Coming off the roundabout Anne did not bother changing up. She floored the accelerator, flew past a truck on the slip road, and was doing ninety down the A12 before the driver blew his horn. The figure at the side of the screen dropped to twenty-four minutes. She always tried to beat the computer and arrive with a minute to spare. There was a whole page about it in her psyche report.

"It's in a hospital," said Mike. "They are clearing the area now. Bomb scenario. I have no details yet, but it looks like a s.n.a.t.c.h."

"Outsider?"

"Likely."

"d.a.m.n!"

Anne checked her rear-view mirror and saw a police car tailing her. She was now doing a hundred and twenty.

"Mike, I've picked up a bogey. See to it."

Mike swore. The blue light started and the police car's headlights began flashing. Anne kept her foot down and as soon as she hit an open stretch she pulled to the middle of the road so they could not pa.s.s. A minute pa.s.sed. Two minutes. Abruptly the blue light went out and the police car dropped back.

"They didn't like that," said Mike.

Anne nodded to herself. They had considered using police cars for this stage of an operation. The trouble was that in trials they found the abrupt slowing of other drivers slowed them down too. Anne took the slip road at a hundred and decelerated just enough to take the mini roundabout without losing it. The police car stayed on the carriageway. Quarter of an hour.

"More information in: two bodies have gone missing, right off the world-line."

Anne saved any reply until she was past a trundling JCB. She dropped down to fifty for the back roads. Lanes strewn with leaves and spattered sweet chestnuts. Traction not so good. She slowed to forty and observed red toadstools growing on the verges. They looked unreal. She shuddered.

"They have the area clear now. Davidson and Smith are in. McDonald and Jason are twenty minutes away."

Anne drew to a halt in front of steel gates that were already opening. Stone eagles glared down at her. She accelerated onto the asphalt drive, observed by a soldier with a Rottweiler on a lead and an a.s.sault rifle cradled before him. An automatic gun on a balcony traced her progress up the drive to the house. She leapt out of her car with the reading on her screen at one minute forty seconds. Mike met her at the door and followed her in with the motor of his wheelchair humming to keep up with her. He looked young and vulnerable, his blond hair tied back in a pony-tail out of the way of the comunit on his head.

"Davidson and Smith are getting the van out," he said.

Anne nodded as she ducked into a room off the corridor and began stripping off her track suit.

Mike looked into intense blue eyes below cropped black hair. She stripped naked, unselfconsciously. She had the musculature of a body-builder and had not lost a trace of femininity. He cursed the lack of reaction below his waist.

"Do you think we'll have to go in?" she asked as she pulled on the tight cotton undersuit.

"Almost certainly. We've no proof it's an Outsider, but that the blister formed from a hospital is indicative. It will probably try and use one of the bodies to lead it back through. You know what that means."

Anne nodded. Of course she knew. It meant extreme prejudice. The area would be nuked if the Outsider got through, for there was no other solution. Mike observed the practiced ease with which she pulled on an overall bulky with Kevlar, then boots, and a helmet with comunit and drop-down dark-visor. To finish she strapped on her own hand gun, and Mike noted that the standard-issue Browning remained in her locker. She preferred her .44 Desert Eagle automatic, loaded with blue tips. Davidson had once jokingly called it her elephant gun, and had not been far from the truth.

"Right, let's go."

Mike headed back to the op's room. He wasn't going anywhere.

"Nurse! Nurse!"

The prat had been whinging for the last half an hour and Gary was getting tired of it. His leg hurt and they had not given him anything to ease the pain. His head ached and he felt sick. Where the h.e.l.l were the nurses? He gazed across at the prat and wondered what his problem was, then he saw the supported arm and the glint of metal along it. There were pins entering the arm down its length. Gary supposed it hurt a fair bit. He turned his attention to the only other patient he could see: a big guy, lying back staring at the ceiling. It looked as if, under the sheets, his legs were shorter than they ought to be. Gary lay back and closed his eyes. He drifted for a moment, then opened his eyes when he heard movement.

The nurse was standing over the prat's bed. He held some pills in his good hand and she was holding out a plastic cup for him. He was staring at her face with a look of horror as he took the pills and washed them down. The nurse turned to Gary.

"I'll be getting yours in a moment," she said.

Perhaps she had been injured and this was the result of plastic surgery. Perhaps she had been burnt or something... Her face appeared to be made of soft plastic, and her eyes were flat and dry. Gary could see no nostrils and no ears and her hair looked false. When she opened her mouth the inside of it was bright pink and it glistened. There were no teeth.

