None of them paid any attention to the whimpering civilians scampering out of their way, they were focused on the skyscraper alone. Vehicles littering the street ahead of them flared electric-blue before bursting apart into a sleet of black granules. The army of the damned walked through the smouldering wreckage. Again, it was all panache. Showtime.

To the majority of Edmonton’s citizens, the skyscraper that was the centre of their wrath was just a modest, ordinary building divided into standard commercial and residential sections. The police knew different, as did most of the locals. Rumours of the sect presence inside began to filter back to the media anchors. But by then professional rover reporters were on the scene, watching the police seal off the area and armed squads take up position.

Sixty per cent of Earth’s population was now on-line, waiting for the shoot out. The greatest audience in history.

Inside the sect headquarters, the senior acolytes broke open the armoury and began handing out heavy-calibre chemical projectile rifles and machine guns to the acolytes. There was little panic; the beleaguered sect members were almost glad they had a tangible enemy at last. Banneth herself supervised setting up their defences. First she established a ring of snipers peeking through the skyscraper’s windows, then consolidated their heavier firepower around the convoluted barriers inside.

She hurried round all of them, issuing orders and offering encouragement—never threats, not now. Quinn and the possessed had become the new fear-figures. It was interesting that they had now returned to her. After all Quinn had done to fill them with doubt and mistrust, the random tortures and deaths he had silently enacted throughout the headquarters had come to nothing in the end. They still believed that she was the stronger of the two.

You realize this is probably a diversion, don’t you?she asked. He’s most likely planning to snatch me or kill me in the battle.

Possibly,western europe replied equitably. Personally, I believe this pathetic conflict he’s staging is purely a case of collateral slaughter while he achieves his real goal: escaping from our grasp.

Thanks. That makes me feel a lot better.

Frightened? You?

Wouldn’t you be?

If I was physically in your position, no doubt I would, yes. But I’m not, am I?

Don’t give me that natural superiority crap.

I apologise.

Very magnanimous. Does that mean you’ve got the SD platforms zeroed in on me?

I’m afraid so, yes. Again, I doubt if we’ll have to use them. Quinn won’t reveal himself, not today.

Banneth took a look along the familiar darkened corridors of the headquarters as she made her way back to her own rooms. On her orders, they were lit with candles and crude chemical batteries powering low-voltage halogen bulbs—technology the possessed would be unable to glitch without considerable effort. Not that it particularly mattered, she thought, we’re not protecting anything we can salvage. After this, the headquarters would be no more. All her acolytes were doing was fighting a delaying action until the police and B7 eliminated Quinn’s ersatz invasion. But then, the sect was nothing more than a B7 creation anyway. A convenient umbrella for them and her.

She walked through the temple giving it a nostalgic look. The first rocket hit the skyscraper; a light EE tipped anti-armour missile. Duffy fired it; Quinn had given him the honour of opening the fighting as a reward for unswerving loyalty to the cause of Night. The explosion sent shockwaves yammering through the skyscraper’s structure, blowing out a huge crater on the northern corner and shattering hundreds of surrounding windows. Huge lumps of rubble cascaded down onto the street to smash apart in front of the possessed. The surviving snipers inside picked themselves up and opened fire.

The vac-train carriage had seating for a hundred. Louise, Genevieve, and Ivanov Robson were the only people using it. In fact, Louise had only seen a dozen or so people milling about on the platform at King’s Cross when they got on. She wasn’t sure if they were passengers or station staff.

Despite her growing uncertainty, and Gen’s sulky resentment, she’d followed the private detective in through the airlock door. Even now there was something about him that reassured her. Even beyond physical size, he had a self-confidence greater than Joshua. Which was saying a lot. She settled back with dreamy thoughts of her fiancй filling her mind. Although the seats were worn, they were comfortable; and her alcohol suppresser program was off. Joshua had such a warm smile, she remembered. It would be so nice to have it shine on her again.

“I love you, and I’m coming back for you.” His words. Spoken to her when they were naked and alone, their bodies clinging together. A promise that could be nothing but totally honest.

I will find him again, despite all this horrid mess.

Her news hound program alerted her to the situation developing in Edmonton. She went through Time Universe to access a sensevise of the fight. And there she was, crouched behind one of the abandoned buses, peering cautiously round the front at the crazy army marching along the street. Dazzling white fireballs were pumping up from a dozen upstretched hands, smacking into the skyscraper. Flames were roaring out of windows and missile craters all the way up the first eight or nine stories. Heavy-calibre guns were firing down in retaliation, pummelling the carbon-concrete sidewalk with small intense topaz explosions. Several bodies were scattered along the street, clothes still smouldering from beam weapon scorches.

Figures began to race past the bus. Police in dark-grey armour suits, hauling even larger automatic guns than those in use up ahead. Their movements were arachnid, scuttling from cover to cover. They began to fire; the discharge from their weapons a continuous howl ripping into the delicate tissue of her inner ear. She started, hands halfway to her ears before the reporter’s audio limiter program cut in. Then she was ducking down as multiple explosions ploughed up the street. White fireballs flew directly overhead.

Louise reduced the sensevise to monitor function, bundling it away until it became a vivid real-time memory. She looked at Ivanov. “Now what?” she asked. “They won’t let this train into Edmonton now, will they? Surely?”

“They ought to. Access the overview commentary. The possessed are concentrated in one area, and the police have them contained. They’ve got enough firepower concentrated on them to exterminate ten times as many as there are on the ground. Besides, if we were being diverted, the train company would have told us immediately.”

Louise accessed the carriage’s processor, and requested a schedule update. It reported that they were going to arrive in Edmonton in forty-one minutes. “That doesn’t make any sense. The authorities were paranoid about outbreaks before.”

“It’s politics. Edmonton is trying to prove they don’t have a problem with the possessed; that they’re on top of the situation.”

“But—”

“I know. They should have waited until after this fight is over before any grand announcements. Being premature with the good news is hardly new for Govcentral. As soon as the Edmonton isolation was announced, a lot of highly connected lobbyists will have been called in to pressure the president’s office and sympathetic senators to have the vac-train lines re-opened. If Edmonton is taken out of the global economic loop, all the companies in the arcology will start to fall behind their competitors; and an entire arcology is a huge market for outside companies to sell into; that’s a factor, too.”

“They’re endangering people because of money?” Louise asked in astonishment. “That’s awful.”