Misha’s lungs roared at him to stop. His legs seized up and cramped and implored him to stop. A torrent of Catherine wheel sparks flooded his vision and commanded him to stop. He did not shake himself clear in time to see the right-angle bend of the corridor and slammed into the wall with a force that almost popped out his shoulder, but it did not matter: he could see the patch gate within twenty metres of him. 

Anyone unacquainted with the patch network would have seen the ragged hole in the concrete tunnel wall and filed a repair ticket with the maintenance department. Misha had no time to worry about whether he had gained weight since the last time or whether he was running precisely on target. The only meaning to his life right now was to throw himself in the direction of the breach and hope that he and the terminal made it through unscathed. He jumped. 

A slender curtain of friable concrete broke off at the impact from his hip and drenched him in abrasive dust. The point of contact was right on his hip bone and it knocked his little remaining breath out of him. Fighting through this suddenly heightened intensity of pain, he scrabbled into the dark recess to the right of the gate and panted as silently as he could. The angry whorp of the security sentry drew closer and louder but did not pick up on the settling cloud of concrete dust on its path, and continued onto the next walkway. Misha lay flat against the wall of the gate with his heart tearing its way out of his chest and his breath still coming in tiny staccato doses. The pain from his hip was intense enough to burn through the adrenaline and make him wonder if he’d fractured a bone. He yanked up his sleeve and saw from his watch that his heart rate was still 194. It did not matter. 

The terminal was still hot and slightly slippery from having been jammed haphazardly into his pocket before he tripped the lab doors and ran. He thumbed free the cable link and, more out of habit than of genuine anticipation this time, breathed deeply before pushing the connector into the slot just under the root of his jaw. The familiar nausea and hot ache seared through him as the patch was initiated. He heard the voice vibrating behind his eyeballs before he had a chance to stabilise his vitals. 

‘PROTOCOL’ 

The words spilled out of his mind’s mouth in a torrential mudslide, chasing and tripping over each other as his heartbeat and the nausea threatened to make him white out and lose the connection entirely. 

‘MOROZOV Mikhail Vasilyevich Protocol A344BN2-286191-C assignment complete record transfer black-encrypt full dump no wipe PATCH.’ 

The cable link glowed a dull white as the terminal attempted to open the gate. He was two hundred metres underground but there was no reason that should make any difference. He had already patched from inside a scrambled and armoured data cell, albeit after a full night’s sleep and an hour’s meditation. The feedback rang powerful and acrid. 

‘ERROR. REFRESH PROTOCOL.’ 

Misha had known this would be a risk and had been trained in the methods of cleaning the gate access. He placed his hand flat on his chest and concentrated on synchronising his breathing with the thump of his heart, both of which had begun to regulate themselves a little by now. He was no longer in immediate danger, at least from the sentry; there was still the danger of time. He disconnected the cable from his neck, wiped it on the collar of his jacket and plugged it back in. His aim was a little wonky from the nerves this time and the cable spat a single spark at his fingers as he drove it home. 

‘PROTOCOL ‘MOROZOV Mikhail Vasilyevich Protocol A344BN2-286191-C assignment complete record transfer black-encrypt full dump no wipe PATCH!’ 

He gripped at his stomach to maintain his focus and to ward off the cramps from this janky gate that were threatening to fold him in half. 

‘ERROR. REFRESH PROTOCOL.’ 

This time he could not stifle a sour groan of disgust and anger. It would take too long for him to return his vital statistics to standard levels in order to accommodate this gate’s very temperamental parameters. He knew there was no point in trying again. He was going to have to find another gate. He managed to marshal his slurring fingers into calling up the map of the facility from his watch, and saw that there was another gate in a bullet shuttle 370 metres further down. 

He stuck his head through the gate’s entrance cautiously. There was no longer any trace of the sentry or any other sign that he was being pursued, but he measured every kilogramme of his weight with each step he took until the hatch to the next walkway section. The noise of the hatch’s mechanism seemed to boom and scream out in the emptiness of the tunnels, like a beacon to his location, but within a second it had fallen silent. He slunk forward as gracefully as his bruised hip and his state of exhaustion would allow him. 

His watch was counting down from 27 minutes and 38 seconds. Even now that the adrenaline spike was blunted and he could feel the drag in his step from his injuries, he reckoned he had ample time in which to reach the second gate. If that gate did not work either, of course, there were no other options. The countdown would reach zero, he would be reported as a compromised asset and his memory would be remotely wiped. He would stumble out of wherever he had thought was going to be his extraction point, with no idea what he was doing there, destined to be absorbed into a completely anonymous existence with the Social Ward. 

The discreet flashing green dots on his watch’s projection map led Misha along the corridor and left, down a sloping platform that terminated in a circular airlock in the floor. He cranked the wheel of the airlock to open it and felt the chill of his sweat-soaked shirt on the backs of his arms. Threading his way down into the airlock, he mouthed a silent prayer of thanks that he did not share the blocky frame of Grisha or his other colleagues recruited for their proficiency at close combat. 

The access console of the bullet shuttle was simple and completely unsecured, in accordance with regulations. Misha held his thumb on the panel for just long enough for the device to register that he was giving off the heat of a human being, and the door opened. This time, he retrieved the terminal from his pocket and was already feeding the cable into its socket by the time the shuttle sealed and the launch sequence was triggered. He hoped with an unavowed trickle of dread that being a moving target would not disrupt the gate connection. 

‘PROTOCOL’ 

The shuttle’s engines were whirring up around him and the automatic seatbelt lassoed him into place in his standing berth against the wall. 

Another glance at his watch. 8 minutes and 17 seconds remaining. 

‘MOROZOV Mikhail Vasilyevich … protocol A344BN2-286191-C … assignment complete record transfer black-encrypt full dump no wipe paaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAA…’ 

The gate blasted open and flooded Misha’s brain with scanning protocols, memory spiders and other encrypted dumpware that would extract everything he had seen, heard and done during the seven hours of the mission. This was the new way. It was quicker than debriefing every agent, more reliable, and could be piped to every intelligence department for simultaneous analysis. 

Misha did not actually see the seven hours of the mission flash before his eyes as they were downloaded. What he saw was the interior of the shuttle tube as he was jettisoned from the station at supersonic speed, then a dizzying whirl of stars that stripped him of any sense of up or down. As soon as the shuttle capsule stopped spinning, he opened a private comm channel through the gate and sent a general call. 

‘Extraction requested. This is Mikhail Vasilyevich. Extraction requested.’ 

‘Where are you, Misha?’, a familiar voice replied. 

‘I don’t know.’ 

‘Don’t worry: we’ll find you. Hang in there. Out.’ 

Once they had triangulated the location of his transmission gate, they would be able to pull him out. Until then, Misha teased the cable from his neck, rested his head back on the shuttle berth, and looked out at the stars.