The young woman regained her feet and took up a fighting stance again, suddenly aware of just how many old masters were watching and judging her. Every time she advanced, the gap-toothed, potbellied fiend was just outside her line of attack. Every defence she threw up, he swarmed over. Within two minutes she was breathing hard, labouring for air. At the end of that first session of kumite, she felt herself entirely defeated. With another nine fights ahead of her.

She fought on.

Every opponent bested her. She failed to land a single blow or kick. Her arms turned black with bruises, as poorly focused blocks warded off strike after strike. But still she fought on. Not because she knew this would end, but because as the other fighters came on, each after the next, she came to understand this would never end. This was life.

It. Would. Never. End. Not until life itself ended.

When they were done with her, the crisp white gi she had specially laundered for the day was heavy with sweat and pink with her blood. And only her blood. Her stiff black belt, the obi of a newly minted shodan, was limp and foul. She hurt everywhere. In her joints, her meat, deep down in her bones. But the pain was a distant, illusory thing.

She could hardly stand to bow off the mat, yet she could not leave without doing so. Every man she had fought lined up and bowed deeply to her, the young American whom they had bested. Inside, she felt empty. But happy in a way she had never known before. She had lost herself in battle, her actual self.

An arrogant, self-conscious and pitiably vain student had stepped onto the tatami just a short time ago. A warrior limped off.

Nine years after this, she found that same unspoilt clarity of mind as she breathed out and let go of vanity, of desire, of worldly attachments – including the attachment to life itself. She became death and she waited.

Forty minutes later, Caitlin Monroe attacked.

*

The heavy wooden door swung open on creaky hinges just as the day was reaching its hottest hour. Perhaps if the two errand boys had returned by now, Facility 183 would already have been dozing through an afternoon siesta. But they would never return, and when enough time had passed, the two most junior militia men were sent out to investigate. This they accomplished by slowly stepping off the veranda and squinting into the sun, shading their eyes with their hands.

Concealed within the thick brush growth not much more than a long stone’s throw from them, Caitlin flicked off the safety on her HK-417, laid the iron sights on the centre mass of the larger, closer man and breathed out.