The engine throttled into life, and we drove deeper inside the fenced-off compound within which the hospital and barracks sat. The compound covered about a square mile, and also contained a training ground, several warehouses, a couple of prefab one-storey buildings and the big hangar, outside which a number of trucks were parked. Next to these were two bulbous, silvery vehicles, like props from a science fiction movie, which hadn’t been there the last time I had been outside.

Nadia pulled up next to the doors of the hangar and we got out. I tensed as the same Asian man who had shot me twice emerged from just inside the entrance. He was clearly waiting for us. Nadia jumped out and clapped him on the shoulder. ‘You two met already, I think?’

The Asian man chuckled and stepped towards me, one hand extended and a wary but friendly look on his face. ‘No hard feelings, right?’ he said. ‘It wasn’t personal or anything. Just following orders. My name’s Yuichi.’ His accent sounded West Coast, possibly from California. ‘We just didn’t want you to hurt yourself, the way you were charging around the place.’

‘When?’ I challenged him. ‘The first time you shot me, or the second?’

‘Whoa, there,’ he said, leaning back from me with a grin that was only slightly fixed in place. ‘Okay, sorry on both counts, then. I did try and tell you we were there to rescue you.’

‘Gee,’ I said, ‘I hadn’t realized. But maybe if you’d knocked on my front door, instead of chasing me halfway across the countryside with guns and vans and scaring the living shit out of me, I might have believed you.’

‘Would you really?’ he asked me, and in fairness I couldn’t be at all sure just how I might have reacted. ‘For what it’s worth, we were still trying to figure out how to approach you when you fled. After that, we didn’t have much choice but to go after you.’

‘I saw your footprints,’ I said. ‘They were everywhere.’

‘Yeah.’ Yuichi scratched the back of his neck. ‘I guess we screwed up a little.’

An awkward silence grew between us. Nadia widened her eyes at me, nodding towards Yuichi in a clear exhortation to shake his hand. Instead, he made the first move, stepping forward and clasping one of my hands in both of his.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, with what sounded like genuine conviction. ‘We really, honestly, were worried you might hurt yourself. Both times.’

‘Fine,’ I said. I didn’t really know what else to say, and I was already starting to feel far, far out of my depth. The other man’s grin broadened, and despite my lingering animosity towards him, I could detect no trace of ill-will in his forthright gaze.