Crossover: (Cassandra Kresnov Book 1)

‘Ms President, the doctor said that you ought to rest.’

‘I don’t want to rest, Ms Rafasan, I’m perfectly capable of holding a meeting.’

Mahudmita Rafasan gave Benjamin Grey a despairing look. Half seated on the hospital bed that the President ought to have been occupying, the Callayan State Security Chief shook his head, lips pressed to a grim line. His shirt and tie were uncharacteristically askew, and a suggestion of stubble darkened his jaw.

Seemingly oblivious to them both, President Katia Neiland sat between the far wall and the large desk, facing them both. Chi Haotian hospital reserved exclusive sections for important, busy people. This room was one such, and the hospital bed was accompanied by the inevitable working desk. If either of the President’s aides found the irony of this pairing amusing, they kept it to themselves.

Neiland was fully and properly dressed, refusing the white bed robe that the nervous attending nurse had offered. How anyone could possibly expect her to lie in bed and stare at the ceiling when the entire city, indeed the planet, had just been turned on its head was completely beyond her. She could only assume that certain of her advisors did not take her responsibilities as seriously as she did.

She flicked from one shielded channel to another, checking on her latest advisory reports, reading most and internalising some through the direct link. With a practised eye, she noted the signs of frantic haste — the contextual ambiguities, the grammatical errors, the incomplete analyses. The bureaucracy was going nuts. Reports were being churned out, instructions overlapping from a dozen different departments, queries misplaced, security restrictions imposed … it was chaos of a sort that modern, infotech administrations were supposed to have been cured of long, long ago.

Good Lord, Neiland thought glumly as she scanned quickly through the mess, have we let things get this far out of hand? She remembered reports, warning documents urging caution in the face of unbridled expansion and administrative indulgence … You never notice the problem until the crisis hits. She shook her head tiredly. It all seemed so predictable in hindsight. But at the time there had never been enough reason, and the administrative demands had been so enormous, the pace of change so much faster than any comparable administration had ever had to handle … She’d thought she’d been doing a good job on this kind of thing. It dismayed her to discover otherwise.

The door to the private ward opened, and Neiland looked up.

‘Ms President?’ It was Ulu N’Darie, the deputy chief of the CSA. Small, black and compact, she was a ball of seamless efficiency. ‘Everyone is here except for Mr Ramos and Mr Ibrahim … should I have them wait?’

‘No,’ Neiland sharply cut off the two advisors present, who stared at her with consternation. ‘I’ll see them now, thank you. I don’t have time to wait for the unpunctual.’ It was a harsh assessment of both absent men, who were no doubt entangled in their own procedural nightmares on this most singular of Tanushan evenings. N’Darie merely nodded and vanished from the doorway.

‘Ms President,’ Grey tried again, ‘don’t you think it would be better to wait…?’

‘No.’ The word was sharp and tactless, with little regard for feelings. Grey had no response. Doubtless, she thought, he believed her unreasonable. That suited her fine. She was in no mood for reasonable. She wanted answers.

The main door opened once more and stayed open, as a file of important, anxious-looking, people entered the room. Neiland absently disconnected the shielded plug-in from the back of her skull and leaned back in the deep leather chair. Unlike her office chair, it was not moulded to her body, and the cushions felt all wrong. Another incongruous wrongness on a day of wrongnesses. It gave her a strange feeling, and she had to blink herself back to attention as the greetings flooded in on her.

‘Ms President,’ Governor Dali was saying, ‘I cannot express my relief at your survival, I was truly terrified for you, truly terrified.’ He loomed over the desk, his face a picture of dark-skinned, long-nosed concern. With his deep, sallow eyes and languid wrists, he reminded Neiland of a long brown goldfish. He talked on for a time, but she missed what he was saying. Which was frequently her habit with Dali.

And the others — Sanjay Golpanath, the Vice President, some of the senior cabinet members, the head of Tanusha’s IT network (a bureaucrat), Ulu N’Darie in her boss’s absence and the head of the Secret Service, among others. Neiland did not perform a head count — she knew these people, and worked with them constantly. She was pleased to see her Treasurer, Claudio Rossini. Not that this was a matter concerning treasurers, but she considered Rossini a friend. For Katia Neiland, real friends were rare indeed.

