“Not really. Any interesting reason you’re calling this office?” He’d been appointed head of Connexion’s small but elite Olyix Monitoring Office two years ago. At the time, Yuri hadn’t been sure whether or not it was a promotion from director of the Sol Habitat Security Office, which he’d held before, but it had been created by Ainsley himself ten years after the Olyix arkship Salvation of Life had decelerated into the solar system in 2144 and had provided Yuri with almost unlimited authority. Despite his being completely office-bound, it was interesting work, plotting the political and financial influence of the Olyix across Earth and the habitats. It also gave him personal access to some very influential people. He’d come to regard it as an essential rung on his way up to Connexion’s Security Chief, proving he had the executive skills to match his operational ability.

“There is a matter which we would like you to investigate personally,” Poi Li said.

“We?”

“Ainsley and me.”

Reflex made Yuri sit up fast. “I see.”

“It is somewhat urgent.”

—

He took the security department’s portal door into the company’s general London network; from there he could walk straight into the London metrohub inner loop. He took a radial out to the Sloane Square hub. A short walk down King’s Road, where there were a lot of silver-blue two-person cabez breezing about, and he was at the address Poi Li had sent, an elegant brick Regency-style building that contained phenomenally expensive pied-à-terres for the wealthy, overlooking a small square with tall plane trees. He counted five security guards positioned around the square, dressed like normal people, hanging casually, and wondered how many more he was missing.

Boris gave his code to the entrance, which scanned him. The glossy black door—which looked like wood but wasn’t—opened smoothly. Two guards in expensive suits were standing in the hallway. They gestured him in.

Yuri just had to admire the ancient lift with its iron grid doors and manual brass operating handle. He was the sole occupant as it rattled and groaned its way up to the fourth floor.

Poi Li was waiting on the landing for him. She looked the same as she had when he first started working for Connexion almost a century earlier, but somehow more delicate now. The telomere treatments seemed to be gnawing away at her core, leaving only the shell of a woman.

“Thank you for coming,” she said and led him into the penthouse apartment.

The décor was classical: marble floors and high ceilings, gold-plated chandeliers illuminating old master oil paintings and baroque modern canvases with equal intensity. The furniture style was unremittingly Louis XVI, heavy handcrafted pieces that looked hugely uncomfortable to sit on.