Gary nodded mutely. "Fine... Fine..."

She walked away with short quick steps, her hands out before her as if she could not see so well. With gritted teeth Gary hoisted himself upright and pushed pillows up behind him. He glanced from the cubicle, across the corridor to the plate gla.s.s windows. Everything appeared quite normal, other than the nurse. He turned to speak to the prat and saw he was lying back, convulsed, his eyes rolled up into his head.

"Nurse! Nurse!"

Gary searched for and found the call b.u.t.ton next to his bed. He reached out to press it, but it crawled higher up the wall, out of his reach. The nurse did not come. The guy opposite seemed to deflate after a moment and close his eyes. Gary wondered if he had died or was just asleep. He broke out into a cold sweat and scanned about himself. What was next? Someone had slipped him a tab or something worse. He couldn't remember eating any mushrooms, but then he'd had a bash on the head. He glared suspiciously at the bottle of Lucozade his ex had left him. The b.i.t.c.h!

"Breakfast!"

The trolley pusher appeared fairly normal until you inspected her hands. They seemed to be coated with polythene and there were no fingernails, just slots in the top of her fingers from which the tips of claws occasionally peeked. Gary tried to ignore this as she gazed across to the big feller with the short legs.

"Pork for dinner," she said.

The big feller was terrified, and watched her carefully as she pushed her trolley away. Gary spooned grey glutinous porridge into his mouth. Only he had been served any food. The stuff filled his empty stomach but seemed to taste of cardboard. The pterodactyl flew past outside when he was sc.r.a.ping the bowl clean. He watched it for a moment then shook his head. He remembered drinking magic mushroom tea once and seeing helicopters flying out of the television. However, this did not feel quite the same as he felt completely awake. Had Jill slipped him a designer drug? He decided that if it was a drug he would walk it off. Anyway, he also wanted to use the toilet. It took him a few minutes to don his dressing gown and precariously position himself on his crutches, then he lurched out of the cubicle and into the corridor.

"Alf?"

It was not Alf in the bed in the next cubicle along. Gary was confused. Alf was supposed to be in for the next week. Had they moved him? Had he snuffed it? The man that looked up at him grinned engagingly through obvious pain.

"Name's Derek..."

"Pleased to meet you," said Gary, balancing himself and reaching out to shake a sweat-damp hand. "What you in for?"

"Stomach... Guts... I think it might be cancer..."

"Oh... well, I'll see you in a minute, I've got to get to the toilet."

Gary set off for the toilet, feeling Derek's eyes boring into his back. He had not meant to be rude, but all of a sudden he was desperate for a c.r.a.p. He pushed through the door into the toilets with all speed, then sat himself with relief on a porcelain throne. As he c.r.a.pped something swirled underneath him so he finished quickly and stood up. When he peered into the toilet pan there was nothing there. After dropping in a wad of s.h.i.tty toilet-paper he backed away. There was something threatening, something... not right. Abruptly a tentacle draped in wet toilet paper rose out of the toilet. Gary got out of there as quickly as he could.

"There's something not right here," said Derek.

Gary leant against the wall breathing deeply, evenly. "What? What did you say?"

"There's something not right here."

Gary let out a hysterical laugh.

"Not right," he giggled. "Not right... Excuse me nurse but why are you made of plastic? Gosh, isn't that a big seagull." He giggled again and headed for his bed. He suddenly felt very tired. He slept.

"Dinner!"

It was the same woman with the same hands, and Gary now knew he was not hallucinating; he had just gone completely mad. She gave him a plate of pork and gravy then pushed her trolley away. Gary noticed objects on the lower shelf covered with a white cloth. Blood was soaking through the cloth. He ate his meat and found it very rich. There were no potatoes or vegetables. When he finished he looked around. The big feller's legs seemed to be even shorter. The guy in the bed opposite was writhing about and moaning with his eyes rolled up into his head again.

"Hey! Hey! What's the matter with you?"

"He'll be next," said the big feller.

"What do you mean?"

"They don't like it if you complain, if you cause trouble. I did, and look what's happening."

He folded back his sheet and showed legs amputated at the knee. There were no dressings, just blunt pink unbleeding flesh with neatly sawn leg-bones protruding. Gary swallowed bile and turned back to the complainer.

"Hey!"

The guy stopped moaning and abruptly sat upright.

"The unsharks!" he yelled and leapt out of his bed. He ran screaming down the corridor.

"Jesus!"

