“All this will be lost, Petrovitch-san. Lost for a second time, lost forever. My beloved wife, my precious boys. All gone.” Oshicora breathed deeply, and sighed. “So be it. Good luck, Samuil.”

They bowed to each other.

“We’ll meet again, Oshicora-san. In better circumstances. And thank you for not forcing me to use Plan B.”

“There was a Plan B?”

“Yeah. Something involving low-yield nuclear weapons. Hopefully we’ve avoided that.” He bowed again, lower, deeper. “Now I have to watch you go.”

Oshicora nodded, took one last look around, and lost definition. His face hardened to a mask and drained of color. His clothes set stiff, bleached white and vanished.

The mannequin grew rough, revealing the mesh of polygons that determined its shape, then even that unspliced. His physical form dissipated on the wind.

Then it was the turn of everything else. The trees, the grass, the gravel. The towers of Tokyo. The sky. The contours of the ground.

Everything—every last window, brick, spoon, book, bed, stone, flower—all fell, all at the same time, all recursively peeling back the layers they were lovingly created from until the mere thought of them had been erased.

What was left was a white, featureless space which existed for a moment, then blinked away.

Only Petrovitch remained, a brooding spirit in the darkness of de-creation.

Blinding light. Mortal pain.

Madeleine leaning over him, two paddles from a portable defibrillator pressed hard against his exposed chest. “Charging.”

“Stop,” he croaked. His throat was raw, and his mouth tasted of blood.

“Clear.”

“Sister?” said Chain. “His lips are moving.”

She looked into his face, stared close into his eyes. Petrovitch could feel the effort it took to focus on her. He tried to speak again, and she put her finger across his mouth.

“Don’t try and talk.” She sat back. “We have to get him to a hospital. Now. No arguments.”

“It’s a good thought,” said Chain. “Have you remembered we’re fifty floors up and the lifts don’t work?”

“No arguments!” she screamed. She scooped Petrovitch up and kicked the defibrillator to one side. “Pack that up and bring it with you.”

Madeleine pushed her way through to the stairs, and dragged him up the narrow staircase by his shoulders.

“Sam? Sam?”

He grunted in return.

“We will get you out of here,” she said. “We will have a future together. Do you hear me?”

He heard, but there were sharp flashes of ice behind his eyes that were so distracting, he could no longer respond.

“Chain? Get a move on.”

“I’m coming, I’m coming.”

“What do you want me to do?” asked Sonja.

“That’s up to you. After all Sam’s done for you, you might feel the need to come along.”

“Perhaps I will.” There was the ringing of metal, the song of a sword being drawn. “Perhaps I can be of some use after all.”