‘It hurts, wherever I aim,’ she whispered. ‘But next time the consequences may be rather more permanent. Were we right about Peary?’
‘Yes,’ he screamed.
‘When? When’s the bomb due to go off?’
‘I don’t know.’ He twisted and turned, his eyes stark with pain. ‘Sometime. Now. Soon. We’re out of contact.’
‘You started the botnet.’
‘Yes.’
‘Can you stop it?’
‘Yes, let me go, you’re insane!’
‘Is your organisation called Hydra? Who’s behind it all?’
Without warning Norrington’s head jerked up, and Yoyo realised that it had been a mistake to crouch so low above him. There was a noise like two blocks of wood being slammed together as his forehead met hers. She was flung back. By reflex, she stabbed and heard him howl, then felt him grab hold of her and fling her aside. There were spots dancing in front of her eyes. Her head roared and her nose seemed to have swollen to several times its original size. She rolled swiftly out of Norrington’s reach, holding the scissors out in front of her, but instead of launching himself at her, he hobbled away.
‘You stay here,’ she gasped.
Norrington began to run, as much as his wounded leg would allow. Yoyo clambered to her feet, then fell down again straight away and felt at her face. Blood was pouring from her nose. She felt sickeningly dizzy, but finally managed to stand up, staggered from the office out to the gallery and saw Norrington climbing some stairs on the other side of the glass bridge between the Big O’s western and eastern wings.
The shithead was making for the flight deck.
A quiet voice inside her warned her not to give way to her hatred, to consider that it might be dangerous up there. She didn’t listen. Just as she could not doubt Norrington’s guilt, right at this moment she couldn’t think of anything but stopping him from getting away. She ran after him, glanced down at the dark glass canyon that yawned below the bridge and felt a wave of nausea climb her throat. She fought it down.
Norrington was fighting his way up the last steps.
He was lost to sight.
She shook herself. She resumed the chase, crossed the bridge at last, hurried up the steps two at a time, in constant danger of losing her balance. She made it to the top and saw one of the glass doors out to the roof gliding shut.
Norrington was outside.
Holding the scissors tightly, she went after him, and the glass doors slid open again. The flight deck stretched away before her eyes, with its helicopters and sky-cars. Norrington hobbled towards something without looking round, waving.
‘Over here!’ he called.
She quickened her pace. She was puzzled to note that there were airbikes up here as well, more exactly, one airbike. She hadn’t noticed it the previous morning, and all of a sudden she knew why.
Because it hadn’t been there.
She stopped. Her eyes skittered around the flight deck, and she saw two guards lying on the floor, their limbs outflung. A figure dismounted. Norrington staggered, recovered and then dragged himself on towards the bike. The figure pointed a gun at him and he stopped, his hand pressed to his thigh.
‘Kenny, what is this?’ he asked, his voice wavering.
‘We’ve classed you as a risk,’ Xin said. ‘You’re stupid enough to get caught, and then you’ll tell them what you mustn’t tell anyone.’
‘No!’ Norrington screamed. ‘No, I promise—’
He was flung upward a little into the air, and his body hung there for a moment like a puppet before he flew backwards, his arms spread, and thudded at Yoyo’s feet.
There was a only a mass of red where his face had been.
She froze. Sank to her knees, and dropped the scissors. Xin walked towards her and pressed the muzzle of the gun against her forehead.
‘How nice,’ he whispered. ‘I had already given up all hope.’
Yoyo stared dead ahead. She thought that if she ignored him perhaps he might just vanish, but he didn’t, and her eyes filled slowly with tears, because it was over. Finally over. This time nobody would ride to her rescue. There was nobody who could turn up and take Xin by surprise.
Very softly, her voice hoarse, so that she could barely understand the word she spoke, she said, ‘Please.’
Xin squatted down in front of her. Yoyo raised her eyes to the handsome, symmetrical mask of his face.
‘You’re pleading with me?’
She nodded. The gun’s mouth pressed harder against her brow, as though boring a hole.
‘For what? For your life?’
‘For everyone’s lives.’
‘How very exorbitant of you.’
‘I know.’ Fat tears rolled down her cheeks, and her lower lip began to tremble. And suddenly, curiously, she felt fear washed away with her tears, the fear that had been her constant companion for so long, leaving only a deep, painful sorrow behind. Sorrow that she would never learn now what had happened to Hongbing, why her life had been the way it was, why their lives hadn’t been different. Xin couldn’t scare her now, nor any of his kind. It wouldn’t have taken much for her to fling her arms around his neck to sob on his shoulders. Why not?
‘Yoyo?’
Someone was calling her name in the distance.
‘Yoyo! Where are you?’
Jericho! Was that Owen?
Xin smiled. ‘Brave little Yoyo. Admirable. It’s a shame, I would have liked the chance for a longer chat with you, but as you see, there’s no rest for the wicked. They’re looking for you, I’m afraid, so now I shall have to leave you.’
He stood up, the gun still pointing straight at her forehead. Yoyo turned her face towards him. The dawn breeze was pleasant as it dried the tears on her cheeks. Caressing. Forgiving.
She heard Jericho shout, ‘Yoyo!’
Xin shook his head.
‘I’m sorry about this, Yoyo.’
Peary Base, North Pole, The Moon
The evacuated guests took their seats in the Io and buckled themselves in. Kyra Gore was on her way to the cockpit when a call came through from Callisto. Nina Hedegaard’s face appeared on the screen.
‘Where are you?’ Gore asked as she warmed up her engines.
‘On our way to land soon.’
‘Turn around, right now! Orders from Palmer.’
‘What about our group?’
‘They’re all on board here with me.’ She modified thrust, aimed her jets and lifted the shuttle slowly. ‘Here on Io.’
‘All of them?’
‘The only ones left in the base are Palmer and some of our crew. We had a visit from Carl Hanna. The whole place might blow up any moment now, so turn round and cover some ground away out of here!’
‘What about Carl?’ Julian Orley broke in. ‘Where is he?’
‘Dead.’
She cast her eyes over the control panel, from sheer force of habit. The landing field was dwindling away below the Io, and the whole scattered assembly, factories, pipelines, igloos and corridors, were only toys, a bucket-and-spade set for scientists to muck about in the lunar sand. The roads ran across the regolith like grooves on a toybox lid. In the tiny hangars, little machines assembled other machines, not quite so little. The sunlight gleamed blindingly from the solar panels. Gore curved her flight-path, climbed again and steered Io across the crater wall to the west.