Tara lowered the gun. She also lowered her eyes from the scene in front of her, and glanced down at her wrist. She gave silent thanks for her two blessings.

An hour earlier she had been sitting in her father’s farmhouse kitchen, reading The Times. He had nodded off to sleep after supper as he usually did, and she was scanning the paper while idly listening to some vacant pop music being played on the local radio station. A news item on Page 3 caught her attention.

‘The Home Secretary announced today that Phase 2 of the Compliance Directive, rolled out following her Commons statement in March, was almost complete. She praised the combined work of the Home Office and the health services that had enabled the chip upgrade scheme to be implemented so swiftly and smoothly.’

Tara grinned to herself. The Compliance Directive had been created by the government during the crisis of Summer 2019. It required everybody to have a chip implant that would contain their basic biometric details. The chip not only confirmed citizenship or residence rights (visitors had temporary attachments), but allowed access to all public services like health and transport. It had been cleverly touted as being more about convenience than security, and there had been remarkably few objections to the scheme. Phase 1 was fairly elementary, and early adopters had instantly been labelled ‘Oncies’ by the media, standing for ‘1-Compliant’. The term had stuck, and so when the extension of the scheme was announced early in 2020, the word ‘Twocy’ had been coined for those who were 2-Compliant. The new scheme simply upgraded the chip implant with replacement software, but there were numerous extra benefits. Companies and businesses had rapidly discovered that the chips, fitted subcutaneously in the wrist, could be used to monitor and reward their workers, and new technology meant that the chips could be used to control access to buildings too. Security was transformed overnight. Offices, businesses, homes, cars, could all automatically detect visitors and authorise or deny entry as appropriate. Old-fashioned keys and locks became redundant.

Tara was still amazed by how fast the transformation had taken place, and by how little opposition there had been. True, there were innumerable advantages in people’s day-to-day lives, but she’d have expected more than token protests about apparent loss of individual liberty. The few who had raised their voices were told – often by their friends – that their liberties were being increased rather than restricted.

She was deflected from her musings by the radio, which broke off in the middle of a song. An announcer came on, his voice measured yet tense and urgent.

‘We are receiving reports of a major incident in the centre of Canterbury. Three men, described by the police as potential terrorists, seized the cathedral precinct earlier this evening, and have taken hostages from the cathedral staff. There are reports of casualties. We go over to our local reporter at the scene.’

A woman’s voice replaced the announcer’s. It was clear enough, but she was whispering and Tara had to lean forward to catch what she was saying.

‘I’m just outside the cathedral gate. I can’t go through. Nobody can. Two police officers who tried have already been shot. I can see their bodies from here, but nobody can go forward to try to rescue them. The police tell us the gunmen know where everybody is, and will shoot anybody who comes closer.’

Tara turned off the radio and got up to switch on the television. As she expected, the live news channel already had a team in Canterbury, and although they could get no nearer than the local radio’s reporter, they seemed better informed.

‘We’re told that the police are in direct communication with the men, who have barricaded themselves in front of the South Door of the cathedral. Although there is great confusion, at this point three things are clear. There have been casualties, people killed or injured, both during the initial incident and since, when police have tried to move into the cathedral precinct. Secondly, hostages are being held. It is believed they are members of the cathedral staff who were in the vicinity, although we have no details about how many there are. Finally, the attackers have revealed that they possess a sophisticated computer program which shows the position of every single person in the area, by reading the GPS co-ordinates of their Compliance chips. They say they will shoot anybody who moves towards them, and that their rifles can automatically lock on to the GPS tag of a target, so they can’t miss, they say, and they’ve already proved it by shooting dead two police officers who attempted to approach them.’

The news broadcaster switched back to the studio and a security expert. He explained that the technology the gunmen were employing couldn’t be used against them, because they appeared to have no Compliance implants. The public called such people Noncies (for non-Compliant), borrowing an abusive term to show dislike and contempt. They were automatically assumed to be criminals of the worst kind. Without chips, they couldn’t be traced or located, and the expert suggested that this was how they’d been able to move in and seize control of the cathedral in the first place.

