“Please tell me you’re being metaphorical now. I don’t think I can cope with another hardwired believer at the moment.”

“Hey, you don’t like the conversation, you can fuck off out of here, can’t you.”

The sudden edge on her voice kicked me back to New Hok and the seemingly endless deCom bickering. An unlooked-for smile tugged at my mouth with the memory. I opened my eyes and looked at her again. Placed both hands flat on the bar, sighed and let the smile come up.

“I came to get you out, Sylvie.”

“I know.” She put her hand over one of mine. “But I’m fine here.”

“I told Las I’d look after you.”

“So look after her. That keeps me safe too.”

I hesitated, trying to frame it right. “I think she might be some kind of weapon, Sylvie.”

“So? Aren’t we all?”

I looked around at the bar and its grey speed ghosts. The low murmur of amalgamated sound. “Is this really all you want?”

“Right now, Micky, it’s all I can cope with.”

My drink stood untouched on the bar in front of me. I stood up. Picked it up.

“Then I’d better be getting back.”

“Sure. I’ll see you out.”

The whisky went down burning, cheap and rough, not what I’d been expecting.

She walked with me out onto the wharf. Here the dawn was already up, cold and pale grey, and there were no people, speeded pastiche or otherwise, anywhere in the unforgiving light. The sweeper station stood closed and deserted, the mooring points and the ocean beyond were both empty of traffic. There was a naked, stripped look to everything and the Andrassy Sea came in and slapped at the pilings with sullen force. Looking north, you could sense Drava crouched below the horizon in similar, abandoned quiet.

We stood under the crane where we’d first met, and it hit me then with palpable force that this was the last time I’d see her.

“One question?”

She was staring out to sea. “Sure.”

“Your preferred active agent up there says she recognised someone in the holding constructs. Grigori Ishii. That chime with you at all?”

A slight frown. “It sounds familiar, yes. I couldn’t tell you from where though. But I can’t see how a personality would have got down here.”

“Well, quite.”

“Did she say it was this Grigori?”

“No. She said there was something down here that sounded like him. But when you flaked taking down the scorpion gun, afterwards when you were coming out of it in Drava you said it knew you, something knew you. Like an old friend.”

Sylvie shrugged. Most of her was still watching the northern horizon.