Cowl

19

Modification Status Report:

Pain inside. The boy grows at a phenomenal rate and the early scans show that his growth is optimal. I feel his carapace hard in my womb when he moves, and twice already he has interfaced through my spinal cord. Watching Amanita build her machines, the stunted tendrils moving on her face, I wonder what the relationship between the two of them will be. Will they be friends? Will he consider her his inferior, even though it was only through studying her that I was able to achieve him? Her mind is complex and quite evidently her intelligence is high, but she is very much a human girl. When he interfaced with me I glimpsed a mind equally as complex, but frighteningly alien. But my reaction I put down to my hormonal imbalance. I should not fear this perfection I have achieved.

Sauros, a metallic sphere drawing a tail of bright energy between grey and black surfaces—inverted through vorpal vision, it was poised in the flaw of a vast gem, infinite surfaces falling away from it, while it was supported by a fountain of energy and cut by the surfaces of a hypersphere. But Goron did not need this second view to know they were heading into deep shit. Like a bullet reaching the end of its ballistic arc, the great city was now ploughing down into the midnight sea in which awaited the organic Mandelbrot patterns of endless layers of beast.

‘We’ll have no fields! It’ll tear us apart!’ That was Theldon, playing his hands over his console like a virtuoso finding he has gone deaf.

‘All weapons systems are still enabled. We’re getting no energy loss there. I am reading organic mass on the other side.’ Silleck: grim, determined, fatalistic.

‘Put tactical nukes out ahead of us—as close as you dare. Have them detonate on the other side of the interface,’ Goron instructed, which was about the only instruction he could give in the circumstances, though he knew they were flea-biting an elephant.

The real world rolled in around them, distorted over hyper-surfaces. The triple flash of detonation momentarily blackened all screens, and Sauros resettled, groaning, to its bones in the midst of a firestorm.

‘Incursion right inside us!’ Silleck yelled, before even Theldon, who was supposed to be searching for such, could yell a warning.

Goron called up a view, into the abutment chamber, and saw the huge flaw opening and the defence rafts moving in to attack. He saw a feeding mouth come out, like a gargantuan striking cobra, and slam itself closed on the stern of one raft, before the second raft opened fire and severed the neck. But then another mouth hurtled out, then another… then a second incursion began to open.

‘Bastard! It was local fauna—we got nothing!’ Theldon’s hands were now motionless on his console.

Goron called up an external view, while with one eye he continued watching the battle in the abutment chamber. His people were dying in there, all due to him. Outside he observed a macabre landscape of seared dinosaur fauna. The torbeast had driven these creatures ahead of it to take the brunt of Sauros’s first defensive measures. Goron did not like the intelligence that revealed. Beyond the carnage he saw a line of incursions closing in.

‘Hit them with everything we’ve got,’ he instructed.

‘All of them?’ Silleck asked. ‘They are all around us.’

More views, and Goron observed the ring as it closed.

‘Do what you can,’ he said, now operating controls that had been set in the control pillar ever since Sauros had been built, but had never been used. Now he watched missiles hammering out from the city, hitting the incursions—some of those nacreous whirlwinds collapsing, but always others moving into their place.

‘We’ve lost it, we’ve fucking lost it!’ Theldon protested, turning from his console and staring at Goron.

Goron gestured to the rear of the chamber. ‘Get to the displacement generator. It’s set to drop us ten kilometres away, which should put us outside the beast’s immediate reach. I doubt it’s much interested in us, anyway—there’s a bigger prize at the other end of the tunnel.’

‘OK,’ said Theldon, turning back to his console.

In a flash Goron understood why Silleck had picked up on that first incursion before Theldon had. Quickly he shifted virtual controls and saw that somehow Theldon had gained access, through equipment made for external and internal monitoring and some adjustment of internal systems, to the abutment controls. Using yet another control protocol he had never revealed to anyone but Palleque, the Engineer shut off Theldon’s console.

Theldon turned. ‘Maybe, if we—’

‘Nothing we can do,’ Goron interrupted, his face expressionless. ‘We blow the abutments and New London goes anyway. Get out of here.’

