He wore the fatigues of an Inspectorate enforcer, over a heavy-boned physique winnowed of spare flesh. Now sprouting bristles on the scalp and chin, his skull-like head had regained some humanity, but dark circles still underscored his eyes, and stitched-up slices were mapped across his crown and behind his ears. When he snapped a glance towards Saul with bloodshot eyes, it felt almost like a blow. Malden assessed him, making calculations based on this new input of him being awake and cognizant, then dismissed him as he returned his attention to Hannah. After a moment he picked up a hand-rolled cigarette from the ashtray on the table and took a drag.

‘How did he manage to penetrate Inspectorate security?’ Malden asked.

Saul abruptly felt the imminence of a bullet through his brain. He had used Janus to penetrate Inspectorate security, an AI hiding on Govnet which he could summon at any moment, in turn alerting the Inspectorate to his location, and he would be dead if Malden found that out. Saul sat up, feeling sick and slightly dizzy, and with a thought called up a menu to some inner visual field.

‘I used a virus,’ he said. ‘I could give you the schematics, but I doubt it will work again now the Inspectorate is aware of it.’ He paused, in his mental space somehow summoning up a virtual screen and beginning to lay down the coding for just such a virus, in case Malden requested it. Even as he did so it felt as if he had started up some sort of pump in his head, his pulse thundering inside it and a pain growing between his eyes. ‘Then, again, the Inspectorate has a bit of a problem at the moment, so might be slow to respond.’ Saul gazed at the man intently. ‘How is it we are here now and what was that blast?’

Malden gave him a humourless smile. ‘My people were watching out for the good Dr Neumann here, so consider my surprise when she walked straight into one of our surgical units.’ He paused. ‘The blast was a tactical nuke, and Inspectorate headquarters London is now a radioactive crater.’

In Bronstein’s mobile surgery they had been quite some distance from the HQ, yet were still at the periphery of the blast. That meant more than just the HQ was gone. As Saul absorbed the implications of this information, the part of his mind trying to build a virus just hung, nothing happening. The pain then peaked and the virtual screen dissolved in a jagged mass of migraine lights. He’d just discovered his limitations.

‘How?’ he asked.