The broad metal-skinned slab in the middle of the room held a body that had been cut open and spread apart so much that its original human outline was difficult to recognize. He was looking at a butcher’s table. It didn’t escape him that Aothori leaned forwards keenly.

‘The Meor regiment brought its remains to us two days ago,’ Professor Gravin said, sucking down air after his exertion. ‘We’ve been examining it ever since.’

Philious was aware of the professor’s emphasis, the institute carries on doing its job as always. ‘The Knole Street Faller, yes. I took the gifting, along with most of the city.’

‘Our first point of interest was the missing fingers,’ the professor said. He pulled on some rubber gloves and picked up the Faller’s hand. The index and middle fingers were missing, reduced to tiny stumps from which several sections had been sliced away. ‘In itself there’s nothing too unusual about that. An eggsumption will always duplicate the person it absorbs, right down to moles, blemishes, hair pattern. If our man had lost two fingers, than that’s what will come out. The egg won’t grow replacements.’

‘I am aware of this,’ Philious said, looking at the hand. The dead flesh was abnormally pale in the bright light. ‘So what is unusual?’

‘The surgery.’

‘Excuse me?’

The professor tapped the Faller’s index finger stump with his thumb. ‘We noticed the ends were unusually smooth. Normally when someone is unfortunate enough to lose a finger – some kind of industrial accident or just simple carelessness with an axe – the doctor will trim the torn flesh and stitch the wound together. It will heal, leaving scar tissue. This man had none.’

‘So it was a congenital condition,’ Aothori said. ‘He was born without those fingers.’

‘No, sir. We don’t think so. In both fingers there was still a section of the proximal phalanges remaining, about a centimetre long, extending from the knuckle. I consulted with the dean of medicine at the university – that isn’t a congenital defect we’re aware of.’

‘Then how do you explain it?’ Philious asked.

‘The tips of the phalanges had been smoothed, yet I don’t know how that would be achieved. And we examined the skin of the tip under a microscope: the wound had healed over in a uniform fashion. There is no scar tissue, no anomalies in the dermal layer at all. If he lost the fingers in an accident, he was given a perfect treatment afterwards. A treatment we are not capable of providing.’

‘Occam’s razor,’ Aothori said. ‘Just because you haven’t seen that congenital condition before doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Or perhaps the egg made a small alteration during duplication this time. More likely, the Faller lost those fingers in some kind of fight and you’re seeing the way their bodies heal.’

‘Yes, sir. We considered those options.’

‘But?’ Philious continued. ‘We’re not here because of the fingers, are we?’

‘No, sir. When my deputy reported the irregularity I took it upon myself to continue the autopsy personally.’

‘Commendable. And?’

The professor pointed at the open skull. The brainpan was empty. ‘Its brain. I dissected its brain. Please.’ He beckoned them over to one of the long benches running down the side of the room. There were several glass jars with flesh sealed inside, and a large brass microscope. A Faller brain was splayed open on a small metal platform, the grey-brown mass peeled apart like a fruit, its segments pinned down at the tips. A brass stand with various magnifying glasses curved over the dissected tissue, providing various enhanced views of the stringy organ. ‘Fallers copy human organs very precisely,’ the professor said. ‘Except for the brain. It is the most distinctive difference outside of blood colour. Their brains are a single array of identical neural cells. Ours are a composite of clusters and lobes and glands, while theirs are uniform and regular. This one was different.’

Philious studied the splayed brain open before him; his distaste suppressed by curiosity, he moved in closer. The big magnifying glasses provided weirdly distorted images. ‘How so?’

‘There were minute fibres interlaced within the structure. I only just spotted them because I was using the strongest lenses.’

‘Fibres?’ Philious peered closer. The biggest lens showed him a landscape of grey-brown hummocks threaded with collapsed tubules – which he took to be capillaries.

‘Here, sir,’ the professor indicated the big microscope. ‘They’re considerably thinner than a human hair. As I say, it was mostly luck I spotted them. And they were terribly difficult to extract. We’ve only succeeded with a few sections so far.’

Philious looked into the microscope. The vision field was a simple white expanse, with what could have been a slender translucent grey blemish running from top to bottom: the fibre. He saw tiny spikes radiating out from the main strand, as if it had bristles. It was fascinating. ‘What is that?’

‘We don’t know,’ the professor said bluntly. ‘You saw the secondary filaments branching?’

‘Yes.’ Philious reluctantly moved away; he could sense Aothori’s eagerness to view the thread.

‘They appear short, but actually we don’t know how extensive they are. They get thinner and thinner until they vanish from the microscope’s sight. We’re guessing, of course, but they could wind up as molecular strings. In which case they’re presumably connected to individual neurones.’

Philious glanced back to the body on the slab. ‘And they’re part of its brain? Some kind of second nervous system?’

‘We simply don’t know.’ The professor dabbed a handkerchief across his brow to soak up some of the perspiration. ‘There has never, ever, been anything like this recorded in the institute’s history.’

‘You said yourself you got lucky.’

‘Yes, sir. I did. But the institute’s founders, the scientists who had ship’s machines, I don’t believe they’d have missed something like this, yet it isn’t described in any of the texts they published. And I’ve had staff re-examining microscope slides of Faller brain tissue for the last thirty hours. We have hundreds of valid samples dating back two hundred and fifty years. As yet, no one has spotted any threads like this.’

Philious licked his lips and glanced over at Trevene, who as always guarded his thoughts impeccably. ‘New,’ he said slowly. ‘And different. Sounds familiar?’

‘Not coincidence,’ Trevene said. ‘A new kind of Faller?’

‘Why bother speculating?’ Aothori said. ‘Let me bring Slvasta in. I can have answers out of him in a day – two at the most if he wants to play tough. You know I can.’

‘The Hero of Eynsham Square?’ Philious asked sarcastically. ‘The man who stood up to rampaging neuts to save a bunch of adorable schoolchildren in front of the whole city? You want to snatch him from his home and interrogate him until his mind and body are broken? Really?’

‘The Fallers manipulated that stampede,’ Aothori said. ‘And it made Slvasta look like the greatest thing on Bienvenido since we discovered how to adapt neuts. Is that also coincidence?’

‘Slvasta loathes Fallers and mods more than anybody,’ Trevene said. ‘His hatred consumes and drives him. It verges on the irrational. He is responsible for the neut sterilization. His followers are the ones slaughtering mods.’

‘You hope,’ Aothori sneered back. ‘Father, we need answers. I can get them. If our world is facing a new threat from our enemy, we must expose it.’

‘Not like this. These are troubled times. Our position, our status, must not be questioned.’

‘There were other people standing with Slvasta to face the neut charge,’ Trevene said. ‘Slvasta would naturally stop and make his stand: despite everything he’s an officer, regiment trained and sworn to protect Bienvenido’s citizens. But those others, it was almost suicide to stand with him. Their reasons for doing so might be a more profitable avenue of investigation. They have slunk away again, which is curious in itself.’