Force shields sprang into being before him, shimmering walls to block his way. He strode through them, and they burst like soap bubbles. Poison gasses belched into the hallway from hidden vents, and he breathed them in like summer air and kept going. A trap-door opened abruptly beneath his feet, revealing a bottomless pit, but he kept walking, as though the floor was still there to support him.

Finally, he came face-to-face with a massive steel door. Ten feet tall, eight feet wide. Just to look at it was to know it was thick and heavy and solid. Tons of steel, held in place by massive bolts. The Walking Man stopped, and considered the door thoughtfully. Far behind him, the alarms were still shrieking dimly. The Walking Man put away his guns and placed both his hands flat against the steel door. He frowned slightly, and his fingers sank slowly, unstoppably, into the solid steel as though it were so much mud. He buried his hands in the metal, took a good hold, and tore the door apart, splitting it from top to bottom. The steel screeched like a living thing as it broke, forced to left and right like a pair of curtains. The Walking Man pulled his hands free with hardly an effort and walked on.

Cyborg guards came running to meet him, huge ugly men with crudely implanted technology. They were big and muscular with unfamiliar tech thrust inside their bodies, some of it still protruding through puckered skin. Home-made cyborgs, not from any future time-line. They came at him with augmented hands—steel claws and energy guns protruding from their wrists and palms. But the guns couldn’t touch him, and the claws couldn’t cut him. The Walking Man tore their implants right out of them, ripping the tech out with his bare hands, then smashed it over their misshapen heads. He beat them to death, with simple brute efficiency, one after the other, until there weren’t any more. He stood over their broken bodies for a moment, his hands dripping blood and motor oil, then he went on, into the rough stone cellar at the base of the building.

A long run of basic kennels held some twenty or more dogs. Large, powerful creatures in good condition. They all barked loudly at the Walking Man, protesting his presence. They could smell the blood and death on him. They moved restlessly back and forth in their kennels, uneasy as he approached them. Some actually backed away, disturbed by his intensity, while others threw themselves at the steel mesh of their kennel doors, barking and snarling and slavering, desperate to get at him. The doors were all firmly padlocked. The Walking Man was in no danger from them. He killed them all anyway. He walked slowly from one end of the kennels to the other, shooting each dog in the head. Some defied him to the last, some backed away with their tails between their legs. The last few crouched down, abasing themselves before him, pissing themselves and wagging their tails hopefully. He killed every last one of them.

Finally, he turned to face us, looking out of the screen as though he could see the three of us watching him. And perhaps he could. It took me a moment to realise he wasn’t smiling any more. He put his guns away, and said, “This is why.”

The scene moved past him, past the dead dogs in their kennels, to give us a clear view of the whole cellar. It was full of cages, rows and rows of them, maybe four feet square at most, simple steel mesh in steel frames. And in each of these cages was a child. Naked, bruised, and beaten, shivering, with a hopeless face and empty eyes. A bowl of water, and straw on the floor to soak up the wastes, and that was all. Not even a bucket to shit or piss in. Children, kept like animals. Worse than animals. Small children, none older than nine or ten. The youngest looked to be a little girl about four years old. None of them were crying, or asking for help, because they’d learned the hard way that didn’t work. They looked at the Walking Man with blunt animal curiosity. They didn’t expect to be rescued. All hope had been systematically beaten out of them. The cages weren’t big enough for them to stand up. They sat or crouched listlessly, in their own filth. Waiting for whatever this man wanted to do to them.

“These children were snatched off streets all over London,” said the Walking Man. “Brought here to the Nightside, to be raped, tortured, mutilated, and, eventually, murdered. All so that the experience could be impressed on a memory crystal, then sold to those who delight in such things. A real you are there experience, for sale to the very highest bidders. This was the product Precious Memories dealt in, for its very select clientele. Utter degradation, from a safe distance. They didn’t do anything, after all. They just watched. Over and over again, until the thrill wore off. Long after the child was dead and gone. That’s why everyone here had to die. They all knew what was going on. They all profited. They were all guilty. After the children died their slow, horrible deaths, their bodies were fed to the dogs, for disposal. And that’s why they had to die, too.”

He moved into view again, unlocking the cages one by one. None of the children tried to leave. They cowered back, afraid of the Walking Man, as they’d learned to be afraid of all men. Even with the doors open, they wouldn’t, couldn’t, leave. When the Walking Man had finished, he turned back to look at us.

“Help them,” he said. “Get them out of here. Get them to safety, and comfort, and heal those who can be healed. Get them home. I can’t stay here. I still have work to do. I have to track down everyone who was on Precious Memories’ customer list, and kill them all.”

The viewscreen disappeared, and the three of us were left together in the lobby full of dead people. I snatched my hand away from the memory crystal. I was shaking so hard I couldn’t speak. Suzie moved in close beside me, comforting me as best she could with her presence. I looked around at the dead men and women. I couldn’t believe I’d ever felt sorry for them. After what they’d done... the Walking Man showed them more mercy than I would have. He’d given them quick, clean deaths. I felt cold, so cold, right down to my soul. Bad things happen in the Nightside. That’s what it’s for. But this . . . systematic, business-like brutality, to feed the worst appetites of humanity . . . a concentration camp for children . . . He was right. The Walking Man was right, to kill every last one of them.

I must have said some of that aloud, because Chandra Singh nodded quickly. When he spoke, his voice was thick with outrage.

“Perhaps . . . I have been hunting the wrong kind of monster, all these years.”

“We have to go down there,” said Suzie. “Into the cellar. We have to help the children.”

“Of course we do,” I said.

We went down into the cellar. Sometimes we stepped over the bodies, sometimes we kicked them out of our way. At the bottom level, the smell hit us first. It drifted through the broken steel door like a breeze gusting out of Hell. A bad smell, of death and horror, of human filth and children’s suffering. Of piss and shit, sweat and blood. Of terrible things, done in a terrible place. A harsh, reeking, animal smell.

The children were still there, in their cages, trapped in the world that had been made to hold them. Suzie and Chandra approached the cages slowly and cautiously, speaking softly to the children, trying to coax them out. I got on the phone to Walker. I told him what had happened there, then I told him to send help. All the help the children would need. There must have been something in my voice, because Walker didn’t argue or waste my time with unnecessary questions. He promised me help was on the way, and I hung up on him.

Chandra was having some success reaching the children, with his great smile and his warm, friendly voice. And perhaps because he was dressed so differently from what they were used to seeing. Suzie did better. They weren’t as afraid of a woman. I tried to help, but I was too close to what they’d been taught to be afraid of. It seemed to take forever for Walker’s people to arrive. Down there, in that hell. When the doctors and nurses and shrinks finally turned up, we’d still only managed to coax seven of the children out of their cages. Five boys, two girls. They looked at us with wide, traumatised eyes, still too disturbed to talk, just beginning to hope that maybe their long nightmare was finally coming to a close.