I didn’t sleep so well that night. I mean, I’ve never slept well. My brain starts buzzing when there’s nothing to distract it, and I can spend an hour trying to mentally design a new kind of aeroplane, or rerunning conversations until she’s literally swooning in my arms. It never has any effect the next morning, but that doesn’t stop my mind from doing it every night. That night, though, it suddenly had a whole lot of new material. I spent a little while thinking about the possibilities inherent in the resurrection machine, and a long while wondering how I could get Alex to like me. I still had no idea how long she’d be around. Maybe a few weeks, to keep an eye on us while we were training?

At least she was there the next morning...

“HANDS OFF COCKS AND ON WITH SOCKS! MOVE IT, MOVE IT! WE’VE GOT A LOT TO DO BY MIDDAY, SO GET YOUR ASSES INTO GEAR!”

“Did the Professor put you up to that?” James groaned.

“Maybe...” she replied, twirling out of the room with a cheeky grin.

James and I dressed quickly in the white t-shirts and khaki shorts provided, slipping our personal belongings into our pockets. For me, that meant the little case that mostly held breath mints, my wallet, with its Fresnel lens and three business cards which seemed just a little thicker than they should be, my Zippo lighter with the Pioneer engraving, and the knife the professor gave me, with its many useful tools of a nature entirely suited to the innocent pursuits of a teenage boy. James packed a case containing just breath mints, a wallet that contained at all times no less than three condoms and a slim calculator, his souvenir Zippo engraved with the Bridge of Sighs, and his knife, which had a different but complementary set of tools to the one in my pocket. We had an interesting childhood.

When we were dressed we walked down to the mess, both piling high a huge breakfast of institutional bacon¹ and scrambled eggs on toast with sausages on the side. Her Majesty’s New Zealand Army looks after its officers. I can’t comment on the enlisted men, but they probably get it pretty good too.

After breakfast we went back to the warehouse. First order of the day was a lecture on security by dear old Crenshaw. He explained, at length, in bureaucratese:

1. Don’t tell anyone about this. Seriously.

2. If you tell anyone about this, you will get into trouble.

3. The third rule of Resurrection Club is, you DO NOT talk about Resurrection club.

4. Don’t tell anyone about this. We mean it.

5. The CIA is an open, friendly, family-oriented organisation and if you have any concerns, don’t hesitate to raise them with me AND NO ONE ELSE.

Since it was just the three of us, we couldn’t even play the Penis game to pass the time. Luckily, after two hours of this (I later realised, probably intentionally) hypnotic droning, the professor explained what we’d be doing in the afternoon, which woke us right up.

1

Ah, institutional bacon. Unless you’ve encountered it I’m not sure any description can really do it justice, but I’m pretty sure the pig wouldn’t consider it worth dying for. Nevertheless, it fills the gaps.