Theldon turned back to his console, stared at it for a moment, then slapping his hands against it, stood and, without meeting Goron’s gaze, headed for the generator. Goron watched the displacement sphere flick the man away from Sauros. Blowing the abutments would certainly close the mouth of the wormhole and prevent the beast reaching New London, and just as certainly the feedback energy, and that projected from the sun tap, would fry the city. Goron returned his attention to more exigent concerns now the man was gone.

‘This is Engineer Goron,’ he said over the public address system. ‘All personnel head for your nearest displacement generator and get out of here. We have lost Sauros.’

He saw that many were not responding to his order. Some were fighting feeding mouths that were shooting up like trains from the corridors leading into the abutment chamber. Others seemed to be doing nothing at all, perhaps preferring to die with their city.

‘This is Engineer Goron. I am now leaving this city. You must all come with me.’

This finally motivated many to head for the generator points. But, just then, most of them were thrown off their feet as the city lurched.

‘What the hell was that?’

‘I can’t keep them out!’ from Silleck.

An outside view showed Goron a wide-open incursion in which atomic fires burned and were swamped by the roll of megatonnes of flesh. From this extended the neck of a giant feeding mouth that was now chewing on the city wall. Lasers burnt grooves in it, and missiles blew away chunks of it the size of houses. Its neck broke then separated, the mouth end attached to the city crashing down and by its sheer weight causing Sauros to tilt. But then another of the giants hammered in from the other side of the city.

‘Put a tactical into it,’ Goron suggested, knowing Silleck’s answer even as he spoke.

‘I can’t—we’ve got nothing left.’

‘This is Engineer Goron. Everybody get out—get out now! This order includes all technicians vorpally interfaced. You must abandon this place. It is not worth your lives!’

‘Silleck,’ he said in quieter tones, ‘that means you too.’

A display on the control pillar informed him that at least this latest order was being generally obeyed. The other controls there, having gone through their detachment sequence some minutes before, had freed a section of the pillar. He pulled the section away and stepped back, holding a control sphere and viewing sphere with all the vorpal tech that connected them together. Tucking under his arm this item, which looked like the severed head of a huge praying mantis fashioned of glass, he turned towards where the displacement generator was located. Then he heard the crashing hiss of monstrous progress coming up the lift shaft. Looking to those still trying to separate from their vorpal interfaces, he knew there was just no time left.

‘Silleck…’ he said, but could not go on. Abruptly he turned towards the generator.

The sphere enclosed him instantly, flicked him out between nightmare incursions and deposited him on a denuded mountainside, along with many other citizens of the place he had ruled. He spotted Palleque walking towards him, the other escapees too shocked to even feel motivated to attack the man. When Palleque reached him, both he and Goron turned to look back at the city.

Now some incursions were expanding and mating up, while others were closing. As further citizens suddenly appeared around the two men, they watched more of the beast’s mass flowing in towards the city, tearing out walls and boring through the superstructure. Those displacing from there were now arriving injured, sometimes dead, till their numbers dwindled and finally reached zero. Now they could see the beast like the forever-turning back of a sea giant, diving in between the abutments of the wormhole and attenuating—flowing away like sump oil draining into some huge invisible funnel. But this was a flow that seemed as if it would never end.

‘Palleque! Palleque you bastard!’ The heliothant who stumbled up the slope towards them was drawing a weapon from his belt.

Goron held up his hand. ‘Palleque did his duty.’ He gestured towards the beast and the remaining skeleton of Sauros. ‘This is what we wanted to happen.’

This news was spread gradually as the endless transit of the beast continued. Hours passed and the surviving citizens gathered around Goron to hear his explanation.

‘But that means we are trapped here now,’ someone managed.

‘It means the survival of all we hold dear, and that is all that should concern you,’ Palleque replied.

That stilled them, while in shock, then growing horror, they saw the seemingly endless monster flowing through their temporary home towards what they truly called home: New London.

