‘Yes, he is, and whatever you do with me, you need to help us find him. And stop him.’

‘Why? What’s he got to do with this?’

‘We interrogated him. Put him under, and asked him questions. The things he told us, he’s . . . he’s not even goddamn human any more.’

‘What?’

‘That shipment we sent you to look for?’ Donohue coughed. ‘There’s no reason why the Sphere drone carrying it should have gone out of control the way it did. Those things are near as damn fail-proof. Then we found out that the Sphere lost contact with it at exactly the same instant Stone—’

The shot came from nowhere, blowing out the car’s front windscreen. Saul ducked instinctively, slamming the accelerator down, without pause for thought. The car surged forward.

More shots followed, and Saul grabbed hold of the steering wheel as it emerged from the dashboard. Donohue scrabbled at him with claw-like fingers, attempting to wrest the wheel from his grasp.

Somewhere amid the din and fury, Saul realized the terrible mistake he had made in not forcing Donohue to remove his contacts. The whole time they’d been talking, rescue had already been on the way.

Troopers scattered as the car hurtled towards them, their outlines shimmering. Donohue wrenched at the wheel and the car side-swiped a Black Dog, ripping the passenger-side door away. Donohue screamed and held on tight, as Saul managed to accelerate away again. Saul let go of the wheel just long enough to raise one leg and boot Donohue hard enough to send him tumbling out of the car.

He then grabbed hold of the wheel again, glancing in the rear-view mirror to see Donohue rolling to a halt behind him. Saul nailed the accelerator to the floor, gunning the vehicle for a ramp down which daylight filtered from above. He twisted the wheel wildly, skirting another Black Dog making its way down the same ramp, and cursing as troopers darted out of his way with only centimetres to spare.

Suddenly, miraculously, he was outside, the early morning sun pale and wan behind clouds. A cordon of tanks and Dogs surrounded the Array directly ahead of him. He kept his fot on the accelerator, swerving past several vehicles heading towards the ramp from the direction of a hopper, then past the armoured cordon and on into the no man’s land separating it from the crowds. The car ploughed through a dense tangle of barbed wire before jarring to a sudden halt.

He stumbled out of the vehicle and saw that spiked steel balls, scattered all around, had blown the tires. The crowds of refugees were just metres away, hidden behind a cordon of cars that had been pushed over on to their sides, mirroring the ASI’s own defences.