‘Just relax,’ he said, reaching over her. ‘I say the same thing every time. This is a place of dreams. So I’m going to give you something now. Something good. And after that – believe me when I say this – you’re going to live forever.’

Chapter Two

Chapter Two

Agusto Zidarov crept along the metal walkway, keeping his body low, his Tzarina autopistol held out straight ahead of him. Sweat pricked under his flak jacket. It was hot. It was dark. All things considered, he really didn’t want to be there.

‘How close?’ he breathed into the comm.

Brecht took a while to answer. ‘Backup incoming. Ten minutes.’

Too long. Zidarov blinked an enhancement to his augmetic iris’ visual filters. The view ahead shifted fractionally – from dirt black, to near dirt black.

The walkway was elevated, threaded through and around huge machines. He could feel the power terminal’s heat convertors working underfoot, the filtration units straining overhead. High up, in the gantries and the pipework, amid the rust and the stench of oils, the valves and the processor coils, there were just too many places to hide, too many places to die. Every other corner had a burst seal pushing steam into your face, or a clatter­ing heat vent making your eyes water.

He clutched the grip of his pistol, narrowed his eyes, kept moving.

‘I don’t have a fix on you,’ Zidarov said.

‘I’ve got one on you,’ Brecht replied. ‘I’m coming your way.’

‘Hurry up, then.’

Brecht didn’t move fast often. Zidarov hoped he would this time. It was the least he could do, in the circumstances.

He reached an intersection. The walkway branched into two, one left, one right. Below him, glimpsed through the thin metal grid, he could see ironwork devices belch and grind. Beyond that was a rat’s paradise of tubes and conduits. A few lumens blinked down there – tiny red points amid hissing clots of darkness.

Something moved, and he whirled to face it. Just a spinner valve discharging. Zidarov felt his heart beating quickly. He was breathing too hard. This was sanctioners’ work – they had the armour, the weapons. He had his sidearm, basic flak-cover, a probator’s holo-seal. That counted for something, a lot of the time. Right now, it felt like not much worth having.

He checked his iris. The subdermal ocular implant – a combined dataveil-link and tactical retinal display – cycled and clicked, giving him an updated estimate of the target’s trajectory. It was based on heat patterns only, and down here they weren’t exactly reliable.