The image of her yelling orders at her deputies boiled into Dariat’s mind like a particularly vigorous hangover. He had just reached the top of the polyp pile and squeezed under the ceiling. The station was filled with thick white mist, reducing visibility to less than five metres. Condensation had penetrated everywhere, making this side of the polyp mound dangerously unstable.

Smart bitch,rubra said. I didn’t expect that.

Can you delay them?

Not in this station, I can’t. I haven’t got any servitors nearby, and the cables have all burnt out. You’ll have to run.

Image relay of a deputy with a walkie-talkie pressed to his ear hurrying across the lobby above. “I’m on it, I’m on it,” he was yelling into the mike.

“Tatiana, move it!” Dariat shouted.

Tatiana was still wriggling along on her belly as she slithered over the top of the pile. “What’s the matter?”

“Someone’s coming.”

She gave one final squirm and freed her legs. Together they scooted down the side of the pile, bringing a minor avalanche of slushy gravel with them.

“This way.” Dariat pointed into the mist. His perception filled in glass-grey outlines of the station walls through the swirls of cold vapour, enabling him to see the tunnel entrance. Valisk’s sensitive cells showed him the carriage waiting a hundred and fifty metres further on. They also showed him the deputy reaching the top of the stairs.

“Wait here,” he told Tatiana, and vaulted up onto the platform. His appearance changed drastically, the simple one-piece thickening to an elaborate purple uniform, complete with gold braid. The most imposing figure to dominate his youth: Colonel Chaucer. A weekly AV show of a renegade Confederation officer, a super vigilante.

Rubra was laughing softly in his head.

The deputy was halfway down the stairs when he started to slow up. He raised the walkie-talkie. “Somebody’s down here.”

Dariat reached the bottom of the stairs. “Only me,” he called up cheerfully.

“Who the hell are you?”

“You first. This is my station.”

The deputy’s mind revealed his confusion as Dariat started up towards him with powerful, confident strides. This was not the action of someone trying to hide.

Dariat opened his mouth wide and spat a ball of white fire directly at the deputy’s head. Two souls bawled in terror as they vanished into the beyond. The body tumbled past Dariat.

“What’s happening?” The walkie-talkie was reverting back to a standard communications block as it clattered down the stairs. “What’s happening? Report. Report.”

There’s four more on their way up from the first floor,rubra said. Bonney ordered them to the station as soon as the deputy said he sensed someone.

Shit! We’ll never make it to the carriage. They can outrun Tatiana no problem.

Call her up. I’ll hide you in the starscraper.

What?

Just move!

“Tatiana! Up here, now!” He was aware of all the lift doors in the lobby sliding open. The four possessed had reached the bottom of the first-floor stairs. Tatiana jogged along the platform. She gave the corpse a quick, appalled glance.

“Come on.” Dariat caught her hand and tugged hard. Her expression was resentful, but the rising anxiety in his voice spurred her. They raced up the stairs together.

Daylight shone through the circular lobby’s glass walls. It had suffered very little damage; scorch marks on the polyp pillars and cracked glass were the only evidence that the possessed had arrived to search the tower.

Dariat could hear multiple footsteps pounding up one of the stairwells on the other side of the lobby, hidden by the central bank of lifts. His perception was just starting to register their minds emerging from behind the shield of polyp. Which meant they’d also be able to sense him.

He scooped Tatiana up, ignoring her startled holler, and sprinted for the lifts. Huge muscles pumped his legs in an effortless rhythm. She weighed nothing at all.

The phenomenal speed he was travelling at meant there was no chance at all of slowing once he passed the lift doors; he would have needed ten metres to come to a halt. They slammed straight into the rear wall. Tatiana shrieked as her shoulder, ribs, and leg hit flat on, with Dariat’s prodigious inertia driving into her. Then his face smacked into silvery metal, and there was no energistic solution to the blast of pain jabbing into his brain. Blood squirted out of his nose, smearing the wall. As he fell he was dimly aware of the lift doors sliding shut. The light outside was growing inordinately bright.

Dariat reeled around feebly, clutching at his head as if the pressure from his fingers alone could squeeze the bruises back down out of existence. Slowly the pain subsided, which allowed him to concentrate on vanquishing the remainder. “Ho fuck.” He slumped back against a wall and let his breathing calm. Tatiana was lying on the lift floor in front of him, hands pressed against her side, cold sweat on her brow.

“Anything broken?” he asked.

“I don’t think so. It just hurts.”

He went onto his hands and knees and crawled over to her. “Show me where.”

She pointed, and he laid his hand on. With his mind he could see the smooth glowing pattern of living flesh distorted and broken below his fingers, the fissures extending deep inside her. He willed the pattern to return to its unblemished state.

Tatiana hissed in relief. “I don’t know what you did, but it’s better than a medical nanonic.”

The lift stopped at the fiftieth floor.

Now what?dariat asked.

Rubra showed him.

You are one evil bastard.

Why, thank you, boy.

Stanyon was leading the possessed down through the starscraper in pursuit of Dariat. He’d started off with thirty-five under his command, and that number was rapidly swelling as Bonney directed more and more from neighbouring starscrapers to assist him. She’d announced she was on her way herself. Stanyon was going balls-out to find Dariat before she arrived. He got hot just thinking about the praise (and other things) Kiera would direct at the champion who erased her bête noire from the habitat.

Eight different teams of possessed were searching, assigned a floor each. They were working their way steadily downwards, demolishing every mechanical and electrical device as they went.

He strode out of the stairwell onto the thirty-eighth-floor vestibule. For whatever reason, Rubra was no longer putting up any resistance. Muscle-membrane doors opened obediently, the lighting remained on, there wasn’t a servitor in sight. He looked around, happy with what he found. The floor’s mechanical utilities office had been broken open, and the machinery inside reduced to slag, preventing the sprinklers from being used. Doors into the apartments and bars and commercial offices were smashed apart, furniture and fittings inside were blazing with unnatural ferocity. Big circles of polyp flooring were cracking under the intense heat, grainy white marble surface blackening. Wisps of dirty steam fizzed up from the crannies.

“Die,” Stanyon snarled. “Die a little bit at a time. Die hurting big.”

He was walking towards the stairwell door when his walkie-talkie squawked: “We got him! He’s down here.”

Stanyon snatched the unit from his belt. “Where? Who is this? Which floor are you on?”

“This is Talthorn the Greenfoot; I’m on floor forty-nine. He’s just below us. We can all sense him.”

“Everybody hear that?” Stanyon yelled gleefully. “Fiftieth floor. Get your arses down there.” He sprinted for the stairwell.

“They’re coming,” Dariat said.

Tatiana flashed him a worried-but-brave grin, and finished tying the last cord around her pillow. They were in a long-disused residential apartment; its polyp furniture of horseshoe tables and oversized scoop armchairs dominating the living room. The chairs had been turned into cushion nests to add a dash of comfort. The foam used to fill the cushions was a lightweight plastic that was ninety-five per cent nitrogen bubbles.