PART TWO: TO HELL AND BACK

Epilogue

This is the seat of power of AvaMed. In this room the miasma crisis was pitched, talked over and finally put into action. This is where it all began.

It's a huge white room, with original, priceless paintings hanging on the wall, all lit by soft ambient lighting. There's a large oak walnut conference table in the middle of the room, flanked by leather seats. And at the far end, at the top of a short staircase, is Simon Grant.

His desk is a large white marble semi-circle. There's a laptop built into it before him, an old glass and gold bar table lamp, and a pen holder. Nothing else. No pictures, no family, no nothing. Behind him there's a huge long window, black eyes beyond which the city spreads out and up into the summer air, stars shining in the velvet darkness. And at the centre of this sits Grant himself.

I approach him, walking past the conference table, my legs like jelly. I'm getting that feeling you get when you look at the pyramids or Venice or Lady Liberty for the first time – you've seen it in the photos, you know what it looks like, and in real life you're realising that it's every bit as impressive. In these settings, in his lair, Simon Grant couldn't look more imposing. I can't see them, but I know there are buttons in his desk which he can press and summon a hundred fully-armed men into this room and have me vaporised and cleaned up before his 9 am conference. I know he's been following my every move through that LCD screen. His face tells me so. But there's no fear. Nothing but a goddamn fiery determination to end it all.

I walk up the steps.

"Mr Payne," Grant says, his voice as smooth as good wine. He's got a face built for Forbes or any of those other corporate bibles – young, but wise beyond its years, clean shaven, deep tan, ruggedly attractive but undeniably wealthy. Slicked black hair. He's wearing a white pinstripe shirt and black braces. The sleeves are rolled up.

"Don't act so surprised," I reply. "You know what I want."

"The vaccine, right?" he says, nonchalantly. "It's hopeless. If Sax got the C-Strain she's dead already.

Anger flashes up through my body and I reach for my gun. "How do you know about Sax?"

Grant chuckles. He's not acting scared, but he's been taught not to show any fear. I learned when to recognise a terrified man a long time ago.

"Oh, and that's the automatic response, isn't it, Payne?" he sneers. "Reach for the gun. Why solve problems any other way? It matters everything to you that your wife and children are dead, but all those other orphans and widows you're leaving behind – that's fine, isn't it?"

"I'm no hero," I reply, but he's hit me hard, and it hurts because he's right. I can justify it to myself as much as I want, but in the end it all boils down to me, the gun and the bad guy, and if I think there's anything else to it, I'm a fool.

"No," he says. "You don't know any other way. You're as bad as we are. It's your choice of victims that lets Joe Average think you're a Hero Cop, isn't it?"

I throw it aside. Playing mind tricks with me. Ignore it. Focus on what matters.

I pull my gun on him.

He chuckles softly. "Go on, Payne," he says. "Shoot me."

Something snaps, and I leap forward, and the next thing I know the window has imploded, and I'm standing out on the brink with the harsh summer wind pulling at my hair, the city rising up around me like stars, the scream of sirens a dying crescendo in my ears. I've got Grant in my hand, and he's squirming. And the look of comfort in his eyes has turned to raw fear.

"See, Grant?" I yell, over the wind. "A little violence can be useful. Now where's the vaccine?"

"No!" Grant cries.

I let go with one hand. For a moment half of his body tilts, and he gets a nice long look at that distant plaza, far, far below, the snake a tiny Monopoly piece, and the shards of glass falling like shooting stars to those hard, cold tiles. My stomach lurches and I almost let him go.

"In my desk!" he screams, and I grab hold of his shirt cuffs again. His brow is moist with cold sweat.

"How did you know about Sax?" I say. "Who set this whole thing up?"

"God, not that!" he screams hysterically. I let him go again, shaking him gently with my spare hand. One foot tilts, begins to slide, and he screams.

I grab him again.

"WHO!" I yell in his face.

"Senator West!" he screams back.

For a moment I blank out, the noise of the city around me fading to a dull hum.

"You better not be lying, because if you're not, those are some high-class accusations," I whisper.

Grant shakes his head, and the final piece of the puzzle slides into place, and suddenly everything fits. And it's like a conspiracy theorist's worse nightmare. Senator Nathan West is the most powerful man in New York. A staunch Republican, all the polls have him up to be the next President. Won the last election here in New York by a landslide, on a strictly religious and criminal platform. I'd read the paper's side of the story – it was pretty well known. Came from a poor East Side family, raised in an orphanage by some old nuns who raised him as a strict Catholic. He left the nunnery to go to college, and graduated, but found out that the world of work wasn't for him. He wanted to make a difference. So he went into politics here in the city, and was one of the fastest high-flyers the state had seen, making congressman in his late thirties. He got elected to Senator just a few years back.

But I knew there was more to Senator West. I knew he'd been a minor member of the Inner Circle, back when it was a major organisation. He'd kept his head low when the Circle collapsed, but after it fell apart, he swept into power and picked up the remains. Now he ran the city completely.

If anyone could afford to commission the manufacture of a virus as potent as Miasma, it was Senator West. And did that mean he'd hired Hades to take care of me and the rest of the precinct? It all fit, but none of it made sense. It was the stuff of nightmares.

I drag the quivering shape of Simon Grant back into his office, and he collapses weakly into his chair. I step away, down the steps, my head swimming. Senator West – behind everything? God, Hades had been right.

"How did he do it?" I ask calmly.

"Got in touch with me about a year ago," Grant says weakly. He sounds ill. "Promised me that if we put his virus prototype into mass production, he'd make all the charges of malpractice in Africa go away. I had no choice."

"And withdrawing the virus cure until you could get enough money for it? Was that his idea too?"

"That was ours." He sighs, and wipes his brow. He sounds scared, really scared, for the first time. "I don't know what's going on anymore. I think… I think he's gone mad. Stark raving mad."

Suddenly his fear makes perfect sense.

I turn to say something to Grant, to retrieve the virus, to leave here, but there was a loud thud from behind me like a gun shot. Next thing I know three bullets are whistling past my face. They all hit Grant in the chest. He screams, struggles for a moment and then dies, plumes of smoke rising off his still chest.

I don't need to turn around to know who fired the shots. And sure enough, there he stands, with his big wide shark smile, clutching a smoking gun. FBI Agent Troy Novak. Flanked on both sides by his goons, all in expensive suits. I recognise his lackey from our first meeting.

"I think he's said enough," Novak says with a little chuckle.

"Agent Novak," I say. "So this is your glorious new world order. You make it sound like something glorious, but I'm thinking you're more like Senator West's lapdog."

"I'm cleaning up this mess, Payne," he says, still grinning. "And you're very much a part of it. You and AvaMed. They made a big mistake trying to screw us over. They'll be out of business when the Dow Jones opens tomorrow morning." He laughed at himself for a moment, and then added, "If there is a Dow Jones."

"Nice to know you're repaying them kindly," I reply. "And what's my reward?"

He fired a single shot. It socks home in my neck, a brief flash of pain.

I reach for my Desert Eagle, but it's like lifting a ten-tonne weight. My legs collapse under me and I fall to my knees. The whole world swims in grey, fading to black. Tranquiliser dart, I think, tasting the stinging medicinal at the back of my throat.

The last thing I remember seeing is Troy Novak's legs as he steps forward, and feeling his goon's arms around me as they lift me up.

Author's Note: Thanks to all those that have been reading up those point, and to all those who have submitted reviews. Part Three, the final part, will be up soon. I'm hoping to try something different with the prelude: see what you think! Thanks again - Pat Taylor.