She's breathtaking, her box braids are piled up high on her head. Several have fallen loose and frame her face in a most alluring way. I have never seen her with her hair up before. I love it. A surge of gratitude hurtles through me—for her, for my one night away from my duties, and for the memories we will make in the private hours we have been permitted to share together.

'Hello Major Ezenwa,' she smiles, shy. She holds out a bottle of wine and continues in her quiet, honey-smooth voice, 'Just a little something I picked up on the way.'

I eye the label. Domaine Leroy Musigny Grand Cru 2012, a very fine, very rare French red. I lift an eyebrow, impressed, as I take the bottle from her. 'I don't think I have ever tasted a vintage this old before,' I say, a shade too awed. I realise I don't sound cool at all. I glance at her, floundering, awkward in the face of her understated elegance, a bottle of wine worth more than my entire life's savings in my hand. She smiles and her brilliance lights up my heart.

'Neither have I,' she admits as I move aside and she comes into my apartment, looking around, curious, her dark eyes drinking in every detail. 'My father insisted. He said he had been saving it for a special occasion. It appears this is the occasion.' She stops to trail her finger over the top edge of a brass plaque, a king surrounded by his attendants set in raised relief. 'Beautiful,' she murmurs. She glances up at me, shy once more. 'From your father's collection?'

I nod. 'A gift from the Nigerian president when my father won his second term of the presidency.'

She leans forward to read the inscription engraved on the stand. 'Edo Empire of Benin. Sixteenth century.' She lets out a soft breath, her lips part, inviting. I resist the urge to drag her into my arms and press my lips against hers, to devour her, ravish her—the act utterly forbidden to both of us.

'What a precious piece of our past.' She touches the top of the plaque again, reverent. 'At least you are safe.'

I say nothing, but my thoughts are chaotic. I think of what I know, of what I can never tell her—how we are all doomed unless I earn the right for us to live in Alpha VII, our only hope for a chance to be together, to be among the chosen ones.

'Ah,' I say, and pull my eyes from her frank, honest gaze down to the wine's label. I run my thumb over its graceful calligraphy script. 'Two-thousand-twelve. Fifty-eight years old. Seems a shame to drink it.'

'I know,' she says drifting past me towards the open-plan kitchen, its glossy white countertops garishly reflecting the lights installed under the overhead cupboards. I dim the kitchen lights a bit, not too much, just a little. I don't want to give the wrong impression.

'It's hard to imagine how the world was when it was bottled.' She pulls out a bar stool and settles herself into it, graceful, as lithe as an antelope, and as regal as a panther. She leans forward, her elbows on the island. One of her braids brushes against her breast. I look away, ashamed of how much the sight arouses me, how much I long to feel her in my arms, her braids brushing against my bare chest.

'A green, temperate world hovering on the brink of its collapse,' she continues with a sigh. I catch the hint of envy tainting her words. 'Imagine. Everyone oblivious, carrying on as though it could never end. I wish I could have seen it, could have known that kind of blissful ignorance.'

I pull a pair of wine glasses from a cupboard and set them on the counter in front of her. I rummage in a drawer until I find a corkscrew. 'What would you have done?' I ask, cutting the foil away from the top of the cork, keeping my eyes on my work, not yet ready to look at her, not wanting her to see the longing in my eyes.

'Oh,' she says, her voice softening, pleased, 'no one has ever asked me that before.'

'First time for everything,' I say, glancing up at her as I tug the cork from bottle, gentle. It comes out with a quiet, satisfying pop. I hold the bottle at its base and tilt the dark Burgundy into the glasses, just a small amount, so it can air before we taste it.

She lifts her glass by its stem and sniffs. 'Mm,' she sighs, inhaling deep, 'it's so complex, like wildflowers and blossoms overlapping together, and the scent of the earth after rain—' she meets my eyes, uncertain, '—petrichor, I think it's called. I smelled it once in one of the greenhouses. I love that smell.' She swirls her wine, letting the air free its long-hidden scents, captured from a time before either of us were born.

I say nothing, sensing she will continue. She doesn't disappoint me.

'If I could have been in the world when this was bottled,' she says, low, as if she is afraid someone else might hear, 'I would have slept under the stars; danced in the rain; climbed a mountain; swum in the ocean; walked in a forest; sledded in the snow, and gone to all the museums.'

