1

Captain Chaing, of the People’s Security Regiment, saw her in the crowd not twenty meters in front of him, and froze in shock. It was a joyful noisy crowd spread out along Broadstreet—thousands of people determined to enjoy the night’s festivities. Today was Fireyear Day: a public holiday for the whole world to celebrate the time when, 257 years ago, Ursell’s entire atmosphere burned and dear Mother Laura sacrificed herself to save Bienvenido. That was an event worth celebrating, and Opole’s residents were certainly going for it.

Chaing was new to the city; the PSR—People’s Security Regiment—had only reassigned him from Portlynn two months ago. He’d thought it a drab provincial town, and spent those grim months wondering if he’d somehow pissed off his superiors and been sent here as punishment. But today all that had changed. First there was the procession of big colorful floats through the city center; then as dusk came bands claimed the street junctions, playing loud and fast music, and unlicensed stalls miraculously appeared to serve the excited people some truly throat-killing liquors. Half the city had turned out in bizarre and wondrous costumes, singing and dancing along the streets. The grand civic firework display was about to start.

It was a perfect time for any clandestine activity, which was why he’d arranged to meet the undercover agent in the Nenad Café on LowerGate Lane. His route took him along Broadstreet, and there she was, his own personal ghost. But in the flesh. He stood there numbly as the merry singing people swirled around him, watching her. She was side-on to him, face heavily shadowed under her wide-brimmed hat, with her Titian hair braided into a neat tail that fell down her back. But he knew that profile; he could recognize her anywhere. Just to confirm it, she wore her brown leather coat, the one that came down to her ankles. And now she was walking away from him. That jolted him into action. He hurried after her.

Will I finally see her smile?

Chaing had seen her just once before, three decades ago, but that vision had haunted him ever since. He couldn’t stop it. Right from the start he’d been cursed with an excellent memory. And out of all the moments that made up his life, her face was the most vivid recollection…

He’d been five years old, playing in the filthy alley behind their tenement block, when he tripped to sprawl across a mound of earth that turned out to be a bussalore nest. He’d screamed in terror as the vile rodents emerged from the dislodged dirt, squeaking and spitting.

Tiny stars of many colors sparkled behind his eyes, merging to form the picture of a beautiful lady with red hair. And abruptly a voice told him: Stand up, darling. Bussalores are intimidated by anything larger than themselves.

Chaing scrambled to his feet and stared down at the nasty lean things slithering around his ankles. They regarded him for a moment, their noses twitching and sharp little teeth bared, before slinking away through a hole in the wall.

He was still standing in the same spot, trembling in shock, when his mother came hurrying out of the tenement a minute later.

“Are you all right?” she asked. “You did the right thing standing up. Bussalores are horrible things, but they’re basically cowards.”

“Was that you?” he asked incredulously. “Did you tell me what to do?”

His mother smiled nervously. “It’s your clever memory again, darling. I’ve told you several times what to do if you see a nest of bussalores.”

She had never said anything of the sort. He knew that. He would have remembered.

“But there was a lady,” he said with a five-year-old’s insistence. “She was very pretty.”

His mother pointedly looked both ways along the alley. It was empty. “Nobody here, darling. You must have imagined her.”

“I didn’t,” he persisted, upset that his mother wouldn’t believe him.

She gave him a worried glance. His mother always looked harried or tired.

“There is a legend,” his mother said slowly. “If I tell you about it, will you promise me not to repeat it, not to anyone, not even Daddy?”

“I promise,” he said solemnly.

“People say that there is a Warrior Angel who watches over this world. She protects us from the Fallers, among other things.”

“But I thought the regiments and the Liberty astronauts guard Bienvenido.”

“They do, darling, and they’re magnificent. But sometimes we need a little extra help.” She put her hands on his shoulders and gave him a grave look. “Now, this is the important part: The government doesn’t really approve of the Warrior Angel, because she’s not one of them. And they get angry with her because she doesn’t always do what they say. So that’s why we don’t tell them if we see her. And we don’t tell Daddy, either, because we don’t want to worry him, do we? This is our super secret, you and me, and we’ll keep it forever, all right?”

Chaing didn’t like the idea of upsetting Daddy—Daddy who had a short temper and never hesitated to use his belt to beat Chaing when he did something wrong. And he seemed to do a lot of things wrong, no matter how hard he tried not to. “Yes,” he agreed solemnly. “She’s our secret.”

His mother died three years later—on a night when his father came home drunk again, and started hitting her. That night she was standing at the top of the stairs when the vicious punches began to land. She fell, breaking her neck before she’d tumbled halfway down.

A court took less than a day to find his father guilty of murder, and sentence him to life in the Pidrui Mines.

Chaing was placed in an orphanage. By then, like all children on Bienvenido, he knew not to give away any secrets about himself; not his memory, not his vision of the Warrior Angel, nothing that might be regarded as suspect. On Bienvenido, suspicion was always followed by accusation—and soon after that the arrival of PSR officers.

Every child brought up by the state went on to be employed by the state; there was no question, no choice. You took the tests and waited for your assessment results when the career officer told you how the rest of your life would be spent. Chaing’s IQ was measured as slightly above average (never high enough to be suspect), and his two-year compulsory regimental service was admirable, so he was sent to the PSR officer cadet training college. At which point, he realized just how lucky he’d been to escape his new employer’s attention.

Not that he was a filthy Eliter. But some distant ancestor must have made a bad marriage choice that, by luck or chance—or more likely subterfuge—had escaped the PSR’s comprehensive files.

So he’d inherited a good memory through no fault of his own. But that just meant he could be a more effective PSR officer and devote his life to tracking down Faller nests, saving citizens as he was sworn to do.

And as for the Warrior Angel, his mother was right: She was just a legend. One the Eliters incorporated into their criminal propaganda. Which was why he was always on the lookout for her.

Except…his recall was flawless. He really had seen her as a vision, wearing a long brown leather coat that moved with the ease of silk, her red hair falling over her shoulders as if she had a halo of fire, while his memory held her lips forever poised on the verge of a smile. And that vision troubled him. Badly.

A lesser man might call it obsession.

Chaing started to push through the partying crowd, heedless of the annoyed looks as he knocked shoulders. The ghost girl was ten meters away now, slipping through clusters of laughing people with the greatest of ease. As he closed on her, his initial astonishment gave way to anger. She’d left him alone for thirty crudding years, until he’d practically convinced himself all she’d ever been was a child’s stress-induced fantasy. Now here she was again. And given he was now a captain in the PSR, she could end him.

A group of women dressed in cloaks of yellow feathers and exorbitantly high gold-and-emerald headdresses came along the road, all of them linking hands as they high-stepped along. They shrieked at him with drunken delight as he tried to push through them. He snarled and ducked around; taking time to remonstrate, to pull out his PSR badge, would have taken even longer. He looked around frantically, seeing a plait of red hair swaying behind some youths clustered furtively around what looked like a bong of narnik. Chaing was almost running now, and she was right ahead of him. Close enough to—

“Hey, you!” He reached out and closed his hand on her shoulder. His heart thudded at making physical contact. She’s real.

Then she turned and he saw her face. It wasn’t the vision, not as he knew her. The light and confusion of the bustling merry crowds had fooled him. This woman was approaching middle age, with rounded cheeks and a small mouth, her eyes painted in gold mascara. Her features creased up in annoyance. “Whaddya want?” she demanded, and her accent was pure Rakwesh Province.

“Who are you?” he gasped. He could have sworn it was her.

She laughed. “I’m the Warrior Angel, and so’s me friend.” She draped her arm over the shoulder of another girl and tugged her close. The ebony-skinned friend was also wearing a brown coat; tufts of black hair protruded from below her skewed wig of red hair.

Chaing snatched his hand away as if it were burning.

“Whazzamatter?” the woman asked.

“You’re not her” was all Chaing could manage to say.

The second girl was giving him a sly appraising look. “For you, fella, I could be.”

He frowned. “Why are you doing this? This is a festival. A celebration. It is not appropriate to dress as the Warrior Angel. She’s just a reactionary legend. A criminal.”

“Screw you, dickhead,” the first woman snapped. “We like the Warrior Angel. She’s done more for this shitty world than any regiment ponce. What’re yooz anyhow? A party git?”

“Bet he is,” sneered her friend. “Bet his important daddy got him off proper regimental service, too. Didn’t he, party boy? Nice little office job in a supply depot instead, was it?”

Chaing backed off, knowing his cheeks would be coloring. “It’s not right, that’s all. You shouldn’t celebrate her.”

The woman gave him an obscene finger gesture.

Chaing turned away, embarrassed and annoyed—mostly with himself. People were supposed to respect the PSR, to show proper deference. But then he’d hardly behaved like a PSR officer. The first firework burst overhead, crowning the cloudless black sky with topaz and ruby scintillations. And there, on the other side of the wide thoroughfare, she was standing amid a bunch of revelers who were dressed in outsized silver astronaut pressure suits, staring right back at him. Real this time. This was the face he knew from his vision, stippled by the weird multicolored light of the fireworks.

His jaw dropped in amazement. Then a rowdy band of regiment troops jostled their way along the middle of the road, jeering and shouting among themselves. He craned his neck, desperate to keep sight of her, but there were only the carnival astronauts who were singing a badly out-of-tune rendition of “Treefall Blues.” There was no sign of the ghost girl.

“Crudding Uracus!” One stupid mistaken glimpse and now he was seeing phantoms on every corner. He took a breath and stomped off along Broadstreet, heading for the bulky Filbert Exchange two hundred meters away. Baysdale Road lay down the side of the covered market, and the crowd was considerably thinner here; he turned down it as more and more fireworks smothered the sky above in sizzling lightbursts. Baysdale Road led him into the Gates district, the original heart of the city, more than three square kilometers built without any order or conformity. Two of the ancient founding families had clashed here, which was why the streets were all at angles to one another, as neither would adopt the other’s grid. The buildings were slim and high, made from brick and stucco with wooden strapwork, and topped by steep-pitched tile roofs. They weren’t particularly vertical anymore, with some façades leaning alarmingly over the cobbled streets, as if their neighbors were squeezing them out of alignment.

