He turned around. Behind them, the Esplanade bridge had been armoured, along its vertebral column, with a row of concrete blocks anchoring plates of two-metre-tall metal fencing. Across the city steel girder exoskeletons had grown over along selected roads, crusted at intervals with thousand-watt lights. In two days’ time the entire ossified route and the capillaries surrounding it would be closed to traffic, the cartilage hardening and bones fusing, conjoining roads that previously laid criss-cross across the city center into one single-flow, unbroken system. A neonatal presence, unfolding into existence: the ephemeral Marina Bay Street Circuit would be amongst them.