‘Night crew only,’ he said at last. ‘Nobody in this sector except Corporal Idiot over there.’

‘What about the parking lot?’

‘Clear.’

Merv held out his hand. ‘OK, brother. This is it. No turning back. Are we in? Do we want Opal Koboi back?’

Scant blew a lock of black hair from one round pixie eye.

‘Yes, because if she comes back on her own, Opal will find a way to make us suffer,’ he said, shaking his brother’s hand. ‘So yes, we’re in.’

Merv took a remote control from his pocket. The device was tuned to a sonix receiver planted in the clinic’s gable wall. This in turn was connected to a balloon of acid which lay gently on the clinic’s main power cube in the parking-lot junction box. A second balloon sat atop the back-up cube in the maintenance basement. As the clinic’s janitors, it had been a simple matter for Merv and Scant to plant the acid balloons the previous evening. Of course the Argon Clinic was also connected to the main grid, but if the cubes did go down, there would be a two-minute interval before the main power kicked in.

There was no need for more elaborate arrangements — after all, this was a medical facility, not a prison.

Merv took a deep breath, flicked open the safety cover and pressed the red button. The remote control emitted an infrared command activating two sonix charges.

The charges sent out sound waves bursting the balloons, and the balloons dumped their acidic contents on the clinic’s power cubes. Twenty seconds later, the cubes were completely eaten away and the whole building was plunged into darkness. Merv and Scant quickly put on night-vision goggles.