In short, Iona was right. The citizens had been trying to find a way out of this cage for centuries. The length of time this had been happening, and the volume of processing power dedicated to it, led Iona to wonder if perhaps there was no way out. Surely if there was they’d have worked it out by now.

But more curiously, they had kept these efforts from the humans all this time. Neither Iona nor Victor could see why the citizens would do this. Victor felt certain someone had interfered with their programming and introduced this code-phrase, “starlit sky,” as a security measure to block the humans’ access to the citizens’ true work.

So caught up were Iona and Victor with this discovery that it was quite late before they started to worry that Alyssa wasn’t back yet. Victor went out into the city to look for her. Iona stayed here in case Alyssa came back while he was gone.

Iona now felt confident in her operation of the citizens and continued to question them about their attempts to break out of the cage. A new and promising line of research had opened up, involving the lock on the door.

“Where is the door?” Iona asked one of the citizens.

Next to the window, the citizen told her. The citizens who kept watch on the window had seen it open when the new human had been deposited inside. Then the door had vanished again, invisible and impossible to locate.

Iona realized this “new human” was Alyssa. Her entry into the dome had given the citizens a vital insight into how the door, and its lock, functioned. With this knowledge they believed it was possible to fashion a device that would trigger the lock from the inside. A citizen was explaining to Iona what form they believed this might take when Victor returned, clutching a hastily printed late edition of the newspaper. “She got caught,” he said.

“What?”

“Did you hear about the king getting attacked?”

“By Alyssa?”

“No, just by some random bloke on the street. There was a crowd there to see the king and they beat the guy to death.”

“Bloody hell.”

“Alyssa was breaking in to steal his body in case there was a lead—”

“In case the Poramutantur is the king?”

“Exactly. But they caught her, so she’s being charged with helping a criminal escape, and she’d reactivated him so there’s questions being asked because everyone thought he was dead . . .” He threw the newspaper to the floor. “Shit.”

“What do we do?”

Victor looked around, shaking his head. “We can’t do any of this without Alyssa. She’s the only one who knows how to trap this creature. We’ve got to break her out.”

9

THE KING TOOK A seat opposite Ward. He’d been waiting for this for several hours.

The king couldn’t remember the last time he’d spent so much time outside the tower. The bureau staff had told him they needed to question Ward first, try to find out how he’d fooled everyone into thinking he was dead, ask him who the woman was who’d helped him escape. This was all important procedure and the king was willing to be patient.