Patrick Schofield knew the beauty of a Nokia Number 3 was in the ease of disassembly. He slid out its battery, pulled out its SIM card and dunked all the body parts into the mop bucket of room 413. His other two phones got a similar send-off. Raynes' iPhone, however, proved resilient – there proved no way to snap the SIM in half without one of those mini toothpick rods to open the compartment and it was tough to remove the battery or run it down. It was decided to go for the visitor's kitchen area instead and solve the problem with more drastic equipment or, failing that, just abandon the phones registered to them altogether without bothering to destroy evidence of future texts and emails that no longer seemed to exist in this world. Ichor was more up for debate. There was also the question of the scanned 'control' QR code on Raynes' machine and whether that database could prove a problem.

The room they were looking for was marked second floor on the overhead placards and proved a short trip. It seemed a little dilapidated but provided more than what they needed. There were your typical toasters, kettles and even complimentary bags of tea and cups. Most importantly it had a microwave. Raynes arranged his phone and the three others on the turntable, then hit hi-power and watched the sparks and smoke begin. Ichor was to be the only survivor. Schofield in the meantime prepared a quick brew and took the batteries out of the smoke alarm. He watched as Raynes' iPhone caught fire and held out a cup.

"Milk, Paul?" he asked.

"I don't drink tea, Schofield."

"Why didn't you say anything when I pulled out two mugs?"

"I was busy."

"You're getting tea. It's up to you if you want to drink it." Schofield searched the cabinets. There wasn't any milk he could see. Black it was.

"There won't be time. Mark's waiting out front," replied Raynes.

"Well," Schofield slammed a cabinet "Mark can't wait? He's in the parking garage, isn't he?"

"He's in a loading zone out front. I told him the plans had changed."

"Okay, I'll have it fast then," said Schofield and took a sip of black tea. The phones in the microwave crackled now well on their way to joining the great telephone exchange in the sky. He added some cold water and finished the tea with speed. "Those'll be done soon. Turn it off."

Schofield left the cup behind, shut the door to the kitchen behind them and went outside to meet Mark. They found the van parked out at the front and climbed in to find the A/C on at full against the summer sun, and their team wondering what they were doing here. They slid open the side doors and sat in the back seats amongst the rest.

"Afternoon," said Schofield. "Sorry for this." He introduced himself.

"Good to meet you in person, Patrick, I've heard good things," said Mark. The guy really didn't remember that he'd said the same thing last time too.

"The plans have changed, but we're still a go for pursuit here, so we've got to head out. You're Mark, right?"

"Yes, I am. We heard plans had changed. Paul kept us up to date."

"Sure. Sorry again to keep you all here."

"The latest from CCTV and cell data is that we need to get to Hyde Park," said Raynes. "Do you think you could get us over there as fast as you can? We'll need to avoid the crowds."

"Sure," said Mark, "but it's a public place. I thought we were to treat the perpetrators armed. There's only", he counted, "five of us, and the two of you, so in a public place without the element of surprise and civilians in the way it'll be tough" He turned back to type in the location on his GPS.

"They're not armed. We know that," replied Raynes. The case of sniper-rifle was uncomfortable back here, and he climbed out to put it in the back of the van instead.

"You're right in general. There will be witnesses." said Schofield, "That's why we're only planning on arrests. No violence, no slamming people against railings or that sort of thing, alright? Are we ready?"

"Waiting on Paul, and I've just got to finish with this GPS," replied Mark. He hummed to himself as he wrangled with the touchscreen.

Raynes heard murmurs from the front. He'd hefted the sniper rifle, and had to rearrange bits and pieces of equipment for a good while before finding a spot for it. He hadn't been paying attention to the conversation in the front when he closed the double doors and returned to his place beside Schofield. He noticed that the Englishman had put his glasses on. The van was silent except for BBC radio 2, turned down and close to a whisper. Mark in front had the GPS on his lap.

"Raynes, where the hell's Hyde Park?" asked Schofield, not looking up from a roadmap atlas spread over his knees. Every van has a roadmap atlas, that's just a constant of life. "I've been there recently. Have you? I think you must've been at some point, right? All the guys think they know it but no-one can place it."

"Hyde park? It's huge. It shouldn't be a problem – didn't you, Hortez and I go there for a meeting once? I remember it was convenient for us," replied Raynes, studying the atlas.

"You were flying in a few hours and we wanted to catch you before you left."

"Yeah."

Schofield shook his head. "I don't see it."

Paul Raynes thought for a while. He'd been there once or twice. They had this statue of their old prince of theirs who'd died a long time ago, or was that Kensington gardens? There was Diana memorial, he remembered that, and there was a palace in their somewhere too but where it stood he couldn't remember. Paul Raynes tried to stay calm and think it through. Paul Raynes didn't feel himself today.

"Is it...maybe North? North of South Kensington?" Raynes took a stab in the dark.

"North? How can it be north of South Kensington if that's just a few streets, Kensington Gardens and Marble Arch?" Schofield traced the path on an Atlas. He was right. North of South Kensington was just that. The glasses came off.

"It is North", said Raynes, "it's around there. I've been around there somewhere. I'm sure I saw the Albert Hall near it, it's definitely visible."

"I don't know," said Schofield "that sounds like Kensington Gardens. Hyde Park's close, I remember they're linked somehow. You might be right."

"It's not in the GPS, I've checked it out," came a voice from the front. "It's blank."

"How about on your phone?" asked Schofield.

"Not there either. There's no results," said Mark from the driver's seat.

There was an uncomfortable moment. "We need other options."

Schofield turned his attention back to Raynes. "Where exactly, Raynes? You sure it's north, not south of Albert Hall? Point it on here," Schofield tapped the page with his glasses.

Raynes thought and reckoned for a moment he almost had it, but couldn't get a good grasp. He traced Exhibition Road on the map, Kensington Gardens, the Albert Hall. "I've seen it from the front of the Hall, on the avenue that runs there. That's all I know." Thinking about it too long was giving him a headache, the same kind he'd got when he'd looked at where the seam in the 'escape' door had been. The truth is difficult to swallow, and Paul Raynes was starting to form a batshit idea.

"Could it be Hyde and hide, maybe?" he asked quietly.

"Hide and Hyde?" Schofield repeated.

"I've started feeling sick thinking too much about it, just like with the the shift deal. You remember how you felt after that? Sick to your stomach, kinda light-headed?"

"That's not just me?"

"No."

"Hey," Schofield announced, "who here feels light-headed? Stomach pain? Flu symptoms?" There was quiet.

"I feel off," said Mark. "Anyone else? Jackie?" he turned to the shotgun seat.

"I don't feel great," she replied, turned around. "Is it the fumes? Should we get out of here?"

"Schofield," said Mark "is there a gas leak or something we should know about?"

"No, it's fine," he replied. "So you're all feeling a bit sick, right?" He turned to Raynes. "It could be that. If we're all feeling it, all thinking about this it might not be a coincidence. And if that's the case then we won't find Hyde Park. If it's hidden, we can't find it the normal way."

He went quiet then, found a pen in his pocket and began going through the atlas. Maybe he didn't know where Hyde Park was, but knowing where he was sure it wasn't might also help.

"Have you found it?" asked Mark.

"For now head to Albert hall, Mark. We know it's nearby and we can work it out from there if Paul's theory's right." replied Schofield. "I'm beginning to think it might be."

"Paul's theory?" asked Mark

"That's right. We think we know what the problem is," he said "don't worry."

A feeling had been itching the Englishman for a while, trying to put a finger on it hadn't been possible with his attention divided. The roads didn't make sense. South Kensington looked familiar enough, but turn north and follow the streets and you'd find them merging, dead-ends appearing out of nowhere, roads that were named things he couldn't read right. Looking at one place on the map seemed normal. It was only tracing them back and forth that every time they were different, circled back to where you started, blended into the background before your eyes and disintegrated into the paper in ways that made him believe Paul Raynes might be not so insane. Schofield's was now feeling worse by the second. He started colouring in and crossing out the map. Like father, like son. Jamie has his supercars, and I have my map to colour in too. Another road atlas would turn up soon enough even if he ruined this copy. This was a van, after all, a place where replacement maps seem to appear of their own accord under seats and in the pockets if you ever take one out. No-one knows who buys replacement road maps of Britain. Why are they all worn and greasy like this one? Again, a mystery. Schofield left himself a nice box of unscribbled space in the middle, a rough area north of South Kensington where the strangeness more or less began. Seek, and you shall find, he reckoned. But it would take time to scour these streets and find which were a mirage, and which were actually the hidden Hyde Park.