The Fireyear celebrations here were mainly alcohol-based. Many ground floors in the buildings that made up the Gates were small state-licensed enterprises where families followed the same crafts as their forebears for more than two thousand years. Plenty of them revolved around brewing and distilling. Open windows showed him that the small pubs were teeming. Lively modern music was flowing out of the bigger clubs.

Even though he’d memorized the city layout, it took him a while to find LowerGate Lane amid the muddle of the Gates. It turned out to be uncomfortably narrow; if he extended both arms, his fingertips brushed the walls on both sides. You couldn’t even drive a tuk-tuk along it, let alone a modern van. He wasn’t entirely surprised to find that the city council had clearly given up the idea of providing electrical streetlights here. The only illumination came from open windows and the occasional oil lamp hanging outside a doorway. It was like stepping back into pre-Transition times.

The Nenad Café was a student haunt, its alarmingly uneven ceiling ten centimeters too low for comfort. One wall was shelving for a “free library” with a good selection of leather-bound books donated by alumni from Opole University, which bordered the southern end of the Gates. He looked around the tables with their painted chessboards. At thirty-five, he was the oldest patron by a good ten years. Fortunately his family genes kept him relatively youthful. With his full head of hair, as-yet-unwrinkled pale-olive skin, and trim figure, he liked to think he could pass for mid-twenties.

Once his eyes adjusted to the candlelight inside, he saw a short girl who didn’t even look twenty sitting by herself, reading an unlicensed news sheet, a mug of chocolate half drunk on the table. Her legs were folded up yoga-style on the worn chair. Chaing just knew he could never manage to bend his limbs like that, and he prided himself on keeping in good shape. She wore a dark-blue corduroy jacket over a black waitress blouse, the uniform finished off with a short black skirt. Her oval face had hazel eyes that seemed far too large for someone so dainty, and her wavy raven hair was held back by a velvet band.

He hesitated. It was definitely Corporal Jenifa; he recognized her from her file photograph. But she looked a lot younger than her twenty-two years. Which is probably the reason she was chosen for this mission. The sullen expression marring her features was also off-putting.

He eased himself into the seat opposite. “Anything interesting in the news?” That was the identifying phrase.

She slapped the sheet onto the table and regarded him in annoyance. “Yes, I’m Jenifa.”

Which wasn’t the kind of greeting he expected. “Chaing.”

“Of course you are. Who else would you be?”

“Is something wrong?”

She rocked forward, putting her face close to his. “This is Fireyear Day, right?”

Chaing returned her gaze levelly. He wanted to issue an instant reprimand, yet undercover agents had to be given a certain amount of leeway. “Yes.”

“Plenty of people about—” She paused as a couple of students squeezed past the table. “—so no one is going to notice or care about two strangers talking in a café. Not tonight.”

“Well, no.”

“Brilliant. Your idea?”

“Yes, actually. I wanted to meet you. The information you’ve provided has been helpful.”

She grunted dismissively. “The information that I gathered from my job, waitressing at the Cannes Club. Waitressing! Nothing suspicious about me taking time off on the busiest night of the year, then. Right?”

“Oh.” Chaing didn’t know what else to say. It had seemed clever when he’d had the instruction placed in her drop box.

“Forget it,” Jenifa said, abruptly dismissive. “I’m here now, and I’ve got something for you. It’s about the other girls. We may have been right about the gangs here.”

“Good.” Chaing was suddenly very interested. His predecessor had brought in Jenifa to infiltrate a probable trafficking operation. The PSR didn’t usually bother chasing streetwalkers; that was the job of the local sheriffs. But inevitably when humans were treated like cattle, there was the chance that they’d wind up being shipped off to a Faller nest. Fallers who took human form ate human flesh. According to the Faller Research Institute manual, it was mainly to do with body chemistry. Fallers mimicked humans in such a way that the nutrient requirements of their human-shaped bodies required the proteins and vitamins contained within real human flesh. It was instinct at an individual and species level. Fallers had evolved themselves to conquer worlds by supplanting the dominant sentient species—and what better way to speed up the process than literally consuming your opposition?

“The manager at the Cannes, he asks a lot of questions,” Jenifa said. “Stuff like where a girl comes from, her family. Basically, if anyone’s going to notice them missing.”

“I would have thought that was pretty standard.”

“Yeah, but this is more. Once a girl goes to work in the rooms upstairs, she belongs to the house. She’s meat to them. All they’re interested in is that she keeps herself clean and attracts enough customers.”

“Right.” He nodded. There was a big Opole country regiment camp on the edge of the city. Everyone on Bienvenido was conscripted into the regiments for two years on their eighteenth birthday. It was one of Slvasta’s laws, designed to make people understand the reality of the Faller threat. But with the Air Defense Force planes successfully killing eggs in the sky, and the paratroops following them immediately into the area, there was less call for the regiments to sweep the land than there had been in Slvasta’s time. Which left the teenagers kicking their heels in the camps undergoing basic training. And with so many teenagers away from home for the first time, with the regimental basic pay in their pockets, the town’s clubs and bars and brothels received a large never-ending income stream.

“If the answer comes back that no one cares, they work for a few weeks and then get passed on to another house,” Jenifa told him. “I’ve seen it three or four times now.”

“Are these other houses in Opole?”

“That’s the thing. Girls working the pubs and clubs and houses move around a lot, but we all share lodgings, three or four to a room sometimes. Some of the ones that don’t have connections, nobody ever hears from them again. They certainly don’t come back to their lodgings.”

“Okay. The manager who keeps asking these questions, what’s his name?”

“Roscoe Caden.” Her clenched hand slid over the table. “I managed to get a few shots of him for you.”

Chaing took the little cylinder of film from her. He looked at the corduroy jacket again; it was PSR-issue, bulky to disguise the lump of the camera mechanism sewn in just behind the long, broad collar. All the buttons were shiny black so as not to draw attention to the fact that the top button was actually a lens. The right-hand pocket contained the end of the shutter release cable, allowing the wearer to take a photo without anyone seeing. “If Caden is just managing girls at a club, he’s not the top man. Do you know who he takes orders from?”

“Not really. But the name that keeps coming up is Roxwolf.”

“Roxwolf? They were hunted out of this part of Lamaran over a millennium ago. Nasty beasts; their packs will gang up on just about anything in the wild. I think you still get them in the east.”

“Whatever. That’s the name he goes by. He’s Opole’s biggest gang boss, by all accounts; has interests in every underground activity.”

“And where do I find him?”

“I don’t know. Nobody does.”

“So how do they all get their instructions?”

“No idea. Could be Eliters with their links; they can do private ones.”

“Possible,” he mused. That ability to communicate unheard and unknown was one of the reasons the PSR mistrusted Eliters so badly. Somehow he couldn’t imagine Eliters helping Fallers. But her comment was typical of PSR officers in the radical-monitoring division, so he let it slide. “Anything else?”

She gave him a cynical grin. “You’re hard to please.”

“I do my best.”

“There’s a new girl in the Cannes, Noriah. Just a waitress for now, but she’s a runaway like I’m supposed to be. Caden has started his getting-friendly routine with her. Normally he worms his way in, then puts the pressure on to force new girls upstairs if they’re pretty enough. Noriah ran from her co-op farm. She fits the nobody-cares profile. Might be worth putting her under observation.”

“Right. Where’s she staying?” He tried to think which officers he could request to watch Noriah. There were enough resources at the PSR office—once you’d gone through the paperwork to liberate them from their desks. Just the thought of that made him weary.

“The Mother Laura Hostel on Old Milton Street, same as me.”

“Is Caden showing an interest in you?”

“Don’t worry about that. I can handle myself.”

I’m sure you can. “What does Noriah look like?”

“Develop the film. You’ll see.”

“Thank you. This is good work.”

“Be sure to write that on my report.” She got up and shrugged the jacket around her shoulders before walking out.

Chaing put the reel of film in an inside pocket on his own jacket and zipped it up. If he took it back to the PSR office now he could get it developed and printed inside an hour.

—

They came for Noriah two days later. Chaing was still setting up the surveillance operation. All he’d gotten after filling in a mound of forms was three extra officers in addition to Lieutenant Lurvri, his junior partner. It was ridiculous! You couldn’t mount total coverage on someone with just five people.

“Then find me useful intelligence, and I’ll give you a bigger team,” Director Yaki had said simply when he’d gone up to her office to complain.

So he and Lurvri had spent the morning setting up a field office over a hardware shop in Old Milton Street that was opposite the Mother Laura Hostel. The family who held the shop’s state enterprise license cleared some space in their storeroom for the PSR officers, who sat on fold-up chairs by the grimy window, watching the hostel’s entrance.

Noriah’s photo was pinned up on the window frame, next to the camera with a long telephoto lens they’d aimed at the hostel’s door. She was a slight girl who claimed she was fifteen, though Chaing had his doubts she was that old. Her thin face was almost lost in the center of a massive frizzy ball of ebony hair.

According to Jenifa, her routine was a simple one. Noriah slept at the hostel until midday, then took a tram into town, sometimes with another girl from work; a couple of times it had been Jenifa. She had lunch at a cheap café, then took a look around stores before going back to the hostel to change for work. Another tram to the Gates, and she’d be in the Cannes Club by six. Her shift finished at four in the morning, when she took a tram back to Old Milton Street.

“Not much of a life, is it?” Lurvri said as they lugged their equipment cases up the stairs to the storeroom. “What the hell did her parents do to her that she’d want this instead of the farm?”

Chaing shrugged. “It’s boring on a co-op farm. Kids want action and excitement. Always have.”

“I’d never let any of mine sink to this.”

Chaing suppressed any idea of commenting on Lurvri’s parenting skills, or even on his relationships in general. Lurvri was an Opole local, fifty-seven years old, tall with wiry limbs and a bald head—shaved meticulously twice a day. He was now on this third marriage, and had to support five children from the first two. His current wife had just given birth to their second, a boy. To be stuck at lieutenant at his age marked him as a by-the-book time server. Chaing had no problem with that; Lurvri wasn’t particularly dynamic in his role, but he knew the city, knew everyone in the PSR office. He could even push things through its Uracus-begat bureaucracy. Best of all he was never going to question Chaing’s decisions or complain.

