certainly apparent enough for even an artificial intelligence to note. Ian sat on the windowsill, hands braced against it on either side of his hips. "Do you have any idea of how many Squad members I've seen come and go in my time here? 'Here.' I remember when we were still based in the Arndale. Getting relocated here after the insurance people moved out was the best thing ever happened to the Squad."
"Twelve," said Talos.
"What?"
"Since you were recruited into the Goon Squad, twelve Squad members have been detached from service for a variety of reasons."
"Twelve? Really? Bugger me." He laughed humourlessly. "Detached from service. I like that."
"Most retired."
"Aye, most did. The job takes it out of folk. Do you remember Squirrel? No, you wouldn't, before your time. Early 'nineties, it was. Only been on the force meself for about a year. She was great." He shook his head. "Had to go because of a copyright claim from the US. A bloody copyright claim. Apparently they had a squirrel-orientated hero over there with a prior claim of a few months. What are the chances? Damn shame. Kids loved her." He lifted a hand to look at the leathery, dead skin. "Not much chance of anybody asking me to do a school visit. Or any of us, really. We'd scare the crap out of them. Well, maybe not Nadiya. People like her."
He straightened up and walked back to his chair.
"But they didn't all retire. Poor buggers." He glanced at a board on the wall that bore a list of names, lest they forget. The last few on it were names he had known personally.
Talos saw the glance. "When are we going to add Mara?"
Ian didn't want this conversation. He glared at the floor. "We don't know that she's dead."
"It has been months, Ian."
"So? That doesn't mean anything. We don't know what happened to her, yeah? She could've buggered off to Narnia or Dorset or wherever witches go for some quiet for all we know, get her head sorted out. She's fine." He turned away from the board. "She's fine."
Talos was very sure that, wherever she was, she was not fine. It said nothing, however.
Ian had picked up the paper again.
"'Mr Manchester's Marmaduke,' that used to be in it, too. Only found out years later that 'Marmaduke' was syndicated. It's bloody American, nowt to do with Manchester at all. Felt a bit betrayed when I found that out."
He started turning the pages, scanning them briefly, then turning to the next. Faster, more violently. The edges of the pages tore beneath his fingers, but still he kept turning them. The pages were crumpling, the fold becoming misaligned, but still he went through the paper, page after page after page.
"Why are there no cartoons anymore?" he demanded. "Why are there no cartoons? Where are they?" Then he was into the sports section and at the back page. He threw the dishevelled paper to the floor. "Where are they?"
Ian Mears, a man with a lifetime sentence and the immortality with which to enjoy it, looked up.
But Talos was gone, the lift doors closed, the shaft empty. An unspoken kindness.
"Even you've changed," he said quietly to the absent machine. "Once upon a time, you'd have told me to shut up and pull myself together. Even you can change."
He gathered up the newspaper and rearranged its disarrayed pages, folded it as neatly as he could, and put it on the coffee table. It wasn't the paper's fault that everything changes, after all.
That almost everything changes.
No-No Dojo
Nadiya was in Salford at eight on a Sunday morning, a sports bag containing her workout clothes over her shoulder, and a copy of the “Sunday Mirror” under her arm. Currently, she was trying to find the Goon Squad's secret training facility.
She hadn't even known that they had a training facility, never mind a secret one, until she received a very official letter from the Office of Special Talents Oversight telling her to attend a session for the purposes of assessing her current state of task-worthiness. She had blinked at the opaque language for a while, and looked up a few words from the two hundred word paragraph, but was barely any wiser at the end of it. Talos wasn't about – again – and Ian was in Birmingham liaising with the local SpecT over one of the GMP's rogues' gallery that had decided to try his luck in the West Midlands, so Nadiya took the letter to show Gilbert. His reaction was unilluminating, but encouraging; he refused to tell her what to expect, but that she would enjoy it if she let herself.
Oh, and that she should take a copy of the “Mirror.”