The van dipped from gridlocked street to street and headed North. It wasn't an old model and had low mileage but wasn't four-wheel drive and you could tell. The driver with his damaged GPS struggled to find the best way through, and had to split his attention between near-misses, re-routing them and listening to Schofield planning out his attack in the back. Mark didn't know how you could plan an attack for a place no-one in the van seemingly knew how to get to. Raynes hadn't updated central control in Virginia since hopping in, and wasn't asking for updates on the locations of his fugitives either. It was weird, this whole situation was weird, thought Mark. He'd get to Albert hall, assist in the arrests if there were any, but then he had some questions. He registered what Schofield said and turned his attention to the passengers planning the attack.

"Sure, no problem, we'll find the western gate and go through Kensington Gardens.", he replied to Schofield "We'll head through from the palace side like you say. If Hyde Park is nearby then you're right that it's best to cover all the nearest exits. We'll put two north-side, two south-side and we can comb the whole place. I'll call you if we have trouble. Phone or radio?"

"You have my cell number, that'll be perfect" said Schofield. "Paul and I'll head through toward the Serpentine and begin combing the southern section of Kensington Gardens and move eastwards through these weird streets."

"Sounds fine."

"Also, there's a good chance the targets might be slowed down by Miss Packard who was admitted to hospital this afternoon but left before medical assessment. Likewise she might have become split from the others. Look for the descriptions we've given you. There's no reason to believe at this point they'd have a chance to change clothing."

"We're almost there," said Mark.

"Call me the minute you spot anyone. Let's keep it standard, routine, simple, alright?" Mark didn't know that Schofield and Raynes would have a damn hard time trying to pick up a phone call from him even if they wanted to. Besides, sending the strike team to the western gate and splitting it up meant they had a head-start if the news about their totalled hybrid trickled down too far.

"Mark, what's your shoe size?" asked Raynes as they neared Albert Hall.

"I'm a size 8 in most places, though you never really know 'till you put them on."

"Sure, that might work. I brought the wrong kind for this, haven't had a chance to find alternatives," he replied "was hoping you could help me out with the spare pair you have in the back?"

"You should've seen him slip at the hospital," said Schofield.

"Really?" said Mark. "Sure, take the Doc Martens in the boot."

"You sure?" asked Raynes.

"No worries."

They pulled up in front of Albert hall, threw on some hazard lights and let the senior agents out of the van. Raynes found that a pair of Doc Martens can look convincingly like dress shoes if you hide the upper lacing beneath a pair of charcoal-grey business slacks. He hefted the sniper rifle, and led Schofield to the street-side entrance of the hall. The Englishman was buried in his atlas. This was it They were stood at the chiselled entrance to the Albert Hall rotunda.

"We need to head north from here and find an entrance into Kensington Gardens," said Schofield. "It should be faster if we search systematically. We start here and scan our way eastwards across these streets."

Raynes looked at the map. The page was mostly black, crossed out from Exhibition Road down and Marble arch upwards. What lay in the middle was a small box still visible that seemed weird. Raynes noticed it too, the roads kept shifting, and the map seemed to rearrange itself to keep them out.

"It should be... that way," pointed Schofield.

"Where?" asked Raynes. "Where's the entrance to this place? You've scribbled out all of this place, Albert Hall and Kensington Gardens."

"It should be right here. Somewhere east I think."

They walked eastwards down the street and followed the boundary of Kensington Gardens. They crossed Exhibition road, continued on. Hyde Park and Kensington gardens are, in reality, one huge park. But today no-one knows that, the universe might say. Today is a special day and the Unicorn and the Lion on the gates agree with me.

"Say again? Which way?" asked Raynes, reaching for one of his mints. He still had both soft and hard ones. This was a soft-mint situation, one prone to last a while that didn't need the strong punch of a harder mint. He saw Schofield pointing and followed his hand. "Shouldn't we have passed the entrance by now?"

"I'd have thought so," said Schofield.

"Wait which way's north?"

"This way, no?" Schofield pointed down the street.

"No, that's East," said Raynes. He squinted at what was before him. There was some level of bullshit at play here. A little way behind him was Exhibition road, far to the west stood the edifice of Albert Hall, still visible even from here. It was a stout, thick-skinned building dead serious about classical music. If buildings were people, there was no doubt that Albert hall would be a hunched down sumo wrestler. A set of musical carvings, Latin writing and ornaments visible above the rooftops failed to mask the rough, bald-topped and monolithically impressive truth. Running east to west and serving Albert Hall was the main street before him. Westward traffic moving towards Kensington gardens seemed calm enough, but down to eastwards and down Exhibition road queues were piling up, and had become stationary. Police directed traffic where they could down in the distance but there were sirens and backlogs as far as he could easily make out. Mark had done well to get them this far. What about north? He turned his head slowly, but frustratingly found himself looking down the other side of the street. Sure, there was something there, a gap, but in geographical terms there didn't look to be any room for a north direction. How could there be? The compass for now went three ways in this part of London, and it looked like that filled the full 360. He tried to stop mid-way but found he just ended up looking at the other side of the street again with a short delay. So what was on the opposite side of the street near Kensington gardens? Nothing. It was just one street, where east and west were tied together in a curve. If the street was a curve then surely the two lanes eastbound and westbound went in the same direction? He turned towards Exhibition road. If he looked this way, southwards, then the street looked normal, straight, and not curved at all. Raynes had stumbled across some M.C.Escher-ish level of strangeness here. The world tilted a little and his eyes started to water.

"I don't see it. I don't see a north. Do you? Is that map right?"

"It's right."

"What the hell next then?"

"I used to be in the boy scouts half a lifetime ago, even did the Duke of Edinburgh award. Maybe there's a way."

"Great." Raynes didn't know what the Duke had to do with it. He'd eventually find out it's a regular British scouting award.

"We've got to be close. North doesn't disappear because it's a Monday afternoon", continued Schofield. "You're right, it should be visible from here. I've stood here and seen Hyde Park." In fact," he said consulting his map "I'm pretty sure. Do you think we might be able to walk there, even if you can't see it?"

"Be my guest, scout leader."

Schofield checked the flow of traffic. There was a clear gap one direction, and slow moving traffic towards South Kensington heading in the other. He looked down at his map and started walking across the street. He forced himself to step straight, one foot before the other, something which wasn't easy at his weight. He focused, and found that when he looked up he was walking back toward Raynes. It wasn't possible. It just couldn't be.

"What the hell are you doing?"

"Crossing the road," said Schofield.

"How? You did a circle. I watched you," Raynes chewed on his mint.

"To me I walked dead straight. I'd have passed a sobriety test I walked so straight."

To this the American said nothing, and merely watched the traffic pass. Schofield had another idea.

"Maybe we need a different approach. Can we fight fire with fire? Maybe we can use the keys, or regroup and rethink this?"

"Sure. I was thinking it might be a good plan to drop off the radar. We can try a different side, maybe tackle this out of bounds area from the north or east. By now Mark could be reporting back to Virginia on where we are. Your people here might be catching on."

"It's been at least a half-hour. They'll have found the car."

"Yeah. We need to get out of here," said Raynes. "I'm not getting picked up and getting asked questions about what happened."

"How long has it been? Do we actually know?" asked Schofield. Neither had reset their watches after using 'escape', and it might well have almost an hour since the collision on Fulham road. That was a best guess. Maybe Mark didn't suspect them of anything yet, or maybe someone had called him by now and the van would be looking for them.

"Alright. We can head east. The roads are gridlock, so it'll be easier to lose vehicles," said Schofield. Heading East and knowing which way that was seemed a challenge by itself. East and West were pretty similar all of a sudden. He remembered more about Hyde Park now. Eastwards there might be a gate somewhere, and there was a road that cut straight through the middle of it. Which road that was, he couldn't remember, but he had a feeling it was across the Serpentine. The more he looked at the map, the more came back. Hyde Park could be well hidden in this game of hide and seek, but that didn't mean that searching wouldn't work. Would that work? Is it that the more you looked for it the less hidden it became?

"When you say fighting fire with fire do you mean you want to do a shift again," said Raynes.

"It can't hurt to try."

"Hell yeah it can."

"We're close and if we can just break past the gates then we might stand a chance. It's definitely north-east-ish of Albert hall. You're right about that."

"It's somewhere between here and Marble Arch," echoed Raynes.

Schofield folded the road map atlas and got Raynes to open the sniper rifle case and add the atlas to the usual parts of disassembled Barrett machinery.

"I'll find you a door somewhere but we've got to consider the other possibility – the park might be gone forever," said the American.

Schofield hadn't thought of that. "Let's hope not. If Packard still has a phone signal that registers somewhere near then we have to assume at least their phones are still here."

