Saul stared around wildly, desperate at the thought that he’d managed to lose Donohue.

There! Saul recognized Donohue’s ID tag bobbing along past a cluster of troopers, almost unnoticeable amongst their varicoloured UP icons. He hurried past a pair of Black Dogs carrying sonar cannons on their backs, their batteries blaring noisily as the ear-muffled operators ran test checks across the ceiling.

He noticed Donohue was making his way towards a row of cars parked along one wall and hurried after him, closing the distance while casting a quick glance over his shoulder to make sure no one was looking their way.

Saul slammed into Donohue from behind, just as he was pulling the door of a car open. The man grunted under the force of the impact, which sent him flying forward across the driver’s seat. He recovered quickly, however, ramming his left elbow back into Saul’s ribs, while struggling to pull his gun from its shoulder holster.

Saul brought a knee up hard between the man’s thighs, and Donohue slumped forward, wheezing noisily. Saul leaned further inside the car and locked an arm around Donohue’s neck, while groping with his other hand until he found the holster, and pressed Donohue’s standard-issue Agnessa up against the back of the man’s head.

‘Slide over, and keep your hands visible,’ Saul commanded.

Donohue nodded wordlessly, and moved himself over to the passenger seat. His eyes widened in shock as he turned to face his assailant.

‘You son of a bitch,’ Donohue hissed. ‘If you ever had a chance of getting out of this alive, you just lost it.’

A tide of white-hot anger obscuring his thinking, Saul flicked the gun around to grasp it by the muzzle, then whipped the handle viciously across Donohue’s head.

Donohue reeled back in shock, then reached up one trembling hand to feel the blood seeping from his forehead. ‘What the fuck do you want?’ he screeched.

‘Shut the fuck up,’ Saul snapped, pressing the Agnessa between Donohue’s eyes. He groped at the dashboard, opaquing the windows as far as they would go, so as to hide them both from outside scrutiny.

‘Why were you following me when I arrived in Sophia?’ Saul demanded. ‘Were you intending to kill me, like you did Farad Maalouf?’

‘You have no idea what you’re involved in,’ Donohue snarled. ‘I told you to get the fuck off Earth, and you ignored me. You got yourself caught up in something you shouldn’t have had any part in.’

‘Tell me, about Mitchell Stone,’ Saul demanded through clenched teeth. ‘You told me he was dead, but that’s not what I’ve been hearing. Why bother lying to me?’

‘So it’s true what I heard,’ Donohue snapped back. ‘You did get your hands on the Tau Ceti files. We’d never have figured that out if you hadn’t sent them to your girlfriend over a public network.’