duty. It was something I tried hard not to think about every time I had a shower. Just the thought gave me the shivers.

"You stalled. Your heartrate had slowed down just fine, you were as calm as a cow, and yet you didn't fire until almost five seconds later. Why the pause?"

"He was drinking a cup of coffee at a table. I could tell he was going to be there for at least another two minutes. It made no difference."

"I didn't ask you if you thought it would make a difference. I asked you why you paused. I hire you because you're the sort of woman who knows better than to take unnecessary risks. Why did you wait so long?"

I let myself sigh. "OK, so I felt a little empathy towards the target. He'd never hurt anybody. I mean, I read his profile. He was essentially a good man."

"Which is exactly what I'm talking about. We can't afford to let your personal opinions and morals slow you down when you're at work. Those profiles are there to help you to better understand the targets, to better predict them, not to make you feel an emotional attachment towards them. You can do whatever you want at home, donate your wage to charity, I don't care, but when you're out in the field, I need you to be there for me, performing at a hundred percent."

"Yes, sir," I say reluctantly.

He talks into his glass as he swishes around the remaining dribble of whiskey, as if he has trouble meeting my eyes for once. "Someone will meet with you on your way out."

This takes me by surprise. I don't need the red warning label that's suddenly superimposed over my vision to tell me that something's wrong. "Who?"

"A doctor. I'd like to run a few checks on you, just to be on the safe side." If he's not outright lying, then my software's convinced that he's at least hiding something from me.

"Checks?"

"Yeah. Checks." He takes another sip of his drink.

My paranoia starts to kick in as I realise how easy it would be for him to kill me, just as long as he took me unaware. For all my jacked up reflexes and painstakingly learned skills, in light of the new wholly artificial employees our rivals have been raving about, I'm starting to look a lot like an old Decca television set in a room full of Sony projectors. In all likelihood, Mike would have had me killed months ago already if I wasn't still so damned good.

"And Suzi?"

"Yes?" Our eyes meet again, at last.

"Do yourself a favour. Don't get emotionally involved. It's just business."

"I know." I walk out the door, not looking back.

"Well, all your tests show you're operating within specs," says the man that Mike claims to be some sort of medical doctor.

"That's a relief," I say sarcastically.

"Nevertheless, I'm still concerned about these certain imperfections in your performance. I just can't seem to find a neurological or physiological source for them."

"Did it ever occur to you that I'm only human?"

A grunt serves him as laughter. "Isn't that your main selling point? From what I hear, you're Mike's poster girl. Maybe even the whole industry's." He looks me up and down, and I fight the urge to pull out the knife I'm carrying and gouge his inferior eyes out. "Shame no one knows what you look like." Perhaps sensing my obvious discomfort, he changes the subject. "You know how few of you there are left in your line of work?" By 'you,' I assume he means humans. "Less than a dozen, by our estimates. Worldwide. You're a rarity."

I let myself flash a brief smile. Professional pride.

"A dying breed, you might say," he adds with a chuckle. I feel my whole body tense up.

"There's one more test I'd like to carry out on you. It will take several hours, but thankfully I don't actually need you to be present for it so you can go and do whatever you like. I just need to take a relatively quick backup of your brain's neural pathways first, then you can go home and get some rest."

"A neural backup?"

"It won't hurt, I promise." Another