Final chapter!

Disclaimer: Own nothing.

Faith's trial turned out to be the fastest thing since the microwave meal.

Really, of course, it was over from the very beginning. Faith just sat there in a daze as all the important men talked in jargon and ignored her, as though she were nothing but an irritating spectator. Her lawyer put up an honest fight, but he, along with everyone else, seemed convinced of her guilt. And of course there wasn't a fair jury in sight, though she had to admit they at least seemed interested. They stared at her and the judge in turns and whispered amongst themselves.

Faith had never expected to just walk away, but even so the speed of it was frightening, like observing some great, churning engine of destruction. It only took two days for the trial to wrap up, and then only an hours' wait for the jury to declare her 'guilty' of something like thirty charges.

The judge nodded peremptorily and then fixed the hearing for sentencing for the next day.

And that was Faith's shot at justice gone; just like that.

It was almost paradoxical, but in that moment she had never been more proud of becoming a runner.

On the way back to the cell Taroque's phone suddenly rang. Faith watched curiously as he exchanged some brief words; then abruptly stopped and turned them back the way they had come.

"What's going on?" Faith asked.

Taroque looked annoyed. "Somebody's asked to see you before your sentencing tomorrow."

"High up?"

"Yeah, high up."

She couldn't help smirking. "Gee Taroque, I hope I haven't got you in trouble with mummy and daddy."

Taroque's jaw tightened. He was grinding his teeth. "I'm not in trouble," he breathed. "You're the one in trouble here. You're scum."

"Really? 'Cause you look a little unhappy about something."

Taroque didn't answer, but walked on, clearly furious even from behind. The guard behind Faith pushed her and she started walking too. She knew it was stupid, but she had to keep going now.

"Who am I being taken to see?"

Taroque let out a long, ragged breath. "The mayor. Callaghan."

Faith's eyes widened. "The mayor! You mean I get to see the most important person in the city? I guess that explains why you're so jealous."

Suddenly Taroque spun around and threw his fist into her stomach. Faith, with her hands cuffed, took the full force of the blow. She would have fallen but the guard held her up.

Taroque grabbed her hair and spat at her. "You won't talk to me like that! You'll respect me!"

"Yeah right," Faith hissed, loving this meaningless triumph. "Yeah right, I'll respect you. Look at yourself. Look how pathetic you are."

He looked about to hit her again, but just as he was drawing back he seemed to think better of it. He straightened up, adjusting his collar. "I'll get you back for this," he hissed, then spun on his heel.

Soon they were going steadily again. After a few corridors they emerged into a yard and Faith was loaded into a police van.

Sitting in the back was the first time it occurred to her that she might genuinely be going to see Callaghan. Why would they lie when she was already so close to the death penalty anyway? But why?

Callaghan! Just thinking of his name made her skin crawl. But how many times had she looked up at the mayor's tall office building and wondered if he was staring down, the silent observer of his subjects? She hated him more than anyone.

After about half an hour's driving she was bundled back out into the light. Sure enough, it was the mayor's office. Her breath caught as they led her into the hallway and then to an elevator.

They opened into a corridor on a very high storey, with floor-length windows framing the corridor. Here the police escort broke off- Taroque with a bitter glare- and a group of PK troops took over. They led her round a corner up to a single door and swiftly pushed her inside.

All her life Faith had dreamed of facing Callaghan, and pondered if there was some way, any way, to get to him; now under custody she had made it to his very office in less than an hour. He was sitting just feet away from her.

There was total silence for at least five, long minutes. Callaghan was a large man, filling the space behind his desk. Iron-grey hair framed a high brow and a surprisingly young face. Faith guessed he wasn't past fifty, but the stresses of time in office had worn him.

Jesus…

If that's what sitting behind a desk had done to him, what would running do to her? To her own astonishment, she smiled.

Callaghan noticed this and, strangely, it seemed to change him.

Just watching him lean back in his seat was a reminder of why he was mayor, and Pope was dead, and the runners were… history. He was utterly arrogant. A man of distinction, dressed in his thousand-dollar suit, wearing his trademark smirk, that had cracked so many businessmen; and he knew all this about himself. He was a brilliant politician but more. He was like a swordfighter, a veteran; he knew every move, every trick of the trade.

Just this made her hate him so much on top of how she hated him already. And he just smirked back at her knowingly.

"You can leave," he commanded, motioning to the guards. They didn't seem too surprised; was this a regular request?

"And take the cuffs off."

Faith stood there, incredulous as a dull metal click sounded and the handcuffs were unlocked, and one by one the PK troops filed out without looking back.

Faith took a deep, slow breath. She was sweating. She rubbed her palms on her prison garb.

Calm down, Faith. Don't let him get to you.