They got far, almost all the way to the south-eastern edge of where Schofield had scribbled to on his London A-Z. They were about to try finding another entrance when around the corner stepped out two figures - a woman and a man. Schofield couldn't make out their features from this distance, but no-one could mistake the staggering gait of the one on the right. Both of the figures approaching were usually friendly, and Schofield had been offered a homemade biscuit from their offices at the American Embassy on one of his rare visits. The woman on the left had baked them when she'd had a midnight craving for biscuits and fired up the oven on the spur of the moment. She'd brought a few to work the next day and Schofield had been lucky enough to be visiting that day. The Mexican beside her had shared with him some of the best handed-down recipes for traditional cuisine. He was the sort who didn't take bad excuses well, hated things not done just right, but get on his good side on a weekend and you'd find he mellowed right down. Schofield watched as his American stopped, pretended to tie his Martens, and clicked the safety off from the handgun in his pocket. It was left there. He knew that Raynes practiced a quick draw. A few paces away were the frowning faces of agents Manuel Hortez and Bianca Navari.

"Hello Patrick, Paul" she said with a wave. When Navari smiled she meant it. They looked like they'd come straight from her office. Navari had her lanyard on and all. She seemed relieved. Agent Hortez was less cheerful.

"Bianca, Señor Manuel, my goodness funny running into you. I imagine it's no coincidence, am I right or am I right?" he said. "What are you doing here?" Schofield stood with steak-slab hands on hips. Raynes and Schofield stood side by side and a few paces away the two American agents faced them much the same.

"Sorry to shock you like this," said Navari. "Normally I wouldn't interrupt but we couldn't get through to you by phone, or text, or any other way. Manuel tried, I don't know" she turned to Hortez "you tried all the numbers you had, I think, even all of yours, Patrick. We managed to get a hold of the number for your phones after being put on hold with your people in Charing Cross for I don't know how long. You have three?" They were the soft, concerned tones of a young mother speaking in east coast American. There was a tinge, Schofield thought, of Indian flair in a few words, but no more.

"I know, it's a lot of phones, a lot of numbers," replied Schofield. He'd sent her a card congratulating her on her newest arrival. She'd been on maternity leave for some time, and recovered seemingly extremely quickly.

"We're sorry for all the trouble," continued Schofield. "I didn't hear anything. I must've missed your calls," he said. He turned to an equally apologetic Raynes, then back to Navari. "Did you try a Mark Callaghan at the Embassy?" he asked.

Navari nodded.

"On top of that we had the siren in the van. And I guess Mark was driving."

"Ah, I see."

Raynes put down the sniper rifle, took out Ichor and pretended to scroll through missed calls. His phone had perished, but still, maybe Navari would believe it.

"I did get in touch with Mr Callaghan," she said. I managed to contact him and he explained his role. I had to go through a few people to get all the details. He mentioned you should be around here somewhere."

"I don't know how we could've lost contact, we're sorry about that," said the Englishman.

"It's no trouble, don't worry. I needed the walk, and our cab got stuck in all of this..." she motioned to the static traffic "... all of this mess. That's London for you." She folded her arms, looked to Hortez, and hesitated.

"Actually, there's been another problem. It's a strange report I got. I understand you're on a terror case related to what's been happening here in South Kensington?"

"That's right," he replied. Navari might not know everything, but she knew a lot. You had to, if you were in her job. It made maternity leave a headache. "Paul's been brought on to assist in what I understood as a gesture of good faith and collaboration. Thanks for that," he said, "and for the help of Callaghan and his team. He's a madman behind the wheel." Schofield was out of breath from the walk and the heat. "We're at a delicate stage at the moment, I'm afraid."

"I know. Mark was telling me much the same, that you think the terrorists are in Hyde park," she said. "I won't keep you long. We got concerned about your vehicle. We were asked to inquire about it?"

"Vehicle? The van, or do you mean my personal car? Why, what's happened?" Schofield bluffed, and hoped the car on Fulham had burned its passengers. But even then there'd be the satellites, and the CCTV. The sky was a deep blue watchtower.

Navari's smile faded into a deadpan. Her early relief was now just confusion. Seeing them alive had been reassuring. "Your hybrid was found crashed halfway into a shop on Fulham road earlier today. There were fatalities identified including", she looked from Schofield to Raynes, "the driver and a passenger. Phone GPS from your devices suggested it left from the crime scene of South Kensington. Is that right?"

"Well, Bianca, that's terrible if my car's been stolen, but I can't talk about it now. Raynes and I need to go." Schofield put up his hands in defeat. "It's possible I left my phone inside. Sorry for the trouble."

"Patrick, let me stop you there. You and I know there's cameras across London. I know you both know about what I'm telling you. For Christ's sake you visited the scene, didn't you? What I don't know is why you'd try to stage your own deaths, here, in the middle of the city. And why you'd do it so badly."

Agent Hortez had been silent until now, and stepped forward. "I'll tell you those bodies they dragged out might be mighty burned, but to me one of those guys was dressed in a suit just like you there, Washington D.C. And the other was about your size, Patrick. Can you fill us in on what's going on?"

"Paul, I'm sorry but we're taking you off this terror hunt" said Navari. "You're coming with us. Patrick, as for you," she said frowning, "I thought you had respect for me." She reached into a blazer pocket, Schofield thought for cigarettes, then remembered that she'd quit a while back. An email print-out was handed to him.

"I'll need my glasses to read this. May I?" he asked.

"Of course, go ahead, but slowly, please." Navari watched him get out a tattered case and wipe the lenses. Schofield leaned back to give himself a bit of distance from the page. It was a statement from a man he vaguely remembered meeting at a work Christmas party that was ordering him to return to his office and abandon this venture 'in the strictest terms and without delay'.

"Ultimately, what you do is your government's business," said a blurred Navari. "I have a responsibility to our joint interests and values, so I'm going to ask that you allow Agent Hortez and myself to escort you as well as Paul".

Patrick Schofield had given the Hyde Park problem quite a bit of thought when he was following Raynes toward Exhibition road. Now he hoped she might indulge him for a moment. He put away the glasses. "Ms. Navari, I'd be happy to be relieved of this case, and join you. We'll sort this out." He returned the printout. "And I'm sure you'll find that Paul and I can explain whatever this is." He sighed. "I'm sorry to ask, but I was hoping you might be able to answer something that's been bothering us about this case as we walk. We're close and I'm sure it would help."

"Uh-huh, sure, but no tricks." she said. "And Paul, please hand me your weapon if you don't mind," Raynes reached into his pocket, clicked the safety back on.

"Are you a Sikh?" he asked, "I know it's an odd request, humour me."

Navari stood, puzzled, with one hand holding a piece of cloth outstretched towards Raynes for him to wrap up the gun, this way preferably without passers-by noticing what was being handed over. She was distracted. Hortez wasn't. His gaze on Raynes' jacket pocket didn't falter.

"Say again?" asked Navari. Her hand fell, handkerchief still in hand. "No, I'm not religious. How's this relevant?"

"We think someone with knowledge of the Sikh religion might help us. Why, we had a ten-step worked out plan for catching these guys."

"Hortez? Religious history?"

"Nope," said Hortez, too slowly for comfort.

"Damn, you see with our ten-step search program for combing streets for our fugitives I'm confident we had a chance of catching them. But we're missing a piece of the puzzle. Do you remember it Paul?" asked Schofield.

"Enlighten me, again," said Raynes "I've forgotten a bit." This was the first Raynes had heard of it. When Paul Raynes didn't know what to do, he played along. He took the cloth from Navari.

"We really need to go, Patrick. Whatever it is, the police can handle it. I need your weapon, Raynes, and yours preferably, too, Pat. We've known each other for a long time. Do the right thing." Raynes held the cloth, evidently taken from an office break-room still stained with coffee, ejected the magazine of the Starlite handgun in his pocket, and wrapped it in the cloth.

Schofield began to count the steps, wistfully looking to the sky, imagining the ten-step plan. "One, two, three...do you remember step three, we wanted to fight fire with fire?" he asked Raynes.

"No, I don't." Raynes passed over the cloth to Schofield, and showed his hands were empty.

"Say it with me. It might refresh your memory," he replied.

"Stop talking, Schofield, and put your section five in the cloth. I'm warning you," said Hortez. In response the fat man held his hands up in defeat.

"One, two, three..." started Raynes, and when he said it, the nausea and the stomach all came flooding back, harder than before, much harder than in the van. If Hyde park were hide park, then hiding logic applied, and hide-and-seek logic, too. And in hide-and-seek, what do you do before you seek?

Schofield hurried him, "four, yeah sure, step four, five, six and seven," they said together. Schofield took out his revolver, broke open the action. He put it in the cloth, wrapped it. "And after that was step eight, nine, and then ten," Schofield finished, staring with a clarity that shocked Navari. He held out the cloth bundle, arms wide. "And that's the beauty of hide and seek when it's a day like today. I only need to say 'ready or not, here I come'."