‘Right,’ she said when all of the condolences and expressions of relief had been dispensed with. And took a deep, hard breath, sitting back in the unfamiliar chair and looking about at the serious, worried faces that ringed the desk. ‘First off, as you all no doubt know, my senior advisor is dead.’

There was a long, silent pause. Neiland remembered Thiaw’s face, drawn and frightened, trying to protect her. Grasping the pistol that he did not properly know how to use, the ceiling collapsing, and the chaos that followed. It had been explained to her, in her moments of recovery, that it was a fairly common tactic among special forces these days to come in through the ceiling — modern sensory technology did not require a direct line of sight to track an opponent. They’d dropped in at several points using grenades to clear space, and then killed everyone in sight. Including Thiaw. How they’d got him, without hitting her in the process, Neiland had no idea. He’d been right beside her. Right alongside …

And she blinked, dragging herself back to here and now.

‘Thiaw’s loss is a tough one for all of us,’ she continued, ‘both personally and professionally. I hope sometime soon we will have the opportunity to properly grieve his loss. But as Thiaw himself would be the first to tell me, were he here, we don’t have that time right now.’

She paused, brushing strands of long red hair back into order. She did not understand what it meant, Thiaw being dead. It would make a difference to her job, surely — she had always valued his advice and his candour. She would miss his forthright appraisals and his occasionally unflattering assessments. Beyond that she could not say. Could not think that far, at this moment. Just seeing beyond the enormity of this moment, of this entire day, was too much to handle. She took another deep breath and straightened her jacket. It did not feel right, like the chair. Nothing felt right.

‘First and foremost,’ she said, gazing about the room with as much meaningful authority as she could muster, ‘what I require of you, and of all my department heads, is common-sense. The shit has just hit the fan in this city in a way that has never happened in its entire history. The media is going crazy. There are conspiracy theories by the thousand, business is being disrupted and ordinary people who have never given a damn about politics before in their lives now feel themselves personally involved.

‘Tanusha has never been considered a political city, neither have we considered ourselves as such. Possibly that was naïve, considering our central importance in the scheme of so many different things. I feel we are about to find out.’ From about her, there were sombre, silent looks — powerful, intelligent men and women lost in their own thoughts.

‘And so,’ she considered after that brief pause, ‘I require all of you to be independent, and to manage your affairs within your own department with as much restraint and simple common-sense as possible. Pull your heads in. Break channels if needs be. Do whatever is necessary and nothing that is not. And the first person,’ a jab of a warning finger, ‘to resort to bickering or infighting of any kind, over any matter, will lose their job, I guarantee it.’

Another considering silence. Some looked alarmed. Several looked approving. She looked at N’Darie.

‘The investigation is progressing?’

A short nod. ‘It is. There are many leads. All of the attackers’ bodies have been recovered and are being examined. They’re all lower-model GIs, less advanced than our Captain Kresnov, but advanced enough. We think that they’re almost certainly Dark Star. You’ll have a full private briefing when Mr Ibrahim arrives — the investigations are distracting him, as you’ll appreciate.’ That much support for her boss. N’Darie was loyal, Neiland had no doubt of that.

‘Any final casualty figures?’ Neiland asked.

‘Sixty of the attacking GIs,’ N’Darie replied. ‘That appears to be all of them. All that were involved in the attack, anyway — it does not appear that they expected to survive the assault. Parliament security plus Alpha Team plus several of the responding SWAT units lost seventy-three dead and twelve injured. Parliamentary staff, seventeen dead and twenty-five injured. That’s a total of ninety dead and thirty-seven injured, although that number could change over the coming forty-six hours.’

Murmurs of disbelief from those assembled, some mutterings of consternation and sad headshaking. Neiland repressed a swallow, trying to keep her expression even. It was a lot of people dead for an operation that ideally should have resulted in only one death.

‘How many more GIs might be out there?’ she asked quietly.

‘That is what we are attempting to determine,’ N’Darie replied evenly. ‘It depends how they got here, and how they’re managing to stay hidden. And it depends on the nature of any possible connection between the attack on yourself and the presence of Captain Kresnov in government custody. I don’t say that such a connection exists, but it is a possibility we are investigating.’