But there was no point denying it, he'd already got to her. He sat there smirking at everything she did, laughing almost, as though he were some silent, aloof God.

He gestured to one of the couches. "Seat?"

"I'll think I'll stand, thanks."

Callaghan shrugged. There was a small decanter on his desk. He took it and poured a whiskey, which he offered to her.

"Drink?"

"Fuck you," Faith growled, "Tell me what you want and let me leave."

He chuckled, taking a long sip of his drink. The silence stretched out. Faith knew he was amused at her irritation, and she struggled again to calm herself. It was no good. Her body was taut as a wire. Callaghan smiled thinly over the rim of his glass.

"Faith," he said, "I can only wonder how many times you've run through this situation in your mind. You and I, alone in the same room. You could just kill me, right? You want to, don't you?"

"I'm considering it."

"I wondered if you would," he went on, as though he were discussing architecture. "My conclusion is that you won't. You believe you won't as well, which is why you haven't acted already. Because despite your hatred for me, you know as well as I that… well, you need me alive, now more than ever. With security ever on the rise, and the runners in a more dire state than ever, to kill me, you know, would be like the runner's final capital crime; like spitting directly in the face of everything the people of this city believe in and put their trust in. Undoubtedly it would result in the absolute destruction of the last runners. You would be hunted and killed, probably on the spot, to the last man and woman. No one would mourn you, and in the end you would be remembered as nothing but the lowest of criminals. You, of course, would be directly responsible for all that."

"So you brought me here to taunt me?"

"No," said Callaghan firmly, "I never taunt. You are just taking insult."

"Why do you hate us so much?" said Faith before she could stop herself.

Callaghan shrugged dismissively. "I don't hate you, you hate us- me- which is why you do what you do. Running, I mean. The city, on the other hand, rejects you not out of hatred, but instinct. You are old, you see; not physically old, but outdated. A remnant of the past. Everything you stand for died in the November Riots."

"What? Truth and freedom?"

He gave her a bemused look. "You believe you stood for those things?"

"We still do. We don't eat all those lies you force-feed people."

"Force-feed them lies? Silly girl!" He fell back into his seat, chuckling. "Honesty and truth are trivialities! People need lies. They don't need the truth; don't even want the truth. The truth doesn't sell; it never has. Newspapers write lies because then people will read them. TV stations broadcast lies because then people will watch. If they told the truth they would have no audience. People would have no reason to tut, or swear, or laugh at it. The truth is neither here nor there- compared to a well-told lie it has nothing like the same level of fascination. So you see, there is vast public demand for lies."

"What an excuse," Faith hissed.

"Not an excuse, an observation based on evidence. In society there's no such thing as an excuse because in society there's no such thing as an evil. There's society as a collective whole, and the relative emotion of its individuals."

"What? How can you force yourself to say that?" Faith cried. "How can you make yourself say this city is good?"

"But that's the point," Callaghan retorted, "it isn't good. It just works. My colleagues and I didn't design this city for the romantic things that you believe in. It was designed- and listen closely- to limit freedom in order to limit emotion. If people can only do certain things, indeed only even think about doing certain things, then their emotions can only be heightened to a proportional extent. Which is much more convenient for society, and much less mentally wearing for the individual."

"And for that you've got police choppers and your own private army of PK troops."

"Exactly. And also to increase employment."

"But what about freedom?"

"What about it?" Callaghan countered. "What does your average man do with his freedom? People today have all the freedom they need. They have the opportunity to do whatever they could conceivably want. Yes, a few, like yourself, will want to do romantic or adventurous things- jumping on rooftops, for instance- but most won't. With this in mind I built the city according to what people needed. I could remove all the laws and restrictions tomorrow morning, and people would just keep doing the same things they were doing the night before. They would get up, go to work, come home, maybe go shopping or see friends, and then go to bed. If they can name a worst point in their life, it might be a divorce, maybe a car accident. That is the summation of their trivial, but mostly happy lives. It is only because you can never understand this that you reject this city. Which brings me back to what I said before- you are old."

Even as she talked, a part of Faith refused to believe the conversation she was having. In her mind she'd always been so sure of the logic of her beliefs, even without quite knowing why. They were self-evident, she thought. So many times she'd pictured herself in this very spot, challenging Callaghan, making him relent. But that was in her mind.

Now he was actually there in front of her, challenging everything she said, sounding so certain of his insane statements; yet he was so far and away her intellectual superior that it was frightening and unsettling for her. She didn't want to give in to his madness, but she didn't have the words to argue with him.

"This is ridiculous." Faith shook her head in disbelief. "It's insulting. How could any thinking person believe this?"

