Nobody at home, it seemed. Var peered in at a crawler stripped of its wheels and raised on a lift, then transferred her gaze to the bulkhead doors separating this particular wing from Hex Three. These were the same sort of doors as could be found scattered throughout the complex, the sort that had killed those workers processing soil in one of the laboratories. And the doors still operated according to the same safety protocols.

Var placed the battery box on the ground, plugged in the diamond saw’s power cable, then set the thing running. It jerked and twisted under the force of its spin, the blade turning to a blur and gyroscopic action making it awkward to manoeuvre. For a second she hesitated – strangely reluctant to harm her own base – then she brought the saw blade down against the window. A thin shriek assaulted her ears as the blade juddered against the glass, raising a spray of fine white powder. As it hit one of the resin laminations, this bubbled between the layers of glass, then the saw pierced all the way through, and internal air pressure booted it out again. A great plume of vapour shot out from the gash, but maybe that would not be enough. Var cut again, then again, the blade slicing open slots that extended to just under its full ten-centimetre diameter. Beyond the blur of vapour and glass dust she saw three of Ricard’s armed enforcers charging through the bulkhead doors, with a couple of execs trailing behind them. She gazed at them a little disbelievingly, seeing they’d demonstrated just how stupid they were to come running unsuited into a section already shrieking with decompression klaxons.