‘Are we certain,’ one of the gathered officials asked, ‘that our space lanes are secure?’

N’Darie took a deep breath. ‘No,’ she said reluctantly. There were more murmurs of consternation.

‘You mean that the greatest human civilisation outside of Old Earth itself can’t even guard itself from infiltration?’ asked the Vice President, Golpanath. His voice was incredulous.

‘Sir,’ N’Darie said, ‘even Old Earth can’t completely guarantee space lanes. The solar system is a big place. Most spacecraft have stealth designs that are undetectable by active scanning, except at close range, and nothing in space is close. We see them only when they manoeuvre, scan or fire. Standard covert military tactics is to enter a system at far nadir or zenith jump points, run silent through the equatorial plane, dump velocity with jump engines, which produces no actively detectable pulse unless you happen to be focused directly on that region of space when it happens, and release a landing shuttle. The shuttle needs no directional adjustment and uses the atmosphere for deceleration alone. And once inside the atmosphere, well, ninety-eight percent of Callay is uninhabited.

‘Furthermore, we have clear evidence that the Plexus grid sensory system has been compromised from within. We do not know how, and we have no guarantee that it will not happen again. Until we uncover the means of this infiltration we must consider ourselves vulnerable to outside infiltration of this nature. Be assured that we have assigned this matter top priority.’

The expressions on the many assembled faces reflected general dismay. We complacent city-folk, Neiland thought sourly, thinking ourselves so secure. Of course everyone knew the basics of solar-system physics, but no one ever bothered to think about what it actually meant from a security standpoint.

‘If you wanted more information on how it’s done,’ she said to N’Darie, ‘I’d suggest Kresnov. I doubt you’ll find anyone more experienced in the matter.’ N’Darie nodded shortly.

‘I have done that personally. She has been most helpful.’

‘We’re certain that Kresnov did save the President’s life?’ asked Benjamin Grey, from off by the foot of the hospital bed.

N’Darie gave him a short, appraising glance.

‘Very certain. Present investigations show that Kresnov accounted for at least twenty of those GIs. Which also serves to demonstrate just how dangerous she actually is, but nevertheless it does perhaps give some indication as to her loyalties, such as they are.’

Grey nodded, appearing to give that some serious thought. He did not look entirely pleased. Neiland turned back to the gathered faces before her.

‘All right,’ she said, ‘I want a status report from each of you. This is the last time we’ll do this face to face — I merely wanted this one occasion just to make certain that everyone understands everyone else. After this, I’m certain we’ll all be far too busy. Begin.’

When President Neiland pushed her way through the door of the isolation hospital ward, the two guards on duty there snapped to rigid attention.

Neiland ignored them and walked down the long, open room, beds lining the wall upon her right and broad, open windows to her left.

Many-coloured lights strobed and gleamed in the outside dark. Media cruisers were hovering at the required distance, searching for a camera angle. Trucks and trailers with big antennae had surrounded the hospital, and cameras blocked every exit. Police, SWAT and Secret Service made up the security, preventing intrusions. Somewhere amid the mess, regular hospital staff tried desperately to go about their job of treating sick people. It couldn’t have been easy. Outside the room the hospital corridors were jammed so full of stern, armed security staff that it was difficult to move.

On the very end of the last bed a woman sat in a white bed robe, fully upright as if contemplating the view. As she drew nearer, Neiland noted that her ankles and wrists were bound separately, the ankles in turn connected to the bed end with unbreakable cord. Cassandra Kresnov sat with her arms over drawn-up knees, and gazed out at the play of moving light beyond the one-way windows.

Neiland stopped by the neighbouring bed. Folded her arms. Kresnov did not spare her so much as a glance. She looked calm. Flares of blue and red light deepened the natural highlights in her fine blonde hair, gleamed in dim reflection in her eyes, played along the smooth curve of her jawline and over a cheek. Strong features, Neiland thought, watching her in that timeless moment, quiet but for the faint wailing of a distant siren, and the floating expanse of city sound beyond. Strong, broad and wide-browed … and the most beautiful, wide, expressive blue eyes. Serene and calm, watching the lights.

