The Fear Index

button with the heel of his hand to open it. No response. He repeats the motion frantically, as if hammering it into the wall. Nothing. All the lights are out: the fire must have shorted the circuits. As he turns, his eyes go up to the watching lens and one sees in them a tumult of emotions – rage is there, even a sort of insane triumph: and fear, of course.

As fear increases into an agony of terror, we behold, as under all violent emotions, diversified results .

    Hoffmann has a choice now. He can either stay where he is and risk being trapped and burned to death. Or he can try to go back into the flames and reach the fire escape in the corner of the tape-robot suite. The calculation in his eyes …
    He goes for the latter. The heat has become much more intense in the last few seconds. The flames are casting a brilliant glow. The Perspex cabinets are melting. One of the robots has ignited and is also melting in its central section, so that as he rushes past it, the automaton topples forwards at the midriff in a fiery bow and crashes to the floor behind him.
    The ironwork of the staircase is too hot to touch. He can feel the heat of the metal even through the soles of his boots. The steps don’t run all the way up to the roof but only to the next floor, which is in darkness. By the crimson glow of the fire behind him he can make out a large space with three doors leading off it. A noise like a strong wind in a loft is shifting around up here. He can’t quite make out whether it is coming from his left or his right. Somewhere in the distance he hears a crash as a section of the floor gives way. He puts his face in front of the sensor to unlock the first door. When it doesn’t respond, he wipes his face on his sleeves: there is so much sweat and grease on his skin it is possible the sensors can’t recognise him. But even when his face is cleaner it doesn’t respond. The second door won’t open either. The third does, and he steps into utter darkness. The night-vision cameras record him groping blindly around the walls for the next exit, and so it goes on, from room to room, as Hoffmann seeks to escape the maze of the building, until at last, at the end of a passage, he opens a door on to a furnace. A tongue of fire races towards the fresh supply of oxygen like a hungry living thing. He turns and runs. The flames seem to pursue him, lighting ahead the gleaming metal of a staircase. He passes out of camera shot. The fireball reaches the lens a second later. The coverage ends.

    TO THE PEOPLE viewing it from the outside, the processing facility resembles a pressure cooker. No flames are visible, only smoke issuing from the seams and vents of the building, accompanied by this incessant roar. The fire service plays water on the walls from three different directions to try to cool them down. The concern of the chief fire officer, as he explains to Leclerc, is that cutting open the doors will only feed oxygen to the fire. Even so, infrared equipment keeps detecting shifting black pockets inside the structure where the heat is less intense and where someone might have survived. A team wearing heavy protective gear is preparing to go in.
    Gabrielle has been moved back with Quarry to just inside the perimeter fence. Someone has put a blanket round her shoulders. They both stand watching. Suddenly, from the flat roof of the building, a jet of orange flame shoots into the night sky. It resembles in shape, if not in colour, the plume of fire you might see at a refinery, burning off a gaseous waste product. From its base something detaches. It takes a moment for them all to realise that it is the fiery outline of a man. He runs to the edge of the roof, his arms outstretched, then leaps and falls like Icarus.

19

    Looking to the future … which groups will ultimately prevail, no man can predict; for we well know that many groups, formerly most extensively developed, have now become extinct .

    CHARLES DARWIN, On the Origin of Species (1859)

    IT WAS ALMOST midnight and the streets leading to Les Eaux-Vives were quiet, the shops shuttered, the restaurants closed. Quarry and Leclerc sat in the back of a patrol car in silence.
    Eventually Leclerc said, ‘You are quite certain you wouldn’t prefer to be taken home?’
    ‘No. Thank you. I need to get in touch with our investors tonight before they hear about what’s happened on the news.’
    ‘It will be a major story, no doubt.’
    ‘No doubt.’
    ‘Still, if you