Just before midday a van drew up outside the squat brick edifice of the Mother Laura Hostel, its diesel engine growling. For a private individual to own a van on Bienvenido they needed to have a licensed enterprise that legitimately required one—something that involved hauling around a large quantity of goods. Even then, getting a purchase authorization from the county transport office was difficult, and normally involved an envelope stuffed with cash changing hands.

Chaing read the side of the van. “Devora Fruit Nursery. Odd, there’s no greengrocer on this street.”

“Never heard of them,” Lurvri said, writing it down in his notebook. “I’ll check it out.”

“Well, well, look who it’s delivered,” Chaing said happily. The passenger door opened and Roscoe Caden got out. He was a sturdy man, wearing a brown jacket, his curly graying hair kept in place by a black leather cap. He looked both ways along Old Milton Street and went into the hostel.

“Let’s go,” Chaing said, and snatched up the camera.

It was Lurvri who’d found them their transport in the PSR’s garage. A small van similar to the one Caden was using, but older, a drab gray body with rusting edges. The city’s water utility logo was painted on the doors. Chaing was more than satisfied; there were always dozens of them scuttling around the city’s roads.

Lurvri drove; he knew the streets a lot better than Chaing. He had to adjust the choke as he kept turning the ignition key. The engine fired at the fifth go, then something made a terrible grinding sound.

“Crudding clutch,” Lurvri grunted, and pumped the pedal twice before shoving the gear stick forward. The van crawled out of the alley and paused at the junction with Old Milton Street. They didn’t have to wait long. Caden emerged from the hostel, his hand clamped around Noriah’s arm. She didn’t look scared; more like defeated, Chaing thought.

Caden opened the doors on the rear of the van and got inside with Noriah. The doors were closed, and the Devora Fruit Nursery van drove off.

After another fight with the clutch, Lurvri started after them. The first few hundred meters were difficult. Apart from cyclists and a couple of tuk-tuks loaded up with boxes, there was no traffic on Old Milton Street. Then they were out into the wider, busier streets of the city center, and more vans were driving, along with trucks and a river of tuk-tuks caught up in their eternal fist-shaking battle with cyclists, both of whom knew the right-of-way was theirs and theirs alone. Trams rattled along the center of the wider streets, sparks flashing from their spindly pantographs overhead.

Lurvri kept back about fifty meters, surging forward or dropping back depending on how many vehicles got between them.

Chaing searched the dashboard. “Do we have a radio? We could do with some backup.”

“You’re kidding, right? The transport manager got this van from the impound park. The sheriffs nabbed the utility guys using it to carry narnik wads around the city. It’s not an official PSR vehicle.”

“Oh. Right.”

“Better for us. The gangs know all the official vans and cars in Opole, even the unmarked ones. They also monitor the sheriff radio bands.”

Chaing wanted to dispute that but held his tongue. If Noriah was being taken to a nest, then it was likely Caden was a Faller. Having the PSR assault squad on call would be comforting.

“I don’t think they know we’re following,” Lurvri said. “He’s not trying any maneuvers.”

They were heading north along Dunton Road, a dual carriageway lined with ulcca trees that would take them to the Yokon Bridge over the river Crisp. There were fewer bicycles here, and a lot more commercial vehicles—larger trucks hauling freight in and out of the warehouse district. The Devora Fruit Nursery van slotted in behind an empty coal truck, and Lurvri stayed in the outer lane, keeping its taillights in sight. Dunton Road curved around to run parallel with the railway tracks. Chaing could see the big marshaling yard up ahead, merging into the docks whose tall iron cranes stood guard over the wharves that extended for more than three kilometers along the river.

Five hundred meters from the long stone arch bridge across the Crisp, the Devora Fruit Nursery van started signaling then turned off onto a slip road. Lurvri followed it, receiving a series of sharp blasts from the truck he swerved in front of.

They drove for another fifteen minutes along Fontaine Avenue, which ran parallel to the river, heading out of town. At first it led through an industrial district of big factories and long warehouses, even passing the fenced-off Opole Rocketry Plant where they manufactured vernier rocket engines for Silver Swords. It was a residential area next—acres of flat ground where the old buildings had been demolished, allowing the city council to build citizen tenement blocks. They were depressing concrete-and-brick cubes, fifteen stories tall, marked by narrow balconies that wrapped around the whole structure. A dozen had already been built, with scaffolding for another five rising out of the dusty, rubble-strewn ground, but now abandoned and swamped by vegetation. Trees struggled to survive in the regimented parkland laid out between the aloof buildings.

As they entered the outskirts of Opole the houses grew larger. Walls began to line the road to shelter them from curious eyes, with gateways opening onto long driveways; none had gates anymore. This was where the pre-Transition aristocrats and merchants used to live. Some families had managed to hang on to their ancestral homes providing they weren’t too ostentatious, but the larger ones were deemed inappropriate for a single family and nationalized. They’d been divided up into apartments. Chaing caught glimpses of allotment strips covering the extensive gardens that surrounded the old houses.

“They’re turning off,” Lurvri warned as they drove along Plamondon Avenue.

Up ahead, the Devora Fruit Nursery van was turning through a gateway.

“Keep going,” Chaing instructed.

They passed the entrance, which showed them a big old stone lodge. It looked dilapidated, with wisteria and roses swamping the walls and covering a good fraction of the roof. Windows, too, had been overgrown. The grounds were a wilderness of vines and lawns turned to meadow. A slate plaque on the stone gatepost read: XANDER MANOR.

“Okay, pull in to the next house,” Chaing said.

Lurvri turned up the next driveway. The villa facing them was small enough for the original family to retain ownership. A couple of children peered out of the sagging porch as the van pulled up in front of it.

“Right,” Chaing announced as he got out of the van. “Let’s find out what in Uracus is going on here.”

—

The seven-story Opole PSR office was poised between an old bank and the County Guilds headquarters at the northern end of Broadstreet. It had an impressive stone façade that had blackened with city grime over the decades. Chaing considered that to be the most pleasant aspect of it. The windows were slim horizontal slits, protected by iron bars; and while the front was stone, everything else was built from a drab gray-brown brick. Floors, internal walls, arching ceilings, all of it, as if it were a building comprising only cellars. Those thick solid walls soaked up sound, leaving it oddly quiet as you walked along the corridors with their caged electrical bulbs. That aspect was an architectural triumph considering the interrogations that went on in some of the specially equipped basement rooms.

However, Director Yaki’s office on the seventh floor defied the general bleakness. The furniture was old-aristocrat style, with comfy leather wingback chairs and a huge carved miroak desk that dated back centuries. Even her windows seemed to be wider than the others in the building.

Chaing stood in front of the desk, trying not to let himself be intimidated. Director Yaki herself was a tall woman, with her once-blond hair now a lush silver-gray and swept back from her forehead. The dark-pink scar on her face went from her right ear to the corner of her eye, then down to the mouth—a legacy of hand-to-hand combat with a Faller, so Lurvri had told Chaing, which she wore with more pride than any medal. When he’d arrived at Opole, Chaing had hoped her front-line experience would make her sympathetic to field operations. A hope that was rapidly dying.

“So a brothel owner moves his whores around?” Yaki said tonelessly. “That’s not PSR business.”

“Noriah isn’t a whore. She’s a waitress.”

“She’s a waitress that they’re pressuring to be a whore. So? It’s not unique, sadly.”

“But this whole setup, it’s wrong.”

“Wrong how?”

“I talked to the Geale family—they live in the house next door to Xander Manor. They told me it’s owned by the Elsdon family, who were woolen mill owners pre-Transition. Slvasta’s citizen-equity law changed all that. The state took possession of the mill and left them as managers. It didn’t exactly incentivize the next generation, and most of them left. By the time the third generation came along, only the youngest daughter, Elyse, was interested in wool. She ran the old mill for a hundred and twenty years, until the Opole city council finally knocked it down twenty-eight years ago. The whole place was falling apart, and the looms were completely obsolescent. Elyse was heartbroken. She became a classic recluse; she’s barely left Xander Manor since. The Geales used to see her walking about on the grounds occasionally, but that’s all. She’s a hundred and ninety-seven now—if she’s still alive.” Which he had his doubts about. Officially, the average life expectancy for Bienvenido was 165. Some lived longer, of course, though they tended to be Eliters. The Elsdon family wasn’t on the PSR list of Eliter families.

Yaki nodded slowly. “Infiltration?”

“Yes, I’m sure of it. Three years ago, the Elsdon family started to come back. Two supposed cousins, in their twenties, turned up to help look after the old matriarch and keep Xander Manor’s title in the family. Or that’s what they told the Geales.”

“Have the Geales seen Elyse in the last three years?”

“No, they have not. It’s a classic nest setup.”

“Uracus! All right, Lieutenant, what’s your play?”

“We followed Caden back to the Cannes Club. Noriah wasn’t in the van. So either Caden is being naïve and thinks he’s supplying young girls to the cousins for sex, or he’s a Faller himself.”

“Nobody in that business is that naïve,” Yaki said. “Especially if the girls are never seen again.”

“That’s my thought as well, Director.”

“Do you want to use the assault squad on Xander Manor?”

“Eventually, yes. But we need to know how big this is, how many there are in the nest. I want a proper team watching Caden, and another on Xander Manor. The Geales seemed to think one of the cousins, Valentin Murin, goes to Opole University.” The one word he wasn’t going to mention in the director’s office was Apocalypse—which was just Eliter propaganda. Proponents of the Apocalypse theory claimed the government and PSR were actually useless at their job, and that Faller nests were expanding across Bienvenido, ready for the final genocidal assault. Every time the PSR uncovered a long-established nest, Chaing found himself disloyally wondering just how true it was.

“Crud! Are they snatching students as well?” Yaki asked.

“I don’t know, but the university would make a good source of bodies. Kids drop out all the time and never tell their parents. The dean’s office is supposed to monitor anyone leaving, just like all institutions, but I don’t know how vigilant they’re being.”

“Same as the rest of Bienvenido,” Yaki said bitterly. “They never think it’s going to happen to them, and when it does they shout loud enough to be heard in the Ring, swearing it isn’t their fault.”

“Typical.”

Yaki smiled, stretching her scar to a darker pink. “I’ll assign you two watcher teams. You’ll have them by midmorning tomorrow.”

“Thank you. Caden is my priority. The first team can follow him and report directly to Lurvri.”