Goron leaned close to Palleque. ‘Get some help and find Theldon.’ Palleque raised an eyebrow. Goron nodded to the heliothant who had earlier been intent on killing Palleque. ‘Take him with you, and any others like him.’

‘So my position as arch-traitor has been superceded,’ said Palleque. ‘What should I do when I find him?’

Goron just stared at him.

Thirteen screens flicked on, one after another, as the tachyon feed from the abutment chamber of Sauros caused vorpal sensors—spaced all the way down the wormhole—to come into phase. Talk ceased immediately, and it occurred to Maxell you could pluck a dismal tune on the tension stringing the air of the New London Abutment Control Centre.

‘It’s in,’ said one of the interface techs needlessly, for the first screen briefly displayed a giant feeding mouth flung out from an incursion in the abutment chamber of Sauros, before that particular sensor in the wormhole was knocked spinning through the air. All in the room now glimpsed the heaving roll of beast, its probing tentacles and glistening red caves, and one brief glimpse of a defence raft, with its back end sheered off, falling and burning, spilling screaming Heliothane into a tree on which every leaf was a mouth.

‘Anything yet from Goron?’ Maxell asked, walking over to stand behind the sensor operator’s chair and peering up at the view on his first screen.

‘Nothing,’ said Carloon, as he too gazed up at the chaotic image and tried to get his first sensor back under control. Abruptly the first screen blanked and the man swore, pushing his chair back from his console, then turning to Maxell.

‘The attack hit them too quickly, so maybe he didn’t get out,’ he said. ‘We’ll know soon enough.’

On the second screen a tiny speck grew into a distant darkness, at the centre of the triangular tunnel.

Already?

Maxell made a rough calculation: ten thousand million kilometres, and no sign of closure from Sauros. Of course, inside the wormhole, the distance the torbeast extended itself through and its speed were a function of the energy it could expend, nevertheless…

‘Any mass readings yet?’

The interface tech who had first spoken said, ‘Nothing yet, we can’t get that until it’s all entirely in the wormhole, where we can calculate then subtract its energy level.’

‘Mother of fuck,’ said Carloon.

Now, in the second screen, the image had grown and was becoming clear. Maxell considered this view similar to what the prey of a piranha shoal might see in its last moments. The wormhole was filled with a great triangular plug of flesh that consisted almost entirely of mouths. This was the sharp end of the torbeast—that which was the essence of its ferocity and voracity. There was something wolfish about this mass, but with everything else but teeth and jaws stripped away. There could be no doubt, seeing this, that the torbeast’s intentions were not benign.

‘It’s pressed right up against the walls. I’ll not be able to get my sensor out of the way of that,’ said Carloon.

‘Can you take it out of phase?’

‘I can, but how will I know when to bring it back in?’

‘When I tell you.’

As the torbeast completely filled the screen, Carloon put that particular sensor a hundred and eighty degrees out of phase, folding the picture into black, speckled with the flashes of potential photons generated by the beast’s energy front.

Maxell considered her options. If they left bringing the sensor back into phase until the last moment, and then saw that the beast was entirely inside the wormhole, this would indicate that Goron had failed. If it revealed, however briefly, that the beast was still pouring in, they could drop the structural energy feed and thus extend the tunnel by perhaps another third of a lightyear. After that, without closure at Sauros, they must act. It meant catastrophic feedback to Sauros and the certain deaths of any survivors there, along with most of the life existing on that past Earth. It was still a matter for conjecture whether this might shove the Heliothane Dominion down the probability slope just as firmly as anything Cowl might achieve.

On the third screen the beast came into view, eventually filled the screen, then folded away as Carloon put that sensor out of phase too. Maxell felt her body growing damp with perspiration.

Damnation! Twenty thousand million kilometres?

At fifty thousand million kilometres the sweat was actually trickling from her armpits.

‘How big is that damned thing?’ asked Carloon.

Maxell didn’t try to formulate a reply. There was a contention amongst Heliothane chronophysicists that the creature was potentially infinite—and it was a contention she didn’t want to think about.