"They couldn't," said Callaghan curtly. "Aren't you listening? I said you are old, outdated; you are thinking at a different angle to society. Logic and reason is one thing, but it is education that is the true understanding. You weren't educated under the new system because you rejected it at its birth- most people from your time simply dropped into it and thus came to believe it. So if they ever thought through their newfound beliefs, it was only from the point of view of a member of this wondrous, utopian city."

"It doesn't even make sense."

"It doesn't need to," Callaghan said. "Credibility is not relevant to belief. With sufficient education a person will believe literally anything, and potentially be happier for it. That's the whole idea of the city. A limit of freedom, in all its forms, in exchange for a limit of emotion. People are almost always marginally happy here because that's the only emotion they are sufficiently educated to experience."

"But you don't learn emotion, you feel it!" Faith felt frantic. "You can feel this city is wrong."

"Feel it?" Callaghan snorted in disgust "Nonsense. You don't 'feel' anything. People believe what they are conditioned to believe, and feel what they are conditioned to feel. You believe this city is evil because your mother and father educated you to believe it so."

"But why must you educate everything? People should have freedom to discover emotions for themselves! You can't choose their emotions for them-"

"Why not? Who says we can't?"

What could Faith say to that? She didn't know why it was they couldn't; she just knew that it wasn't right; that somehow they couldn't. The silence drew out; her standing, rigid, smouldering, and Callaghan smirking back at her, wise and self-assured. For a moment her attention was drawn to the vast expanse of the city through the windows behind him. She thought of all the times she'd run along those rooftops, and how close Callaghan had always been, almost watching it all, unfolding like a pantomime below him.

"I'm thinking of killing you again," she whispered.

Callaghan shrugged. "You could do. It would certainly be an excellent consummation of your education, after so many years of learning to hate me, and wielding that extreme of emotion you so cherish."

Faith was about to reply, but Callaghan stood up suddenly; it was a single movement, sweeping. Almost like a runner. Faith glanced momentarily into his opaque eyes. Callaghan went to the window, drink in hand.

"Perhaps it would be destiny," he said.

He didn't look round, and it took a moment for Faith to realise he was still addressing her. His voice was frustratingly empty- first sad, then nostalgic, through fear and amusement and a buzz of bitterness; but it was like a recording, leaving her in doubt.

"Did I mention that, like you, I also am old?" Callaghan ran a hand slowly, wistfully through his hair. "Like you, I am outside the system. Uneducated, and thus still victim to emotional extremes. A romantic, as it were. But not forever. I can feel it ebbing out of me."

Faith didn't know quite what to make of this. Staring at the back of his head, and the iron grey hair, it occurred to her that these could be the first genuinely honest words he had spoken to her- but perhaps not.

There was no way of knowing what Callaghan thought, ever.

No way of knowing what anyone thought, Faith realised. There was only the face, a bad monitor with flickering images and bad reception, easily overridden or turned off from within. With that thought came, for one crazy second, the desperate, ridiculous desire to rip out Callaghan's brain, to read his mind straight off the synapses, and know, just for those few seconds, the thoughts of another human being. But instead she could only stand there and be ignorant, barred forever from his understanding of the world.

"These people yours?"

"Huh?"

"These people."

He gestured out the window. Snapped out of her reverie, Faith walked over to him. Outside were two figures on a neighbouring building, maybe three or four storeys lower. One was waving at her.

It was Kriegg. The one next to him was Kate.

Faith felt her heart leap in surprise; but somehow the situation was too surreal to take at face value. Only inches away, Callaghan looked on, emotionless.

"You just gonna let me escape?"

"I'm unarmed. How could I stop you?"

"There's got to be some reason for this."

Kriegg had produced a weapon the size of a rocket launcher and was pointing it directly at them. He fired, and for just a second there was that intense feeling of being a target; then a streamlined piece of steel embedded itself above the window outside. A long wire, proceeding from the rod back to the gun, wound taut as Kriegg wheeled in the slack, then wedged the gun between some ACs.

Faith took one look at Callaghan and hated him even more than before. Genuinely she wanted to kill him, and she would have if she had not felt, inexplicably, that doing so would only cause another mayor, another Callaghan, to rise from his remains.

With a single wide swing, she smashed the glass out of the window. At their altitude a wind quickly began to blow, picking up her hair and lifting the papers off Callaghan's desk. He stood in their midst, still and subdued, uninterested.

"Don't go," he said mildly. "It would be a waste of time. Honestly. Why not just stay, stop playing this game?"

Faith was on the edge of jumping, but one thing stopped her.

"About Pope," she said, over the noise of the wind, "Did he ever have a chance in the elections? I mean would you have let him run for office?"

Callaghan nodded.

"Could he ever have won?"

