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‘What’s the situation now?’ he asked.

‘All security is offline and all the computers down,’ Janus replied. ‘They had to shut everything down just to stop the read-erguns.’

Good. Confusion was just what he needed. He climbed out of the transvan.

‘You two,’ he pointed to two of the Inspectorate enforcers outside the doors, ‘come with me.’

The things Hannah really needed could be fitted into his briefcase: namely the secondary processor and implant hardware enclosed in a cylinder lit with LEDs to show they were powered up and running interface software; also the organic interface, which resided in a container the size of a cigarette packet – again under power but this time to keep the scrap of semi-organic tissue frozen. However, she had drawn up a secondary list of surgical items, and they would fill up a crate like the one Smith had dispatched him in to the incinerator. It took about half an hour to get this stuff loaded, and just as he headed for Transvan Gate Two, an Inspectorate forensics van, trailed by an Inspectorate limousine, passed him heading in the other direction. He guessed there would be some delay whilst they sorted out how they were going to conduct their investigation, so hopefully it would be a little while before someone got round to mentioning that an Inspectorate officer had already removed certain items from the scene.

On through the gate and out, then into the nearest tunnel. He parked in the underpass where previously he had made the second vehicle change, fifty kilometres from the burnt-out van he’d used in order to get Hannah out. Even though not precisely following the previous route, he was now using the same vehicles a second time, and this worried him. Before moving the crate over to the car, he ran his scanner over it, and found it loaded with trackers, so he just took off the lid and spilled it and its contents out the back of the van, knowing that the whole lot would be spread out among the indigents of the sprawl by the time the Inspectorate even started looking. However, the only trackers he found on the essential items were fixed on their containers and therefore easy to dispose of. Fortunately the items themselves were aseptically sealed, ready for surgical implantation.

By early morning he reached the bunker where Hannah, having only just roused from his bed, greeted him wearily.

‘You did it,’ she observed.

He dropped the briefcase on the worktop and pulled out the objects she had requested.

‘Is that all?’

‘Too many trackers on the other stuff,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to acquire it from elsewhere.’

She looked disappointed, but seemed to shrug it off and move on. ‘That means we’ll need equipment from a high-tech surgery.’ She scanned her surroundings and frowned. ‘Preferably the use of a high-tech surgical theatre.’

‘Mobile black hospital.’

She nodded in agreement, which surprised him. How could she have learned about such illegal concerns from her prison?

‘Problem,’ Janus abruptly warned him.

‘What sort of problem?’

Hannah looked at him oddly, but he pointed a finger at his bonefone, and she nodded in understanding. Janus did not reply; all he got was a fizzing noise from the fone.

Of course, it had all been too damned easy. He grabbed up a scanner from the work top and ran it over himself. Nothing, so what had he missed? They must have worked out what happened to Avram Coran and been tracking him by satellite the moment he departed the Cell Complex – he could see no other possibility. He abruptly stepped over to the two screens allowing him a view outside. The agricultural security net was offline and most of his own cams were now down, the screen becoming a patchwork of fizzing squares with only a few clear views. He realized the clear views came from cams with direct fibre-optic links, but they were enough. One big aero had landed in a nearby field and another was still descending. Inspectorate enforcers were pouring from the first and heading across directly to the old beet storage bay.

‘We’ve got trouble,’ he said, gazing at the screen disbelievingly, the evidence before his eyes not yet really impacting.

‘Oh, Christ.’ Hannah’s voice was full of weary pain.

‘They’re using EM blocking, and have knocked out the agricultural network here,’ he observed. ‘I can’t talk to Janus.’ He abruptly felt a strange sense of loss, not remembering ever having gone without the voice of Janus in his ear . . . never in all his two-year lifespan.

‘We’re dead,’ said Hannah.

He turned to study her. ‘I might be, but they’ll sacrifice anything at all in order to take you alive.’ Simple fact of life: while she was close to him they’d use ionic stunners which didn’t have a great range, maybe disablers or gas, but they certainly wouldn’t be firing live rounds. His mind abruptly kicked into gear again and he jerked round to gaze down at the open briefcase, then after a moment he walked over to a cupboard standing against one wall, took out a package and returned to drop it into the case.

‘An optigate?’ Hannah enquired, eyeing the box as he slammed the case shut.

‘More specifically: a teragate optic socket with skin port and inert fibre-grid exterior.’

‘For installing in a human body.’

He nodded. They used such ports for access to cerebral computers employed to replace function and control stem-cell regrowth in the severely brain-damaged. It was twenty-second-century medicine.

‘But where?’ she asked.

He tapped his temple where the control for his internal computer resided. ‘We haven’t enough time for me to explain now.’ He turned and headed towards his weapons cache. She followed him over, and watched while he donned a bulletproof jacket, belted on an automatic still in its holster, shouldered the strap of an assault rifle, then loaded ammo and grenades into a backpack, though reserving some of the latter for his pockets. He slipped the briefcase and its precious components in too.

‘Do you know how to use any of this?’ He waved a hand towards the weapons.

‘I know, but I’ve never done so.’

‘You came with me,’ he said, ‘but how long are you prepared to stay with me?’

‘For as long as it takes. I’m not going back.’

She pulled on a bulletproof jacket, then selected a light, short assault rifle and plenty of ammunition. She also took up a couple of press-button grenades and put them in her pocket.

‘Where now?’ she asked.

‘We go down.’

After he’d managed to get things set up in the bunker just as he wanted, and begun formulating the detail of his plan, he had found physical activity a welcome distraction, so had often spent time clearing rubble out of the escape tunnel. At the end of the tunnel he found only bare earth, checked the position of that point on GPS, then dug towards a particular location, sealing the earth walls all along the way behind him with a spray of fibre bonding. His tunnel exited about a hundred metres away from the bunker, through the side of a drainage dyke, and just another few metres from a wide underground pipe.

As Hannah went ahead of him, down the stairs to the lower floor, he felt really reluctant to leave. So much work, so much equipment – and a home of his own. He would have had to abandon it at some point, but hadn’t expected it so early in the game. Saul stepped over to one of the computer consoles to input the code detaching the whole system from the surrounding agricultural network, then input another code, whereupon a number of things happened simultaneously. A proximity explosive activated under the entrance hatch, the computer began scrubbing data and overwriting with nonsense, time and time again, and a three-minute countdown began to trigger detonators within the Hyex laminate buried in the bunker walls, and along the walls of the tunnel below. He took one last regretful look around, then followed Hannah downstairs.