A deranged connoisseur, lost at the outer edges of human pleasure.

Ribboned flesh, spots of white fat beneath the skin. A tuk-tuk horn blares outside.

You feel your lip twitch into a snarl.

Yes she does.

All systems go down. A brief but total outage.

Don't act surprised. The network was blown, this was inevitable.

Regret, shame.

On behalf of the invisible master.

A miserable defiance to the set of her chin.

You would have stayed had you known. You would have rescued her.

Or was it the drink, the job.

Smug.

Impressed.

She puts her hand to her heart, sighs.

Ring binders stacked on a glass-topped conference table, a chair at either end. She notices a tiny circle of paper on the carpet -- lost from a hole-puncher? A polite cough brings her attention back to her interviewer.

Automatically, your eyes scan up from hers. You notice the lace at the front of her wig.

Dolphins reflected in his eyeglasses.

Another shadow.

Lying to herself, even if she doesn't know it. This is subconscious spycraft.

Perhaps you can love a lie so much that it becomes the truth.

She smiles in a way you've never seen before; Eszti without a trace of ESTOC.

That could be her activating her laser vision. How deep does the augmentoid takeover go?

A breeze rolls through a plantation in Lágundi. Leaves hiss at its passing.

Shit, bluff called. What is she into?

'I wish I was deaf.'

The medium of hum simply doesn't allow for anger.

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

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

This feels wrong. Inverted.

It's not just booze. Benzos.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

The images come to you, one by one.

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

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

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

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.

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...

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

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

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.

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

Checks