Neiland found herself unaccountably nervous, in a way that dealings with important politicians or bureaucrats never made her feel. She did not, at that moment, know what she was going to say. It was an unaccustomed feeling.

‘I’m sorry about the restraints,’ she said then. Her voice sounded strange in the quiet, subdued hush.

‘The restraints don’t bother me so much as the drugs,’ Kresnov replied. She spoke in a soft, mild voice that somehow carried an authority far surpassing its volume. Neiland forced a soft, painful sigh.

‘I’m sorry about the drugs, too,’ she said.

‘The drugs don’t bother me as much as the sensor plug in the back of my head,’ Kresnov added. There was a subtle note in her voice that might have been wry, sarcastic amusement. But it was difficult to tell.

Neiland gazed at her for a long moment. And on a sudden, frustrated impulse strode forward to Kresnov’s side, and felt for the insert socket beneath the tail of blonde hair. Kresnov frowned, but did not move. And let out a small, sharp gasp as the sensor plug came out, the shock sequence deactivated in the presence of hand restraints. Neiland pocketed it, and sat beside Kresnov’s drawn-up knees on the edge of the mattress, looking back at her face. Kresnov gazed at her, eyes puzzled … more than puzzled. Alive and aware, of a sudden, where they had been distant before. The change was remarkable. And always lurking, that subtle, indefinable gleam of intelligence, in the faint narrowing of eyes, the minuscule change of expression. It was several more moments before Neiland realised she was staring.

Kresnov raised a mild eyebrow and cast a meaningful sideways glance back up the length of the room. Neiland looked. One of the guards was standing with his rifle levelled, a clear shot to the side of Kresnov’s head. The other was speaking into a comlink, tense and worried.

‘Son,’ Neiland said loudly, ‘you’ve got three seconds to put that rifle away before I personally walk over there and shove it up your ass.’ And on the next thought, ‘And tell your backup to stay where they are. This woman risked her life to save mine, dammit. If she was going to hurt me, she’d have done it already.’

She had no idea if it would work — arguing with Mishima on security matters had often seemed as useful as banging her skull against a bulkhead. But Mishima was dead now, like all the others. The thought abruptly hit her, like a hammerblow between the eyes. For a moment the room seemed to spin, and her heart accelerated to a racing panic. And eased, just as quickly, as her control restored itself — more an act of habit than an assertion of will. At the far end of the room the guard had lowered his weapon. No support arrived. Which surprised her. She had said that Kresnov would not hurt her. Maybe someone in security actually agreed with her.

But they would be watching her. In this ward more than any other, the security cameras were very active.

And she looked back to Kresnov. The GI was watching her, blue eyes narrowed with sombre consideration.

‘I take it,’ Kresnov said calmly, ‘that you’ve never been shot at before?’ Neiland moved to shake her head, but thought the better of it. She felt weak, and the neighbouring bed looked very inviting.

‘No,’ she replied. And on an impulse, ‘I take it you have?’ A faint shift of reaction in Kresnov’s eyes. And her lips pursed lightly with faint, considered humour.

‘Perhaps,’ she said. ‘In my youth.’ Glanced down at the small space between them, seated together on the same mattress. And back up. ‘You do know that you’re making the guards nervous? I could probably kill you where you are now, even drugged.’

Neiland blinked. ‘And why would you do that?’

Kresnov frowned. ‘You really think I’m that harmless?’

‘Aren’t you?’ To which Kresnov gave a sharp tug at the restraints, achieving nothing.

‘Why these then?’ she asked mildly. Neiland sighed, and glanced back towards the windows. Then back again, to find that Kresnov’s gaze had not wavered a millimetre. It was disconcerting. But somehow, surprisingly, it was not threatening.

‘Security provisions,’ she said tiredly. ‘You know how it is.’

Kresnov gave a faint shake of her head. ‘No,’ she said, gazing back out of the windows. And sighed, eyes suddenly distant, tuning away to the colours and light beyond. ‘I don’t know.’

