‘We need to go, Arian. Police’ll be here soon. No way they can ignore this. We have to get you to Dr Carl,’ said Stanton, then added, after glancing round, ‘Where are the boys?’

‘They didn’t make it. He pulled a laser strike down on the car.’

Pelter closed his eye. Shit, the pain was coming back already.

Stanton stared at Pelter for a long moment. How the hell was he even standing? Pelter’s left eye was gone, just melted out. The area around it was as badly burned, and Stanton could see his cheekbone. They had to get out of here fast. He glanced around, then walked over to the nearest AGC. Christ, his arm hurt. He carefully manoeuvred it so he could put the hand of that same arm into his pocket, to give it some support, then he pulled his pulse-gun. Now for the tricky bit. He put his gun between his teeth, groped around in his pocket for the charge it had just taken him vital minutes to find in the stairwell, and pushed it into place. Are we dangerous or what? he thought, before he blew out the AGC’s lock.

‘We got a car now, Arian. Best we get out of here,’ he said.

Arian took a long slow breath and began to walk over. Stanton considered helping him, but rejected the idea. He knew Arian Pelter well: like this he was dangerous, a cornered rat.

‘Hey! What the hell you! . . . oh.’

The man was an ophidapt with an augmented physique, so perhaps he’d thought he could handle a couple of AGC boosters. He stood two metres tall, his skin was finely scaled, and fangs overhung his narrow bottom lip. He blinked snake eyes and halted when Pelter turned to him, pointing the pulse-rifle. Stanton glanced at the ophidapt, then at Pelter. His remaining violet eye seemed almost to be glowing.

‘Come on, we have to go,’ said Stanton. But it was a desultory attempt to forestall what was certain now. He got into the driver’s seat of the car.

The ophidapt held up his hands and started backing away.

‘This the hell I,’ said Pelter, and shot him in the stomach. The ophidapt went down, clutching at his smoking torso, but in panic he struggled back onto one knee as Pelter, stiff-legged and appearing ready to collapse himself, walked over to him.

‘See what it’s like? See?’ said Pelter, stabbing the barrel of his weapon in the ophidapt’s face. The man nodded, tears in his snake eyes.

‘Arian, we haven’t got time for this,’ said Stanton. He deliberately paid no attention to what was going on. Instead, he took out a chip card very like Cormac’s and shoved it into the slot of the onboard computer. Often, the likes of Pelter did not bother to continue once they were without an audience, he had found.