He was breathing hard when he battered through the next set of doors and into a ring of heavy weapons.

‘Hud it right there! Hauns far I can see ‘em!’

Will was looking down the business end of a Whomper on full power-telltales blinking away on the assault rifle. He did exactly what he was told.

‘Drop the weapon, pal, or I’m gonnae drop you!’

He let the Palm Thrummer fall to the floor. ‘ADS Hunter. I’ve got a Bluecoat DS in need of medical assistance back there and whoever did it is still running loose! Has anyone passed you?’

‘What?’ The assault rifle drifted away from his face as the spokesman frowned. ‘There’s been naebody down this end.’

‘Then they’re still on this level!’

Will pointed at the trooper with the Whomper and the sergeant’s stripes. ‘You come with me.’ He turned towards two others: ‘I want you and you to do a sweep of the floor, search the bloody bedpans if you have to.’ Then he grabbed the remaining trooper. ‘Get back there and guard the lift, no one in or out. Understand?’

‘Hud oan.’ The Whomper drifted back towards Will’s head. ‘Afore we go runnin’ about like good wee doggies, let’s see some ID.’

She can feel the sweat beading on her forehead. The corridor is full of armed guards, but they’re not interested in her; they’re interested in the man trying to order them about. The man she came here to kill. Their guns point at his head, not hers and she wants to keep it that way.

Her heart thumps faster and faster as she wheels the creaking buggy past.

Calm. Stay calm. They don’t even bother to look as she slouches by, even though she knows she must be shaking like a schoolboy in a brothel. And then the doors swing shut behind her and she is in the reception area, praying with every step.

God must love her, because no one says a thing as she walks into the lift.

The doors slide shut and a shudder runs through her body.

She’s going to get away with it.

Will ran back towards the consultation rooms, trailing his armed escort behind him. Jo’s body was still lying where he’d left it and he skidded to a halt. Thank God, she was still breathing.

‘Search the rooms!’

He knelt beside her, stroking her cheek as the sergeant with the Whomper started kicking in doors. Jo’s eyelids fluttered, then she murmured something. He had to lean in close to hear what it was.

‘Well,’ he said, sitting back on his haunches, ‘there’s obviously nothing wrong with your swearing gland.’

Jo grunted, opened her eyes, then closed them again, clutching her bleeding forehead. ‘Bastard…’

‘Are you OK?’

‘No.’ She struggled to sit up. ‘Did you get him?’

‘No sign of anyone. Did you see which way they went?’

She nodded her head, winced, then pointed off towards the main reception, where Will had just come from. ‘Heard the door slam.’

‘What? But there wasn’t anyone…’ He stood, watching the sergeant kicking in another consultation-room door. They’d said no one had passed them, and Will hadn’t seen anyone on the way back.

He clicked his throat-mike. ‘Has anyone tried to leave this floor?’

Jo almost fell over in the rush to pull her earpiece free. ‘Not so loud!’

He shrugged an apology as the voice of the trooper guarding the elevator crackled in his ear.

‘Negative. Just a halfhead with a refuse buggy.’

‘Stop the lift!’

‘What?’

‘Stop the damn lift!’

‘OK, OK! I’m stopping it!’

Jo sagged back against the row of seats, cradling her head in her hands and groaning.

‘Will you be OK?’

‘Go. Catch him.’

Will didn’t need telling twice; he charged back up the corridor and into the reception area. The trooper stood at the lift’s control panel, the open casing exposing neat braids of multicoloured wire and a small terminal.

‘I thought I told you no one in or out!’ Will said, storming across the floor.

‘It was just a halfhead! How could it have been the half-head? It’s got nae brain!’

‘Not the halfhead, you idiot: the buggy. You said it was pushing a refuse buggy.’

‘Aye.’

‘Big enough to hide a man?’

‘Shite.’ The trooper’s face fell.

‘Shite is right. Override the safeties on the lift. We don’t want him cranking the doors open and jumping out.’

‘Yes, sir!’ The private punched something into the elevator’s console. ‘Safeties are killed. He’s going nowhere.’

‘Where is he?’

‘Lift’s stopped between the lobby and the ground floor.’

‘Right.’ Will checked the charge on his Palm Thrummer. ‘Stay here and make sure no one else gets out this way. And this time when I say no one I mean no one! Got it?’

‘Yes, sir!’

Idiot.

Will called the sergeant and told him to round up more bodies and meet him in the hospital lobby.

Tears roll down her cheeks when the lift shudders to a halt between floors. She was so close. So very, very close. Twenty seconds longer and she’d have been free.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

She could have sat on her backside, down in the storeroom, and waited for her surgical appointment, but no. She has to have revenge! She has to risk everything for a little venal pleasure.

She deserves to be caught.

Deserves it.

But she’d been so close…

Dr Westfield reaches into her jumpsuit pocket and fingers her new Palm Zapper. She won’t make it easy for them. The little pebbled disk is powered up, its dial twisted past ‘HEAVY STUN’ all the way to ‘FULL POWER’.

She looks at what’s left of her face, reflected in the lift’s mirrored doors. If they catch her they’ll burn her brain away again. And this time they’ll do it properly. This time there will be no coming back.

The Zapper is warm in her hands.

They won’t take her alive.

They clustered round the lift entrance, all weapons pointed at the doors. A small crowd was beginning to form behind the Network team, but just like the residents of Sherman House, everyone observed the mythical six-foot barrier.

Will clicked his throat-mike, ‘I’m going to give the word and I want you to bring the elevator down nice and slow.’ He checked the cordon of heavy weapons surrounding him. They had enough firepower to take on a small army. ‘Do it.’

With a delicate ping, the double doors slid open and the sound of electronic firearms gearing up filled the air like wasps in a blender. There, standing behind a disposal buggy, was a solitary halfhead.

‘Shite.’ The sergeant took a step forward and swept the lift from top to bottom. ‘There’s no one here.’

Will could have sworn the truncated face relaxed as the sergeant spoke…but that was ridiculous.

‘Hold on.’ Will motioned one of the troopers forward, pointing at the disposal buggy. He’d been right: it was easily big enough to take a fully grown man. The trooper nodded and held his Whomper vertically, the butt-end brushing the ceiling tiles inside the lift. The barrel was pointing straight down into the open buggy.

‘Sorry, sir,’ he said at last. ‘Nothin’ in there, but crap.’

‘You sure?’

‘Yup.’ The trooper stabbed the assault rifle down into the basket, sweeping it through the rubbish, letting it clang off the buggy’s walls. When he pulled it out again there were unpleasant things sticking to the barrel.

Will stepped into the lift. It was beginning to get a bit crowded: three Network personnel, a halfhead, and a disposal buggy. He peered inside the open top, but the trooper was right, there was no one hiding in there. This had all been one big waste of time.

They stood back and let the halfhead get on with its business, moving between the foyer’s rubbish bins, picking them up and tipping them into the disposal buggy as if there was nothing more important in the world.

‘Damn it!’ They were back to square one.

The trooper with the dirty Whomper wiped the barrel clean and said, ‘Y’know the wee bugger may still be up there, sir?’