His real name was Dylan Peake. He sometimes wondered how many living people knew that. Maybe four at the most. In this new world, without documents and forms, without parents, teachers, doctors or policemen, without addresses, you were free to be whoever you wanted.

So, in a way, Dylan Peake was someone else altogether. Separate to Shadowman. He thought of him as someone he used to know. That other boy had been born in Wales but brought up in West London. He had lived in a big house in Notting Hill. His father had been a film producer, his mother a make-up artist. Both dead. He had two brothers and two sisters.

Also dead.

Thinking of Dylan Peake as someone else, a character in a story who had lived in the mythical old world – that lost paradise of easy food and clean water and non-stop fun and games – helped him to deal with the pain and loss.

It hadn’t happened to him.

Even back then, though, Dylan Peake had been an unusual boy. As the middle child of a large family, he had learnt to be invisible and hide among his brothers and sisters. His bedroom had been at the top of the house and he’d taught himself to recognize all the sounds that the building made. The creaking of boards as people moved about, the clanking of pipes as taps were turned on and off, the individual sound each door made as it opened and closed. Sometimes he would creep around the house and listen at the doors. Trying to find out what everyone was saying. Spying on his own family.

And not just his own family.

He had taken to roaming the streets at random, following people, going into shops and cafés, eavesdropping, working out the secret patterns and rhythms of the city. He longed to know what people were up to without actually joining in. He developed a knack for gatecrashing. Entering places he had no right to enter. Other schools. Parties. Offices. Concerts. Events. Nothing was closed to him. He could pass unnoticed wherever he went.

He was also a great mimic; within minutes of meeting someone he could impersonate them. It had been very useful on the phone, but also meant that he could mingle in any group, and fit in, pretending to be older or younger than he was, or posher, or more street, on a couple of occasions even foreign.

He moved freely and left no mark.

So in a way Dylan Peake had never really existed. He was made up of all the other personalities he had mimicked. And now Shadowman was just the name for an organization, a collection of personalities.

As the kids moved on, he waited until it was safe then stood up and followed. Keeping behind the railings. If they came into the park, he’d keep on their tail; if they went away, he’d let them go. He recognized Ryan. He’d been keeping tabs on him for months. He’d even run with him for a few days some time back, but he doubted Ryan would remember him. He’d learnt a lot in that time. Noted all the kids’ names. Worked out their strengths and weaknesses. Ryan’s hunters were probably the best in the area. One day they might be useful to Shadowman.

The other kids were strangers. He’d never seen them before. They intrigued him. He wanted to know where they’d come from, but he could only take on one job at a time. He needed to stay focused. Right now he was getting close to the group of wild kids who’d set up camp at the eastern end of St James’s Park on the drill square at Horse Guards Parade. They’d made themselves a messy little shanty town of tents and shacks built from bits and pieces – old timber, corrugated iron, plastic sheeting – anything they could find.

As far as Shadowman could make out, they’d been on the move around London, stripping an area of anything usable then moving on. He needed to find out all he could about them. So these new kids could wait. One thing at a time. He’d learnt that. Don’t rush. Do things properly. Cover your tracks.

Stay alive.

A lot of kids hadn’t managed to do that.

11

One of his toys was moving about, scuttling across the floor, all jerky. Annoying.

It had woken him up when it had knocked against his legs. He’d been sitting on his sofa. Sleeping. Dreaming. He always slept well after a meal. He’d nearly finished eating the broken toy he’d brought back with him the other night. They didn’t taste so good if you left them too long. Sometimes they started to smell and then they’d make him sick if he ate them. He’d probably had the best of it now. He’d put what was left of it into one of his bags, and the next time he went out collecting he’d take it with him. It was useful if any of the others were around. He could throw them scraps and they’d leave him alone. Some of them had even got used to it. They waited for him, then followed him around like pets, expecting to be fed. He’d had a pet before. He remembered it now. A cat. When he’d got ill, and there was no food left in the shops, and everything became confusing, he’d had to eat the cat. He wondered now if he would have to eat all his new toys before they were broken. This one was pesky, always moving about, trying to get away, dragging its broken bits behind and making that noise, that horrible irritating noise.

Annoying.

He nudged the toy with his foot and grunted at it. Why wouldn’t they just stay still when he wasn’t playing with them? Stupid toys.

He sighed. Belched. A thin trickle of sticky brown liquid squirted from his throat and dripped down his front.

It was a stupid world. Such hard work. He loved his stuff. His collection. He loved to go out searching for more. But it was hard. Avoiding the sun. Always hungry. Always thirsty.

His toys gave him pleasure, except this one. This one was making his life harder. Hard work. Hard, hard work. He’d always hated hard work.

He needed his sleep, needed his rest. Couldn’t his toys see that? Why did they have to be so mean to him? It wasn’t fair. If he was always having to wake up and put his toys back in their box, it was annoying.

He shouted at the toy.

‘’Noying!’

The toy made some stupid snivelling little noise and carried on crawling across the floor. The Collector groaned, shifted his weight and hauled himself up from the sofa. He would have to stop this toy from moving about like this. He had broken its legs, but it was still able to get about by wriggling and shuffling them.

‘’Noying!’

Well, he thought, as he leant over to pick his toy up, if it didn’t have any legs then it would have to stay still.

12

‘The fact of the matter is your friends abandoned us.’ David spoke in a very formal grown-up manner, his pale, freckled face comically serious. ‘We kept our side of the deal, but they simply chose to drive away and leave us to our fate. So, you see, your friend Brooke is not exactly on my Christmas-card list right now.’

The boat crew was sitting with David on a terrace overlooking the gardens of Buckingham Palace. The sunlight glinted off the lake on the far side of what had once been neat lawns, but was now a muddy field of various different vegetables. A small army of kids was busy tending the vegetables, working away with forks and spades and trowels.

If it had felt odd being in the Houses of Parliament with a bunch of children pretending to be the government, it felt odder still to be here in Buckingham Palace. DogNut and his friends had come in through the parade ground, where four of the boys from David’s school, wearing their distinctive red blazers, had been on guard in the sentry boxes at the front of the palace. They’d been suspicious of the new arrivals at first, but luckily one of them had remembered DogNut from when they’d met at the War Museum before the fire. Finally they’d unlocked the gates and DogNut had led his little band across the parade ground into the shadow of the massive building. David had met them inside, in one of the staterooms, and he’d made a big show of welcoming them as if they’d been his oldest and dearest friends. Then he’d given them a tour of the palace, showing off everything, and going on and on about what a good thing they had going there. Finally he’d taken them out into the garden at the back. He called it a garden, but it was more of a small park really, what with the lake in the middle and all the trees and shrubs everywhere. Once again his main aim seemed to have been to show off. He went on and on about how organized they were, how many of them there were, how much food they were growing, how safe it was here.