She knew Papa was dead. The police officers who had come to the loft had told her that. She knew it, and yet between her and that knowing stretched a great gulf over which she could only barely glimpse the oceans of sadness that waited to claim her. But she could no sooner swim over to that grief, through the thick numbness of whatever drug they had given her, than she could have her father back. Sorrow enclosed her, but it was a loose fit. Like a dark heavy coat, a man’s coat, worn by a child playing dress-ups.

Her room was empty aside from herself. The North Kansas City Federal Medical Center had a surplus of rooms to go around. She could smell steamed vegetables and chicken, a thin almost metallic aroma. Like iron filings at the back of her throat. A television suspended from the ceiling was tuned to one of the three channels provided by the Armed Forces Heartland Network. It appeared to be the music video hour. She thought she recognised the band, some Wave Punk thing from Germany. Apart from the hall light, the flickering images on the TV screen provided the only illumination in the room. Full dark had fallen outside, and a high wind moaned as it rushed around the hospital buildings, rattling her window in its frame.

Papa was dead, and Maive gone with him.

The only people she had left in the world, or at least in this part of it. She thought of Trudi Jessup, who had been so kind to her on the trail, and Adam, whom she liked very much. But they were both gone now. Trudi back in Seattle, and Adam living somewhere in Canada with relatives.

Her head felt as though it had been packed in cotton wool soaked in sleeping gas or anaesthetic, or something. She was not groggy so much as numb. She stared out the window overlooking darkened hospital grounds. Through the blowing snow she could just make out the lights of the Cerner Corporation Campus, where the Heartland Territorial Government had set up. After their initial arrival in KC, they had spent a week on the former office campus going through a series of health checks, interviews and screenings not all that different from the ones they went through for the homestead program in Texas. They stayed in a hotel room at the casino down the road, a musty, depressing room still marked by the stains of the departed.

She was transfixed for a moment by the reflection of the TV screen, which seemed to hang in the air outside her room. It floated in the darkness, seemingly as disconnected from consequence and meaning as she was.

Given the view, not to mention her familiarity with the hospital, she realised she was probably five or six floors up, facing towards the east. On a good day you could see the restored power plant from up here.