She smiled again and pressed something unseen into my palm which I knew was the Polaroid of Birgitta and Webster, and after that, she moved her hand in an uncertain manner up towards her chest. I didn’t see at first what she was trying to do, but then noticed her thumb was out, and guessing her intent, I hooked her thumb into the D-ring of the pulse mortar on her chest. She patted my hand and twitched me another smile.

‘Move away from her,’ said Lucy and I trudged back through the snow into the lobby. Already, Porter Lloyd was fetching emergency shutters of folded canvas on bamboo while the winsomniacs all made themselves scarce, just not very quickly.

‘I’m sorry if you liked her,’ said Lucy, ‘but Project Lazarus brings a whole new meaning to the word importance.’

Hooke picked himself up, touched a finger to his bleeding nose, shook his head and then found his weapon. He reloaded it and looked at Lucy and me in turn, then outside at Jonesy, who was still moving weakly on her back in the snow.

‘Put her out of her misery,’ said Lucy. ‘We’d expect the same courtesy from her.’

‘It’s time you were blooded,’ said Hooke. ‘Do it yourself if you’ve the stomach.’

She glared at him.

‘Oh, I’ve the stomach,’ said Lucy, and took Hooke’s Bambi from him.

I started to say something. A warning, I think. Lucy noticed, stopped and stared at me.

‘What is it?’

I stared back at her for a moment.

‘It’s nothing.’

She strode across to where Jonesy’s form was lying in the snow outside, then leaned over and placed the Bambi to Jonesy’s head. I turned away as Jonesy detonated the pulse charge, a heavy concussion that blew the snow and tattered remnants of the curtains back into the lobby. When I looked back outside, there was only a refrozen circle of clear ice on the ground, about the size of an ornamental fountain.

‘Well, shit,’ said Hooke, following my gaze, ‘that’s a loss.’

‘I liked her,’ I said, referring to both of them, I think.

‘No,’ retorted Hooke, ‘I was talking about my staff protection bonus.’

He then looked at me, and presumably misconstrued my lack of decisive action or intervention in any of this as tacit approval of his intentions to take me to HiberTech.

‘Well now, Worthing,’ he said, switching his attention to Birgitta, ‘wouldn’t have marked you as a harbourer. Porter, put this deadhead somewhere safe, and make sure she’s looked after.’

I asked Hooke in something of a daze if we should wait until the blizzard had abated, but he told me that the sooner I was safe inside HiberTech, the better it would be for him. He walked away and I, in a confused and shocked daze, followed.

H4S radar