‘On the way in . . . the blood on them was dry.’

‘Oh, yes.’ Smith had nodded. ‘I used some of the casualties from our previous encounter, just to set the scene. I also needed to let you kill a few yourself, just so you would feel confident enough of victory to come directly against me. Rather negligent of you to leave your robot behind, but that wouldn’t have mattered anyway, since I had one of my officers standing by with a PA50 tank-buster, just in case.’

‘Why?’ Saul had asked.

‘Why what?’

‘Why the charade, if you had suitable weapons . . . to hit my robots?’

‘I only have the one, you see. Initially, I could have sent my soldiers directly against you, but that would have resulted in too many deaths, and I will be needing them now. It was better just to manipulate you, which of course was so easy. You even destroyed those three space planes for me, which of course I can now deny responsibility for.’ Smith had smiled.

Despite the pain in his head, Saul had retained enough analytical capacity to realize that Smith could have brought him down much earlier. It seemed that this whole charade had not been necessary, but merely to satisy Smith’s enjoyment of manipulation.

Saul had blinked, the ache in his head partially receding, and he had begun to probe the computer networks in his vicinity, first picking up on the cam view inside the cell itself, then venturing beyond it to see soldiers moving about in the corridors of the cell block. He had reached further, trying to get in contact with Hannah – but then Smith was there, blocking him, undermining him.

‘I did consider shutting you completely out of the station network, but it seems that switching off your internal modem would require either destructive computer intervention or even surgery,’ Smith had said. ‘I then considered keeping you unconscious until we two found an opportunity to spend some quality time together, before I got Hannah to surgically extract all that hardware in your skull, but the problem is that while you’re unconscious you are not suffering, and I so very much want you to suffer, Alan Saul.’

Smith had stepped back and, with a surge of dread, Saul could clearly see the inducer in the ceiling. The man had continued, ‘Then I figured out the perfect solution: recurrent inducement. For any normal subject, periods of unconsciousness last between ten minutes and an hour, but I feel certain, in your case, the recovery period will be quicker. Let’s see, shall we?’

The agony, as ever, had been unbelievable. He roasted, screaming, in invisible naked flame, his contorted body pounding against the wall behind him like it was being electrocuted. Blackness had overcome him . . . then, seemingly in no time at all, he had been back in the cell, and trying to remember who he was, where he was . . .