Schofield stepped towards north. For Navari and Hortez on the corner of Exhibition Road and Kensington High Street, Patrick Schofield disappeared off the face of the Earth. Hortez was faster, and had his pistol readied. He fired three shots wide west into brickwork before changing target to Raynes. Schofield was faster, though and pulled the taller American by the collar. He'd said a short Sikh prayer he'd learned from an Indian colonel for good luck, too. Hell, maybe it did him some good.

"Run, Raynes, run. For fuck's sake. Get up, man," The American mumbled something. His warning was lost over the gunfire. Raynes had enough time to say 'ready or not', too. He scrambled to his feet.

"I can hear him shouting," screamed Navari. "Hortez! Where is he?" Navari shouted, her words lost in the gunfire. She hadn't processed what she'd seen. All she knew was that their targets were near, and maybe she could tag one of them with a stray round. In the background were screams from civilians, and, approaching fast, armed police on standby at Exhibition road. She tapped Hortez on the shoulder, who dropped the gun moments before he was tackled.

Raynes and Schofield watched them. They'd scrambled to the gates leading into Hyde Park. Hortez had slid the sights straight through them. He'd looked right through them, turned and fired well into the brickwork, unseeing.

"Ow, my ears," Raynes thought he heard Schofield say. Raynes didn't know if that was exactly it, he couldn't lip-read well. He panted and held onto wrought-iron gates of Hyde park until some of the nausea passed.

"God damn this. Here." A polka-dot cloth was held out to Raynes. He'd barely heard but took the bundle, reloaded his pistol, and noticed the revolver was empty. There weren't any rounds in the cloth. In fact Schofield's revolver was hardly scratched. He passed it over.

"Thanks," came a laboured reply.

"No problem. That was a fucking stupid idea."

"It worked, no?"

"It worked."

Raynes leaned against the bars near the ornate gates and covered an ear. He offered a mint. Hell, for this he'd offer a pack. "They're showing their lanyards," he said. Navari and Hortez were pinned to the ground and explaining at gunpoint. Police diverted gridlocked traffic westwards, blocked the street and made drivers do U-turns wherever they could. On the floor by the police was a guitar case. The police were treating it as a bomb threat.

"Lost the rifle," he said.

Schofield wiped his face with the polka dots, took a glance and dismissed it. "Don't worry, if we screw up, we'll just end up with another."

***

"Are you there, Natalie?" asked April. She looked out over the Serpentine bridge and beyond into the undergrowth. On this side there were no paddleboats slicing the Hyde Park water. Pages of her thesaurus turned in the wind and mounted on her thumb. Many of the early pages in the thesaurus had been industriously crossed out with scribbled pencil, others selected, ripped out and what remained were just stubs that would be unable to properly flick or whoosh in the wind ever again. April focused and made Natalie reply. In reality she knew it was a one-sided conversation with herself but imagining what Natalie might say in such a situation helped. It had helped her calm down in the past, and maybe it would now.

"Sure as sticks am, Apes," she thought Natalie might say.

"Good, so you've heard what's been going on, then?" she asked.

"Sure have, girl," said Natalie. She'd put on her American accent, and posh-English 'girl' went halfway to a more Texan 'gal'. "after all su casa es mi casa, hermana. Seems like you're in a bit of trouble, ain't ya." It's a shame she couldn't call the real Natalie and had to settle for pretending. The real Natalie was halfway through a Ph.D in California, and it would probably be close to midnight if she actually called her. Still - big sister advice, even simulated big sister advice, was something.

"It's the other way round, Nat. You've got your high-school Spanish phrases twisted up," she replied. "It's mi casa es su casa."

"No, I reckon 'you're house is mine' works just as well. It still fits, chica," said Natalie.

There was no point in quick-fire back and forth with her, they'd just keep going in circles.

"Anyway, how's Nanna?" asked April. She pushed back the mounting pages of the thesaurus and scanned the next unmarked page. It would be nice to show Amy that she'd made progress through the tome. The rest of them on the opposite side of the river and looking out onto the nicer half. Amy and Scott flanked Mr Hale in a combined attempt to try to reduce and remove distractions during this critical time. She couldn't quite make it out for sure but thought that Matt was wearing headphones, probably to drown out the noise. It was blurry. She got by without using her glasses probably too often.

"Nanna's good. She's been getting into watching those strongman championships you told me about. She seems to really enjoy it when they lift like half an old-style Mini, or one of those ship anchors. Those must weigh a good hundred kilo, at least," she thought Natalie might say.

"I'm sure they do, or more. I mean, those things are meant to stop an entire yacht, right?" replied April.

"Yeah. Wish you'd learned the language so you could tell her yourself." If there was anything Natalie resented, it was acting as her translator for the extended family. She imagined if her sister were here she would lean on the balustrade about now and join April in admiring the darker sun-starved half of the Serpentine.

"I wish I'd learned it too," she'd say. The curvature of the stone railings was making it difficult to balance the thesaurus. April was mindful to keep a good grip.

"Any progress on learning the language, then? Have you been sticking to the regime we planned?" asked Natalie.

April shook her head. "No, haven't had the time. I've been busy." She spotted a black bird bobbing in the water "look, it's a Coot."

"Huh. You still remember your birds." It was another classic thing Natalie might say. The coot swam under the bridge if, though April leaned forward, she reckoned if she leaned any further she might risk the book.

Natalie continued "come on, Apes, you have the time on your hands to learn. Half an hour a day of lingo practice isn't too hard of an ask from me." This was something said very often.

"I keep asking you not to call me Amy's nickname, it sucks" said April.

"Nah, you love it really." Nat batted away an imaginary fly. "Stop changing the subject, you owe it to Nanna to learn."

"For once I've got more important things on my mind, like this." She picked up the book, flicked a few pages forward. There weren't any good homonyms for Matt to use on these pages either. She pulled out a pen and neatly put a diagonal line into the book. Nat shifted closer and leaned over her shoulder.

"Fair enough. This time I'll let you off. You're busy and the four of you need to fix this. I still can't believe you feel so clueless that you're talking to a figment of your imagination because you don't want to call me at what, like 3am over here." Natalie would've watched April go through the mid-A's and would no doubt have given a little advice here and there as to which homonyms were too weak to work, or were a terrible idea. It didn't take long for April to imagine Nat getting bored.

"Partner, I gotta say, good luck getting past B. You stick to alphabetical and you'll never finish that thing in time. I'm yawning already. There ain't no-one", she made good on her promise and yawned, "excuse me. There ain't no-one who's got that much willpower." April didn't look up from her work, but sighed and reckoned that Nat likely wasn't wrong.

The book was opened halfway instead and April went tactically, skimming through words beginning with 'L', then 'R', and back to 'F' haphazardly. The Serpentine in the summer, she realized, felt a lot like Garmisch-Partenkirchen in the summer, she noticed, that's why Nanna and Natalie had come to mind.

Her father had helped in part to organize a family reunion for his side of the clan last summer and had pored long over genealogy. He'd gone as far charting the addresses of his long-lost cousins from Osaka. Then they'd gone to the town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen on the Austrian-German border with its angled dire peaks and dragonflies for the last time before Natalie had to fly back to the States. The sunlight was chiselled, and conference rooms prepared for an onslaught of extended strangers from across the globe. April, Nat and her parents had been the first to arrive and in the days they spent alone before the strangers were due to start trickling in she and Dad went over with her as to who were the closest of the clan. His grand genealogical map with anachronistic post-it note updates proved daunting, and April preferred the resort's lakeside paddleboats, and would laze with Mum on the artificial beach to watch the enigmatic peaks becoming familiar.

She muddled through the first greetings with new family at the hotel reception desk mainly with hand-gestures and little jokes from Dad standing close behind. Worse were the conference days and hotel breakfasts during which she seemed obliged to sit on the surprisingly insubstantial padded chairs and pretend to understand at least a little of the Japanese that was being said. Her distant cousins were good-natured enough and tried teaching her phrases. Evenings after dinner were her respite, it'd be a time when everyone was tired, and wouldn't talk. Occasionally at sunset a band played folk songs from the other side of the lake and the sound would carry to the lakefront restaurant off the darkening waters. Stiff plastic doors to the terrace would be opened, the lights in the bar dimmed, and she could sit by Nanna and listen. It was the kind of bar where the mirror behind the counter stayed foggy no matter how hard you cleaned it, and the studded leather sofas sure suited Nanna. April asked Dad who the old lady was, and Dad searched and found that she was a great-aunt brought along with the Osaka crowd. She seemed content enough to sit with April, watch the TV with a glass of wine and enjoy the moment. Nat had kept in touch and occasionally gave her updates.

