From where he sat, Saul watched one of the readerguns swivel and fire off a three-shot burst, the flare from it just one bright flash and the report only one sound – the shots so close together it was impossible for the human eye or ear to distinguish between them. The guts and much of the chest of an Inspectorate enforcer splashed a grey concrete wall, just before the rest of him slammed into it. Other readerguns began to open up intermittently, then built to a steady thunder as Saul used the fingertips of his right hand to tap out a little ditty on the surface of the console before him. Finally, as the thunder started to die, he stood up and headed for the stairs.

Exiting the lower doors of the monitoring station, he ducked low and quickly slipped behind the vehicle that had brought him here, but a quick glance around revealed that no one was paying attention to him any more. The devastating and gory effectiveness of the readerguns had become immediately apparent. Corpses slumped at the termini of great red splashes of blood and body parts, or lying in spreading pools of blood, were now scattered all across the carbocrete. Whilst he watched, a woman tried to find a better hiding place by moving along a nearby wall. The gun positioned on the building opposite turned and fired, the three shots tracking down her body from the top, first taking off her head, then blowing her spine out of her back.

He stood up a little nervously, but the readerguns did not respond to him as he climbed into the electric buggy and engaged its motor. The short drive over to cell block A7 seemed part of a journey through some lower circle of hell: just canyons of concrete and the partially dismembered dead, blood splashes and body parts. There were no wounded here because the guns were almost incapable of inaccuracy at such close quarters. Only the particular position or angle of each detected target dictated the placing of the shots, but they were always at once lethal, wadcutter bullets slamming nearly head-sized chunks out of the most vital parts of the human body. Saul’s mouth was dry and he felt slightly sickened at the carnage he had achieved, but those feelings were dominated by the other colder and more ruthlessly cruel side of him.

Cell block A7 looked little different from all the other blocks in the vicinity. He noted where an enforcer had tried to get inside but a gun had brought him down on the threshold. Saul dragged the soggy corpse aside before opening the door and stepping through. To his right was a small monitoring station, and two people whirling towards him.

‘Have they stopped?’ asked the woman, clearly scared and horrified.