Madeleine freed herself from her seatbelt, and kicked the door open, all the while trying to maintain the lowest position possible. Petrovitch opened his door and fell out onto the pavement.

A shot smashed the door window, right above his head. He ducked the shower of glass and started for the back of the car, spitting out sharp fragments as they trickled down his face.

“Maddy!”

She was crouched by the boot before he’d even got past the rear wheel. Another shot, another window.

“Paradise militia,” she said. “Recognize them.”

“So we run. Go.”

“You first.” She shoved him forward, then rose behind him. It wasn’t gallant, but it was expedient. She could give him cover.

He ran, doubled over, in a straight line away from the car. He got as far as the corner and slid to a halt. Madeleine knocked him flying and tumbled to the ground herself.

Petrovitch’s coat had flapped up and covered his head, but he was so befuddled, he couldn’t work out why it had gone so dark so quickly. Then he remembered why he’d stopped running in the first place. He looked up.

There was a building in the middle of the road, one he’d have sworn hadn’t been there a moment before.

He clawed his coat away. Madeleine’s legs were directly in front of him: her body was braced, her arms aloft in a fighting stance. What she was trying to protect him from was the bastard child of an industrial crane and a scorpion, five stories tall.

Hydraulics hissed and servos clicked. A leg, composed of industrial-gauge steel latticework, lifted high and swung through the air. As it descended, the tip of it gouged the road surface and punctured it, piercing the sewers below.

“Polniy pizdets,” he breathed. “Maddy?”

“Sam?”

Another leg traveled, demolishing a shop front and causing the whole building to fall into the street in a roar of masonry.

It had a head too, and the head had lights, culled from the front of an articulated lorry. The beams cut through the dust cloud like searchlights, and the path of illumination dropped ever lower until they were at its center.

It was so bright, it burned.

Petrovitch dragged himself upright and took his place in front of Madeleine. He held up his bandaged hand to shield his eyes.

“Sam, what are you doing?” she asked quietly.

“Keeping us alive.”

The mechanical wheezing and gasping ceased. Even the Paradise militia were silent, their booty forgotten in a rare moment of terrified awe.

The lights looked down on them from the end of the thing’s cantilevered neck. Petrovitch tilted his gaze up.

“You know me, don’t you?” he said.

The head descended until it was the same level as Petrovitch’s. One damaged, cut, bleeding: the other vast and cold and all but indestructible.