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mad waves of liquid snow, white mercury ...
    Peace.
    The wave descended across Carter like a white shroud. He was at one with himself; the horror of the past year was gone in a single rush of white injection. Gone, Feuchter and his twisted development of the military QIII processor; gone, the Nex assassins and their hunting and murdering; gone, the images of death and betrayal which had haunted Carter and forced Kade to the forefront of his violent mind ... gone, the attempt by the rogue Spiral operatives to take over the world from a floating warship in the Arctic seas ...
    ... And all were as inconsequential as a single snowflake.
    Snow hissed by, and below him Carter could feel the board; it was a part of him - they had become one. Carter felt his speed increase and the wind howled past his goggles. He crouched lower, and as the ice trail descended through wind-swaying pines the world suddenly opened up to Carter’s right. The mountains fell away into a vast open canyon where far, far below icy waters crashed through narrow rocky pools. Carter veered right, hit a low hump of snow and kicked himself into the air with the board raised in the vertical. Again, everything was silent, but this time with the whole world of ice and snow opening before him, there came a panoramic explosion of blinding white and blasting air ...
    The snowboard slid along the edge of the precipice and a devastating crevasse opened up in front of Carter’s eyes. There came scraping sounds, rocks slicing the underside of the board at high speed and leaving deep grooves. But Carter was oblivious to this. Sunlight glinted from the ice and snow and distant peaks and he did not glance down at the far distant sharp serrated rocks or landlocked lakes. The board veered left, hissing away from the edge of the sheer drop in a shower of snow and Carter allowed himself to breathe once more.
    The faster he went, the more peace settled over him.
    Adrenalin brought him serenity.
    But then— He felt something: a splinter in his soul, a hot needle drilling through his mind. The bulk of the Browning pressed against him reassuringly beneath his jacket but the other feeling, uncomfortable and real and nestling in his stomach like a cancer, made his head twitch as it came up, his eyes scanning his surroundings in a sudden panic born of experience and a life spent in deadly situations. It was almost a vibration, deep, subsonic, beyond normal hearing and it made him feel suddenly sick to his very core.
    Carter licked at his dry lips behind the mask.
    And then the feeling was gone ... as quickly as it had come.
    The board and its rider flashed beneath more conifers, adrenalin pumping Carter to even greater speed. Left and right he zigzagged down the insanely steep incline - more treacherous than any black run that a slope designer could dream up - until, finally, it levelled out and Carter’s racing raging heart started to calm as the board straightened and he sped left, away from the cliffs and lethal terminal drops.
    ‘ You’re still a pussy,’ whispered Kade.
    Carter smiled grimly, his face darkly demonic behind the mask.
    ‘I must get it from you,’ he muttered.
    Reaching the outskirts of the hotel grounds, he snapped free of the snowboard and clipped a strap to the carrying D-ring; the hotel, the Coeur des Alpes, loomed ahead of him, an example of fine Swiss architecture constructed from smooth stone and beech, huge beams fronting finely sculpted gardens. Beyond, down snow-laden paths and cable-car tracks, sat the distant town of Zermatt, huddling under a winter shawl of cloud with curls of smoke reaching like grey fingers into the sky.
    Carter walked slowly down the winding path, boots crunching fresh fallen snow, between decorative trees and a variety of winter flowers, splashes of colour from edelweiss, lilies and anemones. He stopped before he reached the entrance; a small group of people had arrived in a horse-drawn sleigh and were excitedly disembarking,