Jonathan Draper, CEO of the Ranking Institute, sat down at his desk and rested his elbows on the hard, smooth surface. The others, that took up two rows of chairs - men, woman, teenagers alike - regarded him, all with that same scrutinising stare. They all wore the same uniform, of sorts. Plain grey trousers, black shoes and short-sleeved white t-shirts that displayed the black tattoos in the inside of their forearms. Behind every chair, a guard stood, clad in shock-resistant armour, pointing a gun at the chair's occupant, with a finger resting on the trigger.

No one moved. They hardly blinked as Jonathan opened the ring binder and cleared his throat, sitting further forward in his chair.

"Yesterday, the Network Tower was destroyed by a dissent group," he said. His voice was abnormally loud in the otherwise silent room.

None of them acknowledged him. Like a den of sleeping lions.

"One person was killed on scene, but the body was removed before we could identify it. However," he tapped a button on a small remote, and the screen behind him lit up, displaying a picture of a laughing young woman with long blond hair. One eye was blue, the other brown. "We have reasons to believe it was Suzanna Cruz of Sector One, who was, at the time, engaged to Edward Solomon, also of Sector One."

The picture changed again.

"They were very thorough," Jonathan said, his mouth forming a thin line, "The street cameras in the area were destroyed just hours before the attack, leaving us no time to repair them. All of the people involved wore masks and gloves, barely talking through the whole attack. The one person who did talk used their edge to distort their voice. So we have no forms of recognition other than their edges."

One of the people at the front, a young woman with a pale face framed by jet-black hair, raised a single eyebrow, drumming her fingers on her thigh. The tag SF stood out starkly against her white skin. The guard behind her touched the barrel of his gun to the back of her head in warning, and a slow, deadly grin spread across SF's face.

"We do have suspects," Jonathan went on, unruffled, "Some have alibis, but most were known to be in Central at the time of the attack. The suspects are as follows: August Merchant. Rank Two."

A picture of a red-haired man in his twenties.

"Benjamin Redden. Rank One."

A teenage dark skinned boy.

"Jacob Deng. Isabelle Deng. Maria DeSailles. All Ones."

A pair of twins. A woman in her thirties.

"Vivian Linswood. Derek Bridle. Ones."

Two teenagers with their arms around each other, grinning. A few people raised their eyebrows at the sight of the girl's ravaged face, half-bald head and the missing chunk of her nose.

"The Atkinson family, of Sector Five."

"Rachel King. One."

The list went on and on, along with a steady stream of pictures, either gained from social media or captured without the knowledge of the suspect. As the list steadily grew, many of the people watching displayed a greater interest, leaning forward in their seats, analysing the photographs.

When Jonathan reached the end, he had their full attention.

"These are the most likely," he said, and a group of names appeared on the screen, "But there's only one we're interested in, at the moment."

His audience nodded as the picture came up again.

"I don't have the time to explain it all here. You'll all be given one of these," Jonathan tapped the ring binder, "Read it. Carefully. And for Lord's sake, I can't stress this enough: Do not kill them. You'll end up with a bullet in your skull if you do. Capture them alive. Beat them up if you want to, since you all like that kind of thing."

SF let out a breath of laughter, those green eyes piercing.

"The plan is in the binder. Memorise it - you can't take it with you. However battered they are by the end of it, as long as they're still breathing it's fine. Any questions?"

"Why?" SF demanded. The guard behind her tapped the trigger, but she only rolled her eyes.

Jonathan only shrugged, "You're getting rid of a nuisance. A nuisance that's more useful to us alive, rather than dead."

SF sat back in her seat, crossing her arms. She was the uncontrollable one, the wildfire. Then again, she hadn't taken AS's death particularly well. It had unhinged her even more than she had been before. Jonathan knew, without a doubt, that she would fully exercise her right to beat the subject until their life was hanging by a thread.

They all regarded him with that same stare, with those eyes that didn't miss a single beat.

When it really came down to it, they were attack dogs. Vicious, feral. Lethal.

It was the way things had always worked. Parliament liked to call themselves the law-makers, the ones who made all the tough decisions. But London, like every other city, had a dark underbelly. Down there, it was only the most powerful, the coldest, the hardest that could carve out a miserable existence for themselves. It was these two dozen people in front of him that were the coldest and hardest of the bunch, those picked as children to be the elite fighters. And yet, they were no more than puppets, at the end of the day.

And Jonathan held the strings.