A bored shrug. "Theoretically."

"So the campaign was legit? The whole election, I mean. Pope had a chance."

"He did; but I was going to win. I know the people down there in those streets."

She took another step towards going. Her back was turned to him. "You'll regret this. Kate and I are going to escape. We'll find somewhere else."

"If you say so. If you can."

At the window, she spun. "You know what." She made a V sign at Callaghan. "Fuck you. You know I always felt like you were just fucking with us runners. This whole city's your insane experiment. Well fuck it. I'm not a test subject."

Callaghan smirked. "Perhaps I'm still fucking with you."

"I'm not gonna keep doing this. You get it?"

He leant against his desk, arms folded. "I'll give you another five seconds. But honestly, the game's already been won. Just come quietly. I'm asking you."

Then he reached under his desk and pressed on a small button. Instantly it seemed the room was swarming with PK troops. Overtaken by instinct as only a runner can be, Faith had already jumped onto the grapple line and was speeding towards the rooftop below.

The nearest door was a twenty-yard sprint. Supple, light, tunnel-visioned, Faith went straight for it on the back of a single breath. The crack of gunfire was everywhere- straight on, behind, forward- they were shooting from the window!- No space to dodge- move, let the others catch up- the door expanded, expanded-

She was through. The upper door opened into a fire corridor with a square spiral staircase. Faith jumped the first flight onto the first partition. Kriegg, less than a second behind, jumped down too, landing next to her, Kate just a little after.

Kate panted, "Jesus Christ." The others nodded as if in agreement; Faith felt her breathing returning to normal as she adjusted to running again. After the days spent in a cell, she felt recovered and light as a feather.

"You okay, Kate?"

"Yeah."

"Kriegg?"

"Yeah."

"Christ… how did you find me? What the hell was that grapple weapon?"

Kriegg looked at her. "Drake," he said simply. "It was all Drake. He tipped us off about your meeting the mayor, and we found the grapple gun in his hideout. Well… where he used to hide out."

"But Kriegg…"

Faith remembered how broken Drake had looked when she saw him, encouraging her into his trap; how it seemed that every vein in his body had just given up on life, and he was ready to collapse, and obey.

"Kriegg… Drake's the one who turned me in."

"He must have had second thoughts. We need to go. C'mon Kate."

"Kate?" Faith looked anxiously at her sister. "You okay?"

"Yeah."

Kate's face was grey. For a moment Faith felt, absurdly, that her sister's weakness was sure to pass- it was fatigue or something. But it didn't.

She gritted her teeth, feeling already the realisation like the point of a cold hard needle in her flesh.

"You sure you're okay, Kate?"

"I'm fine. We need to keep moving."

Kate attempted feebly to limp towards the next flight of stairs. Her hands were over her thigh and her face was now gruesomely strained.

"Kate," said Faith slowly, "C'mon sis, you gotta let me see the leg."

Kate suppressed a sob. "If I let go… It could be worse than it feels, Effy."

"You gotta let me see."

Faith removed her sister's hands. They came away blood-red. A similar patch of blood covered most of her thigh; at the centre of it was a burgundy-coloured mess of torn flesh.

"I think they hit me out there on the roof," she rasped. "Go on ahead, Effy, I'll hide."

"No friggin' way!" There were tears in her eyes now, blinding her. She blinked them away furiously. "Carry her Kriegg."

Kriegg looked stunned.

"Carry her!"

He picked Kate up in his arms, then carefully hoisted her into a fireman's carry. Kate, for her all her strength, didn't complain, but hung like a rag doll over his shoulders, hands straining over the constant bleeding.

"Take the first door off the stairs," Faith ordered. "If we're caught in the fire escape we haven't got a chance."

"Right," Kriegg agreed. He sounded reserved, unconfident. Faith had the fleeting feeling that he'd never expected them to succeed at all, at anything, even before project Icarus, and the hunting down of the runners.

Her jaw tightened as they started into a quick jog down the stairs. She wouldn't be caught so easily. She couldn't be.

"Hey Kriegg, you ever feel like Callaghan was just playing with us?" Galloping down the stairs, they turned left into an office block. Surprised office workers looked up as they darted down the main section of corridor, then turned left off a junction. The corridor went on for some way then turned sharply right.

Together they busted through a door into an expensive private office hung with modern art and decked with colour and adornment. A huge map of the city hung directly over the head of the lone man in the room- a manager of some sort. He looked at them in shock, then fumbled with a draw at his desk. Faith saw the glint of a metal barrel, but she was already across the room and leaping onto his desk. The manager received a quick kick to the temple, knocking him out instantly. He tumbled back into his chair and lay there like he was sleeping.