“A duty that entails spending all night in a club. We shouldn’t have any shortage of volunteers.”

“Yes. When the rest are allocated to me, they can watch Xander Manor. The Geales will cooperate.”

“Which team are you going to run?”

“The one watching Caden. But if you don’t mind, I’d like to command it from here. I’ve got Lurvri and two of my team down in the basement, going through the Rolodexes to track down this Elsdon family, see if there actually are any cousins. And I want to talk to one of Major Gorlan’s informants at the university, see if anyone there knows anything. When we send in the assault squad, they need to know how many and who the targets are.”

“What about Noriah?”

“I’m sorry. She’s been in Xander Manor for four hours now. They’ve either eaten her or she’s been eggsumed.”

Yaki gave him a sorrowful look and swung her chair around until it was facing the window. She had an excellent view along Broadstreet down to Ghalby Park, where tall weeping wanno trees encircled the central lake. “Tough call.”

“Yes. But we have to look at the overall picture here.” It was the delicate way of saying it. If a nest had infiltrated Opole three years ago, that was a serious lapse of vigilance—one that was going to reflect badly on the PSR office when it came out. Especially its director.

“All right,” she said. “Keep me informed.”

—

Chaing took a tram around the Gates district to Opole University. The campus sprawled across several acres in the middle of the city, a village in itself comprising enormous ornate stone colleges accumulated over a millennium and a half, with turrets and halls and libraries and lecture theaters and residencies donated by alumni keen to show off their wealth and charity. The grounds themselves resembled an exclusive parkland, with avenues of trees, and ponds, and statues.

Walking through it, Chaing thought how different it was from the rest of Opole. Here there was a sense of optimism, of looking to the future; even the colors and noises were enhanced somehow. It was the students, of course, all of them seeming ridiculously young to his jaded gaze. They either smiled or looked intent as they milled around, inevitably laden with books and folders, or carrying elaborate shoulder bags. Groups sat on steps having earnest conversations, while others gathered around people reading out loud. Several impromptu ball games were under way, never lasting long before the players were chased off by fierce college wardens in their scarlet-and-black uniforms.

Chaing headed for Mckie College. At five hundred years old, the stone edifice was relatively new compared with the other buildings. There was a large paved area at the foot of one gable wall, below the central library’s massive stained-glass window. Holat trees were planted around it, the long crimson-and-amber leaves spreading from their overhanging boughs creating a pleasant dapple over the wooden tables and benches set out on the slabs. Tea and coffee and cakes were served from a small wooden hut, invisible under a froth of climbing roses.

He spotted Corilla straightaway. She was supposed to wait at the outdoor café for thirty minutes every day, and sure enough there she was by herself at one of the long tables, wearing a cheap baggy green sweater, with a hole in one elbow, scuffed black boots, and purple tights. Her jet-black hair was gathered into a side clump that sprouted blue and red feathers. The informant was supposed to be wearing a hat with a red ribbon in it so a PSR control officer could identify her. None of the other girls in the café even had a hat. So it must be her.

“I can recommend Pinborough,” he said as he sat next to her. “She’s one of the best novelists Bienvenido ever produced.”

Corilla looked up from her biology textbook, and flashed him a sullen expression—instantly reminding him of Jenifa’s greeting. What is it about covert meetings that makes everyone so grumpy?

“Everyone says Basement is her best,” she recited.

“Pleased to meet you, Corilla. I’m Chaing. You’ll be reporting to me for now.”

“Where’s Gorlan?”

“Moved on to greater things.”

“On this planet?”

He couldn’t reprimand Corilla; she was a reluctant PSR informant, not an officer. Major Gorlan, from the Eliter-monitoring division, had offered her a deal when she applied to study physics at the university. Guaranteed admission in return for divulging any radical activity on campus. As an Eliter, she would never normally get into a university, especially not to study physics.

“Probably not,” Chaing admitted.

“Well, you’ve wasted your time today, Officer Chaing. Nothing to report.”

“Good. And it’s just Chaing. Don’t risk blowing your cover with casual statements.”

She put her textbook down on the table. “I don’t get you people. Where does the paranoia come from? I mean, everyone complains about government. It’s only natural. Don’t tell me you think the People’s Congress is doing a good job?”

He sighed. Eliters were always philosophers, and mostly angry ones at that; she was a genuine walking, talking cliché. “The Air Force clears Fallers from the sky, the regiments sweep them from the land, we pick up any nests that get through, and the Liberty astronauts are eliminating the Trees. I’d call that crudding good, wouldn’t you?”

“That happens because we have to fight the Fallers. The only alternative is death. But I didn’t mean them.”

“I know what you meant. But that strikes me as a very simplistic view.”

Corilla scowled and waved her hand dismissively. “You prosper from the status quo, but the irony is your own actions are ridding us of Fallers. When they’re gone, people will look around with new eyes. They won’t like what they see. Mother Laura knew that.”

“I’m sure she did. But in the meantime I have a world to protect.”

“Well, still nothing to report. Sir. Nobody planning to overthrow the People’s Congress. Nobody plotting to sabotage the railways or blow up bridges, or cut off the city water supply.”

“I don’t care about that.”

Her hazel eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Who the crud are you?”

“Not in the department that deals with political radicals, that’s for sure.”

“A persecutor?” She was trying to sound defiant, but he could hear the worry in her voice.

“A what?”

“The PSR department that makes our lives a misery.”

“No. And that’s not their name, either.”

“It’s what they do,” she snapped back.

“You have to be monitored, that’s all.”

“Why?”

“You’re different. You’re privileged, and privilege always leads to exploitation of the underclass.”

“Privileged? Us? That’s a crudding joke. You have no idea what it’s like to be abused and shunned from the moment you’re born, to be blamed for everything that goes wrong no matter what.”

“I don’t blame you for anything.”

“Your kind always do. And then you wonder why we hate you.”

He didn’t really have the time for this, but handling assets like Corilla in the past had taught him that appearing to tolerate their cause always got better results in the end. She was testing him, that was all, trying to find out how much of a party man he was. “There was good reason for Slvasta’s limiter act,” he said. “Eliters are a kind of aristocracy—no, not like the ones ruling Bienvenido in the Void, I admit—but your abilities set you apart. Above. Slvasta wanted a fair society. No one group could be allowed to take over again. If we hadn’t been careful, you would have elevated yourselves into a new exclusive regime. Bethaneve was trying to do that—imagine that, Slvasta’s own wife! We broke free of the Captain. Slvasta’s revolution destroyed his dictatorship, and Democratic Unity is going to make damn sure nobody’s going to replace it with another oligarchic regime.”

“Oh, get real,” she said. “As soon as we’re back in touch with the Commonwealth, every one of you will be begging to have Eliter genes.”

“Not me. I’m happy just the way I am.”

“Because you don’t know any better! My multicellular clusters have a hundred times the memory of your brain. I can communicate with others directly through a link. We can monitor our own health practically down to a cellular level. Eliter biology is liberating.”

“Yes, but it’s your biology. You keep it for yourselves.”

“Set us free, give us the freedom to research genetics, and you can all share it with us. But no, because that’s not the status quo. That would mean people having a say in power, in how their lives are run.”

Chaing sighed, suddenly weary of her. This argument was so old. “I didn’t come here for this.”

“So sorry. Was I getting uppity?”

“You were wrong about what I do for the regiment. I work for the Faller incursion division.”

“Then why are you here?”

“Because you may be able to help me. That is, if your ideals will permit you to help stop your fellow citizens from being eaten, or worse.”

Corilla’s wide mouth lifted into a very sly smile. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

“What?”

“It means I am quite happy to help you with anything regarding Fallers.”

“Don’t tell your…friends this, but I have reason to believe there’s a nest in Opole.”

“Friends? You mean, my type? The filthy Eliters?”

He regarded her uncertainly. He hadn’t quite expected an Eliter to be so hostile. She had confidence, too. Also unusual. “I mean anybody. We cannot afford a citywide panic.”

“Yeah, I get it. Nice change for me to be on the side of the good-guy types for once.”

“All right. First, have you ever heard of Xander Manor? Has somebody mentioned it recently? Maybe a party being held there? Anything like that?”

“No. What is it, a club?”

“No, an old house on the edge of town. It may hold a nest. That’s what I’m investigating.”

“First stage or a breeder?” she asked without hesitation.

“What?” he answered automatically.

“Is the nest made up of first-stage Fallers, or breeders?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he retorted automatically—standard PSR denial, slap down any mention hard and fast. Breeder Fallers, even more ferocious than ordinary Fallers, were another fiction the Eliters used to try to undermine confidence in government.

She quirked her lips. “I thought you said Fallers are your specialty?”

“They are.” He got the uncomfortable impression she was trying to establish some kind of intellectual superiority. It wouldn’t work, of course. Typical Eliter mind game.

“Well, you should know, or be briefed, that first-stage Fallers are the ones that emerge from the eggs. Breeders are the offspring of first stage. They can be real brutes—or so I’ve heard. They’ll lead the Faller Apocalypse, you’ll see.”

“Stop it,” he said angrily. “Nobody believes this pathetic propaganda.”

“Whose propaganda? The Fallers? When did they ever get ahold of a newspaper or a political platform?”

“They certainly seem to have infiltrated Eliter communications links,” he retorted sharply. “Spreading mendacities like that can get you sent to the Pidrui Mines.”

“You’ll need more than one mine if you’re going to round up everyone who knows about the breeders,” she muttered.

“You’re not to repeat that. Understand? I won’t have a PSR asset spreading sedition and damaging public morale.”

“But nobody knows I’m a PSR asset. It’s not the kind of thing I can broadcast, now, is it? Face it, you’d throw me in prison for breaching state secrets if my fellow students didn’t lynch me first.”

“Can we just get back to the point?” he said, alarmed at how he was losing control of the narrative. Assets, especially informers, weren’t supposed to argue back.

“Sure.”

“Okay. Do you know Valentin Murin? He’s registered as a history and economics student here on campus. He lives at Xander Manor.”

“Again, no, I don’t know him.”

“I’d like you to try to meet him. Find out who his friends are, if anyone he knew has left recently.”

“Crud, that’s active undercover agent work. I’m just supposed to betray radicals and their stupid notions of actual democracy!”

