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Back Extinction Game Save as PDF
Chapters (33)
  1. Title page
  2. CONTENTS
  3. ONE
  4. TWO
  5. THREE
  6. FOUR
  7. FIVE
  8. SIX
  9. SEVEN
  10. EIGHT
  11. NINE
  12. TEN
  13. ELEVEN
  14. TWELVE
  15. THIRTEEN
  16. FOURTEEN
  17. FIFTEEN
  18. SIXTEEN
  19. SEVENTEEN
  20. EIGHTEEN
  21. NINETEEN
  22. TWENTY
  23. TWENTY-ONE
  24. TWENTY-TWO
  25. TWENTY-THREE
  26. TWENTY-FOUR
  27. TWENTY-FIVE
  28. TWENTY-SIX
  29. TWENTY-SEVEN
  30. TWENTY-EIGHT
  31. Acknowledgements
  32. By Gary Gibson
  33. Copyright page

I shook my head fervently. ‘I don’t ever want to run into one of those night patrols again.’

‘You won’t,’ she said. ‘It’s late at night here, but it’ll be morning over there. They’ll all be back in their Hives.’

‘Did the Authority actually give you permission to go back there?’

She looked furtive. ‘Not exactly.’

I sighed and sank onto a kitchen stool. ‘Explain “not exactly”.’

‘I bribed someone. A rig technician,’ she blurted.

I shook my head. The idea of ever going back to that particular alternate filled me with a sense of crawling horror. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Absolutely not. Why don’t you ask Oskar instead?’

‘Because I already know exactly what he’d say. Oskar doesn’t give a damn about anyone but himself, and I don’t know if I could even trust him to be discreet about my asking.’

‘That’s not true,’ I said hotly. ‘Well, he cared about that damn dog of his. And, besides, Nadia died in the water. If you’re looking for her body, I have no idea what happened to it.’

I saw the look on her face and softened my voice. ‘I’m sorry, I—’

She sank down onto a kitchen stool, her expression intent. ‘It’s all right,’ she said, her voice filled with a determination that told me that nothing I said was going to make her change her mind. ‘Anyway, it’s not her body I’m looking for. I just want to see that SUV you abandoned.’

‘Why?’

‘I’ve seen some of the initial reports about what happened,’ she explained. ‘I also read some of the transcripts from the statements you’ve been giving Mayer over the last couple of days.’

I looked at her in surprise. ‘They let you see those?’

‘I wanted to know the exact circumstances around Nadia’s death. I guess Kip took pity on me.’ She shook her head. ‘Not that there was any reason not to let me know, but there are parts of the overall story that frankly don’t make sense to me.’

I shifted on my seat. ‘Like?’

‘Like the fact that the bee-brains attacked you the way they did.’

I remembered Nadia’s own confusion on that exact point. ‘They’re supposed to be aggressive at close range, aren’t they?’

‘Yes, but the way they came after you is something I’d associate more with warfare between Hives.’

‘It sounds like you know a lot about them,’ I said.