‘Go straight back down to the taxi that brought you here, and it will take you to a police station not far from here,’ the avatar finally replied. ‘Tell them that you got in the taxi outside the residency, asked it for help, and it brought you to them. Mention nothing about coming here, Mr Whitecloud. You will of course give them the name Nathan Driscoll.’

‘And what about Weil?’ Ty asked.

‘With any luck, you won’t have to worry about him any more.’

‘But . . .’

Shut up and just be glad you’re alive, Ty told himself. Anything was better than being trapped in the same building as that knife-wielding madman.

He stared at the ring still sitting on the plate, and impulsively reached out for it.

At the exact same moment as his fingers came into contact with the ring, Ty felt a sharp spike of pain in one temple and squeezed his eyes shut, glimpsing a tiny spark of light in the corner of one eye.

Panic gripped him. How could he have been so stupid? How could he have been so . . .

The next thing he knew, he was still sitting in the chair, but the avatar was gone and the comms unit had shut itself down.

There had been something that worried him terribly, but he was damned if he could remember what it was.

Ty stared at the ring nestling in his palm, then slid it on to one finger. He felt it contract slightly until it was snug against his flesh.

He then made his way back through the deserted offices the way he had come, disturbed by what he realized was an entirely irrational terror that Weil might suddenly appear from around some corner, blade raised to slash out at him. Ty pushed the fear back, thinking: For one more day I’m still alive. And I’ll be alive tomorrow and the day after that, and the day after that . . . It was like putting one foot in front of the other, or even breathing, drawing down each swallow of air and then exhaling it. You did what you had to in order to stay alive, to stay ahead of your enemies.

So he made his way to the elevator, and returned to the taxi.

Chapter Sixteen

The Mjollnir’s bow was blunt and rounded, with a thick bulge one-third of the way back, concealing an internal centrifuge that could be spun up to provide artificial gravity. She tapered slightly towards the stern, before flaring out again to accommodate fusion drives powerful enough to push her halfway across a solar system in just days, at maximum burn. At the moment, however, she floated peacefully in orbit above Redstone, caged by a spider’s web of pressurized maintenance bays that would be dismantled once the hull repair crews had finished their work.