The explosion doesn’t come until she has nearly reached Fortnum & Mason for the third time in the rickshaw’s vagrant departure. She wonders with glassy calm if Kraken held the lift so that it would not arrive until after its blitz on the resources of the Witness had materialised, or whether it’s just coincidence. How good is its penetration of the network? How long can it hold against the System’s self-repair? The sound of her would-be assassination is familiarly embracing: a thing of the body rather than the ears. The rickshaw shudders, but does not slow, as the windows of the hallowed department store crack along their widest axis and the awning scythes away over her head. She feels the detonation somewhere in her chest, and waits for the inevitable blizzard of dying fish to wash up from under the seat. To her disappointment they never arrive, and the orchestra seems to have taken the day off as well, leaving only the dull, ordinary noises of destruction and the distant sound of ambulances and fear.