Fucking thing.

How was he supposed to hold onto it when it was slick with blood? How hard did this have to fucking be?

He grabbed the handle and hurled the knife away into the darkness. It clanged off something metal hidden in the shadows.

He put his bloody hands over his eyes and slumped back on the cold post-mortem table.

This was impossible. He couldn’t go anywhere near Sherman House with a pair of locator beacons buried under his skin. They’d all be dead before they even set foot in the place.

An angry voice burst into the cold room. ‘Who’s in here?’.

‘George?’

The short, fat pathologist stood framed in the doorway, slippers on his feet and a bone hammer in his hand. The lights flickered on, killing the shadows.

‘Will? What the hell are you doing down here? It’s half three in the morning!’

‘Could ask you the same thing.’

George shrugged and waddled across the squeaky floor. ‘Explosion in the Queens Cross shuttle station. Forty-one dead. I was getting a couple hours kip before going back to…’ He sniffed, then stopped, staring at the blood oozing out of Will’s side. ‘What the hell are you doing?’

‘I’m trying to get rid of the-’

‘You’re bleeding all over my lovely clean mortuary!’

He pushed Will flat on the slab and peered at the open wound in his side.

‘What did you use, a cheese grater? This is a mess!’

‘You try operating on yourself! See how easy-’

‘You’re not even cutting in the right place!’

‘Well you do it then, if you’re so damn clever.’

George stepped back and bit his bottom lip. ‘I only operate on dead people.’

Will placed a hand on the little pathologist’s shoulder, leaving a dark red stain. ‘They’ve taken Jo. I can’t get her back if they know I’m coming.’

‘Lie back, I’ll go get the wand.’

Will pushed through the double doors into the Network shuttle station. His chest and stomach ached a little, like a background noise not quite loud enough to identify. George might be happier working on the dead, but he was no slouch with the living either. Even if he did narrate everything as if he was doing a post mortem.

Constable Cat McDonald was waiting for him, a brand-new Bull Thrummer slung over her shoulder. It dwarfed the Field Zapper strapped to her hip, reaching down to her shins and up past the top of her head. There was a small buggy at her feet, heaped with weapons from the armoury.

She’d changed out of her mud-encrusted Bluecoat into Network-issue concrete-grey camouflage combat gear. ‘Got a set for you too, sir,’ she said, handing over another jumpsuit.

Two minutes later a shuttle pulled up at the platform and Brian clambered out. He looked as if he’d fallen out of bed and into his fatigues.

‘Somebody call for a taxi?’

‘Here,’ said Will, giving him one of the Whompers and a shoulder pack of assorted crowd-control devices, ‘make yourself useful.’

When they were all ensconced in the shuttle-the massive Bull Thrummer jammed in at an angle to make it fit-Brian stuck his hand out to the new girl. ‘Special Agent Brian Alexander. Who’re you when you’re no’ tooled up to go shoot some toley beanbag?’

The constable smiled and shook Brian’s hand. ‘Cat McDonald: Bluecoats.’

‘Do I no’ know you?’

She stopped smiling. ‘I was drunk, OK?’

Brian threw a wink in Will’s direction. ‘A woman after me own heart.’

With a small clunk the shuttle left the Network’s private station and slipped into the main tunnels. As the car hummed up to cruising speed, Brian asked the big question: ‘So how’re we goin’ tae find her then?’

Will dug the tracker out of Cat’s shoulder pack and tossed it across the shuttle to his friend.

‘Coffin dodger.’

Brian flipped the thing open and scowled at the empty fizzing display. ‘Aw come aff it! It’ll take days to get that bugger Station Commander to switch the damn thing on!’

‘Who says we’re going to ask him?’ The shuttle’s console flickered under Will’s fingers as he hammered his way out through Network security and straight into the Bluecoat’s dispatch system. Within minutes there was a small click and then the tracker in Brian’s hand lit up like a carnival ride.

‘We have lift off!’ Brian squidged his face close to the screen, lips moving slightly as he read.

Will sat forward. ‘Well? Where is she?’

‘Hud yer horses, it’s comin’ up…’ He frowned as the map appeared on the tracker’s screen. Jo’s coffin dodger was a big red circle that constricted to a point as the city’s network of receivers triangulated the signal. ‘Southeast: other side of the river, past the firestacks…Shite.’ Brian looked up. ‘It’s-’

‘Sherman House.’ Will finished for him.

‘Aye, Sherman House.’ Brian sighed. ‘Arseholes.’

‘Look on the bright side,’ said Will as he powered up his Whomper, checking the charge, ‘you’ll get to meet the lovely Mr Peitai.’

Brian shrugged and slapped a new battery into his assault rifle. ‘Her Majesty’s goin’ tae go mental when she finds out. She’ll have our goolies for earrings.’

‘Only if we get out of this alive.’

Brian beamed and slapped their new friend Cat on the back. ‘Aye, he’s right. Always look on the bright side.’

27

Outside the shuttle’s windows the stanchion lights vwipped past, their cold-white glow making the carriage flicker as Brian dug his way through the pack of crowd-control devices Constable Cat MacDonald had liberated from the Network armoury-lining them up on the floor. She’d been pretty thorough: Crispies, Jammers, Sticky Willies, and NightFog. All the toys.

Brian stuck them back in the bag while Will filled Cat in on Ken Peitai’s ‘social research’ project, the sub-dermal tracking and listening devices, Peitai and Kikan’s spell at Glasgow Royal Infirmary and what he’d found hidden away in the PsychTech files.

When Will was finished, Brian dumped the full pack on the seat next to him and said, ‘You find out why the wee dick and his boss were messing about with PsychTech?’

‘Not yet.’ Will stared out of the window, watching the bars of light streak past. ‘Westfield was building killers, Peitai is too. Maybe it was a kindred spirit kind of thing?’

Cat MacDonald raised her hand, as if asking permission to go to the toilet. ‘She was trying to see if the textbook model of serial killer development was valid, yes?’ Cat picked at the Field Zapper in its holster. ‘Perhaps they thought they could hijack her research?’

Will nodded. ‘That’s what I thought.’

There was a small lurch as the shuttle left the main net and clacked onto the Monstrosity Square branch line.

Will checked the destinator. Almost there.

‘Lock and load, people.’

He pulled his Whomper upright and popped the power cartridge out into his hand, checking the contacts were clean and the charge was full, before racking the battery back into place. Watched as Brian and Cat did the same.

They coasted the last fifteen feet into the shuttle station beneath Sherman House in absolute silence. Their car bumped to a halt against the station buffers and, with a soft hiss, the doors slid open, letting in the bitter reek of stale urine. Faded sodiums flickered incontinence-yellow against the grubby concrete as Will stepped out onto the deserted platform.

‘Which way?’

Brian wrinkled his nose. ‘Jesus…It honks in here!’ He peered at the tracker’s screen, then did a slow, lumbering pirouette, holding the device in front of him as he turned. At last he lifted a grey-clad arm and pointed off the end of the platform and into the dark of the shuttle tunnel: back the way they’d come.

‘Goin’ to have to walk.’

Constable MacDonald almost choked. ‘You’re kidding, right?’ She looked at the shuttle and then the black hole. ‘Do you have any idea what speed these things go at?’