Dead quiet. Not even their breathing could be heard. The change was so sudden that it felt unnatural, so that for a second Kriegg and Faith were rooted to the spot, expecting to suddenly die in a hail of bullets from any direction. The door had slammed shut on their entry- now it almost seemed to leer at them as it hid- who could tell?- however many police and PK troops were swamping the building, floor by floor.

Faith picked up the gun the manager guy had gone for. It was a standard-issue revolver. She checked it over and found it to be fully loaded.

"You haven't answered my question, Kriegg." She felt like breaking the silence, but more than that she wanted to address Kriegg. He was a runner she barely knew, and she found that inexplicably frustrating. "You think he's playing with us? Just tell me what you think."

She had to at least know something of this man she had been putting her life on the line with, these past three weeks. But it was pointless; he just replied with his dry, pessimistic voice.

"Playing? This doesn't feel like playing to me."

He carefully laid Kate, now barely conscious, over the desk, then peered closely at her wound. It was drenched in blood.

"She needs medical attention," he said; his tone hinted that, were Kate's sister not in the room, he would have gone on. Faith understood, but she didn't want to. She went on checking the gun over on automatic.

Now she thought about it, the fact that this man even owned a gun was a miracle. Maximum sentence for possessing a firearm was eight years.

Eight years for a secret! Faith felt suddenly impressed with this man; thought of him as a brother, a fellow freedom fighter. What if she hadn't knocked him out? Would he have fought beside them?

"Kriegg? Here's the plan. You get Kate and turn right out of this office. Grab an elevator and escape. I can hold up their goons up here."

Kriegg looked at her strangely, madly; as though he had been a witness to some insane gambit in a gold-wreathed casino, an all-in gambit with all-or-nothing stakes, and it was finally time to reveal the cards. But he'd only ever been glimpsing the table over her shoulder.

"You'd better go," Faith said.

"You okay, Faith?" The way Kriegg said it sounded almost selfish. She wondered whether he'd volunteer to stay or not.

"We haven't got much time."

"You planning to escape?"

"I'm Planning to."

"Where do I go if I get out the building?"

He hadn't said anything about helping.

Faith had always felt it, but now her isolation was confirmed. She was all alone in this office, Kriegg was as good as gone, leaving her to face the barrels of endless guns. The room was torturously small now, almost closing in on her.

"Faith?"

"I don't know," she said, furiously blinking back tears. "Just get somewhere safe. Anywhere."

Kriegg nodded silently as he heaved Kate over his shoulder. Faith tried to meet his eyes as he went for the door, but he looked away.

And then she was alone.

Focus.

It'll be five minutes.

Tops.

You can do it.

The hot room and stale air did nothing for her calm.

A bead of sweat ran down her cheek. She stood up and put her hand on the doorknob. The door was still slightly ajar from when Kriegg had left. They could be right outside! Very slowly she opened the door a crack and peered out, half-expecting a blaze of gunfire. Nothing. She stepped out and followed the corridor left, moving slowly and silently.

Where were they? If she didn't find them soon the distraction would never happen.

At every corridor she stopped, taking what felt like an age to build up the confidence to throw herself round it. She had no concept of time anymore. All of her senses were pricked, waiting, until-

Up ahead!

She ducked into a doorway. Two PK troopers, both armed with M16s, were sidling up the corridor. One stopped by the doorway to glance inside, the barrel of his M16 coming within inches of Faith's face as she hid behind the doorway. But finally he moved on. Faith waited a few seconds, then turned out the doorway and fired in one swift movement.

The first trooper fell, bullet in the temple. He'd been facing toward her- but not quick enough.

The other one turned at the explosion of sound, into another shot through the skull. Blood sloshed from the wound as he crumpled, lifeless.

It was deafening!

The roar of the gunshot ricocheted up and down the small corridor like a rocket taking off, its scream and whine seeming to go on forever. Faith's ears were ringing.

Finally the noise died down, but Faith's ears still rang. Everyone in the building had heard those shots. But then that was the idea.

Faith took up the M16s from the dead PKs, looping one over her shoulder and stuffing the pistol in her belt.

A movement!

Spin and fire! Fire!

The far wall was shredded, but she'd hit no one. Not waiting to find out who she'd fired at, Faith rounded the corner and rushed down the next corridor. She was deep into the maze of office corridors now, criss-crossing and repeated, every one threatening an ambush of PK troops. She passed about a dozen aisles, glancing down every one. There were voices now, shouting from where she'd killed those men.

It must be deliberate!

Did they want her to flee? Were they cornering her?

But the elevator sign was just ahead and she hurried into that aisle. It progressed into a small lobby area with a fancy reception desk, facing a ten-by-ten foot area filled by two couches and a vending machine.