For now Hyde Park was still far from dusk. It was possible dusk could arrive soon if Matt and Amy got this wrong. April contemplated it, weighed up the chances Hyde Park would just go fully black if it was hidden by Matt, ripped from reality and taken to wherever oblivion Matt's original phone had gone to when it disappeared and was replaced by Ichor. That's the way Amy had framed this, she thought. Her life could be gone in the blackness, lost with only enough time to notice the atmosphere wasting away. She pushed that thought away, lay down the pencil and shut it in the thesaurus. So far latter half of 'A' had yielded 'anteroom', and 'atmospheric', B had given her 'blender', and skipping through the other letters hadn't done much. She didn't know of any place that specifically had an anteroom, nor whether filling a room spontaneously with ants might be a good idea. For 'blender' her idea had been that they might use a blending machine to blend into a crowd somehow, and for atmospheric that maybe a bit of atmospheric music could control the weather if Matt really put his imagination to work (supposing the atmospheric music was dark or light in its tone). Beyond that it seemed hopeless, and yet Amy in her place had managed to think of a plan in what couldn't have been more than a few minutes. Amy knew too much. Amy had promised to explain, but only after the park was 'hidden'. But if I die and the park is erased from the world, I'll never know. We don't know what the effect will be.

The park did go dark then for a moment as a plane cast its shadow over the Sun. Apart from that there was still nothing. She winced, gripped the book and waited, then looked back toward the trio on the opposite side of the bridge. Matt was saying something to Amy, and was wrapping up his headphones violently. Was that it? Was it over, just like that, without a sound or a change at all? April took her book, crossed the street and joined them. Natalie, for all intents and purposes, was shelved until April decided she needed to talk to someone and sound out her problems. Either that, or until it was late enough in the day to call the west coast.

"To me it felt the same as the others, no difference," said Matt. "It's just normal. I take your word for it, but I don't feel a thing."

"Okay," said Amy. "All I'm saying is Hyde Park's still here. Nothing's changed, so I'm thinking you could've been distracted."

"No, I wasn't. Sure, I thought of the other meaning of hide for a sec, but that's it. I just chanted and kept going like before."

"Other hide? Like the animal hide?" asked Scott. "I don't see anything like that, the park's not turned BDSM levels of leather, and we're not all being whipped." He ruffled his hair, made it stand a little higher. It was a reflex you'd see him do before he left for a night out, or a nervous half-hour before the hand in of his end-of-term organic chemistry assignment. "So which hide were you thinking of?" he asked.

"You know when you say something so many times it loses all meaning, so it just goes to the back of your head? By the end, dude, it was all noise," said Matt.

Scott looked out over the Serpentine and was grateful that the construction work on the cycle path over the bridge had stopped for lunch. Managing the flow of traffic and protecting the construction site from thieves was left in the capable hands of no-one in particular. The machinery was more-or-less packed with the exception of the tarmac-busting jackhammer. Black marker on adhesive tape had christened this one as 'Martha' and chains padlocked her orange and forlorn to the rebar. There's only one common sound more effective than a classic roadside jackhammer for derailing a train of thought and that's a petrol leaf blower. Even your ducks, your coots and occasional tail-wagging swan know the leaf-blowing regime of Hyde Park and make little tidal-waves away from the shore. Scott frowned. This should've worked. Hyde park should've been hidden, whatever that meant. They should've felt some sort of difference.

He turned to Aims now for guidance as to the next step or a post-bridge plan. She hadn't been able to turn on Ichor and had guiltily suspected that might be her fault for slamming the phone onto the concrete back in the hospital. The backed-up traffic through the park combined with leaf-blowers and tourists hadn't made for the best location for this experiment, but, on the other hand, she hadn't heard Matt's chanting falter. The rest of the gang were waiting for her next move. They expected a back-up plan. They expected Amy knew what the hell was going on. She inspected her thumb which was ringed around the nail with blood from where she'd picked at it. Stall for time, Aims, she thought. Find a back-up plan.

"April have you got the dictionary?" she asked absently

"I have the thesaurus, sure."

"Give it here," she said. Amy took the half-open book mangled from ripped pages and rested it on the railing. She flicked through it, tried to find a good word to use. Nothing came. "Scott, have you got the pages we ripped out? The useful ones?"

"They're with Matt in case he'd need them," he replied.

"Can I take a look at what we've got?" She outstretched her hand and Matt handed her a wad of folded pages. There were words circled on each. A few were convincing, some less so. Most would never work or might be catastrophic. None were useful for making them invisible, or undetectable, or destroying the power grid of the capital to stop an American and a fat Englishman. The only thing left was to stall longer, somewhere full of people who would witness Schofield and Raynes approaching them. They had to be somewhere where they couldn't disappear into the aether without a sound, or be interrogated. Anything had to be better than last time.

"I think we need to call the police," said April, interrupting Amy's attempts to salvage a plan. Aims frowned. Her friend handed her a smaller bundle of pages - these ones were neater, and folded with care.

"We need help from regular, normal people, Aims. If we explain our lives are in danger then at least we don't have to run, don't you think? We can get some time to figure things out if we talk to actual police. We'll tell them we're being followed" April looked past her then and out onto the sunny side of the Serpentine.

"Maybe they can help us," she continued. "And they can help even if they don't know the truth about Matt, right?" It seemed to her the best thing to do, surely the only logical option. "Like you said yourself there's only two people out searching for us. I just think it would be easier to get help and say there's creepy dudes following a group of students. None of us have seen these creepy guys, and neither have you, right? How can you be absolutely sure we're in danger of being arrested? Are you sure we're being followed?" April turned to Scott for back-up, then to Matt. Both stayed silent, and looked out over the Serpentine.

"I never said they were alone, and I never said I didn't see them," said Amy slowly. "There's an entire team out there. All masked and..." To April, her friend's voice sounded at a low, dangerously soft pitch. It was the sound of a final calm before the storm, the last voice of reason that said 'don't fuck with me', and a degree of scared and pissed off far higher than April could've otherwise known from a few moments ago. "Mr Raynes and Mr Schofield are the police, April. They know too much not to be. They know your name. They know you, Matt, they probably know about Ichor, too. It still spoke to us, so it had to download half the internet probably to learn English, don't you think? We're screwed if we go to the police. It's that simple." There would be a time to explain Otter's world, but she couldn't handle telling that story, thinking of a plan, and keeping the group together all at once.

"I don't know, Aims. If not the police, then I don't know what to do," said April

"You know their names? The names of these police guys?" asked Matt.

"Yeah, I know more than I told you, sure. I've had more time to put it together," said Amy. "I thought once we got to Hyde Park I'd have the next step ready, but I don't, alright?"

Amy winced. Hold on, how did they get here? She remembered walking up Exhibition Road, and then they'd taken Matt to the bridge, but the part in between was a dark void. There was nothing, no information, no inkling at all beyond the vaguest itching sense as to where the hell Hyde Park could be, or where they'd left the entrance. They'd passed through the open wrought-iron double doors with its unicorn and lion, but where?

"Amy, we need to hear what's happened to you. How do you know those people? How did you know about Ichor" asked April.

Her friend ignored her. Instead Amy Packard cracked the same stupid grin she always did when she had you down to rights.

"Apes, do you remember where Hyde Park is in London?"

"What?"

"Where are we?"

"In Hyde Park," said April.

"Yeah, but where in London?"

"Where?

"Yeah. Where?"

"Uh, I'm not sure. We're close to Exhibition Road."

"Wait," echoed Scott. "that way's Kensington Gardens, right? On that side of the bridge. And I know where that is. But without that, I couldn't tell you." echoed Scott.

"Matt?" asked Amy. "Do you know where we are?"

The last party member searched from one to the other. He couldn't remember. "No. You can't remember, I can't remember. I'm guessing no-one can."

"Hell yes, Matty-boy," said Amy. "I'm buying the cake, and goddamn if there's chocolate torte I'm getting a fucking chocolate torte. Thank fuck." She pointed down the Serpentine to a café and acted for the most part like Columbus sighting land. "We'll talk there. But no police, alright? Just shelve that thought until I explain things,"

"Aims, where are you going?" shouted April.

"Cake, over at the café there," replied the girl who became more blurred by the second to April at this distance. The righteous anger seemed gone, or at least it pretended to wash away and Hyde Park was hidden. "Come on, Apes, we're done with the pyrotechnic giraffe phase of my plan so we can move on".

