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the rough texture of the scab on Lucasinho’s ear. She enjoys tugging at it, undoing the healing, letting a little fresh blood seep. It gets Abena wet inside her Helena Barber ballgown. Now they’re back in Boa Vista’s network, Jinji has shown Lucasinho her gift; a chrome fang curving through the top arc of his right ear. Looks good. Looks hot. But she won’t let him even slip an arm around her waist.
    Before they reach the window they both know something is wrong. No music, no chatter, no splashing of bodies in the waterfall pool. Shouting voices, orders snapped in Portuguese and Globo. The pupil of Xangô’s stone eye overlooks the length of the Boa Vista’s gardens. Lucasinho sees Corta security escoltas guarding groups of guests. The band and the wait staff have their hands on their heads. Security drones scan the sculpted walls; their lasers rest a moment on Lucasinho and Abena.
    ‘What’s going on?’ Lucasinho asks. Jinji answers in the same instant as Abena’s face turns to shock.
    There has been an attempt on the life on Rafael Corta.

    The edge of the knife lies against Marina Calzaghe’s throat. If she moves, if she speaks, if she takes too deep a breath, it will part her flesh. The blade is so insanely sharp it is almost anaesthetic: she would not feel the slitting of her windpipe. But she must move, she must speak if she is to live.
    Her fingers tap the stem of the cocktail glass clamped upside down on the tray.
    ‘The fly,’ she hisses.
    Flies didn’t move like that. Marina Calzaghe knows flies. She worked as a flycatcher. On the moon, insects – pollinators, decorative butterflies like the ones the Asamoah kids sent wafting through Boa Vista, are licensed. Flies, wasps, wild bugs threaten the complex systems of lunar cities and are exterminated. Marina Calzaghe has killed a million flies and knows they don’t fly like that, in a straight attack line for the exposed soft skin in the corner of Rafael Corta’s jaw line. She lunged with the glass, caught the fly millimetres from its target and clapped the empty martini glass to the tray. A cocktail prison. And in the same instant, a knife whispered out of a concealed magnetic sheath to her throat. At the end of the knife, a Corta escolta in a tailored suit with a perfectly folded square in his breast pocket. He still looks like a thug. He still looks like death.
    Heitor Pereira squats stiffly to examine the thing in the glass. For a first-generation, he is a big man, square built. A big ex-navy man peering into an upturned cocktail glass would be comedy but for the knives.
    ‘An assassin bug,’ Heitor Pereira says. ‘AKA.’
    In an instant blades ring Lousika Asamoah. Their tips are millimetres from her skin. Luna wails and sobs, clinging to her mother. Rafael hurls himself at the security men. Men in suits pile on him, pinion him.
    ‘For your own safety, senhor,’ Heitor Pereira says. ‘She may be harbouring biological agents.’
    ‘It’s a drone,’ Marina Calzaghe whispers. ‘It’s chipped.’
    Heitor Pereira looks closer. The fly batters itself against the glass but in its moments of stillness a pattern of gold tracery is clearly visible on its wings and carapace.
    ‘Let her go.’ Adriana Corta’s voice is quiet but the tone of command makes every security man and woman flinch. Heitor Pereira nods. The knives are sheathed. Lousika scoops up the howling Luna.
    ‘And her,’ Adriana Corta orders. Marina gasps as the knife is removed from her throat and realises she has not inhaled since security grabbed her. The shaking starts.
    Lucas is shouting, ‘Lucasinho? Where is Lucasinho?’
    ‘I’ll take that now.’ Heitor Pereira places his hand on top of the glass. He takes a pulse-gun from a small holster. The device is the size of his thumb, a silly, camp weapon in his huge hand. ‘Shut down your familiars.’ Up and down Boa Vista familiars wink out of existence. Marina blinks off her own Hetty. That camp little gun possesses