‘I’ll bring the third sensor back into phase,’ said Carloon. ‘It doesn’t matter if we lose that one.’

The sensor operated for less than a second. Carloon froze the view, displaying a blurred image as of a torch shone through someone’s cheek from inside.

‘Coming up on number seven,’ said Carloon.

Maxell noticed how the man’s hand was shaking as he poised a finger over the virtual icon that would put this next sensor out of phase. Three more sensors went the same way and when Carloon got the same view from number four as he had from number three, she knew there was no point in saving any more of them for a hoped-for rear view of the beast.

‘Cut the structural feed to minimum sustainable,’ she instructed the interface techs.

The immediate energy surge caused the floor to vibrate, and she knew the Heliothane population would be feeling this all across the city’s disc. Now microwave projectors and terajoule lasers were pumping the energy excess out into space, but this was an emission the city could not sustain. Eventually something would burn out, and then systems would begin to break down. If that happened the wormhole extension would have to be cut, else the microwave beam transmitted from the sun tap would create a molten sea in the centre of their fine city.

‘Coming up on eleven,’ said Carloon. ‘It’s taking longer.’

‘When it hits twelve, we do it,’ said Maxell. She looked around, seeing that most of the superfluous control-room staff were now standing in a semi-circle behind her. ‘And then we see if we survive.’

Theldon gazed back for a second to where the survivors of Sauros were setting up camp on the mountainside, then turned and negotiated his way down what was once the course of a stream between stands of charred vegetation. He needed a deep pool to take the emergency manifold and there was none around here, the water having been evaporated literally in the heat of battle.

Even though the differences between heliothant and umbrathant were a few minor genetic ones, but mostly a question of loyalties, Theldon had found it difficult to infiltrate the upper echelons of the Heliothane Dominion. It had in fact taken him fifty of his one hundred and twenty-five years of life, and just when he was in a position to strike a blow that would obliterate New London, and the threat that it posed, Goron had shut down his console. He would have liked to have acted even earlier, but only during the chaos of the attack could his own penetration of abutment control have gone unnoticed. He damned himself for not sticking entirely to his job, and warning them of that first incursion because that error had certainly been what had roused Goron’s suspicions. Now fifty years of sycophancy were wasted and ten years of being subordinate to Cowl’s previously unknown primary agent.

Palleque.

They’d brought him back wounded for an interrogation. Theldon was unworried that his own presence might be revealed by Palleque, for the identities of Umbrathane agents or Cowl’s agents were never revealed to each other, precisely for this reason. What had worried him then was just how long it was taking for that interrogation to start. And now… now Palleque was Goron’s great friend and a hero to the Heliothane. Palleque had always been a double agent and this was something Cowl needed to know because that, and the fatalistic way Goron had reacted to the torbeast’s attack, made Theldon feel this whole situation stank.

At last, out of sight of the vast flow of the torbeast pouring into the wormhole, Theldon saw the glimmer of water between some rocks. Heading down, he scanned desperately for a deep pool, but none was yet in evidence. Then, thankfully, it appeared before him: a deep pool right by a seared pile of vegetation that must have been washed down here in an earlier flood. He hurried towards it, having no doubt that Goron’s people would be hunting for him even now. Perhaps Cowl could somehow divert an outgrowth of the torbeast into depositing one of its active scales—or maybe Cowl possessed some other method of retrieving his loyal agents.

At the pool Theldon went down on his knees and observed the floating bodies of blue-skinned newts amid the scum of burnt leaves and twigs. Plunging his hand into the water, he found it still warm and thought about the other kind of heat that would still be in this area. Certainly some of the citizens of Sauros would be excising tumours from themselves in the immediate future and having to run anti-cancer enzymes through their bodies for years to come. But whatever technology they had would now no longer be available to Theldon himself. Cowl would have something, though, and Theldon, with his tough genetic structure resulting from Umbrathane breeding programs and direct genetic manipulation, would be able to survive any melanomas for quite a few years yet. He sat back and shook water from his hand, then he pressed the finger and thumb of his right hand into his left forearm. The lump embedded in his muscle became visible through taut skin and, as he kept on the pressure, a fistula developed and began to ooze plasma. He pinched the flesh hard and a flattened white spheroid, a centimetre across, popped out of his arm. He inspected the thing for a second, then tossed it into the pool.

