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as though he were committing it to memory. He handed the picture back to Eli. ‘Run a face and barcode search on it when we get back to Headquarters,’ he instructed. ‘See if we get any hits on this Kry.’
    Eli’s stomach gurgled and growled. ‘I suppose there’s no chance of a break?’ He looked up hopefully at Copernicus. ‘The brain does function better with regular rests.’
    The commander considered it then conceded, ‘A short break.’
    Eli grinned and skipped. Silho looked back over her shoulder. Diega and Jude were still trailing behind exchanging brief, angry words. Behind them the shadows of the trees stretched across the streets and, within their twisted darkness, a silhouetted form stood watching. Silho’s senses jolted. For a moment she thought it was a Midnight Man, one of the most dangerous types of spectral-breed, but when she blinked, the form vanished. Unable to trust her own eyes, she turned away and said nothing.

6
    E verything about this man disturbed her. His bleached white shirt and off-centre bow tie, clean hands with dirty nails, encouraging smile, uninterested eyes. How could she trust a walking contradiction?
    ‘What are your thoughts, Ms Keets?’ The man leaned back in his chair, his hands clasped in front of him. Ev’r studied his pose, weighed and judged the alignment of his limbs and found it counterfeit – not a true gesture of professional concern, but an imitation of learned behaviour. This is how you act when you’re a doctor.
    ‘On what?’ Ev’r replied. The chains constricting her body were attached to the magnetised table, holding her prisoner in her chair.
    ‘On what we were just discussing.’ The psychic analyst spoke with a surface tone of utmost patience and an undercurrent of antagonism. She wasn’t playing by his rules. This was where she was supposed to break down and tell him what was wrong with her, diagnose herself and make his job easier, but, in truth, even if she had wanted to speak, she wouldn’t have known what to say. What she felt had no description anymore. It was a formless misery, a shape-shifting apparition of feelings, an illusive suggestion of thought – intangible, untraceable, incurable – unless, of course, it became possible to raise the dead.
    ‘That folder,’ she said, looking at the portfolio lying on the desk beside the doctor’s outstretched hand. ‘Looks like dragon hide. It must have cost you a fair coin.’
    ‘It did,’ he conceded with a dip of his head.
    ‘And yet you’ve spilt food on it.’
    A vein twitched in the doctor’s neck. Four hours into the session, four minutes to mid-dark, and she hadn’t given him an inch. He leaned forward over the metal table.
    ‘Ms Keets, I don’t think we’re making any progress.’
    ‘I agree,’ she replied.
    ‘Then what do you propose we do about it?’
    ‘You’re the doctor – you tell me.’
    His right hand involuntarily clenched into a fist. ‘I cannot help you if you are not willing to help yourself.’
    ‘Then you can’t help me,’ Ev’r said with finality. The fluoro light above them had begun to hurt her eyes.
    ‘If you cooperate with the state and give indication of knowledge, things will be better for you,’ he continued.
    Ev’r retreated into a dark and silent room in her mind. Things – he meant death. At least Copernicus Kane, though she hated him with all her being, had the backbone to say it. It was a choice between death and death more appalling, but what they didn’t know, even though Kane had detected a change in her internal body structure, was that long before the state would have the chance to take her life, she would become a Ravien and they would be forced to exterminate her by the quickest means possible. Her last dose of antidote had completely worn off and the nausea was gone, but now she felt the beast she was becoming pulsing in her chest. A blackness was spreading out from under her fingernails, and a meaty stench polluted her senses.