They were here! Faith knew! She opened fire. The reception desk erupted into sparks and splintered wood.

Faith didn't slow.

The square was coming up on her left!

She'd predicted them! They were fast, but Faith was faster, squeezing the trigger on the M16 just as she drew even with the first couch. Instantly the square exploded. Metal and fabric leapt into the air and conjoined in a flurry of chaos as PK troops hit the deck. The reception desk was still blistering with fire, but there were potshots coming from that direction now too.

Faith continued to sprint the square, firing in two directions, the twenty feet of corridor a mess of gunfire and instinct.

Someone was rising, daring the inferno! Faith stopped, spun, swinging the M16s. Bullets everywhere. Three seconds of hell as a man fell, covered in blood at point-blank range.

Then there were men standing behind.

At the desk! In the same second Faith felt the trigger squeeze empty on the first of the M16s and she threw it blindly, vaulting one of the couches.

A PK trooper who'd leapt to ground jumped up as she barrel-rolled, deadly beautiful, over the couch. A step of pure reflex.

The M16 into his face, blowing him away.

Blood leapt into the air and covered Faith's face and chest.

Bullets everywhere. She jumped and slid. The second couch was a skeleton of rags, the noise a broadside. Everywhere gunfire as her second M16 ran dry.

Then she was through. The second corridor.

Faith could barely see now, homing in on that elevator sign, closer, closer, passed, then left by a glass office and up to the metal doors.

Their shouting and firing was just behind her. Open, damn it!

The doors opened, she staggered in.

She'd knew now she'd been hit.

The pain was only just starting to tell. Not all the blood on her was someone else's. At least one bullet had gone right through her high in the chest, though the pressure was faint, like a second angrily throbbing heart. As she stumbled into the elevator the pain skyrocketed. The second bullet might be in her thigh or her stomach. There was so much blood she couldn't tell, and the pain was nothing but a general horror.

It was silent now, shockingly so; as though she'd forgotten the meaning of silence. But it was wonderful.

Where was she going? Ground floor? She looked at the buttons. It was the ground floor. Would she have to shoot her way out? She made to reload one of the M16s, but her sticky hand closed over empty air.

Must have dropped it in the escape, probably after being shot. Hell, it didn't matter anyway. She hadn't picked up any ammo.

Just the pistol left then. She reached for it with a shaky hand but the motion, completely to her surprise, caused her knees to collapse. A lance of pain shot up through her chest and beads of blood spilled onto the floor through her fingers.

Sweat dripped into her eyes.

Could she be that badly injured? Was she too hurt to move?

Maybe.

Get up anyway.

She managed to turn 180 degrees, facing the doors. Her vision, she noticed, was lined with a furry red mist, blocking out her peripherals and narrowing her line of sight, second by second.

Second by second, she felt her strength draining away. First floor, said the red light above the doors.

Get the gun! She made a swipe for it and retrieved it, but just holding her arm level was unbearable.

Against her deepest instincts as a runner, she let her arm drop. It took all her strength of will just to look at the doors.

A faint ding.

They opened. The lobby.

A PK trooper spun round but Faith, using what felt like impossible reserve, wrenched up her pistol and fired three wild shots at him.

One clipped him and he fell.

Faith was almost pleased, but a voice her head, seemingly echoing from far away, and almost indifferent, suggested that it'd probably hit his flack jacket and he wasn't hurt. She didn't try to fire again regardless.

The elevator buttons.

They were all she could think of; but her body was so heavy now. So heavy it was hard to imagine she'd ever been a runner; she could barely move.

And everything was red. The red smog that had started in the corners of her eyes was everywhere. Top floor! She needed to recover.

Just to stand up!

She had to escape. Just get to the buttons. Top floor!

The PK trooper was getting up.

Faith had dropped the pistol by accident.

But at least the buttons were a little closer. Just inches from her fingertips.

But every inch felt like half a mile of hell!

But she had to reach them now, had to get off the ground floor.

She'd find it in her to run, to escape. She'd always managed it before.

But with every inch she crawled, the red mist seemed to grow ever thicker around her.

Kate and Kriegg were holed up in a basement underneath a city hotel. Their escape had been a miracle; now they were hunched up amongst janitor's equipment and old stocks of goods, lucky to have their lives.

Under the light of a single bare bulb, Kriegg, with Kate's help, had managed to find some old goods to try and dress Kate's wound, though without anything to extract the bullet there wasn't much they could do. At some point, probably late at night, Kriegg leaned back from his work. He let out a deep sigh, then closed his eyes.

"How can you sleep at a time like this?" Kate cried in disbelief.

Kriegg smiled grimly. "Why shouldn't I? There's nothing we can do down here about contacting your sister. I can't think of any way of finding her at all."

