The guard acceded with a shrug to this unusual request, stepping from the driver’s seat as Saul stepped out of the trailer. His next actions, unlike much else he had organized here, had not been meticulously planned and left him at a bit of a disadvantage. Janus had been unable to penetrate the firewalls established here, hence Saul was carrying a large proportion of the AI around with him in the laptop inside his briefcase. To get Janus into the system required a hardlink – an optic cable plugged into one of the computers here, and the portion of the AI loading, then disabling the firewall to let in the rest of itself – after which things should go smoothly, if bloodily, enough. However, the staff of the monitoring room certainly wouldn’t want him plugging his hardware directly into their computers, no matter what his rank, no matter who he might seem to be. He therefore needed to deal with them.

Entering the monitoring room required passing through just as much security as at the gate into the Cell Complex. He went through first, the guard following, but once inside he gestured the man towards the stairs ahead, while scanning the foyer as he did so. No one in evidence down here but still plenty of Complex staff busily hurrying to their next appointments outside, so at any time one or more of those might enter behind him. His driver climbed the stairs ahead of him, glancing over his shoulder.

‘They’ll know you’re here,’ he said conspiratorially, as if he himself had nothing to do with informing them.

‘That won’t be a problem.’ Saul awarded him a brief smile.

Double doors opened into the monitoring room. Sitting at consoles lining three of the walls were seven staff, all wearing enforcer uniforms. A suited woman likely to be Inspectorate Executive began walking towards him, her expression slightly puzzled. Slanting outwards from above the consoles, windows overlooked the mazelike network of cell blocks, and from here he could see readerguns positioned on every roof at each corner. Just for a second he hesitated, some stab of conscience slowing his hand. But it swiftly evaporated.

‘You are citizen Avram Coran,’ began the Inspectorate woman, her mouth tightening as prissily as that of the woman who’d sat next to him on the rotobus.