Silvano and the two gangsters ushered Kingsley into the hotel’s conference suite. He saw Clarissa immediately, helping serve the morning meal. She caught sight of him and cried out, dropping her serving spatula into the pan of beans. Everybody watched as they embraced.

She was overjoyed to see him. For the first minute. Then Kingsley could stand the dishonesty no longer, and confessed what he had become. She stiffened, backing away in anguish. Wanting to block out the words, for them never to have been spoken.

“How did it happen?” she asked. “How did you die?”

“I was in a starship. There was an antimatter explosion.”

“Trafalgar?” she whispered. “Was it Trafalgar, Kingsley?”

“Yes.”

“Oh dear God. Not you. Not that.”

“I have to know something. I’m sorry I’m not asking about you—I should be, I guess—but this is the most important thing in the universe right now. Do you know where Webster is?”

She shook her head. “They keep us apart. He was assigned to the kitchen staff by that fat collaborator bastard Octavius. I used to see him every week. But it’s been over a fortnight since they brought him last. None of them will tell me anything.” She broke off at the strange smile rising on Kingsley’s face. “What is it?”

“He was telling the truth.”

“Who?”

“I was told that Webster had gotten away from the Organization, that he was on a starship. Now you tell me you haven’t seen him, and Capone can’t find him.”

“He’s free?” The knowledge overcame her reluctance, and she reached out to touch him again.

“It looks that way.”

“Who told you?”

“I don’t know. Someone very strange. Clarissa, believe me, there’s a lot more going on in this universe than we realised.”

Her smile was tragic. “I can hardly doubt my dead husband.”

“Time to go,” he said abruptly.

“Go where?”

“For you, anywhere but here. Capone owes me that, but I suspect I might have trouble trying to collect. So we’ll just take this one stage at a time.”

He walked over to the conference suite’s door, Clarissa following timidly behind him. The two gangsters lounging by the door straightened up as he approached; Silvano had disappeared, and they didn’t know what they were supposed to do.

“I’m leaving now,” Kingsley said in a smoothly reasonable tone. “Be sensible. Move aside.”

“Silvano won’t like this,” one said.

“Then he should tell me in person. It’s not your job.” He concentrated on the door, visualising it swinging open.

They tried to prevent it, focusing their own power on keeping it shut. A black magic version of arm wrestling.

Kingsley laughed as the door crashed open. He looked from one gangster to the other, eyebrow arched in mocking challenge. Unopposed, he stepped through, and took Clarissa’s hand.

Behind him, one of the gangsters picked up an ivory telephone and dialled furiously.

Gerald walked cautiously along the corridor, pausing by each door to discover if anyone was inside. It took a lot of Loren’s attention just to make sure his legs moved in a regular motion. The state of his mind had horrified his wife; thoughts disjointed, personality retarded to a childlike confusion, memories becoming fainter and difficult to recall. Only his emotions remained at their adult strength, unmollified by reason and consideration. They pummelled what was left of his rationality with the sharp peaks of extreme states. He experienced fear, never mild anxiety; shame not embarrassment.

She was constantly having to calm and soothe, offering the kind of persistent encouragement longed for by every child. Her presence was a comfort to him, he kept talking to her, a stream of consciousness drivel she found highly distracting.

He was in bad physical shape, too. The crude injuries Kiera’s goons had inflicted were easy enough to heal with energistic power. But his body remained perpetually cold, and there was a nasty sharp ache behind his temples which even energistic power couldn’t banish entirely. What he needed was a week of proper sleep, a month of good meals, and a year on a psychiatrist’s couch. It would have to wait.

They were somewhere inside the docking ledge spaceport which Kiera had taken over for herself and her fraternity. Cabal Centre. Except it was virtually deserted. Apart from the two goons she’d killed, she’d seen only three other possessed. None of them had paid her any attention, hurrying along with fraught minds to obey whatever orders they’d received. The lounges and halls were all empty.

Loren entered the main lounge, almost familiar with the bland decorations and subdued furniture. She’d seen this place often enough from the beyond. Kiera’s haunt.

Gerald’s hand ran over the woolly fabric of the couch. Marie had sat on it for hours, talking to her fellow conspirators. The coffee machine; she’d had that brought in along with fine china. It was bubbling away, filling the lounge with its aromatic scent. His eyes moved fast across the door to her bedroom. The men she’d taken in there.

Loren tried asking the souls of the beyond where she was. But the agitation and unrest created by Arnstat was snarling up their bitter cacophony even more than usual. There were some glimpses of a female shape. Possibly her. Running with a group of people along an unknown corridor.

The face was less like Marie’s than it used to be.

Loren swore viciously. To have come this far. She and Gerald enduring horrors greater than anyone knew existed. To have prevailed through all that. To be so close. Whatever omnipotent entity had designed the beyond must surely have come up with the concept of fate as well.

She could feel Gerald starting to crumple in utter dismay as the prospect of reclaiming their daughter started to recede once again. It will not happen, she promised him.

As she moved across the lounge she saw a hellhawk on its pedestal outside. Gerald’s surprise halted her as he recognised the Mindori ’s naked form. Platforms and mobile gantries were ranged up against its cargo holds, each one surrounded by bright floodlights. Maintenance crews in sleek black SII spacesuits were installing bulky equipment modules, mating their power and coolant lines to the spacecraft’s existing utility points. Though she couldn’t understand any of the activity, Loren was confident they now had an escape route when the time came. Providing that time was soon.

She left the lounge and descended one level. This was the engineering section, though none of its workforce had spent much time on internal upkeep recently. Lightpanels along the corridor roof were a feeble yellow; a few of the air ducts buzzed irritably as they blew out erratic streams of air, but most were still. The only clue it wasn’t entirely abandoned came from a near-subliminal humming thrown out by heavy machinery. Loren swivelled round trying to guess the direction, curious about what could be functioning at such a pace when nobody else was around.

When she finally located the guilty door and opened it, she emerged into a vast maintenance shop that had been converted into a cybernetic factory. Rows of industrial machinery were pounding away with furious intent, hammering, drilling, and cutting components out of raw metal. Crude conveyer belts had been set up between them, carrying the freshly minted chunks of metal to assembly tables at one end. Over two dozen non-possessed workers were employed building machine guns. They were stripped to the waist, their skin gleaming with sweat from the unfiltered heat given off by the machinery.

None of it really registered with Gerald, while Loren looked round in complete confusion. She walked over to one of the non-possessed workers.

“Hey! You. What the hell are these for?”

The man looked up in shock, then bowed his head. “They’re guns,” he grunted sullenly.