'Every single one?' I ask, lifting the glass to hide my smile. 'That might take a while.' She's right, it does smell of dry earth after the rain. It's perfect. I make a mental note to visit her father to thank him.

Her lips curve up, wry, and she looks up at me from under her thick lashes, her slim fingers still around the stem of her glass. Neither one of us have sipped the wine yet. 'Then if I must choose,' she says, 'the Louvre, the British Museum, the Smithsonian, and the Hermitage.'

I lift my glass, and toast her. 'Excellent choices. To your museum tour, then.'

She smiles, and my heart clenches. She is beyond perfect. I can't believe she is here, in my apartment, alone with me. It's like a dream, a vision I cannot touch. It's torture, exquisite and brutal all at once. I never want it to end.

'To the world we lost,' she murmurs, and sips, slow, savouring the wine.

I follow suit. The ruby liquid washes over my tongue, both delicate and robust. A multitude of flavours assault my senses. No other red I have ever tasted can compare, and I've had some.

'Oh,' she breathes, setting her glass back onto the counter with a quiet clink. 'I feel guilty now. It's too perfect.'

I nod and pour more wine into our glasses. We say nothing, content to swirl our wine, letting it air, savouring its scent spreading around us, suffusing the kitchen with the buried scents of a vanished past.

'I—' she begins, and then stops abrupt. She looks up at me, uncertain. I wait, tensing as the silence drags, fearing she is going to tell me Command has matched her to another man and this is the last time we will see each other.

'Amadi,' she whispers, glancing, involuntary, down the corridor towards my bedroom, where it hulks, dark and silent, laden with weight of countless lonely nights spent relieving myself thinking of her. She takes a deep sip of her wine and her eyes meet mine. 'I want—' she blinks back tears, her need so raw, so painful to witness I feel the nascent itch of tears in my eyes, too.

'So do I,' I whisper, unwilling to let her finish. I move around the island. She turns in her seat to face me and entwines her fingers with mine. We cling to each other, our desperate hand clasp more erotic than any of my filthiest fantasies.

'You know we can't.' I tilt my head toward the washroom. 'The sensors will pick up my DNA on you the next time you shower. We would be marked as ineligible, and banned from ever meeting again.' I lift her hand and press my lips against her fingertips. She shudders. Defeat slides over her perfect, even features.

'It's not enough,' she says, low. 'What we do. I want you inside me. I need you inside me. The waiting, the never knowing, it's killing me. Maybe we will never be allowed to be together. Maybe this is all we will ever have. Tonight. A whole night, alone.'

I pull her against me, my heart aching. I want her so bad I can hardly think straight. How many times have I dreamed of her, her legs wrapped around my hips, our bodies moving together in time? 'Shh,' I say, though I am struggling to resist, to not tear her silk blouse open and caress her breasts; to taste the ripe, hard nipples breaching the thin material, 'let's go to the shower. You can go first.' She makes a muffled sound of despair.

'It's better than nothing,' I persist, dogged. I reach for the bottle of wine. 'We can share a glass together.' I feel her fingers working at the buttons of my fly, deft, determined. I will myself to stop her.

'No,' she says. 'No more solitary showers watching each other climax, separated by a wall of glass. I want your skin on mine, you buried in me, as deep as you can go.' She is panting now, I can feel her fingers brushing against the material of my boxers, my fly wide open. I grab her wrist and hold her still.

'Adiana,' I snap, harsher than I intend, but I'm erect and aching for her, every scrap of my will fleeing, betraying me. 'I love you too much to lose you. I won't make love to you tonight, though more than anything I want to.' I pull back, guilt shearing through me at her anguished expression, at my blunt rejection of her. I grab the wine and a glass, pull her from the stool and lead her down the corridor to the washroom, steeling myself against her low sobs. The lights flicker on, soft. I go to the shower and turn on the water, setting it to the hottest setting, just how she likes it. I pour more wine and hand her the glass.

'Drink, my love,' I say as she takes the glass and drinks, deep, finishing its contents. 'This time I will not wait to use the shower after you. Tonight we will come together. You in there and me out here, and to hell with the risks. I'll just clean everything before you get out.'