"I know," said Kate sadly. As a police officer she had an objective understanding of the hopelessness of the situation; but the thought of having lost her sister again was gut-wrenching.

"So we might as well sleep."

"We can't just give up on her!"

Kriegg shook his head. "At the moment we don't have any choice but to do nothing. Come morning we'll start thinking about how to methodically search every street and roof for your sister. I'm sorry."

The next day Kriegg stole a newspaper from a vendor on the street outside. It was early, while Kate was still in a deep sleep. Her face was grey and drawn. The pain from the bullet-wound must have been immense.

The paper was tabloid garbage, nothing but propaganda with bold fonts and the veil of objectivity. But the headline was honest enough:

JUDGE SENTENCES THE 'AMORAL' FAITH CONNORS TO EXECUTION

When Kate finally woke up he grimly showed it to her.

"Then we know where she is!" Kate said. "We can try to save her!"

The moment was a flood of hope and fear. At least now they had an aim, a final goal, and all the anxiety and wasted desperate thoughts could be put behind them. But then Kate had a sudden, shockingly vivid image of Faith strapped to a gurney, and after that the joy at feeling hope plunged. The image of Faith didn't move.

"We have to try something," she whispered. "Please, Kriegg. I know you never liked her, but Effy's the reason we're even still here at all. You can't abandon her."

Kriegg had his back to her. In the light of the single bulb he created an area of shade in front of him, his face in darkness. His shoulders suddenly sagged, his head drooped; his large hands crushed the newspaper slowly, methodically, into a ball. Kate was briefly reminded of him splayed out in the threshold of the door, like a black cross, after Faith had lost the bag.

"I'll do whatever I can to help," she said slowly.

"Okay," said Kriegg without looking around. "But I don't know how much you or anyone can do. I'll think over the best way to get your sister out. You should rest. I know that injury must be torture."

She nodded, but her resolute expression didn't change. "I'll stay up and help you plan. The wound can wait."

Kriegg sighed. "I thought you'd say that."

The execution room was a grey compartment of ten by twelve feet, with little white floor tiles.

Through a window on her right she could see the outline of an IV mast with two fat bags hanging from it; waiting, clear against the white, clinical walls of the second room. A curtain was there to be pulled across the windows. Why this was necessary she couldn't fathom. Apart from this there was a little red phone on a shelf, a clock, and in the centre a gurney.

Someone nudged her. Faith stepped slowly into the execution room, feeling claustrophobic for the first time in her life. The innocence of the room's little phone, the clock, the surgical chair, pressed down on her.

She wanted to say something aloud, anything, but her breath caught.

The physician, who had appeared in the second room, must have saw her, because he gave her the faintest nod. At that moment a hand took her arm and urged her forwards. Reaching the gurney she climbed onto it. The two guards moved forward and began to fit the straps over her legs and arms. The clock was directly in front of her. It was almost eleven. Am or pm she didn't know.

Faith watched as the red second hand made three slow, steady rotations. The straps were fitted now. The physician approached her. She watched his face as he prepared the cannula.

"Will it hurt?"

He looked at her and hesitated. She had to keep watching him, following his eyes as he worked, nervous now, considering his answer. He was, after all, a doctor.

Wordlessly he pressed the needle into the back of her hand and taped it up.

Faith decided she would try to look into her executioners' eyes, the last eyes she would ever see, but no one would notice her. There was the anaesthetist, busy at the IV fluids; the nervous citizen, staring at those two syringes like they were the icy fingers of Death itself; the physician, busy enough, of course…

And Mayor Callaghan, standing at the window of the second room, strangely distant.

She tried to meet each of their eyes in turn, but could not. None would look at her. She was trapped now, just another statistic in the self-sustaining, automated procedure of the city- the exact thing she'd always fought to avoid. She had to smile at that, just slightly.

The physician, apparently noticing her smile, looked at her, Faith thought, almost sadly. Then he approached her again.

Standing over her, he fingered his glasses nervously. "The anaesthetic will be administered now. You will be asleep shortly." After a pause, he added, "There will be no pain. Okay?"

She nodded.

"Okay. If you have any last statements you wish to make, you are entitled to make them now."

Faith found herself panicking. There was something terrifying about that, even more terrifying than the very fact of approaching death itself. Her last statement… it was like imagining a tiny wisp of her existence left, floating in the air after her death; like leaving behind a final memory. What could she say?

Her breath caught. The immediacy of death was more real than ever; right next to her. The physician staring down at her was her executioner. The clock was ticking away her last seconds, counting her down.

She couldn't think, could barely breathe.

