And if the water is running, it is possible the egg or larva was just carried to the spot. To the break in the pipe. That it’s simply an anomaly.

But the Red List is the Red List. And if there are eggs, or larvae there, work at the site will have to pause.

It wasn’t that he was against the Ice Dock. He understood necessity.

But, what this specimen could represent. How it could fire people’s engagement.

A silverfish under a mat. A marigold established in the crack of a kerb. The belligerent will of a thing to exist.

Give Nature space, and she will take it.

What a story it would make.

What half a million people on the march will not achieve, a tiny insect might.

A dragonfly could stop an iceberg.

For a while at least.

ROOFTOP

When the service door opened, a falcon burst away from the gun baffle. A brief blur that seemed to stay in the air long after it was gone. Leave the space it occupied more present. The way the doctor’s words had hung there in the air.

‘Keen eyes,’ said the constable who had brought Branner up in the access lift.

Branner nodded; then he checked his rifle and stepped onto the roof.

He knew he’d see her ward from here. Did not look towards the hospital.

He’d asked to be posted out of the city. To spend a few days at the Water Train line. To find some space, to try to settle with things.

‘We’ll need you for the protest, though. You can go out to the line for the next rota. If the Super clears it.’

A few more days, thought Branner. Then I’ll be out there. There’ll be some time to set things straight in my head.

‘You go,’ said his wife. She understood.

The transparent shell of the baffle deflected the cool wind. Deepened Branner’s feeling he was in a bubble.

The dream, recurring night after night, now seemed an intuition. After the doctor’s news.

With his feet off the roof Branner seemed to float, rode a momentary swoon of vertigo.

Let the process take over, he coached himself. Use the process.

He set the rifle in the rest. Checked the pneumatics. Steered the baffle left, right, nodded and tipped it with the foot pedals.

Let the spin of unease pass.

He clipped the umbilica from the rifle to his chestconnect, felt, for a very strange moment, he attached a line to his heart. Then he engaged the comms and spoke into the headset. ‘In place.’

There was endless movement below, between the solid, impassive buildings.

On the distant flat roofs Fillic sheets caught the afternoon light.

Branner took things in. The resting meter of the city.

Ahead of him the bridges, on which the protest would converge to cross the empty river channel over to the Ice Dock.

Behind him the hospital.