‘What do you mean he put himself in there?’ asked Drusher.

‘I’ve been trying to access data from the terminals in this chamber,’ she said. ‘It’s definitely a Cognitae facility, and it’s been here a very long time.’

‘How long?’ asked Drusher.

‘Never mind that,’ snapped Nayl. ‘Tell us about Sark.’

‘He didn’t build this place,’ replied Jaff. ‘But he’s run it for the Cognitae for the last century or so. Running its program.’

‘Program for what?’ asked Drusher.

‘I don’t know that yet,’ she replied. ‘But from the notes I found, it seems that Magos Sark was so desperate to get a result, he placed himself in that cage.’

‘Yes, because that’s what scientists do,’ said Drusher.

‘He made himself his own laboratory test subject,’ said Jaff witheringly. ‘He is clearly damaged and obsessive. That cage is a psychometric monitor, and Sark is his own lab rat.’

‘We need to know a lot more than that,’ said Nayl.

‘Well, I was working on it,’ said Jaff. ‘Then I saw you.’

Nayl lowered his rifle and looked around. He walked to the gantry rail.

‘Which terminal were you using, Audla?’ he asked. ‘Where did you get this information from?’

Audla Jaff raised her hand as if to point. But she was holding a compact, snub-nose laspistol.

She fired. The shot hit Nayl in the back. He lurched forwards, toppled over the rail and fell.

Drusher stared, his mouth wide open.

Jaff turned the weapon on him.

‘He was too dangerous to live,’ she said. ‘But you are containable. And new test subjects are always useful.’

Sixteen

SIXTEEN

The Bad Place

Jaff took a step towards Drusher and placed the muzzle of her sidearm against his forehead. Expressionless, she reached forwards with her other hand, and began patting the pockets of his old coat. She stopped, reached in and fished out the gun Nayl had given him.

She stepped back, keeping her weapon trained on him, and put the confiscated gun in the hip pocket of her jacket. Sark had hunched down in the cage, in fear, and was grunting and moaning again.

Over her shoulder, she called out ‘clear’ in a strong, loud voice. Her aim never wavered.

‘How long?’ Drusher asked her.

‘How long what?’

‘Have you been working against the ordos?’

‘Since the day I was born, magos,’ she said. ‘I am the product of a Cognitae breeding school. I was engineered as a savant… Precisely the sort of exceptional individual a man like Gregor Eisenhorn finds appealing and useful. The sort of person he recruits.’

‘I suppose that explains why you’ve been so unhelpful every step of the way,’ said Drusher. ‘Someone like you should have worked out Keshtre’s location in a matter of hours. But you already knew where it was. You were trying to stop us finding it.’

She smiled.