hugo Fletcher.

He thought for a moment. “I think you’re right, we need something big to bring him down. But logistically, it would be tricky. The first hurdle would be that we don’t even have any kind of explosives.”

“I have a few items in my stash, but nothing like that,” John Cane added. “But actually… I might be able to get some.

”Seriously?” asked Jessa.

“Well, I do have my connections. I know people in the secret service and the military, I can try all the possible angles and see what I can do.”

“Won’t that be hard to do, though?” Audrey said discerningly. “I mean, surely there’s paperwork involved in acquiring explosives.”

“In ordinary circumstances, yes,” John replied politely. “But in this situation, I’m sure people will be preoccupied enough that we could circumvent the, uh, administrative side of things. And I certainly don’t have any better ideas. Anyone else?”

They all shook their heads.

“All right then, dare I say we have a plan.”