‘So trust me,’ DeShelle told him, turning around and heading for the relative light of Saint Kazarine’s Processional. ‘We can always come back, but for now, just trust me.’

It took them three blocks to find a cut-through to the hab area, and only a handful of ducats to bribe the bored watchmen who’d been set to ensure that no one got in or out. There was no current risk of infection: the Administratum simply didn’t want anyone unauthorised to get in and set up home without permission in what would be desirable residences, once the correct post-infection protocols had finally been run. Had the redscale still been active then they’d have encountered proctors, who would have likely responded to attempted bribery with the business end of a riot-gun.

‘The alley ends behind that wall,’ DeShelle told Luc, directing her luminator across an open space of real grass, still watered by hydration systems but now growing long and unchecked. She turned around to look at the source of the wind that was buffeting them, and through which could be seen the blaze of lights that constituted Ascension City at night. ‘And here–’

‘Is an external-standard-thickness reinforced crysglass window, that’s been cut open with an Emperor-damned power tool or blade, by the looks of it,’ Luc said slowly. ‘What in the name of Holy Terra is going on here?’

‘There’s blood on the lower half of the cut,’ DeShelle said, directing her luminator at the dirty rivulets that stained the underside of the large oval which had been hacked right through the window. ‘And on the other side of it, a fifteen hundred-foot drop directly into Ascension River. Which is exactly where I’d dump a body, if I could get to it. We’ll need to check this blood matches Avomarr’s, of course. And the blood in the alley.’

Luc shook his head in disbelief. ‘You’d make a damned fine inquisitor, DuVoir.’

‘Don’t say that too loudly around her ladyship,’ DeShelle said with a snort.

In Absentia

In Absentia

The corridors of hab block 274-Delta were pitch-dark at night. When the lighting protocols had been set, centuries before, it had been decided that the public lighting levels should mimic those of the outside world, hundreds of yards away beyond the block’s outer walls. So it was that in the daytime the halls were lit by the acid-yellow glow of the ceiling lumens, and at night the ceiling lumens died away completely. In those hours, when someone standing under the sky would have benefited from the faint glimmer of the moons, or Ascension City’s light pollution that hid the stars from view, the residents of 274-Delta existed with no light in their hallways other than whatever they brought with them.

Not everyone that passed through those hallways needed light, however.