Most clinics made a virtue of their exclusivity. They made no attempt to keep their prices anything other than high. It looked good, to be expensive – people took it as a sign of competence. Some, though, saw a gap at the lower end of things. The slate needed was still eye-watering – much more than Zidarov would ever have been able to pull together – but it wasn’t quite the preserve of Terashova-level plutocrats. Peravov seemed to have positioned himself in that segment, discreetly advertising better-value rejuve treatments. He’d never strayed onto the Bastion’s radar before, save for a couple of minor tithe extraction irregularities a while back. In theory, the inspectorate of medicae practitioners should have been keeping a keen eye on such institutes, but in practice that shower were easier to bribe than a void-docker with a gambling habit.

Peravov’s place followed the rather literal naming conventions of the trade – Endless Health For Citizens. As Zidarov entered the parking lot, he took a good look at the exterior. The building was sited in the Novgy habclave, a middling region lodged between the crime-infested lower-grade claves and the gritty attractions of Havduk. It stood in its own grounds, overlooked by larger commercial towers on all sides, but surrounded by a scratchy kind of ornamental garden. Its signage was tired, and one of the pale pink lumen tubes over the entrance lobby had blown. A few groundcars were parked in the lot, most looking fairly smart – smarter than his, at any rate.

Zidarov got out, secured the Luxer and walked in through glass doors. He used his iris to run a covert scan as he went, picking up nothing more than a few intruder detectors lodged high in the building’s rockcrete fascia. Inside was a dingy waiting room with a brown tiled floor and a few faded picts on the walls depicting youthful, smiling bodies gambolling across beachfronts. A few people sat on plastek chairs, none of them either smiling or youthful. One man looked like his face had been stretched badly, and he wore bandages around his neck. Another woman had half her scalp shaved, with a long suture line across the skin. Zidarov smelled the faint whiff of chems, just like in the Bastion’s medicae-bay.

A reception desk took up space towards the rear of the chamber, and he walked up to it. A man in a medicae tabard sat at it.

‘Can I help you?’ he asked, in a tone of voice that suggested he’d rather not.

‘I need to speak to Ser Peravov. Is he in?’

‘He is, but you’ll need an appointment.’

Zidarov showed him his seal. ‘I don’t think I will.’

The orderly’s eyes widened, he hesitated, then he put a message through. Zidarov heard a muffled response over the comm-link, and then the orderly looked up at him. ‘Go straight through, probator. Last chamber along the corridor.’