Neiland pursed her lips, not knowing what to think. Kresnov confused the hell out of her. She remembered seeing her that first time in the staff office that the media were now calling ‘the final stand’ in their countless, repetitive and mostly inaccurate computer sim reruns of the attack, or what they knew of it. Barefoot, clad only in grey tracksuit leggings and a white T-shirt supplied by her security for the transfer to the airport. Covered in blood, most of which Neiland now knew had not been her own. Eyes narrowed beyond the dead-steady rifle, but only a little. Alert, aware and lethal.

Kresnov in combat had not swaggered, had not yelled with bloodlusting fury, had not made strong, heroic gestures or even looked fierce. She merely killed everything that came within reach that she deemed to be threatening, and killed it fast. The debriefing simulations had shown four Dark Star GIs in that room, with the last of Alpha Team dead. Kresnov had blown the ceiling with a shaped charge stolen from a dead GI and dropped through the hole with a pistol in each hand and the rifle slung over her shoulder.

Point two nine seconds later all four Dark Star GIs were dead or incapacitated. They’d simply made the fatal mistake of being in the same room as Kresnov when she had a weapon in each hand, initiative on her side and was looking to kill them. That being so, numbers were of no relevance. Twelve point four seconds later the last of the Dark Star GIs on that entire level was dead. As one of the Secret Service people who had analysed the tapes had said, at the risk of stating the obvious, the performance was simply inhuman.

And yet here, sitting on the bed alongside Kresnov, Neiland sensed nothing of threat or intimidation. Only a mild, intelligent woman with a subtle sense of humour whom she suspected would much prefer to be at a concert, or smelling flowers, or making love, than gunning down marauding hordes of her ex-comrades in arms. There were those among her staff who believed such simplistic analyses were misleading. That it was dangerous to judge a GI in human terms. Neiland truly did not know — it only confused her more. And she was almost surprised at herself for reaching out a hand, and resting it upon the GI’s white robed forearm. Kresnov looked at it, as if it was some strange kind of butterfly that had landed upon her arm, and aroused her bemusement. Then looked up to Neiland, her eyes seeking an explanation.

‘Captain,’ Neiland said softly. There was some deep, heartfelt emotion welling up from somewhere inside, but she was not certain what it was, or where it came from. ‘Captain, you saved my life. I …’ and she swallowed hard. Kresnov watched, unblinkingly curious. ‘I know you didn’t do it just for me, that it’s just for my office and I shouldn’t take it so personally… but I can’t help it.’

She gripped the arm tightly. It was firm and human feeling beneath the robe. ‘I suppose I’d just like to say thank you,’ she finished lamely. Much to her amazement, Kresnov smiled. It was a small, sad little smile, and for a brief moment the fifteen-year-old GI looked as old and wise as the Louban Sea.

‘You’re welcome,’ she said.

‘Why did you do it?’ Neiland removed the hand and used it for support as she twisted round on the mattress.

Kresnov’s smile slowly faded. ‘Why?’

Neiland nodded. ‘You’re so good at tracking targets, you could have just avoided them. You might even have used the confusion to escape, possibly shoot your way out. You might have been free right now if you’d done that.’

Kresnov’s brows drew together in a pained expression. ‘And where would I have gone? Lived in some alley somewhere? Stolen some money, gotten some illegal surgery to change my appearance? I sure as hell couldn’t get off the planet if everyone was looking for me, face or no face. I’d be stuck here. So I’d have to try and make a life of it.’

‘If anyone could have done it,’ Neiland countered, ‘I bet you could.’

Kresnov shrugged. ‘Sure. I could have been a fugitive, always on the run, always looking over my shoulder. I couldn’t have got a real job, or done any of the things I wanted to do. I’d have nothing.’

‘You were a fugitive before.’ Kresnov shook her head.

‘No,’ she said quietly with the dawnings of a faint, sadly wistful expression. ‘I wasn’t a fugitive at all. I was April Cassidy, cognitive software technician. I was going to have a nice job, and a nice apartment, and I’d go out nights and see bands, and meet people and make ordinary friends who knew all kinds of interesting things. Maybe I’d even get a boyfriend …’

She trailed off, gazing with sad, blue eyes at the blinking motion of lights beyond the windows. Neiland felt her breath catch in her throat, watching her. And she had no idea why Kresnov should affect her so greatly, except that the expression she wore now was as sorrowful as she’d ever seen on someone without the presence of tears. Not upset. Just deeply, deeply sad.

