Asked as if the question scared him.

Asked as if the question scared him.

You'd say 'eerie'. An eerie moment.

Better for everyone that you just take him at his word. The alternative... well, there's a recently vacated room at the bottom of a silo, if you're interested.

You have more pressing things to worry about than this. Better for the assignment that you just believe him and move on.

His voice is reasonable, calm -- utterly at odds with the sparks of fear behind his eyes.

He can't face them again. A part of him still believes he let them down.

A lost cause. He's not going to budge on this one.

Standard Operant Bureau procedure: once burned, an asset is not to be revived except under exceptional circumstances.

They are natural enemies, organisms which, if placed in a jar together, would slaughter one another instantly.

Pia mater: the thin, almost transparent final membrane protecting the brain. On top of which you found the small controller.

Void is exactly what it is. The body is weight, presence -- the mind is conjecture, absence.

He doesn't think it's for the best at all. Part of him is still hoping that the visions will arrive, albeit late.

Trepanation is hardly the most extreme thing an operant has done in pursuit of becoming a supranaturally-inclined spy. Nor is it, for that matter, the only one involving bodily mutilation.

He's been out staring at the sky every night since you forcibly inserted that drill into his skull.

The air charges as he recites each name.

Photons propelled through silver halide gelatine, nothing but the momentary flash of a false star.

The narrow space where anything which is not can safely exist within his mind.

You can almost hear the warm hum of his brain as it processes and cools itself.

As unfavourable as the scenario is, there is a comfort to seeing it lucidly played out before you.

He's right -- if you fall for a decoy instead of the real thing, all your careful planning and execution will have been for nothing.

Comical, yes, but also horrifying. The last place you would suspect.

Maybe breathing is slow-acting poison that takes eight decades to kill. Death's contingency when he can't get a clean shot at you.

SURVIVAL IS SECONDARY. ANONYMOUS MARTYRDOM, ETERNAL.

A shot far beyond you, or any of your known and revealed Crew.

HOLOCENE thinks, and the fog of war dissipates before the both of you. The landscape does not look inviting, but at least it is visible.

The bump of his pupils moves rapidly under the convex domes of his eyelids, as though he were dreaming.

For a moment, you catch a glimpse of HOLOCENE's schematics, a machine of moving parts where the alteration of any single piece sends reverberations through the entire structure...

'Muerte cruzada'. A firing squad arranged in a circle.

You've done it before. You could do it again. Couldn't you?

The freckles and splatter patterns of blood droplets are indistinguishable from one another on the face of a tram driver pinned under rubble. The steel beams that have crushed her legs are the only thing keeping her blood inside her body. Even an inch of motion, and the arteries gush...

He plays with your potential future selves like a child with soldier toys.

The toys always seem to die horribly.

A shocking demotion. Rung number one on the ladder of being.

A familiar tick. Like he's caught a glimpse of an alternate future and can't look back.

Is he engaging in Advanced Cognitive Manoeuvres... right now?

Read between the logistical acrobatics -- he just really wants to work with you again.

It seems... largely fine...

It's not even that messy!

'TEMPORARY ASSET'? HE HAS LOST HIS MIND. THERE IS NOTHING 'TEMPORARY' ABOUT OPERANT CASCADE.

There is a new mutedness to him, and new shadows too.

A hollowness to him -- a ghost whose ectoplasm has run out.

Something's off -- soundtrack not quite syncing with picture.

When a statement says nothing, readers are forced to invent a statement of their own, most likely in conflict with that of the author.

Sixth type... Something really, really, really, really, really, really ambiguous.

His skin has the colour and consistency of chalk.

That childhood book has a strange grip on him, even now.

His infallible recall must distort time. With every memory the same weight, they become the unit of measurement -- and down here he's not making many new ones.

What does midnight alone feel like down here?

A ghost in the system.

Woah, woah, woah, easy! That nickname is offensive and unapproved.

So what, we partake in 'interpretive masturbation'? We think not.

A faint heartbeat from a long lost vein.

You sense the weight of the structure above you, the inverted tower hanging over your head.

Fück us, he's been down here a long time.

You'd take a week of the Weeping Eye fiddling with you over five years down here.

It remains unclear what exactly is 'on' in this gutted space pit.

You never met Twitchitov, but you were always aware of his presence on some unknowable higher level.

A rumour whispered among the more seasoned Remembrancers: That Director Twitchitov asphyxiated himself under auto-erotic circumstances.

AS-YET-UNDISCOVERED ENEMIES CERTAINLY MADE IT APPEAR AS THOUGH DIRECTOR TWITCHITOV HANGED HIMSELF WITH THE FLAG OF THE PARTY IN HIS DEAD MOTHER'S CLOSET.

Let it go. This is as far as you'll get on this.

For a long moment he looks switched on without the sound.

By HOLOCENE's logic, you bear none of the blame for what happened. Everything you did was an expression of institutional logic.

LUDICROUS! THIS ISOLATIONIST POLICY HE'S PURSUING HAS UNSHACKLED HIS MIND.

After a certain point the logic of betrayal becomes its own motive.

SOLVENT ABUSE ALLEGATION. UNSUBSTANTIATED. HOSTILE.

The size of a small cat's coffin.

And he can't wait to tell you.

REACTIONARY THEORISING. HE SHOULD DIRECT THIS DOORSTOP-SIZED CRITIQUE INWARD AT HIS NEXT IDEOLOGICAL STRUGGLE SESSION.

