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and told Emily to make sure it got to her new flat safely. She trotted up the wide steps to the building, feeling tired from the flight and too much VR, but a little excited as well, despite the bad start. Rob was right —she was good enough to make it, immune or not. She passed through the automatic doors and strode purposefully to the receptionist, but the Nepali woman’s eyes were VR white and she could not be brought out of it by waving or a raised voice.
    “What floor?” Amber said, in the end.
    “Fifth, I think,” Emily replied. “Something’s going on up there. Highly classified but lots of people seem to be involved. Including that receptionist, I’m guessing.”
    Amber found the lift, shot up several stories and arrived at an office in chaos. A huge man in a dark suit charged across the aisle, eyes pearl white, slammed into a desk and fell to the ground, grabbing his shin in pain. Others were running, shouting at each other, while still more just stood between desk and VR seat, eyes white.
    Straight in front of her, down the central gap between the desks, a door opened. General Dryer stepped out. He looked furious. He made eye contact with her, somehow contrived to look even angrier, and then abruptly his eyes went white as he VR’d for a few seconds. When the iris and pupil returned, everyone stopped, and the white eyes that Amber could see regained their humanity. Several people stumbled in their haste to stop moving. To emphasise whatever he had just broadcast, the General shouted “Attention!”, but it was redundant. He already had the attention of everyone in the room, and, Amber suspected, the attention of quite a lot of people not in the room.
    “All Area Commanders and Trainees, in here !”
    He disappeared into his office.
    “You’re up,” Emily said quietly.
    “Thanks,” muttered Amber. She walked across the office and filed through the black doorway with the rest of the trainees and several soldiers whose single lapel star indicated their rank of Area Commander. About twenty of them took their places in high–backed leather seats surrounding a table of dark wood. Others continued to fill the room, standing behind the chairs. Her seat was directly facing the General’s. He glared around the room. A single tall window behind him showed either the real view outside or a vivid reproduction. The buildings of Kathmandu spread ochre and brown in all directions. In the distance Amber could see slums, and then bright green terraced hills rising beyond.
    The General said “Close the door,” and Amber recognised the blond man from the airport taxi rank shutting it softly.
    “That guy really likes closing doors,” Emily said. Amber blinked hard to make her shut up.
    For a moment the General’s eyes went white again. When he returned he began to speak.
    “It goes without saying, but I’m saying it anyway. This is a completely classified situation, marked black–one. Any breach of infosec will result in immediate court martial for treason. I will now tell you the facts as we know them. Yesterday morning a powerful electromagnetic signal was detected at alert stations around the world. The radio burst was comparable to that detected in 2026 shortly before the GSE took to orbit. Actually the main difference between the two was that this was considerably more powerful.”
    Amber felt a rush of fear and excitement through her chest. Gasps and murmurs ran around the room.
    “Silence!” the General said. “It overwhelmed many of our detectors, and there is confusion about the order in which it reached those that did not burn out. So pinning down the location by those means may be impossible.”
    There were a several mutters, but the quiet held.
    “We have no evidence that it was the Chinese, but that is our best guess at the moment. Those of you new to Kathmandu will have seen it on your way to the office; there is agreement–violating tech on every street corner out here. The vast majority of