Behind the tree, Cormac inspected the burn on his arm. It was not serious, but that arm would soon be useless. Nevertheless he would wait. He stood up with his back against the tree, holding his thin-gun up beside his face. Any moment now . . .

* * *

Pelter could not believe it; you stood still when someone with a gun was demanding it. You did not run for cover in the hope they would miss. He backed up, firing single shots off at the tree while his mouth seemed to turn ceramic. The ache in his head, since Mr. Crane’s destruction, was growing in intensity, as if striving to fill the void left by the android’s absence.

No Mr. Crane now. No one left at his back. Nothing now between him and that thin-gun.

‘Fucking die!’ he shouted and blasted at the tree again.

Three times. Three times he’d had the agent in his sights, and three times he had failed to kill him. Maybe they had been right at the start . . . maybe Ian Cormac was some kind of android.

Pelter stopped firing and continued to back away. He kept his weapon directed towards the side of the tree where Cormac had disappeared. When the agent stepped from its other side, he stepped straight into Pelter’s nightmare—straight into that vision ever imprinted on his missing eye.

The barrel of the thin-gun seemed attached to Pelter’s forehead by some invisible rod, and he seemed to feel the searing extension of that rod through his forehead and out the back of his skull. He pressed down on the trigger of his weapon and tracked fire sideways. But the time it took him to redirect his aim was not time enough. Silver light flickered in the barrel of the weapon the agent held.

Pelter saw only blackness.

* * *

With a puzzled frown, Cormac walked over and looked down to examine Pelter. Apart from the hole burnt cleanly through the Separatist’s forehead, the man was already a mess: not only was the link suppurating in his head, but his clothing was ragged and filthy, and he stank. This was not the Pelter Cormac had known; this was a man ravaged by some daemon. What else could account for such lack of self-regard? Cormac wondered just what had driven Pelter to become this thing that lay before him.

He was also puzzled by the terror he had heard in the man’s voice. Death was always a distinct possibility for one of Pelter’s tendencies, and always something to fear. But terror? Cormac glanced down at his thin-gun, pocketed it and walked away. He guessed he would never know the answer.

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