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(20 August somewhere a long way from London)

Where were we?

Oh yes.

Morgan hauled himself out of his chair, and headed for the locker on the other side of the office. Sarah followed him, making sure her skirt was pulled down over her knees as she got up out of her own seat. The locker looked as if it had been built to withstand anything non‐nuclear, and Morgan opened it with a key from his trouser pockets, which he left in the lock.

There were shelves inside the locker, cluttered with small pieces of plastic hardware and old sheaves of photocopier paper. The largest item in the locker was a plastic shield, maybe three feet tall and two feet wide, so two of the shelves had been removed to give it the space it needed. The shield was curved, transparent, a pair of handles bolted to the rear side. Some kind of electronic system was built into the front of the plastic.

Wait. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t a memory. What was it?

Morgan had to take the shield out of the locker to get at Guest’s hardware. Once he had his hands on it, he seemed reluctant to put down again.

‘You seen these?’ he asked Sarah.

‘Um, sort of,’ she said.

‘Great, aren’t they? Same market as the shock batons, but you don’t need the full Section Five permit.’

Sarah took a closer look at the electronics. ‘It’s a riot shield?’ she asked, then wished she hadn’t. If she’d really been from IPS, she wouldn’t have needed to ask, surely.

Sarah’s point of view. This was what was happening to Sarah. Now, why on Earth should that happen?

Morgan seemed happy to be able to show the shield off. He stuck an arm through the handles, then started playing with the wiring on his side of the plastic. ‘Latest model,’ he said ‘Only cost a few quid to make. Stand back.’

So Sarah stood back.

The air crackled in front of her. The two other men in the office stopped whatever it was they were doing by the filing cabinets, and watched Sarah’s reaction with amusement. Sarah tried to look impressed.

‘How many volts?’ she asked, casually. It sounded like the kind of question Morgan was expecting.

‘Forty thousand. You can take it all the way up to a hundred and fifty thousand if you feel like doing some permanent damage.’

‘Impressive,’ Sarah told him.

‘Yeah,’ he said as he switched the device off and slid his arm out of the handles. ‘The police thought so.’

Sarah blinked at him. ‘The British police?’

‘The Met. Yeah.’

‘You mean, they’re thinking of using –’

‘Not “thinking”. They’ve already ordered a batch off us. For testing.’ Morgan rested the shield by the side of the locker. ‘They say they want to use ’em on “dangerous dogs”.’

For some reason, that got a laugh from the other two men.

‘Be fair,’ one of them said. He was short, fat, bald and northern. ‘They are testing them on dangerous dogs.’

Sarah wondered how much of this might be true. Morgan sounded like he was trying to show off, to make her think he was in with all the right people. Even with the police. ‘Won’t anyone check to see what they’re being used for?’ she asked.

‘Do they ever? You know the game. People don’t go looking for trouble; nobody wants to know who’s got what.’

‘And you’ve got Home Office approval for all this?’

‘Put it this way, nobody’s talking about prosecuting us. If this Cold stuff works, we’re thinking of giving the police first refusal on it. There’s enough people in prison they wouldn’t mind vanishing. And some “dangerous dogs”. Right?’

‘Not a spy from the RSPCA, are you?’ one of the other men added. And they all laughed again.

Sarah had no idea how to respond to that. Fortunately, she didn’t have to. Before Morgan could turn back to the locker, there was a rattling, coughing sound from somewhere outside the building. An engine, but an old one.

‘Sounds like Alan’s back,’ one of the men noted.

Morgan made a ‘tsch’ noise, and wandered over to the window. The other two turned away from Sarah, to get on with whatever passed for work around here.

Sarah waited until she was sure they weren’t watching her. Then she reached into the locker, scooped up every