They wormed their way from building to building, staying away from the front rooms overlooking the road whenever possible. Going through pub lounges, shop store rooms, offices, even kitchens and one-room flats. Those people they did intrude upon greeted them with astonishment and fear. Then when they found out the little party was official in nature, they just wanted to know what the hell was going on outside. And rescue. Everybody wanted out.

That part was the worst, Louise found. The tension from being caught was survivable; tension was a state she was growing increasingly used to. But the pitiful pleas of the residents were relentless, their eyes accusing as they clutched small children to them.

“Isn’t there another route?” she datavised Charlie after they left a woman and her three-year-old boy sobbing miserably. “It’s awful having to refuse these people.”

Brent Roi waved her through a small triangular door into a narrow disused hallway. The only light was coming through a filthy smoked-glass window above a bricked-up door.

“Sorry, Louise,” Charlie datavised back. “The AI says this way is the most likely to get you there undetected by the possessed. It didn’t take emotional stresses into account. Just try and tough it out. Not much further.”

“Where’s Genevieve?”

“They reached Skyhigh Kijabe seven minutes ago. I’ve chartered a blackhawk to take her to Tranquillity. She’ll be there within the hour.”

Louise tapped Fletcher on the shoulder. “Genevieve’s safe. She’s about to depart for Tranquillity.”

“I’m gladdened to hear that, my lady. Hope survives.”

Ivanov reached the end of the hallway and held his hand up. “Outside road.”

The two GSDI field agents moved forward to the metal door. One glanced at Fletcher.

“No one is near,” he said.

The agent pressed a small block to the damp wall beside the door. It fired a narrow electron beam through the plaster and brick, then extended a microfilament with a sensor on the end. The image it relayed showed them a narrow street, deserted except for a couple of cats. With the sensor switched to infrared, the agent focused it on each visible window along the street in turn, searching for hot silhouettes. The AI had been using the overhead dome sensors to scan their immediate area the whole way, but the angle was all wrong to examine windows.

Their caution every time they had to cross a side street was adding considerably to the journey time.

“Two possibles,” the agent reported, datavising the coordinates to his colleague. The door was opened and he ran fast across the street to the building directly opposite. Their entry point was a window covered by a security grille. Cutting the restraint bolts with a fission blade took fifteen seconds; the window catch was a mere two. The agent vanished inside with a neat roll. Brent Roi was next. Louise followed, sprinting hard across the street. According to her neural nanonics it was Vorley Road, the last open space they had to cross.

Getting in, she reminded herself. It was a long long way back to any vac-train station.

This conglomeration of buildings was gathered around the base of the Archway skyscraper itself: a monolithic twenty-five storey tower that stood halfway up a sloping ridge of land that was topped by Highgate Hill. If it hadn’t been for the buildings along the street blocking the view, they would already be able to look out over the rooftops of the old city.

Once they were inside, a service corridor took them straight to the tower’s lobby. A lift was already waiting for them, door open.

“The tower’s net and power are still connected,” Charlie datavised. “The AI is hooked into every circuit in there. I can give you plenty of early warning if there are any glitches.”

They all crammed into the lift, which rose smoothly to the upper utility level. It opened out onto a world of artificial lighting, thick metal pipes, black storage tanks, and big primitive air-conditioning machines. Ivanov led them along a metal walkway to a spiral stair. The door at the top let them out on the flat roof. A flock of scarlet parakeets took flight as they emerged, startlingly loud in the warm air.

Louise glanced round cautiously. The first rank of tall, modern skyscrapers encircling the old city were only a mile or so away to the north, their glassy faces shimmering rose-gold in the last of the twilight sun. To the south, the embargoed city swept away down the slope towards the distant Thames, a dusky mass of rooftops and intersecting walls. Patches of twinkling silvery light clung to some of the larger roads where the power hadn’t yet been cut to the hologram adverts. Not a single window was illuminated, the residents preferring to stay in the dark, fearful of drawing attention to themselves.

Louise heard Fletcher laughing. He was leaning on the crumbling concrete parapet that ran round the edge of the roof, looking out towards the south.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I laugh at my own humility, lady. I look at this city which is supposed to be the closest to home I will ever come, only to find that it is the strangest vista I have encountered since my return. The word ‘city’ no longer encompasses the meaning it had in my time. You have the power and artifice to build such a colossus, yet it is I who has been asked to perform this scant task of finding one man.”

“He’s not a man. He’s a monster.”

“Aye, Lady Louise.” The humour faded from his handsome face, and he faced the ancient city. “They’re here, but of course you knew that.”

“Are there many?”

“Fewer than I had supposed, but enough. I feel their presence everywhere.” He closed his eyes and leant out a little further, sniffing the air. His hands gripped the top of the parapet. “There is a gathering. I feel them. Their thoughts are quietened, deliberately so. They wait for something.”

“Waiting?” Ivanov asked quickly. “How do you know?”

“There is an aura of anticipation about them. And unease. They are troubled, yet unable to walk away from their predicament.”

“It’s him! It has to be. No one else could make a whole bunch of possessed do as they’re told. Where are they?”

Fletcher took one of his hands off the parapet, leaving behind a dark sweat-stain print. He pointed along the Holloway Road. “Over yonder. I am uncertain as to how many leagues. Though they remain inside the dome. On that I would wager my hat.”

Ivanov moved over to stand behind Fletcher, squinting along the direction he was pointing. “You’re sure?”

“I am, sir. There.”

“Okay. I’ve got a fix. We just need to triangulate.”

“A splendid notion.”

“I’ll take you over to Crouch Hill. That ought to be far enough. Then once we get a rough idea where the bastard’s hiding out, we can work out a route to get you close.”

“If I may suggest, I simply walk. No man would accost me in this guise, and fewer will suspect my intent.”

“Walk off into the goddamn sunset,” Brent said. “No fucking way.”

“We can talk about it,” Ivanov said. “Fletcher, you got any idea how many there are in this group?”

“I would suggest several hundred. Possibly even a thousand.”

“What the hell does he want with that many in one place?”

“I can advance no rationale to elucidate Quinn Dexter’s behaviour. He is, sir, quite mad.”

“All right.” Ivanov took a final look across the city, fixing the line Fletcher had indicated. “Let’s move out.”

They had just got into the lift when the AI reported an electronics glitch close to the Archway Tower. It immediately datavised a search update to Charlie. The glitch was occurring beside the electricity substation which distributed power to the Archway Tower among other consumers. A security camera revealed two people approaching the substation along a dark corridor.

Trouble,he warned ivanov.

The substation door crumpled from a blast of white fire. Three more glitches appeared around the base of the Archway Tower. Sensors showed possessed moving purposefully through the subway, freight tunnel, and utilities passageway. The substation transformers exploded as a barrage of white fire pummelled into their casings.