Emily caught it and held the cool container against her forehead. Sighed. She ran the tube through her close cropped hair and down to the nape of her neck. ‘Can’t remember summer ever going on this damn long…’

‘Cheers.’ Will pulled the tab and swigged a mouthful of cold, dark-brown beer. ‘Won’t be much longer: Monsoon’s on its way. They’re saying Thursday, Friday at the latest.’ He slumped down onto a box of pod rockets. Loosened his tie. ‘God…that’s better.’

‘Serves you right for wearing that ridiculous suit the whole time.’

‘Privilege of rank: you get to “set an example”.’

‘Get to sweat like a pig in a sauna too: sod that.’ She leaned back against the Dragonfly’s dented hull and stared at him for a bit. ‘You know,’ she said at last, ‘you look like shite.’

‘Good’, I’ve been practising.’

‘Trust me, you can stop practising. You’ve reached perfection in the “looking like shite” stakes. They ever decide to make “looking like shite” an Olympic sport, you can rep resent Scotland. You’re gold medal material.’

Will took another swig and smiled. ‘Thanks for the vote of confidence.’

‘Don’t mention it.’ Emily crossed her arms and examined the scuffed toe of her grey boot. ‘How’s the new girl getting on?’

‘Jo?’ He suppressed a beer-fuelled burp. ‘OK, I suppose. Get the feeling this liaison job is a bit more…difficult than she’d expected.’

‘Yeah, everyone thinks it’s all glamour, heroism, and medals…’ Emily looked away. ‘Want to see why the crash kit wouldn’t work yesterday?’

She marched around to the far side of the ship. Will hauled himself to his feet and followed.

‘Shite.’ There was a tattered hole in the hull, about the size of a small child, just in front of the starboard air intakes. Pipes, wires, and cables blackened and torn.

‘Outer casing slowed it down a bit, but there was still enough oomph left to roast the controller circuits. Whole thing’s completely fucked; it’s a miracle your new girl got it working again.’ Emily’s voice dropped. ‘Two minutes earlier and we might have saved Stien…’

Will peered into the hole. ‘What was it?’

‘Best guess? One of the old P-Seven-Fifties. Probably the same one that took a chunk out of Floyd’s shoulder. Damn thing must be an antique.’

They walked back to the hangar’s entrance together, standing just out of the sun’s reach.

‘Funny the way it works out, isn’t it?’ Emily snapped a pair of shades over her eyes. ‘Team before us were in and out, not even a whiff of trouble.’ She smiled. ‘Mind you, spent two days getting the blood out of their drop bay.’

‘Tell me about it. I remember this one time…’ He stopped as his brain caught up with what she’d just said. ‘Wait a minute, why did they have to clean the drop bay?’

‘Told you: all that blood. Gets gummed up in the mesh flooring and if you don’t get rid of it sharpish, the whole ship smells like fusty black pudding and rotting-’

‘No. I mean why was it covered in blood?’

She shrugged. ‘They tramped it in from the scene. Lieutenant Slater said the flat looked like an abattoir-had to sponge the guy’s wife and kids into their body-bags.’

‘But…’ He frowned. ‘The Kevin McEwen murder? Flat forty-seven one-twenty-two? Two doors down from where we were yesterday?’

She nodded and took another swig of beer. ‘Killed his wife and kids, then topped himself.’

‘But I saw the place. It was clean.’

‘So? Services probably sent in a sanitation team. Stripped the whole thing back to the plasticboard and repainted. Big deal.’

Something in Will’s stomach lurched. ‘Who was the investigating agent?’

‘I think it was Brian. Why are you so-’

But Will had already clicked his throat-mike, ‘Control, this is Hunter, where’s Agent Brian Alexander?’

‘One moment, sir…’ There was a small pause, and then, ‘He’s overseeing SOC at the Martian Pavilion with DS Cameron. I’m not getting any response from his phone-must have the scanners running. You want me to give him a message?’

‘Tell him I want to see him in the reconstruction suites, soon as he gets back.’ Will killed the link and dropped his half-drunk plastic in the nearest bin. ‘Got to run. Thanks for the beer.’

‘You’re welcome…’

Blood. Everywhere. On the floor, up the walls, spattered across the ceiling. Will fumbled with the sizing band on the dusty VR headset one of the technicians had dug out of the stores for him. The old-fashioned gloves weren’t helping, the wires kept getting tangled in the straps…

Flat 47-122 looked nothing like Will remembered it. There were holes in the recording: fuzzy blobs of no data caused by interference, but nearly everything else was stained red. An avatar stood next to him: a muscular, computer-generated man with hair hanging down to the middle of his back-which was either wishful thinking, or a serious case of self-delusion. A dark-blue label floated above its head with ‘AGENT ALEXANDER’ written on it.

Will walked forwards and touched the scarlet-stained wall, the glove giving a small tingle of feedback as he ran his fingertips across the pixel-perfect wallpaper. ‘Are you sure this is the right apartment?’

The avatar that didn’t look anything like Brian nodded. ‘Trust me, it’s no’ the sort of thing you forget. Bits of body all over the shop, blood everywhere. Aye, this is it alright.’

The carpet beneath their computer-generated feet was almost black with blood, the SOC team’s footprints still clearly visible in the matted fabric. Over by the door, something that had once been a father of two was sprawled against the wall.

‘So where’s the rest of him?’

Brian’s avatar pointed downwards. ‘You’re standing in it.’

And that’s when Will realized what the fist-sized lump lying beside his left foot was. ‘Wonderful…’

Kevin McEwen’s lower half coated the middle of the room, what was left of his torso acting as a doorstop. Mrs McEwen was smeared across the tiny kitchen, the two children all over the second bedroom. Will worked his way from room to room, just as he’d done when he’d visited the real apartment yesterday.

How on earth could this be the same place? The flat he’d seen was spotless; this was straight out of a cheap horror film.

The murder weapon was lying behind the sofa, power lights flickering in the reconstruction. Will gave it a cursory once over and then went looking for the VR unit. It was lying on the floor, the casing battered and cracked, as if someone had smashed the thing repeatedly against the wall until it was little more than a large, electronic maraca. Will bent down and picked the computer-generated replica off the carpet, his gloves tingling in a half-hearted attempt to simulate weight and texture. One of the headsets was bent into a perfect figure of eight, the lenses cracked, the cables ripped from their sockets, leaving small tufts of multicoloured spaghetti behind.

They still didn’t know what caused VR syndrome, but they knew the symptoms well enough. Something goes very wrong with Kevin McEwen’s brain chemistry. Then, one day, the only escape he has from his shitty life-the public virtual reality channels-goes on the blink. Maybe his VR unit blows a fuse, or maybe one of his kids tries to stick a slice of buttered toast in the drive, whatever, it doesn’t matter: the results are the same. Kevin McEwen goes out, gets himself an old MZ90 and kills every last member of his family.

Will took another look at the room. The bloodstains. The chunks of meat. The big holes of nothing in the corners of the room, where the walls joined the ceiling, jagged with interference. ‘It’s a bloody awful recording.’

‘What do you expect? Every SOC team kicks seven shades of shite out the machinery. I’m no’ surprised it’s buggered.’

Will closed his eyes and pictured the place he’d visited: a cramped, scrupulously clean rabbit hutch without so much as a stain on the carpet.