China left the bedroom, took the gun from her desk drawer and put it in her purse. She couldn’t risk taking one of her own cars, so she called a taxi and endured forty-five minutes of the taxi driver telling her how much he loved her before they arrived at their destination. The driver wept as he drove away.

China stepped off the cracked pavement and followed a thin trail between a tall rotten fence and a high crumbling wall. The trail was overgrown with weeds and grasses, and it led to a small house, tucked away from prying eyes and passing cars. She knocked on the door and a small man in a three-piece suit answered. His face was a catalogue of disappointments, of cohesion attempted but never achieved. His name was Prave, and his bulbous eyes grew so wide they practically erupted from their sockets and rolled down his cheeks.

“China Sorrows,” he said in a hushed tone. She had forgotten how nasal his voice was. “I knew this day would come. I knew it. You’ve come to kill me, haven’t you?”

“Now why would I want to do something like that?” China asked. She didn’t smile at him. He wasn’t worthy of her smile. “May I come in?”

“I’ve done nothing wrong,” he said quickly.

“That must make a nice change. Stand aside, please.”

Prave did as he was told and China walked in. The house was a hundred years old and she knew it well, for upon completion it had been converted into a church for the followers of the Faceless Ones. Its existence was one of the best-kept secrets in the city, mainly because the man who ran it, Prave himself, was an ineffectual fool who posed no serious threat to anyone. The walls were decorated with the paintings and iconography of the Dark Gods, and the main room contained an altar and a well-worn carpet, where a handful of desperate disciples had kneeled and worshipped and prayed for the end of humanity.

“Where is he?” China asked, flicking through the book on the altar. It was a particularly battered edition of the Gospel of the Faceless, a moronic book written by a moron in an attempt to rationalise the behaviour of his ilk.

Prave shook his head. “I don’t know who you’re talking about, but even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you. You are a traitor and a blasphemer and a heretic.”

“I seem to be a lot of things. I’m looking for Remus Crux.”

Prave adopted a look he probably thought was aloof. “I don’t know who that is. A lot has changed since you started your blaspheming ways, Miss Sorrows. We are a respectable religion now, and should be treated as such. We are tired of this persecution we have been subjected to. We have our rights, you know.”

“No, you don’t.”