They began sauntering along the stony road. Savi put her hand into the bag and found the hexagonal switch. There was only a moment’s hesitation before she turned it.
Ketchell and Larik both glanced at her when she exhaled loudly. “It’s armed,” she said.
Ten fifty-three.
They reached the fence. Savi kept walking but unslung the bag. She dropped it at the base of a post.
Without saying anything, the three of them picked up their pace. Thirty seconds later they reached the top of Rennison Road. They crouched down behind a flimsy fence marking out a prefab’s yard. Savi worried the thin composite might fragment in the blast, producing a blizzard of shrapnel. “Did anyone see us?” she asked urgently.
“All quiet,” Larik said. He started putting in a pair of foam earplugs.
“Damn,” Savi grunted. “You got any spare?”
He gave her another of his contemptuous glances and handed her a couple. She squeezed the first plug and started to worm it in. Something moved across the stony ground behind her. She stared in disbelief. A football was rolling out of Fountain Street heading straight for the substation. “No,” she whispered.
Ketchell looked at her; then he saw the ball and his eyes widened in shock. “Shit.”
The ball was only a few meters from the fence, and a boy was trotting along behind it; he was maybe eight or nine years old.
“No.” Savi stood up. “No, get back.”
“Stay down,” Ketchell growled at her.
“Get away,” Savi yelled. “Away!”
The boy looked around, seeing a woman wearing a white plastic mask waving frantically. He cocked his head and carried on following his ball.
“Fuck!” Savi screeched. All she saw now was Talish, lying in his hospital bed, with so many tubes and organ support machines inserted into his flesh he’d ceased to become purely human. She started running.
“No!” Larik bellowed behind her.
The boy had almost reached the ball, which was rolling to a halt a couple of meters from the fence, level with the abandoned shoulder bag. He turned again, his expression growing uncertain as Savi sprinted hard toward him. “Get away, get away,” she yelled frantically.
He didn’t know what to do. He took an uncertain step back, away from the wild eyes of the crazy woman. Then he realized she wasn’t going to stop, that she was going to run right into him. He turned and started to run.
She flung her arms around him, picking him up despite his frightened wail and thrashing limbs. She kept running, desperate to build distance between her and the bag.
Savi saw a flash, then nothing—
—
The waiting room for the surgical wards was neutral in every respect. Pale gray carpet, white walls, with twin floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over nighttime Brisbane. Two rows of back-to-back settees were lined up down the center, their cushions thick and comfortable enough for worried families to spend the night curled up on them. High quality vending machines and a big wallscreen silently running news streams completed the décor.
Yuri Alster had been waiting in it for more than an hour, but refused to sit. It meant his deputy, Kohei Yamada, couldn’t sit, either, which clearly pissed him off no end. They were the only two in the waiting room.
Finally, long after midnight, the Reardon family came out of Ward Two. Ben Reardon was a short, bulky man in his early forties, with a bald head and a face that looked like it had been squashed flat. He seemed angry, which Yuri suspected was a permanent expression. Ben was employed running the machines that dug out the Icefall canals—tough work that he was well suited to. Dani, the current girlfriend, was barely twenty. A cliché relationship, Yuri decided, endorsed by her short denim skirt, showing off heavily tanned thighs, and a cheap green sport shirt that had the Alcides café logo on both sleeves.
They walked down the corridor on either side of nine-year-old Toby Reardon’s wheelchair, as the boy was pushed along by a ward nurse. Ben scowled as Yuri stood in front of them.
“What do you want?” he asked, exhaustion and fear giving him a raspy voice.
“Just a couple of questions for Toby,” Yuri said as pleasantly as he could. He winked at the boy, whose cheeks and right arm were covered in patches of medskin. There was a cast holding one leg rigid, too.
“No way,” Ben snapped. “We’ve answered every question a dozen times.”
“I’m not police,” Yuri said. “I’m from Connexion Security.”
“Clear off, mate. Come back in a week. My boy got blown up. You understand that? He’s nine years old, and the bastards blew him up!”
“I know. And Connexion’s medical plan covers your family, even for this. That’s worth a minute, surely?”
Ben took a step forward, his fists bunching. “Are you threatening me?”
“I’m asking you to do the right thing.”
“I don’t mind, Dad,” Toby said.
“We’re going home!”