April asked about the giraffe, but no one knew. Her friend had now got a fair distance power-walking ahead of the group and they followed her, taking the stairs down to the bankside of the lake to head towards the café. Amy rehearsed what she could. 'Yeah, and then I used the car fob to go back in time to the hospital'. 'Did I get help? Yeah, an otter appeared in my head and kept me company'. She marched onwards and grasped for a better way to say it. She turned back to see witness her friends destroying the thesaurus. The snapped it in three from A to mid-J and at S-onwards. Each took a section and got a third to search. The glue held but the cover was beyond hope. The whole process reminded Amy of one of those contests where strongmen savaged a stockpile of Yellow Pages in under ten seconds.

They eventually made it to the café, ordered at the counter and found a classic corrugated steel table to sit outdoors. The chairs grounded themselves unevenly into the paving slabs and stayed cold despite the summer sun. Amy brought out a tray of muffins, cheesecake, drinks and tea. They searched for a fourth chair, and propped up the table so that more tea wouldn't spill itself over the tray and soak the cheesecake. Muffins for Scott and April, cheesecake to split. There had been no chocolate torte.

Amy had waited at the end of the counter to pick up the order and asked the waitress standing behind the fluorescently-lit pastries where in London she might find Buckingham Palace in relation to Hyde Park. In response the girl had added Amy's tea onto the tray, frowned and then blinked at the ready-made sandwiches. "Sorry, I'm...I'm sorry, I've lived here for years. I'm not sure. Let me ask." The café girl had turned to another at the espresso machine, who also frowned. Amy had then taken her pasties, tea and had gone outside satisfied in the knowledge that regular people didn't know either.

Now she stared intently at the wobbling tea all the way, and tried her best to calm down and take her time. Her hands shook no matter what, and her fluxing heat and cold stubbornly echoed each other and stubbornly refused to sync up. She helped find a fourth chair and scraped it into place. The café chairs were, of course, half a foot too low for the table. Either way, here goes, she thought. It was time to bring her friends up to speed with what had happened the first time at the hospital. And she did.

***

Not long had passed. Hyde Park was becoming engulfed by an approaching stillness that pulsed in silence with the lapping waves at the bankside. The emptying panorama heaved with a stillness, and the voices of retreating leaf-blowers died to give way to the cracking tones of the wind alone. There was no backlog of cars on the main bridge where they'd been, no pedestrians on the pretend pseudo-bridge either, and only the occasional couple still lay motionless on a rug under distant oaks. Their café was just as susceptible to the infection. Tables emptied, few remained. The essence of the park and its typical free and welcoming vibe had vanished and had seemed to submit to an oppressive blankness where memory failed everyone. The planes made detours and sliced space in half elsewhere on the way to Heathrow. And in this stillness Amy spoke, at first loudly over the sound of cheesecake and terriers, then ever softer with each desertion. She gave most of the cheesecake to Matt but he wasn't hungry either. They'd left the half the muffins. Losing such an important piece of information, having it hidden and repressed was frightening, and Hyde Park was emptying.

A waitress with her light blouse wiped down the table next door with grim efficiency and seemed for the most part almost alone in doing so. At times whilst telling her story Amy noticed the café staff disappearing. They untied aprons and left early with phones to their ears. The one at the espresso machine was among the first. This one nearby was the girl she'd asked for directions in the first place who'd inadvertently started a chain-reaction in this local park corner.

The waiting staff were affected by the same dim panic brought on by the new cloudless blue silence and dark glittering waves as Amy and all the other customers. A part of it was a fear of the known unknown, of something seemingly normal but wrong. There was the familiar sight of the paddle-boats that would normally bob in the middle of the lake but now lay deserted in their regimented rows all at once unused and unrented despite the summer sun. Memories of Hyde Park were missing key pieces and as the remaining waitress wiped she didn't know how she'd get home. Where her bike was parked she knew, but how to get there was total void. Normally on a slow afternoon she'd ask if these her few customers might like anything else but this table of four still had a few cups with tea ringed in sediment and cake flattened into boulders of New York cheese. They wouldn't want anything else and she wasn't sure if she could bring herself to ask anything other than for the brunette girl who'd ordered it to tell her what the sharp silence was. The waitress replayed the encounter at the checkout and just knew that it hadn't all been so simple. The brunette had grinned when she'd asked her that question. With cold detachment she felt sure no Londoner would ask for a tourist destination. No one with that girl's accent would need to know how to find Buckingham Palace, especially not someone who didn't seem to have a map open, or even have a map on her phone. By the waitress' account the four at the table should have had a fold-out tourist sheet of central London splayed out and overflowing over the table with the four corners held down by saucers, but they didn't. They should have left first once they realized something felt strange, or the girl should've at least waited for the answer back at the counter. No, that one knew something about this. Equally the waitress knew there was no way to ask. What could you accuse her of? It was as if collectively people had decided to ignore the loss of memory, ignore the rising silence and the empty bridges. Besides, how could you pinpoint exactly what was wrong with the park if nothing seemed out of place beyond a feeling and a memory just out of reach? Her co-workers had quietly just packed up and left when they found the void wasn't just theirs, it was everywhere.

Amy sat back in her chair. It was still just as uncomfortable, still just as low as before. She'd answered questions. She'd told her story and explained what happened with as many details as she could give in a few minutes. She'd apologized again and again for leaving them in the dusted hospital stairwell, and given her theories on what Schofield and Raynes wanted.

"It's gone quiet," said Scott. He looked to the few remaining occupied tables. He was now equally convinced as Amy that they needed as many people as they could find to act as witnesses. "How long do we have until M can charge up, do you think?"

"I'm at a mid-to-high level, so I don't know, I'd say not long. A few minutes," said Amy. The table rocked a little from side to side and tea cups clinked.

"What word are we going with? Did we make a decision?" asked Matt.

"Depends on if I find a good desktop background, really," she replied. "Like I said, worst comes to worst try to avoid homonyms at all costs. Either think of a phrase that has no other meanings out loud, or try something else that would distract you. It's better than creating something magic without us understanding it."

"Magic?" asked Scott.

"How would you call it?"

"I don't know."

"How about translating thoughts into French or Spanish, or just saying nonsense?" asked Matt.

"That could work, for example, sure. Or it might just be stored in you until you slip up and think a valid homonym," said Amy. "If you don't think you know homonyms in Spanish then it's worth a try. It's uncharted territory."

She rummaged through her satchel and dramatically threw out stacks of severe maths worksheets as well as a book on set theory. The tea and plates were put onto the newly-wiped table next door alongside the maths and the space on their table replaced by Amy's laptop. She booted it and swore. It seemed that if you buy any laptop half a year later it's overwhelmed by its sheer weight of existence and demands updates constantly no matter if you have internet or not. Her background flared into life when she cancelled it and tried to boot the laptop again. Her friends got up and crowded around the screen.

"Is that it?" asked Matt.

She nodded. It was the temple-bank made pixelated and rendered with the ruined city in the background. Towers, the huge wall and the square she'd been in were in part obscured by violet trees and icons. It was the same view but without the blood and the destroyed computer case at the bottom of the stairs. And it would have to go and be replaced. She hoped it might be simple enough to find a recent picture of London, replace her screensaver with it and have Matt repeat 'keys' at a safer distance this time. Keys were something she knew how to use. They were familiar and worst came to worst she knew how to return and try again. She set up internet in the café by leeching off her phone data and searched for recent images of London. Aerial pictures were completely out of the question as were the photoshopped candy-coloured ones with watermarks. Images of regular buildings preferably near South Kensington were best. Photos of the university were numerous but she didn't know when and where exactly they'd been taken. She swapped from the internet to her own collection of pictures from months passed and scanned through them all. Many pictures showed either Scott wasted on the kitchen table, or immortalized in a notorious Sunday evening game of drunk Monopoly where you took a shot for landing on someone else's property. She skimmed passed the selfies she'd taken of Matt face-down on the board opposite a comatose Scott. There was one with April from the same night with gang-signs, one with Scott waking to imprints of the little plastic board-piece houses. She'd rather not think of what weird situations might happen if she used a photo with themselves in the picture as her background. Besides these pictures were from months ago and she risked presumably re-living the entirety of the lecture series on the 'Introduction to Geometry', this time with a clone by her side. She decided on a recent evening snap of Exhibition Road complete with sunset. It was a photo that she'd been proud to hear was judged by photo-freak Scott as 'pretty good'. It was a grainy picture, but the temple-bank had been the same resolution and worked just as well.

"Are you sure this will work, Amy?" asked April, who stood over her shoulder. "You said that to get back you used the reverse key, so what happens if we spend too long in there?"

"It's not really 'in there', Apes, that place is just as real and just as vast as London, or anywhere. It's not a screensaver once you use the key, it's Somewhere Else." Amy saved the screensaver, and turned her computer off in preparation for it once again becoming a satchel charge.

