People on the Piccadilly Line were eating themselves.

At least, that was the rumour. He’d heard that as food had run out, they’d started hacking at their arms like salami – starting with the pinky, working towards the thumb, then up the wrist and beyond the elbow. Everyone giving up one limb if needed. To keep it democratic.

Barbaric. But that was the Piccadilly Line. Their battle with the western section of the District had begun only days after the thuds forced everyone under. He had little experience of both of those lines – a water raid at Finsbury; a revenge skirmish for a rape at Victoria – and was thankful for it. They had once found a young girl who told stories of Gloucester Road platforms covered in corpses piled high as the ceiling. He had somehow managed to convince everyone that they couldn’t just leave her – but soon discovered that she kept everyone not on watch awake with her nightmares. They’d had to ‘lose’ her within a week.

He stubbed the big toe on his right foot