Tara switched off the television. Noncies. Typical. The authorities had been so keen to impose their Compliance directive, and so happy to crow about its virtues, that they’d ignored the dangers. It only took a handful of non-Compliants to paralyse a city. They could turn the Compliance chips into a weapon against all citizens, but were untraceable themselves. She shook her head at the stupidity of a scheme that led to such catastrophic consequences.

Five minutes later she left the house wearing her heavy outdoor coat, leaving her father sleeping. There was no point in disturbing him. He’d find out soon enough what was going on. She got into the aged Land Rover and hauled its bulk out of the farmyard and onto the road that led to Canterbury.

She knew where to leave the car. Within fifteen minutes of hearing the radio bulletin she was in Palace Street, outside a small door set into a tall fence. It had the word ‘Private’ on it, but she was certain from her long friendship with the owners that it wasn’t locked, and she knew where it led.

Moments later she had crossed a yard, scrambled over a wall, and dropped to the ground on the other side. She grinned to herself in the near darkness. Perfect. She had played here dozens of times as a kid and knew every inch of the area. Silently she made her way across the grass and emerged near the West Door of the cathedral. She paused under a tree and listened.

There were sirens wailing in the distance, but nothing close by. Slowly, cautiously, she moved forward, keeping away from the cathedral and in the shadows of the buildings opposite. That way she had the maximum field of view as she approached the south-west corner of the cathedral. She could see the outlines of two vehicles, vans, that had been parked outside the South Door. She could make out the shapes of several people, and as her eyes focused in she could decipher the scene. There were four or five hostages, pressed back against the wall. They were being half-guarded by a man with an automatic weapon, but his attention wasn’t really on them. They posed no threat. Instead he was looking at the screen of a laptop computer that had been set up on the ground. A second man was kneeling down beside it, while a third stood alert behind one of the vans, his rifle poised and ready, looking out for anyone approaching from the gate.

Even with her eyesight Tara couldn’t see the detail of the laptop screen, but she didn’t need to. It was a GPS map, and from where she stood she could make out the tiny red dots that represented every living person in the area. There was a cluster of dots beside the cathedral – those were the hostages. And there was a great mass of dots outside the cathedral gate, where the reporters were and where the police forces must be massing and trying to decide what to do. They couldn’t storm the area for fear of the hostages being killed, and they couldn’t approach individually because the gunmen would shoot them down.

The gunmen. The only dots missing from the computer display were those of the gunmen. And hers.

Silently, crouching low to the ground, she moved. She was much closer now, within thirty yards, but she wasn’t scared. The men’s attention was fixed on the screen, on the threats that the red dots represented. They had never considered that there might be a threat that wasn’t visible.

Still she crept forward. Eighty feet, then sixty. She could see everything now, the details of the men and their dark clothing, the bright, bright dots on the computer screen. If any of the gunmen turned round they’d spot her immediately. But they had no reason to turn.

She stood up straight, and carefully removed her grandfather’s service pistol from her coat pocket. It was like when she stalked rabbits in the fields. They were twitchy, fearful, and you just had to know which direction to approach them from. She had done this a thousand times. The straight arm, her perfect eyesight, a steady hand. A gentle, gentle squeeze of the trigger and another rabbit fell, destined for the pot.

She paused. These were men, not rabbits. Rabbits were vermin, and good eating. These men were … killers, she thought. She could see the bodies of the two policemen across the yard. They didn’t show up as dots on the computer display, which meant they were dead.

She raised the pistol. Her hand never wavered as she straightened her arm, lined up the sight with the middle of the rifleman’s back. He was looking out towards the gate, at the threats he understood.

The gunshot and the jerk of the man’s body seemed simultaneous. Even before he hit the ground she had swung the barrel round to the man who was guarding the hostages. By the time he’d turned towards her and realised what was happening she had finished aiming with complete deliberation and squeezed the trigger gently again.

The third man, the one crouching by the computer, jumped to his feet and swivelled. Whether he would have surrendered she never knew. His hand went to his pocket and she guessed he was reaching for a gun. Her pistol tracked automatically until it was lined up with his chest, and she pulled the trigger for the third time.

In the aftermath of the shots there was a temporary silence. Tara lowered the gun. She also lowered her perfect eyes from the scene in front of her, and glanced down at her wrist. She gave silent thanks for her two blessings. Then she turned and made her way back to the Land Rover. With luck her father would still be asleep.