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them. All determined to go their own way and make a name for themselves, like their illustrious father. So many of them died, trying to prove themselves worthy of the family name. Like Harry, and Roger, and . . .
    If the Armourer had a son now, he supposed it would have to be his nephew, Eddie. A good man, a better field agent, and a credit to his family. Eddie Drood, the man responsible for the death of the Armourer’s beloved brother, James, and his estranged son, Timothy. There was no one in the family the Armourer felt closer to than Eddie, but there was no denying that closeness came with a cost.
    Timothy Drood . . . or Tiger Tim, the name he took for himself when he went rogue, and disappeared into the African jungles. What they used to call a bad seed. Bad to the bone. Or could it all have been the Armourer’s fault, did Timothy Drood become Tiger Tim because of parental neglect? The Armourer thought he’d done his best, but he’d never known what to make of his odd, unruly son. A strange child, even from an early age. The Armourer never knew how to be a father to him. Timothy had always been resistant to every form of authority, or affection. And so more and more the Armourer just left him to his own devices and buried himself in his work. Because he understood his work. Was it because of that turning away, that his son had gone to the bad?
    “Still blaming yourself, after all these years?” said Timothy. He sounded pleased at the idea. “Hello, Daddy. Here I am, back again, like the traditional bad penny. You’re looking old.”
    He sat in the chair opposite the Armourer, where his mother had been, lounging bonelessly, almost arrogantly relaxed. A man heading into middle age and fighting it all the way. He had that kind of aesthetic musculature that only comes from regular workouts with professional equipment in expensive private gyms, and the skin on his face, especially just around the eyes, looked suggestively taut. He was wearing a rich cream safari suit, topped off with a white snap-brimmed hat, complete with tiger-skin band. He looked very inch the Great White Hunter and gloried in it. He smiled a lot, but it never reached his cold blue eyes.
    “Why did you always prefer the jungles, boy?” said the Armourer. “Dangerous places, jungles.”
    “Not for me,” said Tiger Tim, smiling easily. “When I walk through a jungle, you can always be sure that I am the most dangerous thing in it.”
    “Well?” said the Armourer. “Tell me, was it my fault that you turned out bad? Did I let you down?”
    “Typical you,” said Tiger Tim. “Everything has to be your responsibility. It’s a form of arrogance, really.”
    “Answer me!”
    “I never thought of myself as bad. . . . I just wanted to have fun.”
    “Did you ever love me, son?” said the Armourer. “I tried to love you. I really did.”
    “Love . . .” said Tiger Tim. “Sorry. Never really got the hang of love.”
    “You nearly killed me,” said the Armourer. “Trying to force me to open the family’s Armageddon Codex for you.”
    “So I did,” said Tiger Tim, nodding cheerfully. “Now that one was your fault. You didn’t have to fight me.”
    The Drood family keeps its most secret depository of its most dangerous weapons, the Armageddon Codex, locked away in a pocket dimension only loosely linked to the Armory. For security reasons. Only the Armourer can even approach it, let alone enter it, without setting off all kinds of alarms. But Timothy Drood, not yet Tiger Tim, wanted in. So he lured his father off to a private place, with an urgent message, and beat the crap out of him. Timothy had laid his plans well, found all the right loopholes in the security measures that would let him access the pocket dimension, but he still couldn’t open the Codex without the knowledge locked away in his father’s head.
    Timothy kicked his father in the ribs, again and again, and then knelt down beside him. “Come on, Daddy dearest! I’m on