“Are you saying you won’t do it?”

“No. I’m just pointing out what a good girl I’m being.”

“Noted. I also want to know—”

“Officially noted?”

“What?”

“Are you going to put that on my record? I could do with having a bit of credit from you people. You might even consider offering me some tolerance—although that’s probably wishing for a miracle.”

“Yes, I’ll put it on your record,” he grunted. “Though I might put another entry on there about how everything is always an argument with you.”

Her grin was sardonic.

“Also,” he continued with some force, “are there any missing persons on campus? Not students formally reported missing, but a rumor, perhaps, someone saying they haven’t seen a friend around for a while, and how odd that is?”

“That’s easy enough. I’ll keep alert for gossip.”

He nearly fell for it, nearly retorted to the not-quite-mockery. “Good. You know your dead drop if you have urgent information?”

“I know my dead drop. I know my fallback dead drop. I know my contact time for this café. I know my cover-blown signal. I know my emergency telephone number. I even kept the midget camera Gorlan gave me. I’m still waiting for my secret agent pen gun.”

“All right.” He stood up. “Don’t let me down. Don’t let Bienvenido down. But be careful around Valentin Murin. Be very careful.”

She gave him a fast derisive salute.

Chaing walked away, wondering how in the empty heavens Gorlan had ever managed to get her to agree to being an informer. I need to read her file. All of it.

—

The PSR’s records division belonged to Ashya Kukaida, a 172-year-old who ruled the two extensive basement halls as if she were running a Void-era aristocrat’s fiefdom. Office directors and department deputy directors came and went, but Ashya Kukaida went on forever. Her phenomenal (natural) memory was the Opole office’s greatest weapon in the fight against Faller incursions. Her obstinacy was legend, and the loyalty of her clerks fanatical. If you gained her disapproval, you had no future in the Opole PSR office. Any serious operation needed her cooperation to succeed.

Chaing knocked respectfully on her office door.

“Come,” she said.

Her office’s brick walls were painted a gloss white. Double the usual number of caged bulbs were fitted to the arched ceiling, making it seem more like a solarium than an underground haunt. There was only one desk—also white—and one chair. She sat there in her usual gray suit and white blouse, her thinning hair arranged in a tight bun. Three middle-aged clerks in identical black suits were in attendance, holding files and boxes of photographs. The desktop had twenty-five photographs arranged in a neat square, which she was studying through her thick glasses.

“Colonel Kukaida.” Chaing gave a small bow.

“Ah yes, Captain Chaing.” She looked up from the photographs. “You seem to have impressed Director Yaki. I was asked to prioritize your operation.”

“Yes, Colonel. I believe a nest may have infiltrated Opole.”

“Well, of course you do. You’re in the Faller incursion division; what else would you be investigating?”

“I am determined to expose and eliminate them.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“Could you please tell me if you know anything about the Elsdon family?”

“Let me see.” She drew a deep breath. “Pre-Transition merchants, not true aristocrats like everyone thinks. You needed to have at least ten generations of wealth behind you to qualify for that. They were only on their third generation when we underwent the Great Transition. But they would have gotten there eventually. Their woolen mills produced some exceptionally fine products. Half the houses on Opole will have one of their blankets on a bed somewhere. It was a shame the council shut down the mill.”

“Apparently it was out of date.”

“Age does not automatically imply obsolescence, Captain.”

“No, Colonel.” He finally saw that the photos on the desk were the ones Jenifa had taken of Caden. “That’s one of my suspected Fallers. Do you recognize him?”

“We don’t have a file on the gentleman in question, which is interesting. Normally someone in his profession will have encountered the sheriffs at some stage. Well, we do now. My clerks are contacting the city registry to see if he’s a native. A background will be compiled.”

“Thank you. Every detail will be helpful.”

Ashya Kukaida pushed her glasses back down and returned to the photographs. “Lieutenant Lurvri is in the index office on the second level,” she said without looking up. “I have assigned two clerks to assist your inquiries.”

Which was all Chaing really wanted to know. “Thank you, Colonel.”

Chaing made his way down the glass-walled central stairs. The record halls stretched out on every side. Row after row of metal filing cabinets illuminated by stark electric bulbs hanging from the arched brick ceiling. Just looking at them made Chaing faintly depressed. The Opole office alone held over a million and a half files on citizens, and it was nowhere near the largest PSR office on the planet.

As he made his way to the second level’s index office he found himself wondering how much of the information Corilla could hold in her macrocellular stores. Was a hundred times the memory of an ordinary brain enough to hold the files around him? Had she even been telling the truth about that? What if it was a thousand? Or ten thousand? He was fairly sure his memory, wonderful though it was, couldn’t hold anything close to the stacks of information he was walking through. It was a shame. Having so much knowledge just a thought away would give him a phenomenal advantage over the Fallers. For a start he wouldn’t have to pander to the whims of a belligerent old woman who should have been retired decades ago.

The index office had floor-to-ceiling metal shelving that held hundreds of Rolodex drums. Ashya Kukaida had been true to her word. Two of the black-suited clerks were there, helping Lurvri—checking the Rolodexes for file numbers, then bringing the requisite folders to the table where he sat. They’d clearly had a busy afternoon. Files formed a half-meter tower beside Lurvri, their cardboard folders old and creased, faded to a uniform brown. The desk’s Anglepoise lamps cast a bright pool of light on the sheets of paper and old photos he was studying.

“What have you got?” Chaing asked as he slid into a spare chair beside his partner.

“Elyse had two brothers and a sister,” Lurvri said, waving his hand over some of the files. “The Geale family was right; they all left Opole. The sister went to Varlan, married a captain in the marines. We don’t know where the brothers went. I’ve sent out a priority-three request to other PSR offices to check residency registration—which is a long shot, given they left damn near two hundred years ago. But I talked to the Opole city land and buildings bureau. The so-called cousins, Valentin and Rashad, applied for an ownership continuation certificate for Xander Manor three years ago. Their residency permits were issued by Gretz County.”

“Have you contacted the Gretz office?”

“Yes. Their records hall promised to get back to me before midday tomorrow.”

“Good work.” He signaled one of the clerks over. “I want Opole’s missing persons statistics for the last fifteen years, and the files of everyone reported missing during the last three years.”

The clerk hesitated. “The chief sheriff’s office hasn’t submitted their returns for the last six months.”

“Oh, for— Get me what you can now, and call the chief sheriff’s office. I want their paperwork here by tomorrow morning.”

“Yes, Captain.”

Chaing looked around. “We’re going to need a command office. This is too small.”

“Building management has the allocation forms,” Lurvri said. “That’s on the second floor.”

“Yaki promised me more people.”

“Good!”

Chaing glanced out of the office’s window. At the far end of the records hall aisle, jail-style metal bars protected the restricted files section. “I want another file,” he told the clerk. “An Eliter called Corilla. She’s an active informant, handled by the political division.”

“Yes, Captain.”

Lurvri was giving him a curious look. “Problem?”

“I just want to know how reliable she is, that’s all.”

“Right.” Lurvri lowered his head to study the spread of paper on the table, but not quickly enough to hide the knowing smile elevating his lips.

Chaing let it go.

Within minutes the clerks had checked the Rolodexes and started bringing the files. Chaing was surprised by the number of missing persons—more than twenty-five a year from the city alone. The county statistics were a lot higher. And this in a world where someone vanishing was always a cause for concern. Then starting three years ago, the numbers had risen. “Does no one ever check these?” he demanded.

“Statistics aren’t terribly accurate predictors,” Lurvri said with a shrug.

“They’re an ideal way to monitor possible nest activity.” He forced himself not to voice any more criticism in front of the clerks; no doubt a report of everything he said would be quietly delivered to Colonel Kukaida.

He was making notes on the locations people had gone missing from when Jenifa arrived, bursting through the index office door. She was out of breath, sweat beading on her face, blue cord jacket flapping open.

“What—?” began Chaing. For an undercover agent to break cover and turn up at the PSR office went against every operational rule.

“Something’s happening,” she said urgently. “I had to come.”

Chaing glanced at the clerks, who were watching attentively. He took Jenifa’s arm and hustled her out of the office into the echoing cavern of the records hall. Lurvri followed, making sure no one else was within earshot.

“Did anyone see you come here?” Chaing asked.

“I was careful. And I used the Warral Street entrance at the back of the store.”

“Okay, then. What’s happened?”

“There were people in the Cannes Club tonight, a group of them. I marked five of them, maybe more.” Her hand juddered along her sweaty forehead. “They were a team, I could see it. Really professional. They sat at three tables, which gave them full coverage of the club floor, ordered one drink, and didn’t drink it. They just watched the customers.”

“An observer team?”

“Yes, but they’re not PSR. Caden talked to them. It was casual, like he was checking that they were having a good time, but that wasn’t it. He knew them and they knew him.”

Chaing felt his throat muscles tighten. “Fallers?”

“I think so, yes.”

“Uracus! How many of them are in this nest?”

“I don’t know. But I managed to get some photos.”

“That was risky.” But even as he said it, he couldn’t help admiring her. If only everyone in the PSR had her guts and initiative.

“I only got shots of two of them,” she said regretfully. “They left before I could get them all. I had to be careful they didn’t notice me. But, Chaing, they were following someone. A man. I’ve seen him in the Cannes Club before. He was by himself. Came in early, had a couple of drinks up near the stage, watched the girls for a few routines, then left. They went with him. Just like we’d do it—with two in front and three following. Next thing I know, Caden’s gone, too.”

“Who was the target?”

“I don’t know. He was well dressed, reasonable clothes, but nothing too flashy. No one prominent.”

“You think they were waiting for him?”

“Yes, but it’s weird. If all they need is a human for food or eggsumption, Caden can find them girls that no one cares about, so why risk a man who can fight back? And he must have a job; his office or workplace will notice him missing. It’ll be reported.”

“Yeah, that doesn’t make a lot of sense.” He was unnerved by the idea of Fallers having teams the same way the PSR had. “We need to know who this man was, why he was important to them. I want you to work with the sketch artist, work up a likeness for me. Maybe Colonel Kukaida will recognize him.”

Jenifa grinned wryly and held up a roll of film. “I can do you one better than a sketch. I got a shot of him.”

