“I suppose it might be.”

“Thank you.” Petrovitch released him, and Iguro staggered back. “Five minutes—then we’ll be gone.”

There could be no more objections, because Valentina was already combing the dirt by the doors to the container, seeing if anything had fallen there, and Tabletop was looking up at the sides of other, nearby domiks.

“They could have thrown it. Quick, easy.” She reached into invisible pouches at her wrists and pulled out gloves made of the same material as her suit. “I’ll need help.”

Lucy trailed over. “So what can I do?”

“Stand there. Face the wall, put your hands against it and straighten your arms and legs.” Tabletop slipped her fingers inside the gloves as she measured her run-up.

“Like that?” Lucy looked over her shoulder. “What are you going to do?”

“This.”

She took three steps, each faster than before. One foot rose up onto the small of Lucy’s back, the other lightly touched the nape of her neck, and abruptly Tabletop was waist-level with the top of the container, supporting herself on her palms.

Then she rotated her body into a handstand, and backflipped out of sight.

Lucy was staring upward, mouth open, but Petrovitch was having none of it.

“Just leave her. She’s only looking for attention.” He switched to infrared and turned slowly in a circle.

“But did you see…?”

“Yeah, I saw it. You realize that the CIA trained her to do stuff like that because it made her a better killer, not because they have a cheerleading squad.” Petrovitch tilted his head. “Maybe they do. Finally, there’s something I don’t know.”

“So what are we looking for?” Lucy peeled her hands off the cold metal wall and rubbed them together until they were pink.

“My rat. Anything else that doesn’t look like it belongs here.”

“They had to drive the bomb away, right? Tire tracks?”

“Only useful if we had a list of which car had which tires. There are hundreds of thousands of abandoned vehicles in the Freezone. They could have used half a dozen of them, one after another, and because they know they’re not being watched, they don’t even have to be careful.”

“Bummer.”

“I’m cross-checking everything I can, but there are massive gaps in the data that didn’t used to exist under the Metrozone Authority. It comes down to this; we have to stick our noses in the dirt.”

They spent the next ten minutes peering uselessly at the ground, squeezing down the narrow gaps between domiks and finding that everything they touched sapped a little more heat from them. Tabletop would appear occasionally, a shadow leaping from one container to the next, making a soft booming sound as she landed that cut through the still night air.

Then she was behind Petrovitch, breathing hard.

“I’ve found something.”

“Significant?”

“Could be nothing.”

“But more than likely not.”

She put her hand on her heaving chest. “Sorry. Spooked.”

“It’s fine. Take your time.” He straightened up properly and arched his back. Almost his whole torso was strapped with equipment. A sub-standard replacement for his rat. Battery pack after battery pack, wired in parallel to give him the voltage, then in series to give him the power. The back brace and strapping for the exoskeletal arm. It was heavy, and he was tiring fast.

“Okay,” she said, cycling her breath, in through her nose, out through her mouth. “It’s the roof of Container Zero. We can haul you up on top…”

“Or I can bluff my way in, which will be a lot less embarrassing.” Petrovitch pulled up a virtual phone and called Lucy and Valentina.

They walked back together, but Tabletop wasn’t giving anything away. He’d be able to look at whatever it was with fresh eyes, but first he’d have to get past the punctilious Iguro.

The man himself was still searching the floor of the container, on his hands and knees and using a little flashlight that spread a faint beam no bigger than his fist. Petrovitch eased himself past the waiting guards and pushed his head through the cut in the door he’d made earlier.

“Hey again.”

Iguro didn’t look up, in case he missed something as he shuffled over it. “Petrovitch-san? Have you completed your task? Mine is almost finished, too.”

“Another slight problem. One of my colleagues wants me to take a look at the roof, but I’m not going to be able to get up there, not in my condition.” As he talked, he edged further inside, while Valentina and Tabletop stood behind him and prevented any intervention by the others. Lucy kept up a constant stream of chatter, distracting them.

“It will not be possible for you to enter, as I have already explained.” Iguro inched forward, and his flashlight illuminated the toes of Petrovitch’s boots. “Oh.”

“Don’t worry. I won’t tell.” He held down his good hand and helped Iguro up. He pointed to the flashlight. “Mind if I borrow that?”

Petrovitch held the light high, and swept the roof with it. He frowned, and did it again. When he saw it, it was obvious. So obvious, he wondered how he’d missed it when he’d first entered Container Zero; the Armageddonist’s fault, undoubtedly.

Someone, at some point in the past, had cut through the roof in a perfect rectangle, freeing a plate two meters by three. Then they’d carefully welded it back into place. There were drill holes at the corners of the rewelded plate, also filled with molten metal.

“See that?” he said, his breath rising and breaking against the ceiling. “That shouldn’t be there. Shouldn’t be there at all.”

“Petrovitch-san?”

The welds looked new. Not brand new, but not rusted either. Two weeks, a month maybe. “Just when you think it can’t get any worse, it inevitably does.”

He turned in the gloom of the container to the figure in the chair.

“Where is it, you govnosos, you zhopoliz, you sooksin? Tell me what you’ve done with the yebani bomb.”

The Last Armageddonist grinned back. He’d not give his secrets away so easily.

Petrovitch leaned down, pressing his hands onto the mummified forearms as they rested on the arms of the chair.

“Come on, you yebanat,” he growled. “Where is it?”

He got nothing from the shrunken eyes or the shriveled tongue. No sign that he’d been heard, let alone understood, and it enraged him beyond reason. Petrovitch brought his left arm across his body and let loose with every last watt he could summon.

He backhanded the Armageddonist with the edge of his exoskeleton. A moment later, Petrovitch was on the floor, and a head, trailing the dust of two decades, lay rattling in a corner.

“Petrovitch-san. I think you should not have done that.”

The faces at the container opening seemed to agree, but Petrovitch didn’t care. He awkwardly levered himself upright and glared at the decapitated corpse, its neck of brown flesh surrounding an island of white bone. “I wish you could have suffered more. Suffered as much as we did. But no, you died here, in the quiet and the dark, and you left us all your govno to clear up. Well, listen to me, you huyesos: I’m done with shoveling. I’m going to bury you and your kind forever, and then I’m not looking back. Got that?”

He put his boot against the chair and kicked it over backward. It crashed over, leaving a pair of leather shoes dangling obscenely at the end of two dried-out legs.

No one said anything. Petrovitch grunted with satisfaction at the destruction he’d wreaked and headed for the exit. He waited for it to clear, then pushed out, catching his arm on the container only once.

He was starting to get the hang of it: appreciate it, even.

Valentina ventured, “Are we done here?”

“Oh yeah. More than done.” He stamped toward the car, leaving a wake of Oshicora guards.

Iguro called after him. “Petrovitch-san? How am I going to explain this to Miss Sonja?”