The guards are simply expecting to find a bald girl strapped to a table, snapped Malcolm. Thijs himself wont be returning for at least another hour, and thats all the time we need. Now hurry!

No, wait, she said. We cant

For Gods sake, Est, he exploded, raising his voice for the first time. We discussed this already and we agreed. Its either you or her, except she gets a choice in the matter. Now come on.

She felt too weak to resist as he dragged her out of the room and along a passageway. They descended several flights of steps before arriving at an airlock, next to which lay the bodies of two men in uniforms identical to Malcolms own. One of the men had a dark stain spreading across his chest, while the head of the other seemed to be twisted at an odd angle.

Dakota studied Malcolm with new respect as he hauled the airlock door open, and she wondered what kind of woman Est must have been to inspire such fierce, and deadly, devotion.

Inside the airlock, a pair of cold-weather jackets and matching over-trousers hung on hooks. They quickly pulled them on.

Here. Malcolm handed her a thick, knitted cap, which she looked at questioningly as she took it from him. To help keep you from being recognized, he explained, then nodded to her head. And to hide those.

Dakota reached up again to feel the bumps and contours of the implants beneath her scalp. Clearly Est had been a machine-head as well. The cap, when she put it on, fit warm and snug around her ears. She next pulled on her breather mask and followed Malcolm out into a crisp, cold night.

Glancing behind, her gaze moved up along the broad curve of a Magi ships hull, looming above the building from which they had just emerged. It looked like some vast leviathan of the deep, washed up from unknowable depths and towering over everything beneath it.

She looked further to see that the ship actually leaned against the broad face of a cliff. Dozens of other buildings circled the base of the ship like watchful guardians, and were interlinked by a tangle of metal walkways and stairways.

Turning the other way, she saw a three-metre-high wall, illuminated by tall arc lights, standing perhaps a hundred metres away. She followed it with her eyes and realized that it ran all the way around the Magi ship itself and the various buildings surrounding it.

Malcolm pulled her in the direction of a row of half a dozen structures close to a gate set into the perimeter wall. They were moving so quickly that Dakota, with legs shorter than Malcolms, almost had to break into a run to keep up with him. As they came abreast of what she now recognized as warehouses, Malcolm drew her towards a vehicle parked in the shadows between two of them.