‘And so you thought what?’ Neiland said quietly into that silence. ‘You thought that if you saved the President, you’d get a pardon?’

Kresnov sighed, a short, silent heave of broad, white-robed shoulders. And shot Neiland an unreadable sideways look.

‘You can’t pardon me from being a GI,’ she said. ‘It’s a life sentence.’

‘No,’ Neiland agreed, ‘but hell, it’s got me sitting this close to you without having a division’s worth of security dragging me away by the armpits. Your popularity rating among some of the people I’ve spoken to recently has skyrocketed.’

Kresnov snorted. ‘I was bottom-dwelling river sludge,’ she retorted. ‘Now I’m only pond scum.’

Neiland fought down a smile.

‘That as may be,’ she said with what she hoped was a reassuring touch of humour, ‘but people are beginning to accept the possibility that you might not be evil. A lot of them thought you were. Or otherwise just not to be trusted. But you’ve got them wondering. So if that’s what you were intending, I’d commend you for picking a good option.’

Kresnov thought about it for a moment. Her lips pursed, twisted slightly to one side. Neiland found that intriguing, and again could not say precisely why. It was like in those movies of first contact she’d occasionally seen, back in that earlier life when there had been such a thing as leisure time, where the alien and the human finally met face to face, and discovered that they shared a common facial gesture. An awe-inspiring point of similarity, of togetherness. Neiland’s brain said that Kresnov was not human. And yet everything, everything she saw in Kresnov said utterly otherwise.

Which simply did not make any sense. There was not a single organic cell in Kresnov’s body. There was a strong thread of philosophical argument, particularly common in the wartime Federation, that GIs were not even life forms. They were imitations. Reflections of humanity’s self-perception made real through the organs of commerce, technology and politics. The philosophers claimed that as such they had more in common with works of art than genuine life forms.

But damn, how could you argue with a deadpan sense of humour, an active libido and that damnably subtle little wrinkle above the left eyebrow that she got whenever she considered something difficult? Neiland watched that wrinkle now, an intelligent narrowing of the eyes, considering her last statement. Then she shook her head as the conclusion arrived.

‘That’s not why I did it,’ Kresnov said. And looked at her, as if slightly puzzled by her own conclusion. ‘I think I did it because I could.’ Neiland frowned. And Kresnov sighed again, in that very human way of hers.

‘I know, it probably sounds a little odd. But they were trying to kill the President of Callay, and I was in a position to stop them. And … I don’t know, maybe that’s just what I am, and the way that I operate. Maybe I just need to be useful. I just can’t imagine having found myself in that position, knowing that I could stop them, and not doing anything.’ She shrugged helplessly. ‘That’s just the way I am.’

‘And I’m very glad of it,’ Neiland added with feeling. Kresnov glanced away, eyes calmly scanning. Her report said that she enjoyed sensory pleasures, Neiland remembered. Certainly she seemed reluctant to turn her eyes away from the view.

‘I don’t know if you should be thanking me for that,’ she said a little sourly. ‘I’m probably just designed that way.’

‘Oh God,’ Neiland sighed painfully, getting to her feet and stretching, ‘no more philosophy of human free will, please. I’ll die.’ Walked two steps to the head of the neighbouring bed, took a pillow, and settled it against the end frame. Climbed gingerly up, and leaned back, half seated against the pillow, long stockinged legs stretched out before her. Kicked off her shoes on an impulse, and settled properly with a long sigh, tugging the dress hem firmly to her knees.

Looked back to Kresnov, and found her watching, looking surprised. And a little amused.

‘You’re just like me after two days with no exercise,’ she said. ‘I creak like a rusty gate every time I sit down.’

‘You don’t mind if I stay here for a moment, do you?’ Neiland thought to ask her. As President, she wasn’t much in the habit of asking.’ This is probably the only room in the hospital I can go without being mobbed by panicking administrators or officials wanting to show their unutterable relief that I’m still alive.’

