“We both know you won’t do it, Kovacs. We both know who you’re working for.”

This time the pause before he called back was barely noticeable. Good recovery, very impressive.

“You seem remarkably well informed for a man on the run.”

“It’s my training.”

“Soak up the local colour, huh?”

Virginia Vidaura’s words at Envoy induction, a subjective century ago. I wondered how long ago she’d said it to him.

“Something like that.”

“Tell me something, man, ‘cause I’d genuinely like to know. With all that training, how come you end up a cut-rate sneak assassin for a living? As a career move, I got to say it puzzles me.”

A cold knowledge crept up through me as I listened. I grimaced and shifted my position slightly. Said nothing.

“Serendipity, right? It’s Serendipity?”

“Well, I have got another name,” I shouted back. “But some fuckhead stole it. Until I get it back, Serendipity’s fine.”

“Maybe you won’t get it back.”

“Nah, it’s good of you to worry, but I know the fuckhead in question. He isn’t going to be a problem for much longer.”

The twitch was tiny, barely a missed beat. Only the Envoy sense picked it up, the anger, shut down as rapidly as it flared.

“Is that so?”

“Yeah, like I said. Real fuckhead. Strictly a short-lived thing.”

“That sounds like overconfidence to me.” His voice had changed fractionally. Somewhere in there, I’d stung him. “Maybe you don’t know this guy as well as you like to think.”

I barked a laugh. “Are you kidding? I taught him every nicking thing he knows. Without me—”

And there. The figure I’d known was coming. The one I couldn’t listen for with neurachem while I traded veiled insults with the voice outside. A crouched, black-clad form sliding in through the opening five metres under me, some kind of spec-ops eye-mask-and-sensor gear turning the head insectile and inhuman. Thermographic imaging, sonic locater, motion alert, at a probable minimum—

I was already falling. Pushed off from the ledge, boot-heels aligned to hit the neck below the masked head and snap it.

Something in the headgear warned him. He jumped sideways, looking up, twisting the blaster towards me. Beneath the mask, his mouth jerked open to yell. The blast cut through air I’d just dropped out of. I hit the floor crouched, a handsbreadth off his right elbow. Blocked the swing of the blaster barrel as it came round. The yell came out of his mouth, shivery with the shock. I struck upward into his throat with the blade of one hand and the sound choked to retching. He staggered. I straightened, went after him and chopped again.

There were two more of them.