It was nine o’clock; most of the PSR office had gone home, leaving a small night shift working until breakfast. There was only one technician left in the photographic lab. Chaing took the roll of film there in person, and even went into the darkroom with him to watch it being developed. That way it was done quickly.

He stared at the glossy paper in the chemical tanks as the images slowly formed, willing the shadowy outlines to darken quicker. The dull crimson light from the solitary bulb overhead made the pictures curiously intense.

“I know him,” Chaing exclaimed as he pulled the first sheet from the liquid. “That was the driver from this afternoon, the one who helped Caden take Noriah to Xander Manor.”

Jenifa pulled another sheet out. “What about this one? He’s the other watcher I snapped.”

“No.”

She pulled out the last photo, letting the reeking chemicals drip back into the tank. “This one? He’s the one they followed out of the club, the target.”

Chaing studied the man, almost disappointed by how ordinary he appeared—middle-aged, ebony skin with jowls just beginning. He was expecting some kind of feature that would make him understand why the Fallers wanted him. “No,” he said in frustration. “I want blowups of all three,” he told the photographic technician. “Get them up to my office as fast as you can.”

Then, with Jenifa behind him, he knocked again on Colonel Kukaida’s door, wishing he didn’t feel so sheepish.

“Come.”

Only the photographs on the white desk were different. Kukaida hadn’t moved, and the same clerks hovered in attendance.

“Sorry to bother you, Colonel,” Chaing said, and held up the still-wet photograph of the Fallers’ target, “but I was wondering if you know this man?”

Colonel Kukaida carefully cleared a space on her desk and studied the photo. Her glasses magnified the twitch of her eyebrows. “I certainly do, Captain Chaing. This is comrade Deneriov.”

The name meant nothing to Chaing. “Who is he?”

“Deneriov is the general manager of the Opole Rocketry Plant.”

“Crudding Uracus!” He stared openmouthed at an equally apprehensive Jenifa. “They don’t want food. They’re after the factory!”

—

Chaing caught Jenifa giving his office a mildly disappointed appraisal as they hurried in. It made him realize just how small and shabby the room was for an officer of his rank—not that status or comfort should bother a PSR officer. The brick walls were painted a depressing gray-green. One of them had a big pin board with a map of the city, and various photos of suspects from Chaing’s five current operations. A lone high window looked out into the central courtyard, so even in daylight there was nothing to see but more walls with narrow barred windows. His desk was at an angle across a corner, while Lurvri’s was crammed into the other side. None of the furniture matched, and one wall was lined with filing cabinets from different eras—all a disjointed legacy of careers that had been played out and absorbed by the bleak room.

Major Sorrell, the duty officer, was in there, waiting with Lurvri.

“We need the assault squad,” Chaing said immediately. “We have to be ready to storm Xander Manor tonight.”

“I can put them on standby for you,” Sorrell said, “but it’s going to take a real emergency to authorize deployment.”

“A real emergency? How about Fallers sabotaging the Rocketry Plant?”

“Not a chance. There’s no way a Faller could get past perimeter security. Our officers supervise the guards, and blood tests are compulsory for anyone going in. No exceptions.”

“The Fallers have captured comrade Deneriov, the manager.”

Sorrell gave him a suspicious look. “Have you confirmed that?”

The Bakelite phone on Chaing’s desk started ringing, its red priority light flashing on the side.

“Corporal Jenifa saw him being followed by five suspected Fallers earlier this evening,” he told Sorrell.

“I need positive confirmation.”

Exasperated, Chaing picked up the phone. “Yes?”

“Help me,” a frightened female voice said.

“What? Who is this?”

“It’s me, Corilla. I need help.”

Chaing’s back stiffened in surprise. “What is it? What’s happened?”

“They’re here,” she whispered. “They’re at the campus looking for me.”

“Who are?”

Lurvri was frowning hard at him, wanting an explanation. Chaing waved him away.

“I don’t know. There’s three of them. They asked a friend about me. He warned me. I’m frightened. And Chaing, they’re using links to communicate with one another. We’ve picked up the transmissions.”

“So they’re Eliters?”

“No. Their links are encrypted. It’s something new, something different. We can’t crack it.”

Chaing put his hand over the mouthpiece and turned to Sorrell. “If Fallers eggsume an Eliter, do they have the same abilities?”

Sorrell gave him a blank stare. “I’ve no idea. I’ve never heard of it.”

“They duplicate everything else,” Lurvri said.

“Except the human brain,” Jenifa said. “Fallers have our organs, but their own neural structure.”

Chaing wanted the universe to slow down for a minute so he could make sense of it. There was too much happening. “Corilla?”

“Yes.”

“I’m going to bring you in. Where are you?”

“I’m in a phone box on Rence Street.”

Chaing studied the map. “That’s too close to the university. Get out of there. Now. I’ll pick you up at the corner of Sedto Street and Frikal Alley in fifteen minutes. All right?”

“Just hurry. Please!”

The phone went dead.

“Who was that?” Sorrell demanded.

“An asset. She’s in danger from Fallers.”

“Is this the same case?”

“I believe so, yes. Sir, this just got a whole lot bigger. We need to call in Director Yaki.”

“Yes.” Sorrell nodded slowly. “Yes, I think we do.”

“I’m going to collect my asset. Lurvri, I want you at Deneriov’s home. Confirm if he got back there tonight. Call it in as soon as you know anything.”

Lurvri shot a glance at Sorrell. “Yes, chief.”

“I’ll come with you,” Jenifa said.

Chaing’s automatic protest died before he could voice it. She looked so determined. “Right.” He went over to the wall safe and took out a ten-millimeter pistol, along with a case of hollow-tip bullets—the same kind the PSR assault squad used in their carbines. He handed it to her. “Here. You might need this.”

—

Chaing took a car from the underground garage, ignoring the transport manager’s plea to sign for it.

“No time,” he barked, snatching the keys from a hook in the woman’s cubicle.

The Cubar was a four-door sedan built at the Adice Motor Industry factory. Its acceleration was notoriously sluggish, but the engine was reliable even in cold weather, and the squat metal bodywork sturdy enough to survive modest collisions. The government bought fleets of them.

It was raining when they emerged out onto Broadstreet—a thin drizzle that created a lot of spray and degraded the tires’ grip. Chaing switched on the sirens and their blue flashing lights, driving as hard as he dared, forcing tuk-tuks out of his way. At least the weather had banished most of the city’s cyclists.

“How could they know about her?” Jenifa asked, hands gripping the passenger seat as the Cubar slalomed across the road.

“I don’t know. Maybe she asked the wrong person about Valentin Murin, or Xander Manor.”

She winced as he spun the wheel, dodging a couple crossing the street. “I suppose. But that implies they’re very well organized.”

“Yeah, it does. But they’ve been here for three years, and they’re planning to sabotage or destroy the Rocketry Plant. You have to be organized to accomplish that.”

“They’re organized, all right. Remember Kassell? They don’t show any mercy, either.”

“I know.” The Kassell atrocity had been the PSR’s lowest point. Sixty years ago, a nest of Fallers had managed to drive three trucks packed with explosives into the regiment’s barracks for the Fireyear Day celebration ball. More than three hundred troops and support staff had died that day.

“So if they’d do that to troopers, what are they going to do to a factory that makes rocket engines for the Silver Sword?” she mused.

“What are you saying?”

“The Xander Manor nest has been established for three years that we know of. How much explosive can they put together in that time?”

He gripped the steering wheel tighter. “Giu!”

They were four blocks out from Sedto Street when Chaing killed the lights and siren.

“Let me out,” Jenifa said. “I’ll cover you.”

It must have been her appearance, small and vulnerable looking; his immediate instinct was to protest. But she was a fully trained and qualified PSR officer. In fact, she was probably a lot more streetwise than him.

He braked at the top of Sedto Street and she hurried out, zipping her blue cord jacket against the miserable rain.

The wipers smeared water across the windscreen. This wasn’t the best of the city’s neighborhoods. The streets were narrow, their timeworn buildings small and densely packed, but without the antique quirkiness of the Gates. This was where the poor sank to live their overlooked lives of no consequence. He drove along slowly, looking for the junction with Frikal Alley. The streetlighting was inadequate, and his headlights struggled against the gray rain. A strange bass noise rose over the engine’s low growl, thudding in the fast rhythm of an excited heart.

Chaing spotted the junction and pulled in just past it. He got out. The sound was music coming from an open club door that glowed red, as if its steps led down into a cave of lava. It was awful—the new electrically amplified guitars pounding out a fast beat that youngsters listened to these days. Farther down Sedto Street, a group of youths loitered in another doorway, the glow of narnik pipes illuminating their faces in spectral shadows.

He unclipped the leather strap on his shoulder holster but didn’t draw the pistol as he walked cautiously back toward Frikal Alley. He couldn’t see Corilla anywhere.

Frikal Alley itself was a gulf of blackness as deep as the empty night sky. There were no streetlights at all. A few glimmers came from windows that weren’t properly shuttered, but that was all. He peered forward, unpleasantly conscious that he was presenting a clear silhouette to anyone in the alley.

His eyes adjusted quickly to the low light, revealing the outlines of walls and abandoned crates. Rubbish littered the uneven cobbles. Maybe this hadn’t been the best place for a rendezvous.

“Corilla?” he said quietly. It was no use against the racket coming from the club. “Corilla?” Louder this time.

A couple of the narnik youths looked his way.

Chaing took a few tentative steps down the alley. “Are you there? Come on, let’s go.”

Something moved up ahead—a black wraith emerging from the cover of a doorway.

“Corilla?”

The indistinct shape moved toward him.

“Chaing?”

He hadn’t realized how tense he was until his shoulders sagged at the relief of hearing her voice. “Yes. Come on. Hurry.”

His night-adapted eyes saw her nebulous shape resolve into a more solid outline as she quickened her pace. Then something else moved in the alley behind her—a smaller shape, lower to the ground, a liquid shadow flowing through the chilly drizzle. “Who’s that?” He tugged his pistol from its shoulder holster.

Beyond the spooky shape, a bright-yellow muzzle flame flared. The pistol’s discharge echoed down the narrow alley, overpowering the wretched music. Its muzzle flash illuminated Jenifa’s intense face. She fired again, and again. Bullets whined as they ricocheted off walls.