The physician just waited solemnly. Finally Faith managed to gulp back breath. The only way to talk was to close her eyes and stare downwards, away from the ticking clock.

"Can you get a message to my sister?" she asked.

"I can assure you that the establishment will do its utmost to deliver her final statement."

"Can you write it down?"

The physician gestured to someone behind the window of the second room. Then he nodded.

"Good." Faith took a deep sigh. There was a realisation on her now that she only had one chance to say these, her last words; as death approached she felt more and more muted.

"Tell Kate I love her. That's the most important thing. Yeah, and I guess tell Kriegg too that I'm sorry I didn't come through for him. Tell Kate that too. Tell her first, actually. That's what I'm most sorry for."

The physician gave a brief nod, but Faith, driven suddenly by the impulse of death, managed to go on.

"You may hate me, but you know I'm scared just like you would be. But I don't regret it. I mean it when I say that."

The physician looked almost pitying, like she were some poor deranged criminal, more in need of help than death. He cared for her, Faith realised, but had he understood any of what she said? The sentiment of her words seemed lost on him. She glanced at Callaghan, but his gaze was as unreadable as ever.

The physician gave a final short nod, repeated about the anaesthetic, then attached the IV, connected through the wall to the drugs, to her cannula.

Hearing the ticking of the clock's little second hand more acutely now than ever, Faith lay her head back, waiting for the drugs; but it felt like her own body was rebelling against her fate. A great weight was pressing on her chest, crushing her lungs, closing her windpipe, growing rapidly stronger. Within seconds it was agony. The feeling grew rapidly stronger until it was mental agony. In desperation Faith glanced at the window into the second room, but the curtain was closed.

She could barely breathe now but she had no conception of time passing, of what was happening.

The clock in front of her seemed to have stopped; yet she was shaking violently, panting, trembling.

There was a brief moment when she screwed up her eyes and begged silently; just begged in her mind, because she couldn't open her mouth now, or move her limbs. For a second she begged; then there was darkness and blissful peace.

11: 02. The physician put a hand against her neck, then on her wrist. He took out his stethoscope and listened to her chest.

Taking a pen from his pocket, he scribbled the time of death on Faith Connors death certificate.

As they were returning down the corridor, the physician turned anxiously to Callaghan.

"Sir… may I ask what is to be done about her final words?"

Callaghan waved a dismissive hand. "We'll leave that to the tabloids."

The first thing that struck Kate when she next awoke was that the pain in her leg had died down.

That was a good sign, she thought, still half asleep.

A spray of salt water landed on her face, refreshingly cool; as she started to come to, she became aware of a side-to-side rocking, and the lapping of gentle waves.

They were on a boat.

A boat?

Her eyes snapped open. She was laying on a deck chair on the deck of a towering liner. Directly facing were the tall white and silver towers of the city, staring back from the harbour.

"Isn't it amazing?"

Kriegg was sitting beside her on another deck chair. He was stretched out full-length, smiling slightly, taking long, deep gulps of the fresh sea air.

Kate was stunned. "What the hell happened, Kriegg? How did we get here? Where's Faith?"

He grinned at her. "It was Drake who did it, Kate. He helped us out with some fake passports. That old bugger came through for us. Maybe he'd planned it all along, but I knew he'd never cave just like that. Wouldn't have been enough to get us through security on any normal day, though, obviously… but all the guards were practically AWOL today. They barely checked us. Even with you wounded and in a wheelchair."

"What?" Kate shook her head in disbelief. "But I don't understand. We were going to help Faith! How did you do this? Where is she?"

"I waited until you fell asleep," he said simply. "It didn't take long- unsurprisingly, given that leg wound. But as soon as we're the hell away from here we'll get that properly looked at."

"But what about Effy? We were gonna get her out."

Kriegg shook his head. "We'd never have made it through security with her. Hell, all the passport control guys, the PK troops, police, everyone, they were all sitting around watching the news bulletin about her execution. They barely saw us."

"So… they executed her? She's dead? She can't be…"

"I'm sorry for what happened to her, but the thing to remember is that she didn't die in vain. She would have wanted this, Kate." Kriegg threw up his arms suddenly, an expression of open joy on his face. "Don't you see, Kate? We did it! We've escaped! We're free!"

But Kate was staring blankly out into the sea. Looking at her stricken face, Kriegg seemed only then to remember what had happened to her; he shook his head with an indecipherable expression before rising and pacing off along the side of the deck.

Kate just sat where she was, too weak to move anyway, but with her head fixed solely in one direction.

As the sky turned red with evening the city began to recede; the skyscrapers shrank in size and began to disappear, one by one, until at last only the Shard, winking in silver, could be seen over the horizon.

End.

That's your lot. Hope you enjoyed this final chapter and the whole story.