People threaded onto the bridge. Surchins larked in the concrete channel below.

Branner looked to recognise the two brothers amongst them but did not. He looked for the dog.

The light gleamed off the mica held in the dry sandy mud.

The soft crunching chant of the protest came to him now, guided between the buildings, filling the streets ahead of the marchers.

It brought Branner the sense of something rolling, clanking towards him. He saw the bridge like a funnel.

When he looked back at the waste ground, as if he sensed him first, Branner saw the man.

He lay on his belly, an arm outstretched in the water. Branner’s stomach twisted again, upturned.

Light bounced from the weapon the injured man had dropped. It seemed he tried to drag himself.

Branner feared, for a horrible moment, that he’d had some sort of absence, during which he’d shot the man. The way the man lay prone.

He felt a sort of clatter in his brain. The off-synch patter of the protest growing more defined; the travel of the Overland that passed along the bridge.

From the deep hollow inside himself, Branner heard the doctor’s words begin again to knock and rattle. An expectation; some object tumbling closer.

A wash of adrenalin came with a taste like the metal smell of sundered iron. And his body braced.

He waited for this morning’s news to reach him.

The horrible moment, waiting for the doctor’s words to detonate.

‘Baffle nine.’ Comms call cutting through the chemical flood.

‘Check,’ said Branner.

But he was back, now, there. His first posting. Barely old enough to leave the base. Pulling bodies from the pooling water of the sabotaged pipeline.

How they’d stood there, helpless, listening, the next bomb pinging and clanging towards them down the pipe.

It was that day. That day at the pipe you met.

He brought his eyes down onto the protest. Went for the safety of the scope. But.

‘Sir.’

‘What is it?’

‘I’m not fully with this, sir.’

‘Branner?’

‘I’m not focused, sir.’

‘We can’t bring you down now. Are you fit for a shot?’

‘I don’t think so, sir.’

‘You’ve got the bridge, John. There’s a reason it’s you up there.’

‘She’s not going to come through.’

For a moment all he could acknowledge was the sky, the wide sky.

‘Switch off your gun, Branner.’

‘It’s okay. I’ve said it now.’

‘Switch your gun off, John.’

‘No, sir. I’m good. I just needed to say it. There was a falcon on the roof, sir.’

‘Branner.’

‘I’m fine, sir.’

A flock of pigeons bloomed into the space above the building, the falcon toying lazily amongst them. Twisting and tilting. As if called by Branner.

‘I’m fine, now, sir. I’ve said it.’

One of the pigeons seemed to glint with a copper sheen as the flock disappeared.