The cop finished his radio message and turned his head to speak to Baptiste, but before the first word made it out of his mouth –

       Ttzxch.

      The smallest sound as it entered his brain.

      The tiniest entry wound at the temple.

      His face went into spasm, then froze.

      

      September 29 10:14 (GMT+1). Hook Hall, Surrey, UK.

      The morning after the night before was 150 times more disappointing than any previous morning at nano-scale.

      Finn, Delta, Kelly and Stubbs sat in silence at a tiny table that had been specially made for them and stared at nothing in particular for a good long while.

      The Sons of Scarlatti (one technically a daughter) as they liked to call themselves, lived in an ‘apartment block’ fashioned from cellular seed trays that sat inside a biohazard bubble, which protected them from insects and other threats, inside Laboratory One. It was known as the nano-compound. First they were going to be there a week. Then they were told twelve days. Then three weeks “tops”.

      So far, five months had passed.

      On the upside, the longer they’d waited for the one thing they wanted most, the more they got of everything else. They could come and go as they pleased from the biosphere (as long as they followed elaborate safety procedures) and anything they wanted could be shrunk in the new accelerator array, so they enjoyed the finest foods, consumer goods and high-end leisure activities. Finn had his own private zoo full of his favourite insects, a laboratory and a skate park, and there was even a ski slope inside a macro freezer in Lab Two. Best of all a perspex-covered road and model rail network had been laid that allowed them safe access to the entire complex. Finn had been gifted a red Mini to drive around, which he adored (even though its speed had been restricted at Grandma’s insistence).

      But right now none of that helped.

      Various people had already called to reassure them: Grandma, Commander King and, over a video link, the Prime Minister. Even Hudson had been sent for. Not many kids could ruin the ‘jeans and hoodie’ look, but with his long hair, massive glasses and uncomfortable expression, Hudson was one of a kind. He was in on the Boldklub secret because he’d been dragged into the climax of operation Scarlatti and proved himself an unlikely hero.

      “What a bummer … That’s so rubbish. Bet you were looking forward to being tall again?” said Hudson when he arrived.

      “Mmmm,” said Kelly, looking round for a gun to shoot him with.

      “It must really eat away at the back of your minds …” Hudson mused.

      At which point Delta politely asked that they be left alone “to suck things up a while”.

      “At least he didn’t offer to write one of his poems^fn1,” said Finn when the nano-team were alone again.

      Stubbs grunted. “We are at the very margins of human comprehension. We might be stuck here for years and years …”

      “What do you know, old fool!” Delta said to Stubbs.

      “Quite a lot, actually,” said Stubbs defensively.

      Doubt stirred like a great black eel in the pit of Finn’s gut.

      Be yourself. Trust yourself. Just keep going. These had been his mother’s Big Three rules. But how could you be yourself when you were stuck in the wrong-sized body? What was the use of trusting yourself when you were totally dependent on other people? And how could you just keep going when you were so obviously stuck? When he’d complained about this to Christabel, their local vicar and a good friend since his mother’s funeral, she’d said, “Use it. Just like your mum left you three lessons, see what lessons you can learn from what you’re going through.”

      All he’d learned so far was that the more you wanted something, the further away it got.

      “I expect you’ve had better birthdays, Finn,” said Stubbs, looking more than ever like a dejected tortoise.

      Kelly gave a hollow laugh and slapped the old man on the back for being such a grouch. Stubbs could fix anything, but didn’t have much clue when it came to ‘being a human being’.

      “Thanks – it’s not until tomorrow,” said Finn.

      “Hey – a birthday is still a birthday. What do you want to do?” asked Delta, trying to brighten things up. She didn’t normally do ‘close’ but her younger sister Carla was the same age as Finn so he’d become a de facto younger brother.

      Finn shrugged. What was there to celebrate at 9mm? He didn’t even get to skip school. Instead he was attending via Skype, Hudson dutifully carrying him around on a laptop (the official explanation for Finn’s absence being he had a highly-contagious skin disease). Grandma insisted on the arrangement. “So he can live a normal life, like any other boy,” she had said, to which Finn responded, “IN WHAT POSSIBLE WAY COULD MY LIFE BE CONSIDERED NORMAL! I’M NINE MILLIMETRES TALL!”

      “At least you lot get to go to work …” Finn complained.

      There was a military research project that Finn wasn’t really supposed to know about called the ‘nCraft’. One great problem of being a centimetre tall was the time it took to cover even a modest distance and a new vehicle was being developed to take full advantage of the massively improved power-to-mass ratios at nano-scale. Al disapproved of any military application of his technology but Finn knew, that out of sheer boredom, Stubbs and the others had been working on it.

      They felt for him.

      “Don’t