Albert looked at her staring seriously up at him. Could any of this be true? Everything was happening so fast, and so strangely—it all seemed unreal. Then he shrugged. What did he have to lose, except his life? It was gone anyway if he kept wandering around the streets; sooner rather than later, he’d be caught.

He stood up straight, looking down at her. She met his gaze unblinkingly.

‘Tell me,’ he said.

Just under an hour later, they stood by a side street, flanked by rows of identical dwellings on either side. Albert looked down the road, frowning. They’d made it this far without being spotted, which was a miracle. And they’d made it before the curfew set in and the night patrols began scouring the street too, even if only just. Somewhere on this street was the person who Theo said was going to help him. If the address she’d reeled off was correct. If it wasn’t—he didn’t want to think about that.

The now familiar tugging at his sleeve broke into his musings. ‘Mac! Mac! Why don’t you listen?’

‘I beg your pardon. I was thinking about something.’

‘You think too much, Mac.’

‘That might be true’, he agreed.

She grinned up at him. ‘So pay attention, willya? Where do we go now?’

‘Well, you said 411, X17, ZB3. This is street ZB3, and that should be building X17. Apartment 411 should be on the fourth floor.

‘All right, then,’ she said. ‘Let’s go.’

They hurried across the street, and into the building he had been pointing at. The conveyor inside was dead—it would stay that way till the morning. Albert looked uneasily up at the conveyor belt, or to be more geometrical, at its angle of inclination. The fourth floor seemed a long way off.

They began climbing. It was slow going; the gently sloping surface of the polymer wasn’t designed to be clambered over. If only to give himself a slight breather, Albert made it a point to look down each floor they passed. They were all identical, long white hallways dotted with beehive-shaped doors at regular intervals on either side, like miniature mirror images of the Employment Department. Everything was spotless, sanitized, nothing to break the austerity of the all-encompassing symmetry. If he hadn’t known the truth, Albert could well have believed that the place was uninhabited.

When they finally got to the fourth floor, Theo jumped off the conveyor into the corridor, and he followed.

‘All right,’ he whispered, shortly after he had finished pulling a series of contorted faces in the quest for breath.

Theo’s expression seemed to suggest she suspected he was far from it. ‘We need to open ’em all.’

‘Excuse me?’

Without replying, she walked ahead, and he quickly shuffled after her, grabbing her by the shoulder, turning her around to face him. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’