Chaing shrank down instinctively, his own pistol waving around as it sought a target. He saw Corilla hit the cobbles, crying out in shock. And behind her, exposed by the flashes—

An animal, bigger than any terrestrial dog. Streamlined, brutal, its equine head half mouth with sharp curving fangs. Powerful squat legs, ending in dark claws that could tear any human apart in seconds.

He managed a wordless shout of warning, trying to bring his pistol around. But though Jenifa had stopped shooting, his precious night vision was still impaired by the sharp flashes. He saw the creature jerk sideways as if it was bouncing, scooting up a low wall. There was a clatter of rubbish being dislodged. He shifted the pistol, lining directly onto the sound. Then glass shattered above the rubbish. The pistol went up. But there was nothing. No movement. No sounds.

Jenifa was running down the alley. “Did you see that?”

“Yes.” Chaing hurried over to Corilla, who was curled up on the cobbles. “Are you okay? Can you move?”

She let out a sob.

“Come on,” Jenifa snapped at the whimpering girl. “We don’t have time for this. Either get up or we leave you. Because we are out of here, now.”

Chaing bent down and grabbed the girl’s shoulder. She half cooperated as he pulled her up. She was groggy, swaying.

“Move!” he shouted.

The three of them came careering out of the alley. Chaing was swiveling around, trying to look in every direction at once. Trying to see if the creature was closing, ready to pounce. The narnik gang members were standing perfectly still, staring at him.

“Get out of here,” he yelled. “There’s a…a roxwolf loose.”

They started jeering.

Chaing caught a slither of motion above. Froze. Scanned the roofline, his pistol in a two-handed grip, pointing up.

Nothing.

They ran for the Cubar. Jenifa and Corilla dived into the backseat and Chaing turned the ignition key, praying to Giu to smile on him just once this night. The wonderfully reliable engine caught immediately, and he slapped it into gear, shoving his foot down hard on the accelerator. The wheels spun, sending up small puffs of rubber smoke, and they lurched forward.

“Is it there?” he yelled. “Is it following?”

Jenifa was craning her neck, looking through the clouded rear window. “I don’t think so. I can’t see anything.” Her pistol was held ready.

He slapped the switches for the siren and blue flashing lights. Shoved the gear stick into third, still accelerating. Sedto Street became a blur.

Corilla slowly sat up. “Thank you.”

Chaing grunted in satisfaction. Despite it all, they’d done what they set out to do: save the asset. Score one for the PSR. “You okay?”

“Crud, no! But I’m alive.”

He turned out of Sedto Street and eased off the accelerator slightly. “We’ll take you back to the office. You’ll be safe there. I’ll debrief you myself.”

“Safe from what?” Jenifa demanded angrily. “What the crudding Uracus was that?”

“A roxwolf?” Chaing suggested. But he didn’t believe it for a second.

“That’s bollocks,” Jenifa retorted angrily. “It was—crud, I don’t know what we saw, I was so hyped up. Could have been an Uracus-damned cat for all I know.”

“It was a breeder Faller,” Corilla said in a flat tone. “That’s what the bastards set on me.”

Jenifa gave her a sharp look. “There’s no such thing.”

Chaing glanced into the rearview mirror. Corilla was staring right at him. He didn’t say anything.

—

They made good time back to the PSR office.

“Take her to an interview room,” Chaing told Jenifa. “She’s not under arrest, but don’t let her leave.”

“Got it, boss.”

“Chat to her, make friends, and keep the tape recorder running. I want to know everything she says.”

He found Major Sorrell in the command room—a grand name for a windowless room consisting of five desks with telephones, and two further desks with radios to talk to the PSR’s mobile units. There was a bigger version of his office’s city map on the wall behind them. He was surprised to see there were only three communications staff inside. We’ll need everybody at their station to deploy the assault squad.

The transport manager was just leaving the command room. She scowled at Chaing.

“What happened?” Sorrell asked. “The sheriff patrol cars are reporting gunshots fired.”

“That was us,” Chaing said. He explained what had happened, what he’d seen.

“An animal?” Sorrell asked. “What sort of animal?”

“I don’t know. It was big.”

“So we don’t know that the informant was being pursued by Fallers. You couldn’t confirm that?”

Chaing felt his shoulders tensing up again. “No, sir. But something was after her; that could not have been a coincidence. It wasn’t any kind of natural Bienvenido animal. It had…purpose.” He couldn’t quite bring himself to say breeder Faller, not here in the center of the PSR office.

“I see.”

“I’d like to tell Director Yaki about the incident.”

“So would I, Captain.” Sorrell gestured to one of the telephone operatives. “But we haven’t been able to get ahold of her yet. She seems to be between engagements.”

Chaing stared at him in astonishment. As director, Yaki was supposed to leave her itinerary with the command room so she could be contacted at any time, day or night. “What about the assault squad?” he asked lamely.

“Right now they are officially on standby, but I’ve authorized their vehicles to be released. Major Borlog is their commander tonight. She’s down in the armory now.”

“Good. Thank you, sir. Has Lurvri checked in?”

Sorrell checked with one of the communications staff, who gave a small shake of her head.

Chaing frowned. “But—” He looked at the big city map. Deneriov’s flat on Veenar Avenue had a bright-green pin stuck in it. “Deneriov’s residence is closer than Sedto Street; he should have been there a long time ago.”

Sorrell held up a clipboard, his index finger running down the entries. “He confirmed his arrival at the address thirty-seven minutes ago.”

“And there’s been nothing since?”

“No.”

“Sir, that’s not right. Lurvri knows how urgent this is. All he had to do was see if Deneriov was at home. That’s five minutes maximum.”

“He’s one of us. He knows to radio for backup if there’s any trouble.”

Chaing turned to the radio operator. “Have the sheriff patrols reported any disturbance on Veenar Avenue?”

She lifted up her earpiece. “No, sir.”

“Something’s happened.” All Chaing could see was that weird savage creature moving with eerie grace, big mouth opening to expose those evil fangs. “And we need to find out what.”

“Very well,” Sorrell said reluctantly. “I’ll order a sheriff patrol car to investigate.”

“No, sir! They’re not equipped for this, and they’re certainly not prepared. I’ll go.”

—

He took the Cubar out again. This time he didn’t use the siren or lights, but still drove fast. The rain was a lot heavier now. Even the tuk-tuks were off the roads, although the city’s trams were still going, rattling down the center of the major thoroughfares. The occasional car or truck passed, headlights shimmering off the slick cobbles.

Chaing arrived at the address on Veenar Avenue eleven minutes after leaving the PSR office. He drew in behind a parked Cubar, and checked the number plate. It was the one Lurvri had signed out. The lights were off. Nobody was inside.

He pulled the radio microphone off its dashboard clip. “This is car 37-B. Has my partner checked in yet?”

“Negative, car 37-B. No contact.”

Lurvri had been out of contact for almost an hour now. That was bad. Lurvri wasn’t a man who took risks. “Roger that. I’m at the address. Will contact you again in ten, one zero, minutes, no matter what.”

“Confirm received, car 37-B. Contact in ten minutes.”

Chaing glared at the radio as he slapped the microphone back onto its clip. Confirm—my arse.

There were no pedestrians on Veenar Avenue. Chaing stood on the pavement, taking his time as he surveyed the area, hunting for any sign of that unnatural beast. A tram trundled down the middle of the street, a disconnected row of bright-yellow windows, revealing empty seats inside. Sparks scattered from the overhead cable as its pantograph crossed a junction.

He waited until it was gone before walking up to the broad doorway of a grand old apartment block. Deneriov lived on the second floor. The big lobby was all polished marble and ornate pillars, brightly lit by electric bulbs wired into the original chandeliers. There was no one behind the concierge desk, which was unusual on a well-to-do block like this. He walked across the tiles toward the stairs, leaving wet footprints as he went.

Deneriov’s door was ajar. Chaing flattened himself against the wall at the side of it. No sound from within. He spun around, kicking the door open. Into the flat fast and low, identifying potential hostile locations, pistol held in front, moving smoothly from one threat point to another, just like he’d done in a hundred training exercises. Nobody there.

A low table had been overturned in the lounge. Struggle? He moved into Deneriov’s study. It had been ransacked, papers strewn everywhere.

He jogged back out to the Cubar and plucked the microphone from its clip. “This is car 37-B. There’s been a fight at the flat. The opposition was here tonight. There’s no sign of my partner. They must have taken him.”

“Do you have confirmation of that, car 37-B?”

“Oh, for Urac—” he grunted, then took a breath and pressed the microphone button. “If he’s been taken, we don’t have much time. I am proceeding to the manor to verify. Request backup.”

“Negative, car 37-B. Duty officer will come to your location to assess the scene.”

“No time, control! I am proceeding to Manor. Request urgent backup!”

“Car 37-B, you do not have authoriza—”

“He’s one of us. I’m going. Back me up!” Chaing switched the radio off and pulled out from the curb.

Anger made him a surprisingly calm driver. He was totally focused on getting there alive and quickly. Lurvri’s life depended on that, so no risky charging across junctions, no reckless speeding on the rain-slicked road. Just get there.

It took nearly thirty minutes, which was a good time. The Fallers wouldn’t have driven so fast, so he should have cut their lead down considerably. Lurvri could still be alive. They’ll want to know what we know. They’ll ask—hard. But they won’t kill him immediately.

The siren and lights had been turned off for the last couple of kilometers. He drew up a hundred meters short of the gates leading to Xander Manor and hurried out. The rain soaked him within a minute. He took his jacket off; the wet cloth was just too restrictive. Reaction times were going to be critical. Fallers were a lot faster than humans; he’d seen that for himself both times he’d actually encountered them.

Streetlights on this road were few and far between. As before, his eyes adapted quickly to the darkness. Going through the gateway was out of the question, so he slung his jacket over the top of the unkempt nettlethorn hedge and scrambled over, cursing as the big spikes scratched his arms and legs.

Pistol held ready, safety catch off, he scurried across the wide unmown lawn to the big house beyond. Slim lines of light showed him windows that weren’t entirely covered by curtains. Using them as a guide, he worked out the shape of the house. There was one oddity, a light in some kind of annex. He crept toward it and realized this was the stable block where the family’s coach and horses would’ve been kept pre-Transition.

