Startled, Natalie turned round. Dudgeon had leapt to her feet. She was opening and closing her mouth like a goldfish. What little colour she had was rapidly draining from her cheeks. The screen at the back of the stage, which had been showing inspirational slogans and videos about the company's work with terminal patients, fizzed with a static snowstorm that resolved into a huge human face. Or at least partly human. Natalie felt a stirring of recognition, the pixellated visage on the big screen, a computer talking, a twenty year-old conspiracy.

'Stagnetto!' Dudgeon croaked.

'Hello all,' said the face, which was becoming clearer by the second. A thin metal plate shimmered alongside the man's right eye, running to behind his ear. The eye itself was a black orb with a glowing red light at the centre. The man's skin was leathery, latticed with white canyons of ancient scars.

'What are - I mean how did you - You have no right!' Dudgeon spluttered.

'Ah Joanne, eloquent as always. I do miss our little chats.' The voice was gravelly, rusty, as if it did not often see the light of day. He spoke with a clipped well-educated English accent.

'Don't just stand there gawping girl, get these people out of here! Now.' Natalie realised she had involuntarily shuffled to the side of the stage. Anything to be away from the horror of that face. She was trying to remember where she had seen the name. Stagnetto. Dudgeon and Stagnetto...

'Yes, ma'am,' she mumbled, and called the Secs over to help clear the room. Jake lingered behind and whispered as she shoved him out of the door.

'I'll wait for you,' he said.

'Ssh!' Natalie hissed back, glaring. Aloud, she said, 'I don't know what you're talking about Holland. A technical problem, nothing more.' She pushed him out the door. 'We'll call you when we're ready to continue,' she added firmly.

When she returned to the stage, Dudgeon was standing in front of the screen, hands on hips. A thin, frail-looking silhouette against the giant grinning face.

'Oh yes, I can hear you,' the man was saying. 'And don't worry about your A.I., Unicorn. It was most obliging.'

'This is not an appropriate time, Stagnetto,' Dudgeon said. She sounded more angry than worried. Still in control.

'Oh it is the perfect time, my dear. This time we have an audience!' He waved his hand, indicating Natalie and the Secs, all mesmerised by the huge face.

'You may as well tell me what you want,' Dudgeon said. She carefully moved her right hand behind her back, away from the cameras and the screen, so Natalie could see her fingers. She began to spell out words in code.

T-E-C-H-S -- T-R-C -- S-I-G-L -- S-N-D -- K-A-T -- G-E-T -- B-O-X

Natalie called over one of the Secs and whispered her orders to him. 'Maintain radio silence, you understand? This guy got into Unicorn, he could be listening.' He nodded dumbly and hurried out of the room. Natalie turned back to the strange man on the screen.

'I believe you have something of mine, Joanne,' he was saying. 'It has been a long tim, but there is only one avenue of enquiry left to consider, much as I despise having to admit it.'

'I see. And what might this mysterious object be?'

'Oh, you know full well, my dear,' he said with a wry smile. 'Something you and I once shared, as intimately as lovers. The casket contains more than just our research, but I suspect you already know this.'

'You hack into my mainframe, interrupt my first day in office and break nearly thirty years of silence - for a wooden box?'

The screen filled with a gap-toothed grin. 'That, and to see the look on your face when you see what I have become.'

'You are a mutant, nothing more.'

'I am enhanced!'

'To be perfectly frank, I am quite astonished to find you still breathing.'

'Astonished, or disappointed? Your thieves did not find me. The casket, yes. But not me. Now I have found you, and I want my property back.'

'You are welcome to make an appointment.'

Stagnetto chuckled. It sounded quite painful. 'I am no fool, Dudgeon,' he said. 'And you would do well not to underestimate me. Negotiating with Unicorn was nothing. I can see through all of your cameras, read all of your emails...' He paused. The red light in his eye socket flickered. 'And tamper with your research.'

'And you would do well not to underestimate me.' Dudgeon said through gritted teeth.

Stagnetto laughed. 'Of course! Prime Minister. You need not worry. I have no desire to shatter your strange dreams.' The camera zoomed out a little, revealing a long white room lined with glass. A man in a long black coat leaning casually on the workbench in the centre of the room. 'Not yet, in any case.' The man in the black coat grinned, and threw his arms wide. 'See what I can do?' he said.

Dudgeon gasped. Natalie wondered why. This man was obviously some sort of scientist, perhaps he and Dudgeon had a history in that room.

A door banged open behind them and everybody turned. Everybody except Dudgeon, who was glaring furiously at the screen, fists bunched. The Sec sergeant coughed, embarrassed, and pressed a piece of paper into Natalie's hand. On it were written a set of co-ordinates and the words 'majer seckurty breech'. Natalie sighed.

'Yes, we know,' she said quietly. The Secs had serious intelligence issues. She ought to get the Techies working on that a bit harder. Something else to deal with later.

'Natalie?' Dudgeon said, eyes not leaving the screen.

'Yes ma'am?'

'News?' Dudgeon clicked her fingers.

'Sorry ma'am,' Natalie said, and handed Dudgeon the note. Dudgeon read it, and rolled her eyes. Turned back to the screen.

'Stay there,' she said to Stagnetto.

'I see we are done here,' Stagnetto said with a chuckle, shaking his head. 'Adieu, Professor, I'm sure we will speak again. Soon.' He smiled broadly, and nodded to someone off camera. The screen filled with static again and the face faded. Three more Secs burst into the conference room, weapons ready. Radios buzzed like agitated wasps. Natalie felt a little faint. Her own head was buzzing too, spikes of pain piercing her temples.

'Ma'am!' the Sec sergeant shouted, deafening her in one ear. 'We must hurry. There is a security breach on basement level five!' Dudgeon nodded.

'Go quickly, all of you, and tell the General to meet us there,' she said. 'Natalie, you go too. Make sure my casket is still intact, then meet me in the gallery.'

'What? Where?' Natalie asked, confused.

'Don't worry. The Secs will take you.' A hand gripped her arm like a vice. 'Quickly now, Stagnetto is still in the building.'