Confusion and riot was all around. Caitlin could no longer place anyone in the room. Baumer. McCutcheon. Blackstone. Or any of the TDF troopers who had been standing by the French doors. In her memory, she saw a stuttering replay of at least three soldiers dancing a disjointed, bloody jig as dozens of rounds chewed through them. The staccato uproar of an AK-47 unloading an entire magazine on automatic drowned out the screaming.

At the end of the lounge she stopped. McCutcheon was crouched behind another chair on the far side of the room. She locked eyes with him for half a second before he moved, launching himself towards the exit through which Baumer had just disappeared.

The gun roared. She saw McCutcheon’s head fly apart in a kaleidoscope of blood and horror. A handgun fired unsteadily, coughed back weakly at the snarl of the Kalashnikov. Blackstone firing uncontrolled, emptying his clip, but to no effect. Caitlin could not see him directly without exposing herself to the shooter, but she could make out the Governor’s reflection in a window on the far side of the room. He had been hit, like her, in the leg. But the round that had taken him was larger and travelling much faster. He groaned pitiably as he tried to lever himself up out of his chair.

Then the firing stopped, and the whole world changed in just seconds.

Caitlin heard the metallic chunking sound of somebody swapping out a magazine. She risked a furtive peak over the furniture. The arms of the lounge chair were split and torn. Stuffing spilled from them like yellow fairy floss. As she pushed herself up, the gun fired again and an evil wind swept over Blackstone, shredding his dressing gown, punching huge gobbets of meat and gore out of his body, and throwing him backwards into his bookshelf.

The girl.

Caitlin found herself struck dumb and paralysed by the shock of recognition.

She knew this girl. Knew of her anyway.

The Mexican refugee. From the murdered settler family. In the madness of death and violence, Caitlin couldn’t remember the name of the girl’s father. The man who’d been run down in Kansas City. But she thought she recalled the daughter’s name.

‘Sophie. Sophie, don’t shoot!’

The teenager turned the muzzle of the gun on her, and Caitlin recognised the fugue state of close-quarter battle in her eyes. She was gone, lost in the killing.

‘Sophie. I came for your father,’ Caitlin shouted. ‘For . . . for Manuel.’

The gun stopped tracking in her direction. The girl looked confused and then upset.

‘Miguel,’ she said in a small voice. ‘My father was Miguel Pieraro. He was a good man. And this . . . this . . . Blackstone killed him.’