‘Close,’ Tay instructed the coffin-case, then watched it do so before moving away. As she walked to the door of the safe, the drone retreated into the room beyond and hovered in midair. With a touch, Tay had the safe door closing behind her, and then she stood surveying the wreckage. It was vandalism, plain and simple, like someone had gone berserk with a gas-system pulse-gun. The furniture was burnt, even the floor, ceiling and walls were distinctively scored, cabinets smashed. Books, some burnt and some still burning, were strewn all about, and the computer console was a hollowed-by-fire ruin.

‘It seems they had some sort of grudge against you.’

The voice that now issued from the mollusc drone was no longer its own, Tay realized instantly, but that is what it wanted her to know. Picking her way through the debris, she moved to the entrance hall - the drone trailing along behind her.

‘A grudge?’ she asked.

‘The Batian mercenaries that came here - presumably in search of Sable Keech,’ replied the Warden.

‘Oh, I don’t think they had a grudge,’ Tay replied, stepping out into soft green light.

‘There does seem an excessive amount of damage here.’

‘Not done by them, I should think. It’s not part of their remit. That lot,’ Tay gestured over her shoulder with her thumb, ‘was probably done by their employer, once she realized she couldn’t get at me. She has a long history of throwing spectacular tantrums. And now, of course, she’s quite mad.’

There was a long silence from the drone as Tay headed for her museum. Shortly before she reached the structure, the drone hummed ahead of her and zipped inside. Following it in she was pleasantly surprised to see no damage here at all. The drone was now hovering above the head of the Skinner, and together they presented a sinister apparition.

Tay stared up at it. ‘No explosives? No booby-traps?’ she asked.

‘None,’ now replied the voice of SM12 again.

‘I thought not. Her arrogance and self-regard would not allow her to destroy this, though her love of inflicting pain and terror would have let her destroy me - though she would have labelled it an act of self-preservation.’

‘Who is this employer you refer to?’ asked the voice of the Warden, quickly returning.

‘You haven’t worked that out?’

‘I have some idea, but I would like to hear the answer from you.’

‘Rebecca Frisk,’ said Tay, swinging her gaze down to the model of that very person. ‘She must have cored herself and swapped into another human body. It must have taken some deep re-programming to have whoever she put into her own previous body play the part of Frisk herself, but then she would have had access to Prador thrall technology, and without any compunction or moral restraint. She would have dearly relished breaking another’s mind and turning it to her own ends.’