There was a brief silence. Kate could not hear Lorraine’s words, but they were easy to work out.

‘Nothing’s beyond my reach. Not tonight.’

I don’t like the sound of this.

‘No, not even the HPFC. Tell me where to go.’

Kate gasped, hopefully not loud enough for McCormick to hear. She had not heard the High Priority Functional Cluster even mentioned through most of the war. And there was a good reason for that.

But time was running out, and Floor L was high above. With gritted teeth and a sense of powerlessness over McCormick, Kate looked up the stairwell and ran.

*

As far as Ewan could tell, his sense of direction had not let him down. Distractions were everywhere, but he was pretty sure his route was the correct one.

The biggest clue was that the clone patrols were getting heavier. Ewan thought it might have been the perfect opportunity for them to blow him apart with speed mines, but clearly they didn’t want to damage any rooms important enough to be on Floor F.

He took a peek around the next corner, and was spotted by six biorifle soldiers.

Bringing in the big guns now. Literally.

Marshall wants me to run out of ammo. He’s using the soldiers with weapons built into their arms – guns I can’t steal once they’re dead.

His first spray of bullets took down four of the soldiers. Despite their advanced weaponry, the remaining two did not last much longer. Ewan double-checked the corridor and ran over to the bodies, and found that some of their other weapons could be stolen.

By far the most interesting weapon was the belt of incendiary grenades. Four of them. Ewan grinned. He couldn’t have asked for a more suitable weapon to bring to the Experiment Chamber. He seized the whole belt for himself, and astonishingly found the room he was looking for three doors later.

About time we had something good thrown our way. Right, let’s do this.

He used the seized keycard against the door, and it worked. He wouldn’t have long until someone noticed a dead clone checking into the Experiment Chamber, but fifteen minutes between check-ins would be more than enough.

Come to think of it, Ewan was surprised they hadn’t locked down the chamber altogether. But it had been out of action since the research was completed, and would never be needed again unless all their research mysteriously vanished.