Chaing slowed his approach, always alert for the thing from Frikal Alley lurking somewhere in the gloomy grounds. The front of the stables boasted three big double doors. Light was spilling out from the one closest to the main house, which wasn’t fully closed like the others. There was gravel under his boot soles now, but cushioned by moss and weeds so his feet were silent as he crept forward.

His heart was hammering away fast in his chest. He could feel the adrenaline surge in his blood, chilling him, making it difficult to hold the pistol steady.

“Get a grip,” he whispered harshly, ashamed by how scared he was. I should have waited for backup.

Without warning tiny colorful stars were sparkling across his vision, yet strangely not interfering with what he saw. The breath caught in his mouth as he remembered exactly when he’d seen this phenomenon before. And—as before—the stars swarmed into a picture of her: the Warrior Angel. Exactly the same picture his five-year-old self had seen.

“Where are you?” a voice asked. It was a silent voice, speaking into his head.

Chaing spun around, his pistol trying to cover the whole world. There was nobody there, of course.

“Crudding Uracus!” he cursed under his ragged breath. It’s the pressure, it must be. Lurvri’s life is on the line here. He took a moment to quell his anger and fear. The phantom image of the Warrior Angel faded, and he walked unhesitatingly toward the stable.

There were no voices, no sign of movement in the fan of pale light that shone out across the mossy gravel. Chaing swiveled around the opening, presenting the smallest profile as he’d been trained—and his heart thudded, shock locking his muscles. The stable was a big open space, with a stone slab floor and empty wooden stalls at the back, illuminated by a single bare bulb hanging from a flex. And right in the middle was a Faller egg. He’d never seen one before; all the countryside sweeps he’d taken part in as a regimental conscript had been uneventful, and the times he’d encountered nests as a PSR officer, there had never been eggs involved.

Now he stood facing one, and it was exactly as the descriptions and photographs depicted it. A sphere three meters in diameter with a hard crinkled skin the color of charcoal. It was eggsuming comrade Deneriov.

Rule one in the Faller Institute manual was never ever touch the shell of a Faller egg. It responded to the slightest physical contact at a molecular level; skin stuck and adhered in an unbreakable bond. From that moment on, you had to be cut free. If your friends were quick enough then you only lost a finger, or hand, or in the worst case an entire limb. For as soon as the adhesion process was triggered, the shell became permeable around the contact point, and began to drag the entire body inside.

Deneriov’s naked body was too far gone for any rescue. He was being eggsumed sideways, so an arm, a leg, and half of his torso were already inside. His head, too, was sinking below the shell, leaving just one eye and the corner of his mouth outside as the shell slowly drew in more and more, a millimeter at a time. There was no expression on his remaining features, and his free limbs were hanging limply.

The parts of his body inside the egg were being broken down by the alien cells that made up the yolk. Once he was completely inside, those same cells that were consuming him would come together in a perfect replica of the life-form they’d ensnared. But the only thing it shared with its original victim was form; its thoughts were pure Faller. And those thoughts were bent toward one thing—conquering whatever planet they had come to and making it their own.

Chaing didn’t know how long he stared at the terrible scene. It was too late even to perform a mercy slaying. The yolk cells were already infiltrating Deneriov’s brain, penetrating individual neurons. His memories were being extracted, drained away. He wasn’t Deneriov anymore. To shoot what was left of him would be to alert the nest.

There’s only one egg, so where’s Lurvri?

He slipped out of the barn and headed for the house. The front door was too obvious, so he tried one of the ground floor’s sash windows. It opened a few centimeters, and he strained harder, forcing it on upward. Eventually it was wide enough for him to squeeze through.

The room inside was very dark, with a door outlined by thin cracks of light coming from the hallway beyond. He could see the shapes of furniture—big chairs and sofas, a low table—and guessed at a lounge.

He paused by the door, but there was only silence. Pistol held ready, he turned the handle gingerly and opened it a fraction to peer out. The hallway was dilapidated, with faded wallpaper molding away, and dirt crowning every surface. The carpet was now a strip of furry gray grime, filling the air with a musty smell. And something more. He sniffed, not quite recognizing the scent.

Chaing opened the lounge door and walked slowly along the hall, pistol held rigidly out in front. One of the doors five meters ahead was open, with odd muffled sounds coming from within. He reached the doorframe and knelt down to press his eye to the gap between the hinges. The instant lasted an eternity.

He knew the naked, dismembered corpse lying on the long dining table was Lurvri, because the vile beast from Frikal Alley chewing on his head hadn’t yet bitten off every distinguishing feature. Caden was also in the room, along with another four Fallers, all of them feasting on chunks of limb.

No thought. No plan. Only pure rage.

Chaing burst into the room, shooting wildly. Two bullets caught the beast, punching it across the dining room. Blue blood squirted out of its gaping wounds. Then he swung the gun around, firing at Caden. A bullet caught his neck, blowing off a big chunk of flesh, sending blue blood splattering everywhere. The other Fallers roared in fury, jumping aside. Chaing tracked them, going for the nearest, his finger relentlessly pumping the trigger.

Then something slammed into his back with agonizing force, sending him flying. He thudded into a chair and tumbled to the floor. For a terrible second, he thought he’d been shot. But when he twisted his head around, he saw a huge humanoid shape lumbering forward from where it had been hidden behind the door. Blue-gray skin was stretched over impossibly bulging muscles. Its profile was the only remotely human thing about it. The head was clearly related to the beast, and it had six fat pincer claws on the end of each arm.

Chaing rolled desperately, trying to bring his pistol around. A foot stomped down on his wrist. Something snapped, and he screamed. He couldn’t feel his fingers behind the hot pain.

“Mine,” the hulking humanoid creature grunted. It reached down, pincers flexing wide. The tips resembled horns.

Chaing wailed helplessly.

An explosion blew out half a wall, plunging the room into darkness as debris shattered the lights. Then the dreadful scene was lit by an electric-blue glare, as if every air molecule were fluorescing.

The Warrior Angel strode out of legend and in through the smoldering hole, surrounded by her own violet aurora. And she was just as she’d appeared in his vision. Silky Titian hair hanging down over her shoulders. Her sweet twenty-year-old face heavily freckled, wide-brimmed hat at a jaunty tilt. Long dark-brown leather coat flowing like a captured liquid.

Great Giu. She is real.

She raised her arm as if it were a weapon and the air in front of her warped, emitting a dull whoomp. A purple-white flash smothered the room. And the giant Faller disintegrated, great globes of gore splatting outward.

The Warrior Angel’s splendorous blaze lashed out again. Then again. And again. Faller bodies ruptured violently, flinging steaming gobbets wide to coat the whole room in slick carrion.

Chaing was curled up in a fetal ball, trembling in shock. Finally, the awesome flares ended.

“Chaing?”

He tensed even tighter.

“Chaing, it’s over. They’re dead. The Fallers are dead. You’re safe now.”

The words made no sense. I can never be safe, not in this world, not anymore.

“Would you like a sedative? It’ll help you cope.”

He risked looking up. The whole room glistened blue. Blood and tattered gore coated every surface. His shirt and trousers were saturated in warm, viscous Faller blood, as was his hair, his face. He held up dripping hands, staring at them numbly, then threw up.

“Easy there,” the Warrior Angel said. “I know it’s a shock, but you’ll be okay.”

“What are you?” he managed to snivel.

“You know what I am, Chaing. You’re the PSR.”

“Why do you haunt me?”

“Haunt you? Don’t flatter yourself, Captain. I never even knew you existed before this week. As far as I know, tonight’s the first time you linked to the general band.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Okay, let’s get blunt here. You have a Commonwealth Advancer heritage, Chaing. You’re an Eliter.”

“No. No, I can’t be!”

“Not fully, no. Genetic drift means your macrocellular clusters aren’t integrated properly with your neural structure. But they’re still there, in your head. Panic or fear put your brain into overload for a moment there, and your clusters went active. Briefly.” She smiled, and it was enchanting. “Lucky for you, huh? It allowed me to pinpoint your exact location.”

“You knew about the nest?”

“I knew there was one around here. Local Eliters have been detecting their encrypted communication for a while. I’ve been in Opole for a few days, helping to track them down.”

“Why?”

“To protect the Liberty program. There’s a factory in town producing vernier rocket engines for the Silver Sword. I couldn’t risk the nest damaging it.”

“You do this? You help us?”

“Of course. I promised Laura Brandt. Bienvenido needs protecting if we’re ever going to grow into a society that can contact the Commonwealth. Sadly, your PSR isn’t doing the best job defending us right now. You can help rectify that, Chaing. You can bring back some of the drive and determination the PSR has lost. You’re a great officer, so climb the promotion ladder to where you have real influence and power. Help sweep away the dumb politics and prejudices that hinder the fight against Fallers.”

“Eliter sedition.”

She gave him a disappointed glance. “That’s a shame. I thought you were smarter than that. Look around you, Chaing. This world is decaying; human birthrates are in decline. The Fallers are expanding, and they’re organizing to an alarming degree. You have to stop them. The Liberty program alone can’t save us, not now that the Fallers are breeding down here. They’re growing more dangerous, and the government is in denial about the Apocalypse. You know it’s all true. That ogre-thing nearly ate you tonight.”

“So breeder Fallers are real?” he murmured in defeat.

“Oh, yes. Breeder Fallers don’t have to copy the indigenous species like the eggs do; they can designate their offspring’s physiology just like the old neuts and mods we had back in the Void. Don’t your superiors tell you anything?”

“That’s just—” In his head, Chaing could hear Corilla saying, Whose propaganda? “We were told their existence was an Eliter lie,” he said, hating himself for being so weak.

“You might want to think about why you were told that.”

He looked up fearfully at her. “I can’t say these things.”

“No, but you can believe them. Right?”

“I…”

“Okay,” she said sorrowfully. “Do what you have to, Chaing. But a word of advice. Some special political officers from Varlan will be debriefing you. Tell them I was here; don’t hold that part back. Then agree to everything they order you to do. That way, they’ll probably let you live.”

He watched the Warrior Angel turn away. Her disconcerting aurora shrank to nothing as she walked out through the blast hole, leaving him in pitch blackness. Somewhere in the distance, sirens were shrieking.