Page 84 of The Song Rising

“They are.” Maria passed me a sheet of laminated paper. “You’re looking at one.”

I took it with icy fingers.

She had handed me a diagram of a weapon called the SL-59. Each of its components was sparsely labeled, as if the designer had been reluctant to go into too much detail. It clearly showed a compartment under the scope of the rifle, which ought to have some kind of capsule inside it. A capsule labeledRDT SENSHIELD CONNECTOR.

It took me a while to understand, then to accept, what I was seeing.

Maria lifted the rifle carefully. “It seems like a normal gun,” she said, “except for this.” She tapped the empty compartment. “Once the connector is in place, you have an inbuilt Senshield scanner.” Her brow creased. “I just . . . don’t understand this.”

“You do,” I said. “You just don’t want to believe it.”

Scion’s motto had always been “no safer place.” They strove to create an impression of peace; they had relied on it for two centuries, to prove to their denizens that the system worked, that they were safer than anyone else in the world. It was a silent bargain they made: let us remove unnaturals, no questions asked, and in return you will be protected.

A gun-mounted Senshield scanner heralded a new age. Martial law had never been intended to be a temporary measure while they dealt with the Mime Order; Scion wanted to turn Britain into a truly military state. They were ready to declare open war on unnaturals, if need be, and they now had a way to fight us without risk of collateral damage.

“Paige,” Eliza said, “look at this.”

She indicated a label on the lid of a crate. Above the Senshield symbol and the data, there was a destination. I ran my finger over the precious letters, the reason we had infiltrated this factory.

ATTN:

H. COMM. FIRST INQ. DIVISION

PRIORITY:

URGENT

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