You hurt his feelings.

In a dark basement in Novessa, a female controller in her mid-thirties shifts uncomfortably in her seat.

He keeps mentioning this 'M.I.H.O.' thing... ominous.

PSEUDO-INTELLECTUALISM. SILO-SELF-EXILE WAS THE APPROPRIATE COURSE OF ACTION.

Suspect. No true gäng would ask you to read something this big.

REACTIONARY THEORISING. HE SHOULD DIRECT THIS DOORSTOP-SIZED CRITIQUE INWARD AT HIS NEXT IDEOLOGICAL STRUGGLE SESSION.

You hear his words, then unhear them.

Old wounds split open within your mind. Are you between crosshairs? What have you missed? What has the other not missed?

Such crucial information should have been conveyed directly to the Operant Bureau. Something is out of step.

Absolute conviction behind his words. This is no bluff or bait.

'Intra-agency'? But there's only one agency... The one you both work for...

He keeps mentioning this 'M.I.H.O.' thing... ominous.

HOLOCENE has never once lied to you. As far as you know, at least.

The cold flat of dread's knife presses against your heart.

Hold on. Monoaxial... Hermetic... this is literally just him. Your old bandmate's gone and tried his hand at a solo career.

In a dark basement in Novessa, a female controller in her mid-thirties stifles an inexplicable urge to push a palm into her face.

A banishment of mirrors.

He's taking this seriously. You should too.

How fucking stupid it is to live in a höle for half a decade. That's what you're thinking.

Surely there's a lift to get out of this silo. Not the stairs every time... Surely...

Sixteen-years-old, physical education class. Mia Holloway climbing the rope ladder directly above you. Panties, constellation pattern, eking loose from sweat-damp gym shorts.

Origin point for a long-held dream of being smothered by the firmament.

Melita. Bust size. Mystery.

At least we have a building with working electricity.

A trace of concern that you've pre-achieved the very thing he was attempting to do when you found him.

'What is this? Arrête! Get off me!'

Snagged on a memory. A pleasant one.

Operants of the Psychic Wars!

... Have they? Is that the endgame?

Suicide mission. House always wins.

M.I.H.O. is gängless. Front of the bus. No friends.

A one man intelligence agency. Typical Remembrancer histrionics.

A shade of jealousy.

Visual only. No touching.

How did HOLOCENE become a spy?

Requirements

Story condition not identified

As were you. A bullet knocked you down, the communists dragged you clear.

Odd cadence. He hasn't said that name in a long time.

Spring's thin edge, a promise yet to be delivered on. Trembles of blossom on the tree branches lining People's Square. A woman in a blue cardigan pauses at a wooden stall stacked with old books.

Sometimes he recites them to himself, when the darkness feels total enough.

WORST OF ALL. THE SO-CALLED 'REFORMED' COMMUNIST. GULAG.

Afflicted by that odd loneliness that comes from seeing and knowing a lot that you can't do much about.

A nonchalant tone disguising obsessive amounts of research.

He's weighing it up against his current living situation.

Oh yeah. Mentally snapshot this. He's impressed.

Sunless, six stories below ground, he still synthesises information about your life better than you.

Tasting a strange syntax.

IT'S ALL SUPERBLOC, BABY.

I COMMAND YOU TO DETONATE, LITTLE BOMBCHKA.

You are pre-entombed.

He's attempting Functional Invisibility again. Or 'Psychogenic Translucency', as M.I.H.O. calls it.

Everyone else here is actively avoiding him.

He doesn't move -- but you swear you feel the gentle weight of a hand upon yours.

The gaps in his remembrance are more detailed than most people's actual memories.

Within the darkened mass you think you see a slither of movement.

That explains communicating through cipher... though we may soon be rezoning the boundaries of 'explanation'.

The air in the room thickens like an aggressive tumour.

Reason through this. There will be some logic, underneath it all.

No irony here. No dress rehearsal either.

The iron artery that was intended to link Portofiro with La Luz, until the collapse of the Old Luzian Empire prior to Year Zero. The ruins became an infamous suicide spot in the 50s.

None of that sounded real. It was a scene from fiction, from an espionage novel.

Flashes of HOLOCENE's red folder: 'MONSTROUS INTELLIGENCE'... 'HALLUCINATORY LOGICAL CONSTRUCTION'...

He pushed his finger down so hard it's left a red imprint in his skin. A target marker.

As with any espionage catastrophe, there is no true answer. Or there are one hundred answers. That's what's killing him, the unknowing.

Better to go along with this. You'll have a stronger chance of pulling him clear of this psychological wreckage.

He's hurt by that direct accusation, even though it's his own working theory.

A perfect memory turned against itself -- false insertions indistinguishable from the real.

Stop the ride. We want öff.

Behind his gaze, he is cast in iron. You are being entrusted with this.

You would be well within your right to leave him down here.

His voice is in the cipher now. Commune.

Of them all, he was the one you least expected to ever see again.

His hair looks like it exploded.

Deceptively blank. Just behind, his perfect memory ticks and whirs like ancient clockwork.

The dark arts of the Opera's Remembrancer Division. Much storied, often unsuccessful.

'HOLOCENE' is already a cryptonym...

A brief grin irradiates his pale face.

How did he know you were there?

The dark arts of the Opera's Remembrancer Division. Much storied, often unsuccessful.

A laser beam of suspicion.