She smiles, tremulous, and begins to undress. I watch, hard as a rock as she slips her smooth, toned body free of her cream blouse and pencil skirt. She isn't wearing any knickers. I gaze at her, worshipful, my hands clenching into fists. I force myself to hold back, to not touch her. It's agony.

'Get in the shower,' I say, low, my body aching with need. She obeys, and slips behind the glass. I pull my shirt and trousers off, and peel away my boxers and socks, dimly aware the floor's tiles are cold against my bare feet. She is already touching herself, her need savage, primal. She isn't even putting on her usual show for me, but it doesn't matter, it is the hottest thing she has ever done, her hunger boring into me, contagious. I watch her, her body glistening under the shower's steady cascade, a goddess. She holds my eyes as she manipulates herself, panting, burning with need, my name on her lips as she cries out and comes once, twice, three times. I meet her on her fourth orgasm, shuddering as my seed spurts into the sink and down over my clenched fist.

'I love you,' she says, her eyes locked on mine, mournful, defeated.

'I love you more than you'll ever know,' I rasp as my orgasm ebbs and the last of my semen pulses out, freed, wasted, useless. I turn on the tap and rinse it away. 'I will do anything for us to be together,' I continue, my voice turning harsh as what should belong to her slips down the drain. 'Anything. Whatever it takes. We will be together. You will be my wife.'

She slides down the glass wall and huddles into herself, her arms around her knees, helpless, broken. I long to go to her, but I cannot. I can only watch her cry.

November 2086

I ease my way along the grotty, damp corridor towards the rickety wooden door of Blue's apartment. It took ten long, brutal days of scouring drone images of the lanes and alleys to find her building, Akron's photographic memory of my memories giving us the only lead we had.

Even though I don't remember doing it, I had looked out Blue's window. Opposite her apartment, a particular gargoyle perched on the ruins of a nearby chapel. Ten long, soul-crushing days spent searching for a gargoyle. Akron was stubborn, though, and found it in the dead of the night—terminating an exhausting search through the endless wreckage of a dying city. And now here I am, in her deserted building, dressed in full combat gear, passing the once-familiar scrawls of faded graffiti plastered over the breeze block wall: 'Fuck the GC'; 'God help us'; 'Let it end'.

The images awaken memories of before, when I was myself—when I walked with her to her apartment, burning with anticipation, my heart aching with love. Even after everything I have learned about her, it still does. More than ever. Blue. Now I can only love her in silence. The one she loved is dead. Who I have become is no one to her. I can never tell her the truth—tell her I am still alive, like this. It would break her heart to see what I have become. No longer a man, but something other—a machine made for killing.

High above, my ride, a cloaked drone shuttle keeps an eye on what's left of the partially submerged city. The size of a small tank, it's a technological wonder loaned to me from Alpha VII's Elite Command. It waits for me after my rooftop drop, patient, a multi-million dollar sentinel, simultaneously communicating with me, Akron, and the team back at Alpha VII, who are watching my every move via the camera embedded in my helmet. I suspect de Pommier is patched in, too.

A quiet beep inside my helmet lets me know the cloaked shuttle has visuals for me. I tap the panel on the side of my helmet and the inside of my visor scrolls with images of what is left of the lanes of London's Soho.

Movement draws my eye to the topmost screen. Within its tiny frame, the rusted metal door leading to The Jackpot flaps open, wobbles and falls closed again. It slams open once more, so hard it ricochets against the brick wall. A burly, tattooed arm slips out from the building and holds the door open. I wait, tense. Fourteen false alarms so far. With each one my hopes kindle. Maybe Blue doesn't work there anymore. Maybe I was the only one she ever slept with.

Akron made me to prepare for the worst, forcing me to imagine Blue with a GC soldier, of her flirting with him like she did with me. The image of her mounted by another man slides into my mind, insidious. Anger flares, hot, violent, hungry for an outlet. I fight the rush of primal heat, thinking instead of her in her apartment, curled up on her bed with Miro, smiling, feeding her. The image fades, soured by de Pommier's briefing, of the unequivocal truth: Blue belongs to the UFF. I'm crazy to hope she won't be back at The Jackpot, working the soldiers.

