"You're bleeding," he observed.

Glancing down I noted fresh blood staining my dungarees, and a trail of droplets leading back to the slab. I could survive without my heart beating or my lungs breathing, by dint of IF21 distributing oxygen about my body, but I wondered if my body could survive without any blood inside it.

"Kneel down," I instructed Gneiss, "and place your hands on the floor under your knees."

With a slightly puzzled look he obliged. I quickly placed my gun on the floor, opened the packet and pulled on the containment suit. It came with its own integral overboots, so would at least prevent me from dribbling more blood all over the place. I pulled up the hood but did not bother to close the mask since I had no idea how long the small oxygen supply attached to the belt would last me.

"Okay, you can stand up now," I said, the gun once again in my hand.

Gneiss straightened up, shaking some feeling back into his hands. "Shall we go now?"

I nodded, and he turned and strode over to the door. Quickly moving up behind him I pressed the barrel of the gun into his side. "I think you should understand something, Director Gneiss."

"That being?" he asked, as he pushed down the big lever of the door handle.

"I'm dying," I replied. "I probably won't leave this station alive. I truly believe that what I'm now forcing you to do will solve a lot of your problems, and I'm prepared to do anything towards that end. If you cross me, I promise I'll kill you."

With an unreadable look, he opened the door and we stepped out into the corridor. I thrust the gun into my suit's belly pocket, but retained a firm hold on the butt.

We got about twenty feet along the corridor when a worried-looking woman immediately zeroed in on Gneiss.

"Sir, we've been trying to raise you on your personal com…" she said.

"I switched it off."

"The situation has become very serious. Oversight has been trying to contact you. Fleet has just destroyed Platform Four with a gravity disruptor. The Fleet ships are now—"

Gneiss held up his hand. "I'll deal with this when I reach my office, where I won't get very quickly if you feel the need to tell me the whole story here."

"I'm sorry…"

Gneiss quickly moved on and I followed him closely. The woman gave me a puzzled look and turned away. Thereafter no one ventured to approach us, and I got the impression that their Director was someone the other station personnel liked to avoid. We entered a lift that took us up only a little way, then entered a series of corridors where everyone we encountered seemed in a great hurry. Gneiss paused by a long narrow window with a view out across the station and into open space, where distantly could be seen Fleet's firework display.

"Almost certainly Harald will have placed his ships where the use of gravity weapons by Combine will result in huge collateral damage to Combine itself," he said.

"So presumably Combine has prepared for that," I suggested.

"The Oversight Committee lacks foresight."

"But you are on the Oversight Committee and, as far as I can gather, you are also in charge of running Combine's defence."

"Yes, so it would seem."

His strange nonchalance covered up something else I was only just beginning to perceive, some need in him.

"Harald is responding to the Worm's will in the only way he knows," I said, studying him carefully. "But I see I am not telling you anything you don't already know."

His reaction to that was odd. He noticeably jerked as if coming out of a reverie, and for a brief moment looked actually scared.

I prodded him in the back with my gun. "Your office."

The office itself was spartan and lacking in much to personalise it. A picture on one wall displayed a desert scene, while some mostly empty shelves held partially dismantled bits of hardware. A full-length oval mirror in an ornate frame stood opposite a desk loaded with consoles and a framework for opening the soft scroll screens they used here. There was a couch with a low table nearby. Nothing on the table but a film of dust.

"Now you must initiate that emergency protocol," I said. "I'll be looking over your shoulder and, believe me, I know more about your computer systems than you might suppose."

He looked at me as if offended by such an inference, then his gaze strayed over my shoulder, towards the mirror behind me. Vanity? I just could not see the possibility of that vice within him, so even the presence of that mirror struck an incongruous note. Just to remind him, I pulled out the gun, and gestured with it to the desk.

"Unfortunately I misled you," he said, and the weirdly crazy expression that momentarily passed over his face made me step back a pace.

"If you could elaborate," I prompted.

Again that glance towards the mirror, then he focused on me and leant forward a little. "I cannot initiate any of the emergency protocols. No director should possess the power to destroy all or part of the Worm, or even eject it from this station, without good reason. So the protocols only become viable once automatic systems have picked up a definite breach in one of the canisters."

"Then why let me come here at all?"

"Because, as you so rightly pointed out, you are holding a gun." He peered at the weapon. "Finely made, too. It looks like the kind manufactured for ship or station assault. Is the ammunition armour-piercing? Such weapons often use such bullets for the penetration of armoured spacesuits."

What was he wittering on about?

"Yes, the bullets are armour-piercing."

He continued, "I believe the reasoning behind such weapons is that, when you're assaulting a ship or station, the possibility of your bullets causing an atmosphere breach is rather irrelevant, since you'll be wearing a spacesuit."

"Do you think that would stop me from firing in here?" I asked. "Please don't make that mistake."

Almost as if to challenge me, he took a pace forward. I wasn't intending to kill him, but I doubted I could subdue him in any other way. Rewind a few months and I wouldn't even have needed the gun, but now I felt drained in more senses than one, since every time I took a step now, I could feel the blood squelching in my boots. If he went for me, I would probably end up with broken bones, and that might hasten my end.

His gaze wavered, sliding past my shoulder again to the mirror. What was it about that damned mirror? I quickly stepped to one side and took a proper look at it. Its frame, I noticed, had an even patina all round except in one particular place, for the snake's head incorporated in the design was highly polished as if by the frequent touch of a hand. I now recognised the design of the frame was an Ouroboros—a snake swallowing its own tail forever—and I thought that entirely appropriate. I quickly brought my gaze back to him.

"We use optical diamond so the Worm can be viewed," he told me. "It's a foolish conceit, since there is no need for us to actually see it, and diamond, though incredibly hard is also incredibly brittle." He paused for a moment, his gaze cast down, introspective. "When we were lovers I took Elsever down there to see my charge. I was foolishly proud as well as in love. I think it was just awaiting the opportunity…or perhaps it had even manufactured that opportunity." He looked up again. "That was when it touched her, of course." Then he drew his lips back from his teeth, almost as if he were in pain—and threw himself at me.

I had him in my sights all the while. He seemed to make no attempt to avoid getting shot, but I couldn't do it. I flicked my finger away from the trigger as with both hands he grabbed me by the loose material across my chest, hoisted me off the floor then propelled me backwards and slammed me against the mirror. I felt ribs crack and something again began bubbling in my lungs. The gun barrel was pressed right up against his guts, and I knew that in a second I could blow them and part of his spine out of his back.