So, there she was, across Blackfriars Bridge and just into Salford, looking for a top secret training establishment. Her visions of a fully computerised, partially virtual Danger Room sort of facility like the ones she'd seen the American equivalent of SpecT teams using on TV took a bit of a knock when she discovered the address was a Victorian building; formerly a shop with four storeys of offices on top, now glory fading, paint peeling, and shuttered. She checked the address again. This couldn't be it. Could it?
She found the door at the corner and looked for a building number on or near it, convinced that she must have miscounted. As she searched with the ugly feeling that she'd have to go back and look like an idiot, a voice said, "Is that the ‘Sunday Mirror’?"
She stepped back startled. The voice had come from the shuttered door, but had been clear and unmuffled, a male voice, not young and with an accent she thought sounded faintly Chinese.
"Well?"
"Yes?" she said slowly.
"You're not sure?" There was disdain in the voice, as if she was an idiot for being unsure exactly what newspaper she was carrying.
She unfolded it, checked the banner, and turned it around to show the door. This seemed like a good idea until she did it, at which point she felt like an idiot all over again.
"’Sunday Mirror’," she said. "I was told to bring a copy."
There was silence, and she was just wondering if this was all some strange sort of personality test when the shutter on the door started to roll up to a low electrical hum. Beyond it was an ageing shop door, a cloth blind pulled down over the glass. An ancient sign still dangled between material and glass, reading "Sorry! We're Shut!" illustrated by a very dapper '30s-style cartoon man half bowing with a regretful expression on his face. He honestly did seem sorry. As she looked at the yellowed cardboard sign, the door swung open.
She stepped through and drew breath to greet whoever had opened the door, but there was nobody there. The shop looked like it hadn't been refitted since the 'fifties or 'sixties; wooden counters and shelves, with enclosed displays out on the floor. Packing crates and file boxes sat around. It seemed the ground floor was only being used for storage these days.
Nadiya jumped slightly as the door clicked shut behind her, and the metal roller shutter ground down once more, closing off her retreat.
"Upstairs," said the voice, and no more. Clutching her copy of the “Sunday Mirror” like a talisman, she went behind the counter and climbed the narrow, creaking stairs.
The staircase opened out onto a landing at one side of the building by a large open doorway. Through it, she could see a wide, open, windowless space, apparently occupying most of the floor. She guessed this had once been the shop's storage area, but now felt more like a community hall. She could make out a cluster of a few upright chairs to one side in the darkness, but further investigation was curtailed by the sound of footsteps descending from the second floor. Nadiya waited, unsure whether to be nervous or... no, she decided to go with nervous.
The man was, to be honest, a little underwhelming. In his sixties, of far eastern descent (she guessed at Chinese, based mainly on the few words he had spoken), steel grey hair, cheek bones she would admittedly have killed for, and deep brown, very watchful eyes. He was wearing a baggy white cotton shirt, black trousers, and flip-flops over white socks.
He didn't say anything, but waved at her to go into the room. She started to obey, but then he waved her over to him as he reached the foot of the stairs. While she was vacillating, he took the n
ewspaper from under her arm, and then waved her away again. Unaccompanied, she walked into the dark room.
Fluorescent lights flickered on to a series of clicks as she reached the centre of the floor. The man was just inside the room, flicking toggle switches on a brass wall plate that harkened back to another era. He neither looked at the switches nor her, his attention reserved for the newspaper. As the last light flickered into steady life, he tossed the paper onto a chair by the door, put his hands behind his back and regarded her appraisingly in silence.
"I'm... Nadi–"
"Nadiya Kysla. 'Puppet Girl.' I know." He walked slowly towards her, hands still behind his back, eyes never leaving her. "Abilities: manipulate brain chemistry to induce unconsciousness, range close; alter brain chemistry to confuse perceptions, range close; psionically detect emotion, range close; manipulate brain chemistry to influence emotion, specifically via endorphins, range contact."
Nadiya suddenly felt very insecure. She had never admitted to being able to do that last thing. It felt too personal and, frankly, intrusive to use except in extreme circumstances. How did this man know? Was it in her record? If so, what else was there that she didn't care for others to know about?
As she thought these things, the man had nearly reached her. Without warning, his right hand swung around at her head. Utterly surprised, she embarrassed herself by making a small squeak and flinching rather