Corpses everywhere, and here and there orange-overalled prisoners were unsteadily making their escape. As she and her captor reached the main gate, she saw the windows of the guard booth smashed, and even a couple of the mastiffs lying bullet-riddled in their extended enclosure girdling the compound.

‘Transvan.’ He was pointing her towards the nearest vehicle.

‘Who are you?’ she asked, finally.

He gazed at her with those cold eyes that seemed somehow wrong in that face – and yet somehow familiar.

‘A question I, too, am curious to know the answer to,’ he replied, staring at her with peculiar intensity. ‘And to which I hope you can supply an answer.’

She climbed in through the passenger door of the transvan. What else could she do? Or what else did she want to do? Underneath the shock, she felt something like excitement stir. Her life had been one of perpetual confinement and political supervision, the imminent threat of an adjustment cell just around the corner. She had never expected anything else. And now he was taking her out into a world she had never expected to see again.

Malden, she thought. He had to be one of Malden’s people.

But why had he grabbed her and not the revolutionary leader himself? The man must still be back there, still in his cell . . . unless he too had escaped, perhaps leaving the complex via a different route? Perhaps she had been taken out separately so as to cut down on the risk of both of them being caught?

The killer beside her drew the transvan to a halt at the gates, where the post-mounted recognition system just bleeped acceptance and opened them. While driving through, he took his machine pistol out of his lap and dumped it on the third seat, between them.

‘I thought you were Inspectorate . . . here to kill me,’ she said, since it now seemed clear that was not his intention.

‘I think you underrate your value to the Committee,’ he said. ‘If you were that dispensable, they would not have allowed you the anti-ageing drugs, or supplied you with everything you need to conduct your experiments.’ He paused to glance at her expressionlessly. ‘Including the human subjects.’

‘Not my choice,’ she replied, feeling a surge of guilt.

He continued, ‘I’ve little doubt your escape will warrant the outlay of massive resources and any number of lives, just to put you back under lock and key.’

‘You think so?’ Perhaps he was right, though it just didn’t feel like that. The threat of adjustment or execution had been hanging over her just too long.