Gary got out of his bed and onto his crutches as quickly as he could. Out in the corridor he saw the guy leaning against a window clutching at his pieced-together arm. He was panting. He stared past Gary and let out another scream. Gary glanced round and saw the nurse quick-stepping towards them. The man ran to where the corridor turned, leapt straight at a plate gla.s.s window and ... hung there, caught in the gla.s.s mid-leap, webs and strands of gla.s.s holding him in place. Gary felt his crutch slip from under him. He hit the floor with agony stabbing up from his leg.

"Here, let me help you."

A plastic hand closed around his biceps and lifted him easily to his feet. He was hoisted one-handed to his bed with time only to glance back and see the man fading out of existence. The nurse shoved him into his bed as if he weighed nothing. She paused and stood over him. "Now you should know better than to overdo it. I'll get you some pills."

He really did not want any of her pills.

Once beyond the cordon, Anne climbed out of the van checking the action on her Uzi. Her team followed, checking their equipment also. Armed troops watched with bewilderment, aware that the new arrivals certainly did not appear to be the usual bomb disposal team. The troops stayed back though, for they had their orders.

"Davidson?"

Davidson ran his finger along a set of blueprints and studied the building before them. He pointed to a row of plate gla.s.s windows. "Up there on the second floor."

"Right, let's move."

Just as they set out for the entrance they heard a scream followed by a soggy thump. They gaped across at a figure lying twitching on the pavement.

"Tina."

Tina Jason, a diminutive woman carrying an Uzi in one hand and a stainless steel case in the other, trotted towards the figure.

"Anne, what have you got? What have you got?" Mike asked urgently over the com. Anne glanced up at the sky with sweat breaking out all over her body. Up there, somewhere, a Vulcan bomber circled.

"I'm checking now,' she replied. "A figure appeared in mid-air then fell to the pavement. Could be one of the bodies."

"Is there anything with it? Are you sure?"

Anne and the rest of her team followed Tina to the corpse. It lay flat, head turned to one side, spatters of blood and broken teeth round it.

"What have we got?"

Tina finished running a device like a Geiger counter over the corpse, then hooked it on her belt. "Male, human one of the bodies."

"You hear that, Mike?"

"Gotcha."

Tina had no reason to lie. Only Anne knew about the strike.

They entered the building at a run, climbed the stairs to the second floor and entered a long hospital corridor that had been hastily abandoned.

"Anomaly ahead," said Smith. "About five metres." He held something like a pair of binoculars up against his eyes. "It's twelve point three on the D Heisenberg scale instability readings to point six."

Tina placed her case on the ground and opened it. It was filled with small cylinders of Semtex, each marked with a number. She took out enough of the charges to add up to twelve point nine reading plus variation. With practised ease she put the explosive together, then advanced along the corridor using her hand-scanner to find where to position it.

"Twenty seconds!"

She ran back. They took cover in the stairwell.

The soldiers looked up as the gla.s.s windows on the second floor blew out. A sergeant grabbed a medical bag and started heading for the hospital. A cold barrel pressed against the back of his head and he halted.

"We have our orders, Sergeant," said the Colonel.

The sergeant turned slowly.

"Get back into line," the Colonel told him.

The Colonel was frightened. He kept glancing up at the sky.

Gary felt a horrible panic as he struggled from his bed. As he was getting his crutches under him, Derek came round the corner. "Look, I've got an artificial stomach."

Gary gaped at him. He stood there in blue and white striped pyjama trousers and snoopy slippers. His bare torso had been opened from below his chest to his groin, and emptied of intestines, liver, kidneys. The fleshy split was packed with cotton wool and from the top of it a thick bundle of pipes led to a wheeled box he towed behind him. Blood, lymph, and half digested food could be seen travelling through the pipes. Derek looked slightly crazy.

"I'm getting out of here," said Gary, staring at the horror before him. How long until something like this happened to him?

Derek stared back at him and began shivering.

"It's not right is it," he said, and turned and peered at lights and dials flickering and quivering on his portable artificial stomach.

"No, no I don't think it is."

Gary hopped past him into the corridor. He glanced back to where the nurse had gone and headed in the opposite direction.

"Please, let me come with you!"

The tone of Derek's voice was one of barely suppressed terror. Gary glanced back at him and read the pleading in his expression.

"Come on then," he said, not knowing what they would do when they reached the stairs.

The corridor seemed to grow as they walked along it the rubber ends of Gary's crutches squeaking against the floor, the wheels of the artificial stomach rumbling. The turning Gary had earlier seen seemed to have disappeared. Gary was beginning to despair of getting anywhere when Derek shoved his trolley through a side door and pulled him after. The sign on the door said 'Skin Grafts'.

"What?"