Kresnov shrugged. ‘I could use the company, I suppose.’

‘Good.’ Neiland nodded to herself absently. Thinking about what she’d just said, and how lucky she was to actually be alive. Very, very lucky, she supposed. It ought to have been a thought that stuck, and stuck hard. But it floated, and was impossible to pin down, however hard she sought to focus.

It had yet to fully strike her, she knew. But she knew that it would, sooner or later. She was not looking forward to it.

‘How badly were you hurt yourself?’ she thought to ask Kresnov then.

‘A few bits of shrapnel,’ Kresnov replied, gazing off out the windows again. ‘Mostly grenade fragments from the landing pads. Dug them out with tweezers, no trouble.’ Like a gardener talking about trouble with insects in her rose garden. No trouble. Just routine really.

‘You’ve had those before, I take it?’ Flash, an impact of explosions, driving breath from the lungs and sense from the brain … She blinked, and took a deep, shuddering breath.

‘A few times,’ Kresnov replied, not appearing to notice. Or choosing not to, more likely. ‘My muscles work like body armour. Two things make them harden to critical pressure — one is signals from my brain, and the other is a hard, high V impact. Pressure like that triggers the hardening reflex. Most shrapnel doesn’t get much further than skin deep. Not with personnel grenades, anyway.’

‘Interesting material,’ Neiland said.

‘Your muscles work on the same principle,’ Kresnov told her. ‘Mine just take it to an extreme.’ Neiland nodded, trying to think on that. Flash, and the grenade went off again, and a glimpse of a body flying, violently torn and everything going sideways … her heart was suddenly racing again, thudding violently against her ribs. A stuttering roar of gunfire, shots thudding home in murderous succession…

‘Take deep breaths,’ Kresnov calmly advised her. Neiland held up a reassuring hand, blinking her vision clear.

‘I’m all right,’ she said a little dazedly. ‘The doctor gave me tape to lessen the shock. It hasn’t really hit me yet.’

‘It will,’ Kresnov said. ‘Tape can only cover for so long.’ Like she was speaking from experience. Neiland gazed at her, heart settling in unpleasant, heavy thumps against her ribcage. Wondering if Kresnov, too, suffered from post-traumatic stress, or if the League doctors had taped it all over, and made her forget. Or if her brain was structured differently to help her deal with such distractions.

And yet Kresnov professed to have a conscience. She claimed to have been disturbed by the things she’d seen and done. Neiland did not see how that was possible without a clear memory of those individual, violent incidents. And now she’d recently killed twenty or more of her former colleagues, and appeared completely untroubled by the experience. Although, then again, she claimed not to have liked them very much. The thought gave Neiland a cold, sharp chill.

Kresnov just watched her, blue eyes unblinking. If the restraints or her seated posture gave her discomfort, she gave no sign. Her eyes were startlingly clear.

‘You’re staring at me,’ she said.

Neiland blinked. Glanced reflexively away to the blank wall by the end of her bed. And looked back, irritated at herself for being so flustered.

‘I suppose I am. You must get that a lot.’

Kresnov smiled wearily.

‘No. It’s a totally new experience for me. Nobody here seems to understand that.’

It was another hour before Neiland emerged from Kresnov’s hospital ward. Benjamin Grey was waiting for her.

‘Ben, I want to talk to you.’ A sideways glance showed that the corridor was empty. Grey nodded, thin brows drawn downward in concerned concentration. His dark eyes appeared too large for his unremarkable, soft-chinned face. Neiland impulsively took him by the arm, and drew him several steps away from the doorway, where scrupulous agents, doubtlessly with enhanced hearing, stood guard.

‘Ben,’ she said in a low voice when she was sure he was paying attention, ‘what are you planning to do with her?’ Neiland was tall, but Grey was taller. She spoke to a point somewhere level with his shoulder, leaning close, looking up at him from under serious brows without tilting her head.

‘Well,’ Grey said slowly, ‘I’m not sure it’s entirely up to me, Shan’s investigations are underway now and I’m not certain that I want to pre-empt…’

‘So you’re going to leave her cuffed to the bed and drugged to the eyeballs until Shan says that it’s safe to release her?’

