“At least your little friend did that right.” She adjusted the weight in her arms, aimed his feet toward the mass of people that stood in her way, and barged through. From the way he kept feeling impacts on the soles of his boots, he realized that the sight of a two-meter-tall fully-robed novice nun cradling a semi-conscious man wasn’t strange enough for hardened Metrozone residents to take much notice. The sister was determined, however, and they met the ambulance as it shuddered to a halt.

The paramedics took him from her, and laid him efficiently on a stretcher inside the van. He watched as they attacked his shirt with scissors and pasted cold electrodes to his skinny chest. It was only when they tried to put a mask over his face that he rebelled and turned his face away.

“The nun. Where is she?”

She climbed up and crouched down. “What is it?”

If she’d been expecting a message for someone or a death-bed confession, she was going to be disappointed. “My bag.”

“Your what?”

“My bag. Courier bag.”

“It’s back in the church.” She pulled back the side of her veil so she could press her ear close to his mouth. “Is there something important in it?”

“Hardware. Cost me a small fortune and I’ve not even turned it on yet.”

She sat back. “A computer? Your heart’s about to fail and you’re worried about a shiny new computer?”

“Look after it for me.”

“Petrovitch,” she said, “you, you geek.”

“Sister,” said the paramedic who was wincing at the vital signs on his handheld screen. “In or out, but we’re moving.”

She made to leave, but ended up reaching out of the cabin and pulling the doors shut, trapping herself inside. “Just drive,” she muttered, and sat awkwardly in a fold-down seat that wasn’t anywhere near her size. She pulled her veil straight and reached for her rosary to compose herself.

Sister Madeleine watched Petrovitch flat-line three times in the ten minutes it took to get him to the hospital, and each time he came back to life again he searched the interior of the ambulance for her.

Some of the time, he was thinking about his beautiful piece of bespoke kit, lying untended on a pew in a city-center church where anyone could just walk in and take it.

But part of him wondered what she was thinking, and he couldn’t work that out at all.

It involved less surgery and more coding. No one cut him wide open, which he was grateful for. The chip that was supposed to control his errant heart was pulled bloodily out through a hole, and a new one slotted into place. He was kept conscious throughout.

The morphine and exhaustion made him drowsy though, and at some point when they were sewing up the access wound with short, blunt tugs of black thread, he allowed himself the luxury of falling asleep.