"I should be chanting the word 'key'? Is it 'keys', or what?" asked Matt.

"I think originally it was 'the keys'," replied Amy. "We'll need to start soon. We can go round the corner and do it from there." Next stage of Amy's plan meant next Salvador Dali codename. She'd have to think of one.

"Do you mind if we join you?"

Amy turned in incomprehension but it wasn't far enough. Her seat was too low, grounded hard in uneven sandstone to face the approaching men. She'd been packing the satchel and had the gang around the monitor. She'd been too busy rustling papers to think that the tell-tale scrape of hollow-legged chairs was out of the ordinary or that bark of a terrier woken in surprise a couple of tables away was weird.

"It's them," said Amy, hands never leaving the bundle of maths. She didn't have time to register any fear beyond blank shock, or think about much at all.

Scott stood to one side of Amy's chair, and had helped with the picture-choosing. He had carried with him all morning fifty pence in his pocket. It was one of the commemorative ones remembering a hundred years since the start of the First World War. It was with his pocket change they' bought water for Amy on the way to the hospital and fifty pence remained. 'Dieu et mon droit' is stamped ominously into each coin. God and my right, thought Scott. It happened to be in his right hand, too.

"I'll get two chairs. Mr Raynes, be a man and offer a mint. Introduce yourself. Please, sit down-" Schofield didn't finish. The huge man teetered with an aluminium chair and collapsed heavily into the next table. Derelict tea summersaulted over cheesecake and clattered to the floor. It's not a myth that if you hold a fifty-pence in your palm you really do have less of a chance of breaking your fist on impact. The bigger the coin the better, and this one had the full force of both one-hundred years of history and the full weight of The Queen Herself behind it. Scott didn't stop. He rounded on Raynes and planned an underhanded kick. He found himself on the sandstone slabs without knowing how, winded with one Doc Marten pressed on his back. He'd just felt a force out of somewhere and was left flattened and winded, coughing into the slabs. His face grounded itself into the floor amongst the porcelain.

"Don't move, don't shout I recommend not talking at all. Sit the hell down or I'll start breaking arms." Mr Raynes annihilated the last of his mint into powder and clicked off the safety. Schofield was down, but not out. The Englishman scrambled and tried to find purchase against the rounded edges of the upturned table, slipping against the surface slick with tea. He put a hand against his ear, checked he wasn't bleeding.

"Jesus Christ, boy. I've barely even said 'hello'." He righted himself, found his summer coat smeared in New York cheese. The three were stood at their square table, one each side and the elusive Miss Packard in the middle. Schofield limped to an upturned aluminium chair and used it to support himself. He dragged it into position opposite. The waitress took this moment with dishcloth in hand to make her move and plucked up the courage to ask what the hell was going on. Police matters, Madame, she was told, please don't be alarmed. If you could, would you let the other customers know to clear the area for us? She left resigned in the knowledge that the opportunity to ask the girl was gone. She was proud at least her instinct hadn't failed her and there really was something strange going on. She did as she was told, and wanted to clear away the mess so she could listen in, but was asked again to leave. The fat one wiped his brow and asked her to bring him a cold bottle of sparkling water before she went away. The other newcomer said nothing.

"You can probably let him up now, Raynes. He's got a chair by me free," said Schofield. The Englishman reached across the table and wordlessly dragged the satchel towards him. He took the laptop and the maths from Amy, upturned the rest of the satchel onto the table, pencil case and all, inspected it, then returned the contents to the bag and packed it. He heaved with difficulty on his bad leg, stood and walked out of view. There was a sound of tables crashing in the distance and aluminium on stone. In the meantime Raynes sat Scott down and stood behind him. He reached into a pocket and tossed a half-pack of mints onto the table.

"Go on. You've earned it."

Schofield returned having made a barricade of tables around the satchel on the opposite end of the patio.

"Is it going to explode, Miss Packard?" he asked. Amy stared at him in response. "Alright, I'll assume that's a 'yes', then." He pulled out his handkerchief and wiped his brow. "Please, all of you, sit down. I'd meant to start by introducing myself. I'm Mr. Schofield and th-"

"We know who you are," said Amy.

"Oh you do, do ya?" Schofield leaned in. "And how's that? Did your phone spill my secrets? Put dear Mr Raynes and myself in the darkest of light?"

She thought of flipping the table, pinning him to that chair and kicking him until he was in as much pain as she'd suffered. All of it she imagined, and yet said nothing.

"We've already met you once before, all of you," he said. "You, Mr. Hale, last time I saw you we had a discussion about this." Schofield placed his copy of Ichor on the table and slid it across. It collided with the mints. "But for whatever reason when we tried to have that conversation again with you in the hospital, none of you were present. Do you recognize what's on the table?"

"I recognize hard mints when I see them, yes, Mr. Schofield," said Matt.

The serviceman was accustomed to deep breaths. He gave Raynes a sad smile and let it pass. Maybe he'd got it wrong, there were better ways to do this.

"Look. I don't know how much you all know about what's been happening. I'm guessing a lot, but hey, that's just me and my opinion." He put his hands up in defeat, picked up Ichor and the mints. The latter returned to Raynes. "What we do know is that you're all responsible for screwing Hyde Park. All of you. You are responsible. You, Miss Packard. You are responsible for the destruction of this place." He pointed in turn. "Mr. Hale. Mr. Rowenstein, and you, Miss Suzuyama. You are responsible. Do you realize what you've done? Really, do you grasp it? Are you aware in any way what. The. Hell. You've. Done?" He squinted, sat back in his chair. "No one - no can explain this to the general public, ever. You've destroyed it all. Everything around you is going to die worse than Chernobyl. It's tens of the best square kilometres of land gone forever."

"Mr Schofield, that's only because we're running from you," said Amy through gritted teeth. "That's why. And that's the only reason why. You've met us once before yeah? So maybe you want to start with how you knocked his teeth out?" she pointed to Scott. "Or how you beat the ever-loving shit out of Matt?"

"Wait, what?" said Scott.

Schofield went to grab his water from the waitress before she retreated back out of sight. She'd arrived without her apron and had her handbag at the ready to throw in the towel and lock the doors. The last of the café customers were leaving. Hyde Park was almost empty. Schofield took a swig.

"So then, Amy, tell me this. What's the appropriate reaction to what you've done? We find kilos of ammunition, something for which an innocent pan is likely going to die in prison for, by the way. Then you produce a phone that downloads literal terabytes of data per second through both restricted and unrestricted wi-fi channels. And what? You expect something different? You expect that we won't take an interest? Do you think that when you're carrying a bomb there's going to be no reaction? No interest from us?"

"Then there's these," said Raynes, who'd seemed until now a man turned stone. He leaned over Scott and placed the 'control' keycard down. Out of the keys still in existence it seemed the least prone to exploitation.

"We're trying to fix things", said Amy. "We've all been trying hard, very hard, to turn things back to normal. You're wrong if you think we know what's going on or what's really behind what's happening. We don't. We don't know but we're trying to fix it. And, in truth, we can't control what we end up with. Sure we made Ichor. But don't assume we know anything about why us or why now."

Schofield wetted the handkerchief with the last of his water. He started looking for cheesecake stains. "And this?" he asked, tapping toward the keycard.

"I don't know. I don't know what that is," Amy said.

She looked blank, eyes red. She was tired, so tired now suddenly, and so cold and so hot that she could barely focus. Chair? Would that double meaning help them? No. Bank? Maybe Raynes and 'rains'? Sure, as a homonym it would work, but then again, it was even more nonsensical and unpredictable to suggest than 'Hyde', or 'keys'. Maybe if she was fast she could reach the keys after blowing up the satchel and save them that way? Raynes was here but there were four of them to overpower just two men, and Schofield was weaker. The time for Matt to chant would come, but whether it would come soon enough was another question.

"You don't know?" asked the Englishman. "This is a key, a 'control' key. You used one of these to escape us if I'm not mistaken. We never did find all of them after the explosion. How many were we missing, Raynes?"

"At least twelve, maybe more."

"We'll search you either way, Amy, that's a given", continued Schofield. "It would be easier if you hand me them now." She didn't move, hands on her lap, serene. He continued, "believe it or not you'll be pleased to hear Paul and I aren't here to arrest you. We're far beyond that."

Scott took a glance at his captor.

"Don't look at me like that," said Raynes exasperated, "we're beyond arrests but not here to kill you, Rowenstein. For fuck's sake, we wouldn't be talking."

"How did you find us?" asked Matt.

"While you're good at hiding we're just as good at seeking. But," he waved dismissively "that's a conversation for later. The point is that if we've found you then potentially others aren't far behind. There are people you don't want to meet like Mr. Hortez waiting beyond the gates."

