Anya's skin splits beneath his fist, blood bright and flowing far too freely, the hallmark of scalp wounds everywhere. She falls, crumpled like a string-cut puppet.

It is not a child who comes for him next. The woman who swings out from a pool of thick shadow that only vaguely resembles a door is grown, trim and athletic and on the taller side. She, too, wields a pair of shock batons, but with the ease of long practice.

"You can't outrun us," she says - and again, there's that strange undertone, that sense of someone else.