In the Jurassic he had established a permanent manifold set deep and out-of-phase in granite, just like the one Palleque had supposedly been caught using. That was all well and good, as the device extruded layers of vorpal crystal through the surrounding rock with which to blur the tachyon signal and thus hide itself from detection. The only problem was that once the egg had been placed, it took a number of days to develop and become usable. Growing one in water was quick but risky, as the chances of detection increased by an order of magnitude.

The spheroid sank about half a metre below the surface and there, with one twitch, expanded to twice its previous size. It then frayed around the edges, and all movement in the water surrounding it ceased as it set itself in a fast-propagating jelly. It then began to grow the hard tentacular arms of the manifold, like sulphate crystals dumped in a solution of isinglass. In seconds it was ready and he pressed his palm against the pool’s now rubbery surface: like an attacking squid the manifold rose to bind with his hand. After a moment Cowl’s beetle face looked up at him from the depths.

‘Sauros has been evacuated,’ Theldon said without preamble. ‘Was Palleque really your primary agent?’

‘He was,’ Cowl replied.

‘Then know that he was a double agent. Goron gave him a displacement generator before the torbeast’s attack and now it seems they are the greatest of friends.’

Pain shot up Theldon’s arm from the manifold and he found he could not pull his hand away.

‘It’s true!’ he protested. ‘Something more is going on! I’m sure Goron expected things to happen as they have.’ The pain eased and Theldon took an unsteady breath. He went on, ‘I don’t know what they think to achieve, but you have been out-manoeuvred.’

Cowl’s head turned sideways, and for a moment Theldon got a hint of nightmarish shapes deep down in the pool.

‘The beast will not stop,’ said Cowl. He turned back. ‘The killer… my sister…’

Abruptly the connection broke, and the manifold sank and slowly broke apart. Theldon withdrew his hand and looked disbelievingly at the still pool. No chance of rescue now. Cowl had given him nothing, not even a chance to ask for help. Theldon turned and looked back the way he had come. Maybe he could still salvage something. Maybe, during the chaos of the torbeast’s attack, what he had tried to do could be put down to panic… inexperience.

Theldon was halfway back along the course of the stream when Palleque spotted him, and folded up the scope of the Heliothane rifle he was carrying. Theldon did not even see the source of the shot that punched a finger-width hole through his chest and blew his spine out of his back. There were never any maybes in this conflict, and very little room for doubt.

Above Cowl’s citadel the weird shapes of incipient horror continued their hideous dance. Cowl stood utterly still before his vorpal controls, his hands hanging slack against his sides. When Makali and her compatriots entered the sphere, he still did not move until Makali’s second, Scour, spoke—before she could stop him.

‘Have we killed them? Have you done it?’ he asked eagerly.

Cowl turned slowly, then stalked towards them. Eventually he came to stand still and silent before Scour. Makali herself did not move, knowing the danger of this moment. Those Umbrathane whom Cowl had brought back to his citadel were here on sufferance and under his absolute autocratic rule, being viewed by their ruler with the same contempt with which he viewed all humankind. Any who had been there for some time knew when to keep their heads down—for if Cowl suffered any kind of reversal he would take it out on those nearest to him.

Finally Cowl’s voice issued, as if out of the air, ‘The assassin escaped to the sea. Bring Aconite to me.’

‘About time we dealt with that bitch,’ said Scour.

Makali winced. As Cowl backhanded Scour and sent him sprawling, Makali willed her second to just stay on the floor and make no further move. But he was new to this part of citadel and still retained all his Umbrathane pride. He moved his hand to the butt of his handgun, his face twisting in a sneer as if about to say something.

