And somewhere beyond them: the shores of La Luz.

The moment crystallises. The world is empty save for you and your enemy.

The board is set. The Manus Fati wriggles its fingers above the pieces.

His words uncertain, his bearing unsteady. Drunk, possibly high?

YOUR COUNTER-OFFER IS THIS: A BULLET TO HIS REACTIONARY SKULL.

As he attempts to straighten himself, he lists to one side like a wounded battle-cruiser.

He could pass for a simple drunk, waiting around for his off-licence to open.

A top-heavy piece, just waiting to be flicked off the board.

It will have to be. You've come too far.

This feels wrong. Inverted.

A stoic drunk. Tourniquetting the slur with sheer concentration.

It's not just booze. Benzos.

Dante... could it have been... Tempo's message... all will be forgiven... if you pull this off...

This is an open goal. A match-winner. Don't overthink it.

A combination of anaesthesia and mettle just about manage to contain his fear.

A distant look comes over him as he sways to and fro, one foot in the present, one in the memory.

You know the school well. You've already seen the courtyard, the old ginkyo, the barracks where the boys' minds are beaten until they're no longer their own.

Dopamine, adrenaline, DMT, endorphins of every flavour and hue.

Horrific chemical orgasm. A hallucinogenic purge of everything stored within the brain's archives, known to the laywoman as life flashing before your eyes.

Like the domesticated dog whose loyalty to his masters lies in his genes, even now he regards the Lich more with sympathy than resentment.

In spite of you, the conclusion slips into its natural niche -- common sense, inevitable in retrospect.

Brilliantly played, operant. When you get back, there'll be champagne and a line of women's athletic socks commissioned in your honour.

GLORY TO THE PEOPLE'S SPY.

You let him go. You let him go. You let him go.

It's over, operant. You've failed.

You let him get away.

Circuits in your brain spark violently as they rebel against their own conclusions.

In spite of you, the knowledge slips into its natural niche in your brain - common sense, inevitable in retrospect.

Assignment rating: Catastrophic failure. Turn gun on self.

Some primal part of your brain rejects the information like a gag reflex.

Someone has to die today.

A faint but all-encompassing shiver passes through the old man like a tree-shaking wind. Then it's gone -- the tree resettles, a few leaves less than before.

That was his last show of fear, now he sucks it all back into himself.

Behind you, a hundred black-and-white faces regard you with the sublime indifference of the dead.

He seems to be perplexed by his own question.

Your gun suddenly feels heavy, or is it your hand that feels weak?

It's hardly news. The Opera did not drag you back into the field to live a long and productive life.

Meat dragged out of the freezer starts going bad the minute it is done thawing.

The images come to you, one by one.

Prison, torture, madness, a bullet to the temple. A variety of fates, and history repeating itself.

Unfortunately, he's right.

No sense in lying at this point.

CARVE THE NAME OF THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLICS INTO HIS MEMORY AND HIS FOREHEAD.

Understanding dawns on his features, and with it something like peace.

An echo from your first meeting with the prisoner.

No mocking inflection in his voice. He's asking honestly.

He's really outdoing us in the mystique department here. We're going to need a sick line before we slab him.

Best to engage your subject first. Get into his soul. You can't rush quality.

Enough fooling around. Drop the false livery. Let the Operant Bureau's anthem play him off the world-stage.

A pointless series of little gestures meant somehow to communicate death-readiness.

Playing dumb. Squeeze harder and he'll burst.

Seeing something beyond, or absent from, his immediate surroundings.

That's not a denial.

Each new sentence is appended to the puzzle of the preceding ones.

The Operant Bureau is plunging in the rankings with each passing moment. Relegation zone, coming up!

SUBVERSIVE MURMURINGS INTENDED ONLY TO CONFUSE THE PEOPLE'S SPY. DISREGARD.

The feeling of a rug being ripped from under your feet. Beneath there is no floor, only void.

He is the hiss in the tapped phone, the thud of boots in the hallway, the unmarked car and the form letter to next of kin with the bill for the bullet.

HERE COMES TECHNO-FASCIST DAREDEVIL.

As the old man speaks, a little bubble of doubt rises up from your subconscious and bursts through the surface of your awareness.

Your would-be asset Ignatz wasn't far off. All's not right in the enemy camp.

Imprint-on-imprint violence. You're in the middle of an old mind attacking itself.

You suddenly picture Melita, Luzian features behind her clipped, trained Kohilan accent, smiling to herself as she manipulates you from a control room just across the Noscorrentes.

Stop, stop, stop. This is getting phantasmagoric. Your controller is right where she belongs, in Novessa, five-thousand kilometres away.

Stay calm. Even if the Opera's purposes dovetail with those of the Weeping Eye, it makes no difference to your mission.

Overdetermined, like so much else in the smashed and leaking world.

This old fool just wants to live. He's just trying to get under your skin.

It makes no sense -- Melita wouldn't have you jumping through hoops to obtain the Lich's itinerary if she had a direct line to the Weeping Eye. And yet...

Simple, obvious. The only way it could be.

With that, one of the final loose pieces slots into place.

The sacrifice. Centrepiece in a ritual orchestrated around it, but not for it.

Improvise a sick line before you shoot him.

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More than him. His face registers nothing, not even the acknowledgement that he has been shot.

A rustling sound, like a bag of dry leaves.

A soul vacating the premises.

What was that about a 'body double'?

A useless death. A small, fleshy monument to futility.

ONE TECHNO-FASCIST DOWN. THREE HUNDRED MILLION REMAIN.

Just fuck his body off the cliff. Let the boars have him.

There is no 'occasion'. Nothing has happened. All is right with the world.

Say the line again. It will hit harder this time, for sure.

Maybe you can redeem your line from earlier. Maybe this will tie it all together.

No parade, and no funeral, either.

Sky burial by seabirds. The gulls will pick the scant papery skin from his bones.

Milk fills the glass of his eyes.

Distrust. Then relief. Then an even greater mistrust.

Behold, the dialectic in action!

It's only when he starts running that you realise how inebriated he truly is.

THIS HABIT OF RELEASING THE PEOPLE'S ENEMIES IN YOUR POSSESSION WOULD MAKE EVEN THE MOST FORGIVING ETHICS COMMITTEE QUESTION YOUR ALLEGIANCES.

LICH OR NOT, THAT'S ONE OF THE PEOPLE'S ENEMIES YOU JUST RELEASED. EVEN THE MOST FORGIVING ETHICS COMMITTEE WOULD CALL YOUR ALLEGIANCES INTO QUESTION.

More than him. His face registers only the bitterness of the man who knew he was going to be betrayed, and was.

The infamous Reverse-Faux Execution, cruelest of all forms of foreplay.

The feeling isn't even bittersweet. It feels like something that happened to someone else entirely.

In spite of you, the knowledge slips into its natural niche in your brain -- common sense, inevitable in retrospect.

Assignment rating: Catastrophic failure. Turn gun on self.

In spite of you, the knowledge slips into its natural niche in your brain -- obvious, inevitable.

You let him go. You let him go. You let. Him go.

The quarry is dead. You have already completed your assignment.

This is a reality television show. The plot is too complex -- the writers must be high on their own ad revenue cash.

Nice try. He doesn't realise that you know better than he does the fate of his body double.

No, no, no. This isn't right. This can't be right.