Maddy led the five of them through the swing doors into the Museum of Natural History’s main entrance hall. Foster had brought them all here once before, not long after he’d recruited them: Maddy from a doomed passenger plane, moments before it was due to disintegrate mid-air, and Liam from the sinking Titanic. It had been a field trip, a reward for them, a change of scenery. A chance for them to see, to reach out and touch the history they were now responsible for preserving.

Both support units, Bob and Becks, eyed the enormous looming brachiosaurus skeleton stretching along the entrance hall with a detached cool, their silicon minds categorizing the sights, sounds and smells of the museum as either useful or irrelevant data.

Liam, by contrast, chuckled with delight at seeing the dinosaur once again. A class of elementary schoolkids was clustered around the long plastic-boulder-covered display plinth on which the skeleton stood, all carrying their activity clipboards, faces craned upwards to look at the towering dark bones, every mouth drooping to form a little ‘o’ for ‘orrrrr-some’.