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station, he shivered.
    So the rumours were true.
    He remembered the furry, dog-like muzzle, the sharp, dripping teeth. He also remembered the metallic shine of wires protruding out of the creature’s neck, the sacking hood that covered the top of its head, its eyes. The eyes of a man, the face of a dog, the mind of a machine.
    The Huntsmen were abroad.
    Switch could only hope it was being transferred from one secure location to another. He knew the stories, everyone did. Into your house at night, stealing you from your bed, letting you live only if its orders said so, and even then only if it chose. Otherwise it was death: slow, fast, torturous or just plain painful, whatever its misfiring mind decided.
    The Huntsmen had been gone for fifteen years, since the government last brought them into service to end a rebellion in the Manchester-Liverpool GUA. Switch had heard the horror stories of slaughters after dark, the malfunctioning Huntsmen rampaging, tearing apart whole communities irrespective of their political loyalties. The rebellion ended voluntarily to stop the killing. In return for laying down their arms, the government vowed to take the Huntsmen out of service, shut them down, and never again let them loose on the streets. The Huntsmen were a liability, the remnants of a scientific greatness and knowledge that Mega Britain had let fall into dereliction and decay. The Huntsmen were too dangerous, too unpredictable, and now almost uncontrollable.
    There were rumours, of course. There were always rumours, but no confirmed sighting of a Huntsman had been made since the uprising.
    Until now.
    Switch picked up his clawboard and walked back up the platform. He’d planned to do a few more rides, but his enthusiasm was gone. Seeing that thing, that monster, straining at its bonds, wanting his blood, made him tremble. Switch feared no man, but there was no humanity left in the Huntsmen.
    The knife appeared in his hand, and he turned it over, considering it, letting the light reflect off the sharpened blade. It was nothing if one of those things came after him. Nothing at all.
    At the top of the old escalator Switch hauled up the shutter of one of the old newsstands. Behind the door, the light revealed a little den: a sleeping bag and a few blankets, a handful of torches, a small table. Switch went inside, switched on a battery lamp and pulled the shutter back down.
    This was where he made his home. St. Cannerwells Underground station was the obvious choice: riding the trains was the only time he felt pleasure so it made sense to live close to what he loved. The others didn’t know, and he didn’t want them to. Part of him felt like a guard, protecting what was theirs, watching over it. Another part just felt at home underground, in the labyrinth of tunnels beneath London.
    He pulled a can of cola out of a twenty-four pack he’d stolen off a delivery truck and popped it open. The carbonated water fizzed down his throat, stinging him, and he gulped most of it back before he felt any better.
    In a bag on the table he found some tobacco and a small packet of pot. He rolled himself a joint and lay back on the blankets to smoke it. He’d removed one of the metal rungs near the top of the shutter to act as a chimney, and now the smoke drifted up and out into the station. As he reflected on what he’d seen, he realised his hands were shaking, and even the weed wouldn’t make them stop.

 
     
     
     
    Chapter Four
    Owen
     
    Paul waited outside the school gate. Nearby, two burly guards armed with assault rifles watched him impassively. He had tried to start a conversation with one, but the man hadn’t seemed interested. Five days a week Paul waited here at this time, and the guards rarely changed, but even so, they shrugged off any attempt at conversation, as though speaking to him would compromise their positions. He had no particular desire to talk to them anyway; he just liked to pass the time.
    In the distance he heard a