Not a big junkie knife like the skatez carried but a tiny silver thing that grew its own blade. Axl knew it was sharp because one gentle brush of the blade had beaded his throat with little pearls of blood.

‘You’re not hurt,’ said the fat man as Axl examined the smudges of blood on his own fingers. ‘But you will be if you don’t tell the truth ...'

Axl held his breath. Even at ten he didn’t wriggle, whimper or panic; just looked slowly left and right for his escape route.

‘There isn’t one,’ said the man, ‘is there?’

Axl slowly shook his head.

‘I suggest you remember that ...'

And while the boy stood watching the man, all thought locked out of his face, the fat man who smelled of cologne brushed one thumb along the knife to send the metal blade flowing back into its handle.

Hard fingers gripped a wrist weak from calcium deficiency. ‘Why?’ The man said fiercely, his face pushed so close that Axl could see he had lines round his eyes and a saggy mouth. ‘And how long have you been following me?’

Now was the time to run if he was going to, Axl knew that. The man might have his fancy knife but Axl still knew tricks the fat man would never know. Like how to twist free from a grip without getting your own wrist broken for a start. All it took was pivoting hard against your enemy’s thumb and forefinger.

Worked everytime, at least it had so far.

Only that wasn’t what he was going to do. There was all that cash to collect from the tall priest if he played this right and did what he was told.

‘Saw you come into the Park,’ said Axl, his accent rougher than ever. ‘Thought you might help me…’

‘Why would I do that?’

The boy shrugged. ‘Cos I’m hungry, me. Haven’t eaten for days.’ There was a new whine in his voice, a softness that, had it been real, would have seen him dead long since. Kittens didn’t get cuddled in the Alphabets, they got stamped.

‘You know,’ said the man, his smile mocking, ‘you should force yourself.’

Axl’s rat-like face went ever more blank as he gazed up into the man’s watery eyes. He knew he was being mocked, he just didn’t know how.

‘You’ve got money,’ Axl said and before the fat man could deny it, he gently brushed a finger against the man’s open coat. It was soft and black, shimmering to itself. Silk was something else Axl didn’t know back then, not just smart silk, any silk at all. And if that man had told him little worms spun coats that machines unwound into sticky threads which were then dusted with colours smaller than the eye could see Axl wouldn’t have known what he was talking about anyway, or believed him if he had.

Just as Axl didn’t really believe the fat man was taking him to get a Big Mac as he was nudged back towards the terrace and then down wide stone steps towards dark water.

They walked a path that sucked glue-like at their shoes, the black lake always on their right as the fat man kept promising Axl there was a McDonald's round each corner, but there wasn’t. What there was finally was a wooden house with boarded-up windows and a kicked-in door. Around it winter-stripped trees were strung with broken bulbs. The doorway stank of piss, and inside Axl could hear rats scurrying across broken glass.

They kept scurrying.

What happened where the rats lived wasn’t something Axl thought about. In fact, he thought about it so little that a month or two later he forgot it entirely for five years, only remembering at fifteen, coming to in a jungle camp outside Baranquilla and vomiting up memories with the dregs of his previous night’s vodka. And even now, whenever he thought about that wooden shack—which he didn’t—Axl’s primary driving emotion was gratitude. That he was still alive when it was finally over. Standing more miles away across the cold black vacuum of space than, he could readily imagine, Axl pulled up his collar and shivered.

Later on, when the fat man was gone and the rats had come out of their corner to crawl over Axl’s small white body and chew occasionally to see if it was edible or not, Axl had driven himself to his feet and stumbled out into Central Park, heading for the obsidian water.

Frigid as melt and black like night, the lake had closed over him and crept into the crevices of his body, washing them clean. And for a moment as the cold rushed into him, Axl was filled with ice but then his muscles closed out the lake and Axl found himself swimming slowly towards a dish moon lodged in the skeletal branches of a winter tree on the other side of the lake.

He wouldn’t make it—couldn’t, even—no matter how near it looked. And yet Axl kept swimming towards the light until he felt his body disappear. There were no edges to it at all, no skin, no sense of fingers ending or water beginning. Only an unbelievable cold that was calling to him.

Frost filled Axl’s soul and he believed… no, he knew that when he looked through the sodium haze that arced above Central Park he saw not the heat but the coldness of the sharp white stars beyond.

Dancing flashes of light they were, that blazed and then went out, one after another, like neurones shutting down.

Being brought back to life was the second worst thing that ever happened to Axl. Though no one told Axl that resurrection was what they did and Father Declan Begley did a televised meeting with the NYPD specifically to deny it.

A small Latino officer from the NYPD took Axl’s statement at the hospital, recording everything on vid and in her notebook. There was also a little vidSat set to permanent hover near the ceiling of Axl’s room at Mount Olive but no one told him who owned that, though Axl figured it had to be the priest, because he glanced in that direction more than once as he sat beside Axl’s bed and held the boy’s hand.

It didn’t take long for Axl to work out the code. No squeeze meant it was okay to answer, while fingers tightening on his wrist meant don’t remember—and that was fine, most of the time Axl didn’t.

No one got charged with any crime. The sergeant, a good Catholic from Queens, lost her notebook and somehow managed to park her Sony vid next to a magnet by accident. BodyCount on NY access led next morning with a Glasgow couple molywired outside MOMA, three Hispanics mangled by a renegade garbage crusher and a chef on Mott Street who went postie and slaughtered five First Virtual databrokers on a night out.

None of those made Sunday’s download of the New York Times and no site even mentioned a street kid pulled out of the lake in Central Park, probably because such occurrences were just too common.

Three days later, the second lead on CySat’s New York Tonite was the tragic heart attack of Cardinal Bambinetti. A day after that the local godslot led with a pithy but pious soundbite from his successor, a sleek-suited Vampyre in Armani glasses.

The girl ahead of him was good, Axl gave her that. She moved like a cat, though had there been katGirls on Samsara Axl felt sure he’d have heard about it.

All the same, this one was a natural, blending into the drizzle as she skimmed a darkened house trying the door and pushing against windows, all the while carefully avoiding spades, hoes and other rubbish left out to rot.

Whatever the kid wanted wasn’t falling into place. The door was locked and all the windows bolted. Having checked the place, she went round it again to make doubly sure. Professionalism or desperation? Axl wasn’t sure until the wind brought him his answer in a long low litany of swearing.

‘Fuck.

‘Fuck.

‘Fuck.’

Her words weren’t harsh or even that angry, more resigned like bolted windows was all she expected to find in Cocheforet. And then a door clanged in the distance and simultaneously they both froze. When Axl looked again the girl was pressed flat to a wall, well hidden in the shadows.