Like a fool, I glance at the thermal readout of her apartment for the fourth time, willing her to be there, even though I know she's not. Nothing shows apart from a small heat signal tucked into a corner. I hope it's Miro. I hope she's still alive, for Blue's sake. But of Blue, only darkness suffuses her apartment. She's not there. She's not waiting for me.

I keep a wary eye on the screen showing The Jackpot's open door, the grip on my weapon rigid, sensing this is it. This is the one. This time it will be her. I brace myself.

An emaciated woman wearing a blue wig and a black latex swimsuit emerges, followed by a well-fed, beefy man, bracing the door open with one arm, the other draped around her neck, possessive. She leads him away from the club, unsteady on her stilettos, over the alley's broken cobblestones. I catch my breath. Blue. I watch her, transfixed, drinking in the sight of her. Alive. And coming straight at me.

Blue turns out of the filthy alley and moves along a wider lane, grimy and refuse-infested. The man pulls one of her breasts out of her swimsuit, and fondles it, drunk, rough. He stops and shoves her up against a metal dumpster. Within heartbeats he's inside her, ramming himself into her, raping her with brutal, savage thrusts, his hand around her throat, forcing her head back. For a second I see her face. Anguished. Her eyes bleak, dark hollows. Blind rage claws at me.

I turn, determined to go to her, to tear the bastard limb from limb, longing for his blood to coat my armor, slick and hot. I'm at the stairwell when Akron's voice cuts into the haze of my rage, his voice harsh in my earpiece, repeating my orders. Stay in the building. Wait for the target to come to you. Get Vallis and get out. Don't attract attention. In a lower voice, he warns me not to fuck up. I get the message. Akron's life is on the line. I take a deep breath and focus on the goal: getting Blue out. I head back to Blue's apartment, keeping my eyes straight ahead, ignoring the visual of another man climaxing in my woman.

A beep, and another screen pops up, superseding the one of Blue sagging against the dumpster, blood streaking the insides of her thighs. I punch the wall, once, twice, three times, until my armour-clad fist slams through a breeze block. It doesn't make me feel better. Akron hisses at me to calm down. In the new visual, the door to The Jackpot opens and a thin, wiry man emerges, moving with the precision of a trained soldier, dressed in faded military fatigues and a flak jacket. He follows the route Blue has just taken, stealthy, holding a pistol tucked up against his torso.

'Shit,' Akron mutters, tight, into my earpiece. 'He's UFF, probably her handler. Hold for orders.' The link cuts off.

Blue moves on, slower this time. The drone maps out a route to the apartment. Two blocks. I ease her door open—unlocked as usual—with the nose of my weapon. I slip inside, cautious. It's dark. Two patches of scarred wooden floorboards stare back at me, bone-white, highlighted by the pale, insipid light of a crescent moon.

I glance at the heat sensors again. The small smear in the corner moves towards me, hesitant. Miro emerges from the shadows, her eyes huge in her thin head. She walks, unsteady, starving, towards me. She sits by my feet and looks up at me, hopeful. I kneel and hold out a gloved finger, letting her rub her cheek against it. I can hear her purring. I have nothing to give her. In the kitchen I search bare cupboards. My heart clenches as I run a finger along a thick coating of dust, guilt almost crushing me. This is my fault. When I called down the strike on myself, I left them to die. I glance at Miro, who hasn't moved, though her eyes continue to plead, her message boring into me, visceral. Please. Feed me. Please.

'Maddox,' Akron's voice cuts in, urgent, 'you have to be quick. The one shadowing Vallis is tight with Zandiki. GC have been looking for that bastard for a long time. We need the one following Vallis. He'll lead us straight back to UFF's headquarters.' He pauses. I hear typing, rapid. A French accented voice murmurs in the background. So de Pommier is there after all, via her droid, watching me. 'Yes ma'am,' says Akron. 'Maddox,' he continues, tense, 'you have seventy seconds to get out before you compromise yourself.'

'Copy that,' I say, low. 'Get the shuttle ready. Will intercept the target in the stairwell.'

'No,' Akron says, his voice hard. 'Abort mission. You don't have time. We can't afford to lose this lead. Vallis can wait for another day.'

I look at Miro, looking at me. Starving. I think of the blood trailing down Blue's legs. Her eyes empty, bleak, her hope gone.

'No she fucking can't,' I mutter. 'I have time. Send the shuttle. I'm doing this.'