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down in his chair and put his feet on the table, like he used to when he’d lived in his own house, with his own rules. It seemed a very long time ago. Almost a lifetime ago.
    In reality it had just been a few months since he and Sheila had moved in as permanent residents. A few months since Pip had deemed them both too high risk to be based anywhere else. They both knew, had seen first hand, the sordid activities taking place at Pincent Pharma, and Richard Pincent had promised to track them down and kil them in memos that Jude had hacked into.
    It had made him feel important back then. Now – wel , now he wasn’t so sure that Sheila didn’t have a point. It wasn’t the Underground per se. Jude was ful y on board with the whole anti-Pincent thing. He couldn’t not be, not real y, not seeing as how hardly anyone his age existed any more and those that had been born had been rounded up and shipped off to Surplus Hal s. He knew Pip was right, knew that the Declaration – those bits of paper that people signed promising not to procreate just so they could take Longevity – was fundamental y flawed, that a world ful of old people completely sucked, even if the people didn’t look old. And he knew that Richard Pincent was the most evil man in the whole world. No one hated him more than Jude – no one.
    But he’d kind of thought the Underground would be more like an army than a . . . a . . . He searched for the right word and failed. He’d thought the Underground would be different, a hive of activity, ful of soldiers, brave men and women talking about the revolution to come, making plans and carrying them out. Instead, there were hardly any people there for one thing – people came in for procedures or, occasional y, for meetings, but no one ever stopped to make conversation and you weren’t meant to look at anyone too closely because it was risky, because the idea was that people could hardly identify any other supporters if they were caught, if Richard Pincent or the Authorities got hold of them. The only people there permanently were Jude, Sheila, Pip, and one or two guards. Jude had seen more drama when he’d lived in a smal close in South London.
    Suddenly it hit him. A family, that’s what the Underground was like – a slightly dysfunctional family. Pip had taken on the parental role, general y disapproving of and criticising everything while being convinced that everything he did was right and the best possible way to do things. Peter and Anna were the golden children. Sheila was the youngest, indulged child. And Jude? He was the let-down, the misfit, the ‘troublesome’ one. Sometimes he wasn’t even sure he was in the family at al .
    Shaking his head wearily, Jude turned on his computer. There was no point thinking about it real y; he’d never be Peter, would never be held in the same esteem. And in the meantime another Pincent lorry was being ambushed that afternoon and he needed to track it. It soon appeared on his screen and he watched for an hour or so then, bored, looked over at Sheila who had appeared again on the other side of the room a few minutes earlier and was leaning against the wal , broom in hand, daydreaming. He knew she was waiting for him to cal her over.
    ‘Fancy a game, Princess?’ Princess was his nickname for her – he told her it was because she behaved like one, because she was so difficult and demanding, but real y it was because the first time he’d seen her, he thought she looked like a princess in a fairy tale, frozen, scared, waiting for someone to rescue her. He’d seen her when he’d hacked into the Pincent Pharma network, when he’d realised that Pincent Pharma was more than just a pharmaceutical company – it was a prison, a torture chamber. That was when he’d given up everything he’d taken for granted al his life and wormed his way into Pincent Pharma to rescue her, to save his princess from the dark forces at play in the bowels of that odious place. That