What had been foreshadowed was significantly darker. Everything post-extraction is, in a sense, already an unlikely best-case scenario.

Recreational espionage, an extreme sport for those who truly have no place in regular humanity.

Caveman emotions, space alien brain. He can't handle something this primal, this gooey.

It is imbued with its history. Psychic receptors bristle at something that is not quite a scent but is burned forever into the object.

Your skin crawls at the girlish sound, bubbling out of a woman who it doesn't at all seem to belong to.

Trepanation was the earliest form of treatment for brain tumours, relieving the buildup of pressure inside the skull.

Centuries-old paintings of patients, sans anesthesia, getting bloody chunks removed from head. The agony. The insanity.

Feel that. Life and death trembling beneath you, a single gram of pressure between them.

Maybe it's just a random nerve firing, but a smile flutters at the corner of your former double's mouth.

The stillness of death is different from that of catatonia -- the conversation that results from it more unnerving.

You are actively courting schizophrenia at this point.

The boat has been set alight, the chants intoned, the cuts made on the body to attract the vultures. Some kind of ritual action performed to obtain closure from death.

We're going in with that thing. Straight through the bonescreen.

He's not hiding it. He's screaming.

He should have been giving literature classes at a university, not out here, down here, doubting everything...

An artist's impression of biological decay.

Deprived of sight, the inches of paper travelled by your pen feel like chasms.

Locate the prisoner's intercom.

Did you hear it? The song in your head? 'Twas the sacred art of versecraft, inaccessible to all but the most radiant of hearts.

No matter how terrible reality might be, it's better than the not-knowing.

If you don't get back on track, there's a chance you'll both end up in an EMTERR work camp.

Bust our way in.

Hone in on a disc.

The monkey calls out faintly in this strange place. His fingers are cold against the metal bars, he is blind in the dark.

INTERROGATE THE FILING CABINET.

Some form of explosive device may have been useful.

Every grand finale needs an epic cue.

Tempo never really got nervous either -- a sociopathic streak which often served him very well, but occasionally very poorly.

No -- but don't let her see.

If you all make it out of this it'll be a miracle.

Distant crashes in the basement of your mind.

THEIR GRAND LICH FEARS YOUR HUMBLE BULLET.

No witty retort -- caught her with a stiff jab.

Monaxial Intelligence and Hermetic Operations.

In retrospect, her diligence gave you a false sense of her abilities.

Blank entries in the archive. Impossible to query or cross-reference. A form of willful oblivion.

Politeness, professionalism, the performance of empathy. These are the things he was taught would make a good man, or at least a correct man. In his moment of greatest extremis, they all deserted him.

INTERROGATE HIM ABOUT HIS FRAUDULENT PAPERS.

They had to make sure it didn't smell too sour, so the test animals would eat it willingly.

Amid your catastrophic failure five years ago, a small success -- someone took you for a model.

Gäng final form.

Useful. Hiding place. Proud.

Scheming. Yelling about dead ministers and 'international plays'. Back in the game.

She's trade curious. Tempo never could resist a little off-the-books hustle.

Forbidden colours. All known laws defied.

Shapeshifting love. Impossible to hold.

But now it's precarious. Friendship under review.

You remember it all too closely -- hopscotching through the lightning strikes of youth.

In theory, it exists -- but many assume it to be an empty office behind a locked door. The Operant Bureau also does not dictate age restrictions for potential assets.

Internal white noise, max volume.

Checks