None of the seven Umbrathane saw Cowl cross the intervening space. He was just there, jerking Scour high into the air, ripping and tearing at him. Then Scour arced away, trailing his own intestines, and hit a lambent transformer before sliding, burning and screaming, to the floor. None of the other six moved or spoke while Scour’s screams turned to groans as he cooked, unable to drag himself out of the thermal containment field around the machine. Cowl stood amongst them utterly still, as oily smoke drifted across the sphere’s interior. This stillness went on interminably, until Makali relaxed the tension gripping her body and slid her hand down to her belt, just a short distance from her own hand weapon. Cowl immediately spun round towards her, and for a moment she thought she would now die like Scour had.

Sibilant hissing drew in to Cowl, from the shadows amid the machines, and expressed from that entity in words: ‘I do not give orders twice.’

Catching the attention of her companions, Makali twitched her head towards the exit, and the five of them began backing out of the sphere. Makali followed them, pausing at the exit.

‘The torbeast?’ she asked, knowing she was now risking her life.

Cowl hissed again as his face covering began to open up.

Makali fled.

If asked who she trusted, Polly could only suggest Nandru with certainty, since his fortunes were now utterly tied to her own; and Ygrol, maybe, because he was utterly ingenuous. The word ‘trust’ did not apply to Tacitus because, though always honest and utterly straight with the others, he also coldly informed them that he was loyal unto death to Aconite, and cared not one whit if the rest of them lived or died. Cheng-yi she felt was the kind of dog you daren’t turn your back on, and Lostboy she included in her general assessment of Aconite, for most of what rested inside his skull the troll woman had put there. The heliothant herself Polly considered too complex a being to either trust or distrust. Tack she trusted even less than the Chinaman, and when she spotted her erstwhile killer sneaking out into the damp night, she took up her taser, and the Heliothane handgun Aconite had provided for her, and followed him.

Rain was now steadily pouring from a dark sky, but it was a warm downpour and Polly relished it as she fixed her mask across and tied her hair back.

Now then, is there something Mr U-gov arsehole has neglected to tell us?

‘Well, I don’t think he’s out here to smell the roses, Nandru,’ Polly replied.

I wonder what it’s to be: some sort of double cross, or is he still going after Cowl?

‘We’ll find out soon enough.’ Polly set off after the half-seen figure. The light robe Aconite had provided him with was much more easily visible than the black skin-tight clothing Polly herself wore, but nevertheless she found what concealment she could. However, Tack did not look round once as he plodded stolidly into the night.

Polly tracked him down the hill, then up one bank of the river. She ducked down behind a low boulder when at one point he halted, turning his masked face up into the rain. She noticed that his fists were clenched at his sides, then she watched him bow his head and bring the fists up and crush them against his temples. Still he did not turn round, but after a moment moved on.

Migraine? Nandru suggested.

Polly did not answer, for just then Tack abruptly turned aside and she lost sight of him. Hurrying up to the point she had last seen him, she spotted a narrow watercourse leading away from the river bed, cut down through stone. Following this, she kept catching glimpses of him ahead of her. For a second time he disappeared, but then a dim light ignited somewhere in the watercourse, and she finally came upon a tent lit up from the inside.

Perhaps he don’t like company.

Much as she appreciated how much Nandru had helped her, she sometimes wished she had an antidote for his verbal diarrhoea. She studied the tent for long-drawn-out minutes, but no movement was apparent inside it. As she considered turning round and heading home, there came a muttered curse from the interior. Leading with the barrel of her handgun, Polly ducked down and pressed through the entrance.

Tack was sitting cross-legged at the rear of the tent behind a suspended chemical light. To his left lay an empty pack and on the ground to his right, rested a Heliothane carbine. He made no move for the weapon as she entered. When Polly moved to where she could more clearly see his face, she saw that his mask was off revealing a cold, blank expression. She removed her own mask to sample the air, and saw, down in one corner of the tent, some insectile oxygenating device.

‘I’m sorry I tried to kill you,’ Tack said emotionlessly.

He’s sorry. Well, that cuts no mustard on my fucking beef.

