The door slammed inwards. She had a second to see a guard in red armour and a silver mask, a gun rising in his hands. The holes in its black barrel loomed wide in her eyes. The deck pitched. Mersadie slammed into a wall as the room turned over. The guard’s gun fired. Shot and sound filled the air. She struck a wall, and felt the air rush from her lungs. The guard tumbled from the door, arms and gun flailing. The room spun over again. Mersadie rose from the wall, floating, scrabbling at air. The guard hit a wall and rebounded. Red pearls of blood sprayed out from the bottom edge of his mask. She crashed into him. The gun went off again, and the guard’s gun arm yanked him up with a crack of shattering bone. Shot ricocheted off the floor and walls. Mersadie screamed as she felt something punch into her back. The guard was spinning back, limbs slack, blood seeping from him in spheres. Mersadie was turning over and over, the open door, ceiling and walls flicking past.

Gravity snapped back into force, and hauled her to the ground. The guard landed on top of her in a tangle of limbs. She gasped. The sirens screamed on, the world red. She tried to shove the guard off her. Muscles wasted by seven years of confinement in small spaces screamed. The guard spasmed. A wet gurgle came from his cracked chrome mask. Mersadie shoved up with all her strength and pitched him onto the floor. She scrabbled to the side. The guard was twitching, retching. She looked at the door, red light flashing beyond. She could hear shouts and screams over the alarms.

‘You must reach him,’ Keeler’s voice hissed in her thoughts. She pushed herself up and took a step towards the door.

‘Pl…’ the guard wheezed. Mersadie hesitated, then turned. ‘Please…’ he said. She could hear the pain in his voice. She could see a sliver of his face through his broken mask: young, blood running from lips and grey eyes looking back at her. She took a step back towards him. His eye was steady on hers. The gun came up. It was a pistol, the barrel a black circle looking up at her. She had a frozen second to realise that he must have been working it free as she pushed him off. She saw the effort twist his face as he began to pull the trigger. She dived back at the door. A bullet struck the frame. She twisted and scrambled back as another bullet slammed into the wall just above her. She gripped the cell door by its locking handle and yanked it shut. Then she was up and running, bare feet thumping into the grated floor as bullets struck the plasteel behind her.