Davis nods, pleased to get a reaction. “Before that she lied to an Extraction team, compromised two senior Assets, broke several key protocols and now she’s escaped midway through an interrogation led by the Executive. Trust me, she could use a zap.”

“Davis.” Benjamin sighs. “Dial it down.”

The no-longer smiling guy’s horror takes on a degree of awe. “She escaped ReProg?”

I clear my throat but my voice comes out weak. “We were on a break.”

At the end of the mess hall a metal door opens from the gym. Tesla strides in. The whole room stands to attention.

Tesla makes his way between the tables, his scowl mixed with discomfort, like he doesn’t enjoy the attention. Heads turn to follow his progress, faces alert and eager. Shoulders pull back, chests expand, spines straighten. Tesla offers a reluctant nod to some of the young men, who seem to glow with the acknowledgement. He stops before me, his eyes cutting in consternation over my shorn head, bleeding wrists and bare feet. I’m grateful for Benjamin’s hand under my arm as I become aware of how much I’m trembling and weakened by pain.

Tesla frowns at the tableau.

“She was looking for a pho–” The no-longer smiling guy cuts off when he sees my expression. “She was lost. We were just helping her.”

“Really?” Tesla gives a slow nod. “And yet not one of you has offered the girl something to cover her gown?”

A blank pause followed by a reluctant flurry of movement as hands grab for sweatshirt zippers.

“Too late.” Tesla shrugs his jacket off and swings it around my shoulders. A warm and comforting weight, it hangs to the back of my thighs, the pleasant scent of soap and subtle cologne. He narrows his eyes at me and sighs. “Brünnhilde.”

The weird name aggravates me. Is he making fun of me? I’m torn between the desire to throw the jacket off and relief at being covered. I glare at him, my vision blurring with a wave of dizziness. “You know he destroyed the sample.” I shoot Davis a hateful look.

“Bullshit.” Davis jerks his chin at me. An orange glow lights up beneath the head of his baton and the sight of it ignites my rage. An adrenaline surge dilates my pupils and once again my ears fill with high-pitched ringing. Glasses glint and rattle on the nearest tables and pins and needles stab my spine. With a fierce grunt, I ram my elbow into Benjamin’s side, twist away and swipe the baton from Davis’s unsuspecting grasp, jabbing him in the gut with the tip. A charge vibrates through the baton, throwing us both backwards, to a chorus of exploding water glasses and cries of shock. Davis crashes against the sliding door and I crash into the unforgiving surface of Tesla’s chest. A half-second of chaos.

In the next half-second the baton has left my hand and I’m pinned beneath Tesla’s arms and all the adrenaline has drained from my body, leaving me faint with pain and exhaustion.

Tesla tosses the baton to Davis. “Less baton, more brain, my friend.”

Davis staggers back to his feet, red-faced and breathing hard. He nods but murders me with his eyes.

Benjamin holds his ribs, shaking his head, his mouth turned down. “Shall I take her?”

“I will.” Tesla swings me gently up into his arms and I’m as boneless as a bag of laundry with no strength to resist.

“Put me down.”

“No.”

“I’m not coming with you.” My head lolls back over his arm, giving me an upside-down parting glimpse of hostile faces, even the no-longer smiling guy looks glad to see me go. Tesla carries me out through the locker room. My vision blurs and my words come slurred. “I won’t tell you anything … you can’t make me … you’ll have to fry my brain.”

He sighs. “Du bist genau wie deine Mutter.”

FAULT

“What did you say?” My voice is airless, pale, pain like a rolling fog dulling my thoughts. But I know that word … Mutter … Mutter. I cling to it to keep from going under. Mother. He’s saying something about my mother. He means Miriam. I know it. “Where is she? She’s hurt, isn’t she? Can I see her? Please.”

Tesla doesn’t reply. He doesn’t look at me, his stride sure and steady, almost rocking me as he marches through the maze of corridors. Benjamin and Davis follow, both stiff from their injuries. I feel a little bad, at least for long-suffering Benjamin. Davis glowers, hunching to avoid stretching his stomach muscles. I might have relished his discomfort, if I wasn’t agonised and sick with fear. “Please,” I whisper. “Is she okay? Can I see her?”

“She is not and you cannot.”

“What does that mean? It’s bad, isn’t it?”

We stop before a sliding door with a yellow stripe and he turns to his men. “Mr Nelson will do.”

Davis looks like he’s been slapped. “Sir, I didn’t tamper with the evidence.”

“That will be all, Davis.”

He hesitates like he wants to plead his case, but gives a curt nod and stalks away. Benjamin follows us as Tesla sidles into what looks like a laboratory. Computer screens, microscopes, technical equipment. Not the vastness of the infirmary, but a regular-sized room with a regular-height ceiling with fluorescent strip lights, huge cupboards at the back and a window to another room more dimly lit. Through it, I glimpse a body on a surgical bed and in the bandwidth feel his signal. I stiffen in Tesla’s arms and pain flares through my back. I cry out and collapse against him with a whimper. “Not here. Not with Jamie. Please, I can’t.”

“Jamie is unconscious. He will not know you are here.”

“He’s hurt?”

“He is recovering. Benjamin, a container.” Tesla nods at a stack of styrofoam tubs on a side table then lowers me onto the raised mattress. He pulls the sheet up over my legs and hips, Benjamin hands him the tub and Tesla tucks it beneath my chin.

“I’m not going to–” Nausea, a flash flood. “Don’t look.” Then I’m vomiting before an audience. A gush of bile and goo. My last shreds of dignity with it. Exhausted, I slump back.

The container is slipped from my limp hands. A damp cloth mops my mouth and chin. A flap of plastic wraps my bicep, I feel the pump and squeeze of a blood pressure band. Tesla, head cocked, listening without a stethoscope.

Green. His eyes are green, a starburst of emerald flecks around the pupils.

“Please. Will she be okay? I need to know.”

There’s a beep. Tesla makes a frustrated noise and loosens the band from my arm. “You need water.”

Benjamin steps away.

Tesla lowers the head of the bed flat and eases me onto my side. “Your blood pressure has dropped, which is why you feel like you are dying.”

I am dying.

Benjamin returns with a cup and straw.

“Hold it for her,” Tesla says, murmuring. “Sip. Do not gulp. And here.” Another styrofoam container.

Serious and uncertain, as though confused by his new nursing duties, Benjamin pulls up a chair and holds the cup, directing the straw between my lips.

I sip and go cross-eyed trying to bring Benjamin’s hands into focus. Tesla works behind me, his cool fingers opening the back of my gown. He clicks his tongue. “This is a mess.”

I close my eyes to keep from crying because I know they’ll take me back to the room with black glass and the blood sample is lost and I’m sick with fear for Miriam and Jamie. I close my eyes because his signal is rich and resonant and filled with homecoming, but I’ve lost the right to draw comfort from it. Because he must despise me. Because I’m furious with him too.

I draw my knees up, curling away from the pain, ignoring the wetness on my cheeks and the damp on my pillow.

There’s a prick in my shoulder. I flinch, but Tesla holds me still and discharges the needle.

“Please, not more drugs.”

“It is only for pain, nothing more.”

The relief comes quickly, my muscles unclench and I don’t cry out as he removes the soaked dressings from my back and rinses the wounds. “Felicity tried to explain,” I say. “She told me Miriam was in trouble and that I had to keep her–”