‘Go away, Nandru.’

Well, excuse me.

Polly felt the presence of Nandru fade as he took the other option now available to him: shirting his awareness into Wasp.

‘Are you really?’ she sneered at Tack.

He looked confused for a moment, pressed the palm of his hand against his forehead, then went on, ‘I killed Minister LaFrange, Joyce and Jack Tennyson, Theobald Rice and Smythe. I cut off Lucian’s fingers one by one until he told me the file-access code at Green Engine, and then I gutted the guard who tried to stop me breaking in there.’ Then he looked up, staring past her as if at something beyond the wall of the tent and beyond this time. ‘The bomb in the protest meeting against U-gov killed forty-eight people and maimed twelve.’

He fell silent, and she knew he was enumerating further killings and tortures in his mind.

‘Why did you come out here?’ she asked, uncomfortable with the ensuing silence.

His gaze tracked across to her. ‘I needed to think.’

‘Nice thoughts you have,’ she observed.

He flinched. ‘How could they be otherwise? I’ve led such a nice life.’

‘But it wasn’t exactly your fault,’ Polly conceded.

His stare was blank. ‘Yes, I accept that I had only as much control over my actions, before the moment Cowl took my mind apart, as any other machine. But that doesn’t help. It was me who planted that bomb. It was me who raped the teenage daughter of a certain terrorist, to force him to come after me. It was me who led him into a trap and blew his kneecaps away, me who worked him over with scopolamine, a scalpel and pliers, until I had extracted the required information. And it was me who then tied a kerbstone to him and dumped him off the New Thames Barrier.’

‘Did he deserve it?’

‘She didn’t.’

Polly was at a loss. She had followed him here expecting the man to be involved in something nefarious—and perhaps to have the satisfaction of putting a cluster of explosive bullets in his back in repayment for past intended hurts. But this was something else, though what she did not yet know. Maybe he truly felt remorse, or maybe that was just what he wanted her to think.

‘So you have suddenly become such a moral human being?’ she queried.

Tack snorted. ‘It’s not morality—it’s empathy. I cringe when I remember the things I did. I can still hear the sound of the wirecutters going through Lucian’s fingers and the sounds he made. I can remember the girl’s fear, then disbelief, then pain, every word she said to me while she begged for mercy, and I can see how I destroyed something essential.’

Polly sat back and crossed her legs, wondering at her own reaction. She had never killed anyone, but she had caused pain because of her lack of empathy. As for morality, previously she had never known the meaning of the word.

‘Aconite told me that’s the true mark of a criminal,’ she murmured.

‘Cruelty?’ Tack asked.

‘No, lack of empathy. The true criminal cannot conceptualize the experiences of his victims. He cannot feel their pain, or in any way understand their trauma. The true criminal is not a social creature. We were discussing her brother at the time.’

Tack shook his head. ‘In U-gov terms, I was not a criminal. I was merely their agent—the ungloved hand of their justice.’

‘They were the criminals,’ said Polly. ‘What they did to you was in many ways as bad as the things you inflicted on others. They suppressed your humanity and made you their absolute slave.’

‘Knowing who to blame doesn’t make me feel any better. There’s a grey area… Why didn’t I kill that terrorist cleanly rather than let him drown?’

‘Perhaps you felt his actions justified that punishment?’

‘Perhaps.’

Polly gazed at him for a long moment as he stared at his hands. ‘Tell me,’ she said. ‘Tell me all those things you did.’

He looked up at her, a faint smile twisting his features. ‘Catharsis?’

‘Maybe.’

And so, in terse, leaden sentences, Tack told her. When he had finished, Polly reached out and pressed her hand down on his.

‘Where do we go from here?’ Tack asked.

Confused by what she was feeling, Polly leaned forwards and kissed him on the lips. For a moment it appeared he did not know how to respond, then he reached out to press his hand against the back of her head, returning the kiss with a kind of desperation.

Sorry to break up this romantic moment, but a shitstorm just arrived.

Polly sometimes wished Nandru had a face she could slap.