Grey frowned in surprise. The wall was behind him, and retreat was impossible. ‘Release her? Who said anything about releasing her?’

Neiland took a breath. ‘Ben,’ she said with forced calm, ‘she’s not dangerous — to us. Any idiot can see that. She shouldn’t be locked up like this.’

Grey stared down at her from beneath furrowed brows. ‘That may be so, but many of the people and the groups she’s connected with are most certainly very dangerous …’

‘That’s no damn reason to lock her up, Ben. We should put her to work for us, dammit. She’d be a real help in Shan’s damn investigations if you let her …’

‘Wait wait wait.’ Grey shook his head, hands raised in defence. Neiland stopped, arms folded, her stare burning. Grey took a breath. Doubtless he realised that his position had just become precarious, interrupting Katia Neiland in mid-flight. ‘Ms President, this is a GI we’re talking about here. Now, I know she just saved your life. I’m as grateful to her for that as you are, believe me. But to make the leap from there to saying that this is our ally and comrade-in-arms is … is a very big step, and one I’m not convinced is supported by the available evidence.’

‘Why would she save my life, Ben? Twenty-four hours ago you’d have been grateful if she’d just refrained from killing me, given the chance. Not only did she pass up that chance, she purposely and with forethought placed her ass in the middle of a hail of bullets with no other intention but to save my life.’

Grey was frowning. Neiland knew what he was thinking — that his beloved President was letting her emotions run away with her. Again. Neiland liked Benjamin Grey, but sometimes she wanted to hit him.

‘Just for once, Ben, you quit that damn bureaucratic poker face you like to pull and try looking at things from her side. She does have a side, you know, it’s not all just cogs and gears turning in there. You tell me, why would she give a damn what happens to me, given everything that my administration’s done for her so far? Why, huh?’

Grey stared at her for a long, troubled moment. Then shook his head, conceding defeat.

‘Because she’s not half as bloody rational as you are, that’s why.’ Grey blinked. ‘You heard me.’ Neiland’s balance was restored, and she was beginning to feel like herself again. Strange how a verbal barrage could do that for her.

‘She’s got feelings, Ben,’ she continued, just as forcefully, staring up at him with unwavering intensity. ‘I’m not talking touchy-feely here, I’m talking politics. She believes in things. That’s how damn advanced those fools in the League finally got with her. They created a GI who is not only capable of free and independent thought, but who is actually capable of forming her own ideology independent of her creators and superiors.

‘She didn’t save me because she loves me — she didn’t even know me. She just doesn’t think people have the right to go around assassinating democratically elected Presidents, that’s all. Now what does that tell you?’

Grey still looked puzzled. And baffled, as if trying to guess an answer that might possibly placate her, truthful or otherwise. Neiland felt a surge of exasperation.

‘We’re talking about principles here for God’s sake, Ben. I can recognise it very easily because it’s so damn rare among my colleagues and opponents. Kresnov is naïve, inexperienced and principled. That means she’s either our worst enemy or our best friend. Now given recent events, which do you think is most likely?’

Grey scratched at the side of his nose with a finger, and grimaced. ‘What are you suggesting we do with her?’

‘Do with her?’ Hadn’t he been listening? ‘I’m telling you that she’s not our enemy, and given a little friendly persuasion she might even be a friend. How would you normally treat a friend, Ben?’

Grey just looked at her. Obviously, he didn’t have a clue what she was talking about. Neiland exhaled hard.

‘Look,’ she said, ‘just give her to me.’ She pretended not to notice his startled look. ‘She’ll need a high security place to stay, and the Presidential Quarters are probably the only place in the whole damn city we could put her that wouldn’t arouse suspicions. She’ll be invisible there.’

Grey was staring. ‘You’re serious,’ he said then, like it had only just occurred to him that she might be. The muscles in Neiland’s jaw tensed, very tightly.

‘I’m not a comedian by nature Ben,’ she said coldly. ‘Give her to me. She might even be grateful.’

‘Ms President, I’m not sure that I can authorise something as …’

‘I can,’ she snapped. ‘I’m the President of Callay and Tanusha. That’s got to count for something.’