David broke free from the crowd of demonstrators and was confronted by a dog. 'Here, boy,' said David, holding out a hand. It knew better to be fooled by an empty hand. Somewhere behind him David's sister was searching for him, calling his name. He could hear it even though her calls barely rose above the shouts of the crowd. The dog stood and stared unblinking. David tried smiling. Something was going on in the background. The marauder had emerged from the levelled building. Five young men jumped on to its roof with their lumps of rock and wooden posts, hammering away pathetically at the impregnable machine. From the dog's right eye, five lethal bolts of sound disrupted the functioning integrity of the young men's internal organs. They slid from the machine like cast off skin. The crowd fell silent. David ran.
Meanwhile, Janyka finds a sheltered spot between the shadowy pillars of a historical city council building now derelict and hauls out her datapad. She knows it's no good when it comes to future research data and, of course, there is always the chance of the signal being traced, but, nonetheless, she tries. Then she tried punching in David's identity code. And when she had tried, she tries again, and though it's predictive cells have never been adequate, she will try again. She lets her head fall back against the loose stonework, realising that the data-facility is shifting her tenses. It's buzzing back and forward with her still attached. A second or two forward; half a minute back, so that she repeats the whole process, but gets nowhere.
She thumps the pad and it takes her strikingly back to the point when the five guys are eliminated right in front of her. This doesn't happen. Data-facilities don't fool around with time-lines. They might produce the data, but they go there. Meanwhile, the albatross, her brother, will have to be found and probably given another good slap.
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