"I doubt anyone chasing us is worse than you," said Amy.

"I'm a tolerant enough guy," said Raynes. "But I wouldn't want to see Hortez right now. That's coming from me."

"Miss Packard, what you're not hearing is that we're interrogating you, but only we're here to help you," said Schofield. "There is no possible outcome worse than the Ministry of Defence exploiting one of these keys. That's exactly what will happen without our help."

"Yet you creep up on me, then slam me on the ground? You mad?" said Scott.

"If you get screwed by the military then so do we, kid," said Raynes. "Get it? There's a whole load of those keys out there. We've had to work out what you wouldn't tell us. Shift, control, all of it. We've had to use them, and that means Mr. Hortez is looking for me just as much as he is for you."

"Uh-uh, but you're still going to search us," said Scott.

"Scott, you attacked an agent in the line of duty unprovoked," replied Raynes. "I'd let it go."

"We do need to help you," said Schofield. "That I can promise. In honesty I'll admit that I might lie from time to time, but Mr. Raynes here is dead serious, always."

"That last part I could believe," said Scott.

"You don't want us captured by the military," echoed Amy.

"That's right. That's what we offer. We want everything back to normal, the same as you. Coffee, biscuits, normal office hours, sure," said Schofield.

"And yet you are the military," she replied.

Raynes hadn't taken a seat and looked out over the riverside towards the furthest silent edges of Hyde Park. He asked something he hoped he'd never need to. "Schofield, do you keep the locking pins separately?"

"Come again?" The Englishman looked away from Amy and the stains of New York cheese that he'd for the most part treated. Salt and carbonated water work wonders for such problems and he'd had a lot of experience with difficulties such as Bolognese or the occasional spilt glass of wine.

"Locking pins? No. They're together in the case." He frowned. The next question he had for the American he didn't want to ask. "Is this speculation or are we going to have a real problem?" From experience Raynes knew difficult things for Schofield tended to be 'inconveniences', 'hurdles' or 'obstacles'. For something to be a 'real problem' was akin to asking 'dowe have a chance at all.'

"I don't know, I don't see it, but Navari's here. She's approaching from the south, flanking toward the restaurant."

"Locking pins for what?" asked Amy.

"Just sit still and don't talk. Actually, do talk. If we tell you to run, you run. If we tell you to get down, you hit the grass," said Schofield.

"Schofield, what do you mean? Locking pins for what?" she asked again.

He ignored her. "How far away is she?"

"Thirty or forty seconds. He'll be near the main bridge, that's where I'd be." Raynes didn't want to give it away, and didn't dare move his gaze over the Serpentine past the docked boats and the Diana memorial to see whether he was right.

"Listen carefully," Schofield turned to the table of students. "When I say so you're going to run towards the café and round the other side of this building. You're going to keep running. Don't look now, just listen. Can you do that?" asked Schofield. "Don't look anywhere beyond my face or the table, got it? Everything is normal, everything is fine. Don't take anything with you. Don't pick anything up. Leave this ripped up book," he looked with confusion to the thesaurus "and your phones. Leave all of it, alright?"

"Alright," said Amy.

"Can you detonate the bomb? Is it on a timer?" he asked.

"No, it's not. It doesn't work like that. I can't tell how long it'll be. It's not super-exact, half a minute may-."

"Too long," replied Schofield. He ripped a page from the thesaurus and found a pen.

"Hey, stop, you've no right-," she said.

"Amy, you're leaving the book here anyway. Raynes, take the card and phone." Schofield finished writing and left the page on the table.

Raynes moved from behind Scott and toward Amy, who faced the Serpentine, the bridge and, somewhere within the undergrowth, a semi-automatic sniper rifle reassembled.

"Keep running. We'll meet you in a moment," said Schofield. "You're going to stand up and go as fast as you can behind the café. Raynes, get the table, towards the far right, 45 degrees. Ready?"

"No, no wait, hold on...where-"

"Good. Aaaaand...go."

Raynes flipped the table, his momentum ripping its light frame upwards and clear of the chairs. Schofield simultaneously tipped his seat and fell sideways still seated. Parts of the thesaurus flew briefly and rustled loose in the summer breeze. Something like the crack of a whip resounded and hit a dull gong. Obliterated aluminium from a nearby table rained down. A moment later a roar carried across the water and the waves. The air pulsed and a chair spiralled and cracked from a second shot.

"Run, for God's sake, move! Left!" shouted Schofield from the floor. They ran then, four of them, weaving past littered debris. Raynes righted himself from behind their flipped table. It wouldn't help against the rifle. That much he couldn't hope for. He crouched and sprinted away from the kids and fell flat at the edge of the patio closest to Navari. The crosshairs followed. She'd be here soon, approaching through the trees somewhere. He sneaked a peek from behind a concrete pillar.

"It's aimed high!" shouted Schofield over distant screams, himself lying flat behind a set of tables. "Keep low, Paul!" He hoped to God the tables might, if not protect him, at least make him harder to spot.

The plate glass behind Raynes seemed to smash itself spontaneously, the round ripping through and burying itself in the sandwich displays beyond. The American ran from his place at the patio and saw her then. She wasn't far, hidden behind an oak tree. He ducked behind a café wall out of sight for the rifle and fired blindly. Echoes of shots carried across the calm waters. Birds were scared into flight. Hortez adjusted his aim a few clicks and fired again through the haze of scared waterfowl. This time the shot arced wide entirely, leaving a thin tracer-line of sparks where it bent around and through the flock of ducks, not grazing a feather and a crack as it detonated into a tree limb that exploded into wood chips. Schofield rolled and sprinted despite his bad leg to the next nearest cover of a concrete pillar. It proved thick enough to absorb when Hortez got the adjustment dead on. Chunks of concrete and plaster grazed his jacket and split the pillar almost in half to expose its rebar core. He ran before Hortez could try again and went for his revolver in time to cover Raynes. He fumbled for the pistol rounds, loaded three and fired as they did a staggered retreat to the safety of the trees. In the distance through waving branches he caught glimpses of the students and followed. The whip-cracks buzzed wildly through the undergrowth then, arcing higher and further into the treetops.

"Move! Keep going," he screamed.

April tripped. Maybe if she'd not looked back towards Schofield she'd be fine. She was fast, did volleyball, running, the lot, and fell winded into the undergrowth. Someone yanked her upwards by an arm and dragged her, her ribs aching.

"Get up! Go. We need to go!" It was Scott.

"I'm trying, wait," she wanted to say. Her knees stung. One shoulder was on fire from Scott's grip tearing at the sinew. Her hands and legs were covered in razor-thin lines from stray twigs. She couldn't breathe right and staggered forward. She ended up with one last chance to look back. Amy was sprinting towards them between the tilting thickets and seemed close, one arm outstretched and ready to help her up. It was almost time for dust to dust, ashes to ashes and keys to keys. And though April didn't see him staggering behind Matt struggled to catch up. The inevitable happened but it didn't follow Amy's Stage Four as yet un-named plan of Dali.

April felt herself fall away from Scott. His grip waned. The outstretched arm slowed and the scene tilted away as if a camera lens once focused on a distant point now rushed out to reveal the true total blackness masquerading beyond her well-defined edges of vision. The silently-still image of the park blurred, crushed itself and warped into something that, with clarity, she knew was real, but also not the whole of the story, not all of the reality out there. The reality was missing something, and she was missing it too. Pressure compressed her body for a moment in an immense force of acceleration in no direction beyond inwards that seemed to grow and pulse as an ocean of weight. There was no frame of reference. Blackness. Nothing at all. She felt the ocean spread and flood every direction, accelerating now each way at once and pressing her for one moment outwards rather than inwards. She began drowning and weaving through memories which smothered her. The still static slice of vision from the park disappeared and what remained was just pressure. She was the pressure, and the ocean, and the vision and the park was just a story, and there were many stories, so many of them. And all of the places and stories were regimented in impossibly long lines that stretched away into a distant point, and none of the stories made sense completely but were a slice of the truth, and up till now she'd only be able to see the slice of the truth that she lived in. The ocean stretched forth and she found herself not herself. She tasted pieces of other moments, thoughts, memories and ideas that weren't hers but intruded on her and insisted that they weren't foreign. She screamed into the nothingness, and didn't know where the scream ended and began, or where it echoed and where it didn't. The ocean drowned her then completely and she resisted, flailing against the waves that she wasn't sure were truly there at all. She, who was now something more than just a girl held to the only life-raft she could find. She held on to it tight. It was nothing more than a feeling of home and the lush green of the Hyde Park memories that felt, amongst the rest of the ocean of memories, different and wrong. And April fell deep into unconsciousness then, and bobbed like an oil slick amongst the dark never-ending waves.