By the sound of it, it's more expensive than a mere toy.

Something twitches inside your memory. You have heard of this, but its name slips by you.

You've heard him talk, you know his arrogant, fast-talking manners -- he's faking the stutter as part of the roleplay.

Deep inside, somewhere in the bloody recesses of your genetics, something primal and long-dormant stirs.

Clay teeth. No eyes.

That's him. Mind's fucked, face worse, but that's our boy.

His lopsided smile is the same, though perhaps cut with a streak of bitterness that might be new.

His fingers twitch in jittery bursts. Postictal tremors -- the aftershock of a seizure.

Exploitation money. Reserved for those willing to undergo serious bodily harm for what they do.

RADIAN is an audio engineer. That scene you walked in on looked nothing like his line of work.

The getup. The fashion. The aesthetics of Luzian mass culture unmistakable even when they're undercover.

The faces. 'Strange cousins' to Portofiran in more ways than one.

The Weeping Eye's interrogator class.

That's how it always goes: some loose ends that can't be tied off.

Conclusion: You are speaking to a phantom.

Textbook practice. Once you find an enemy network, you torch it and ensure nothing remains.

You flash back to the memory of planting that cricket with Ramses, how it had trembled in his hand for a moment...

A small silence as you rearrange your understandings of each other.

He doesn't try to hide the disappointment on his face.

RADIAN: no mention of epilepsy found. Medical conditions: left blank.

WHO ELSE BUT THE DEMON FACE OF MARKET FORCES AND ECONOMIC FETISHISM.

Perhaps, but behind it all there is something else, far simpler -- the power to pay someone to have a medical emergency for your viewing pleasure.

The mouth muscles contorting into every shape they know, producing random morphemes that latch onto words from every language floating around the brain.

THERE IS NO BETTER DOMINATRIX THAN THE STATE. WE WILL SATISFY ALL URGES, IRREVOCABLY.

Prognosis: almost identical to the one Dr. Gonza gave you. Either they are onto something or these men have the same kind of brain parasite.

He's weaker than he looks. Even these little exertions leave him drained.

A good deal of Ramses' equipment always consisted of improvised devices cobbled up from the cannibalised remains of consumer electronics.

His body completes the sentence with another one of its periodic shivers.

Unexpected venom. Directed inwards.

He needs to feel useful somehow. Especially as you're trying to help him out.

Haunting images of torture surround your mind. In seconds, imagined people deform into blistering, moaning creatures -- writhing in what's left of their insides.

Not dying. At least, not right here and now.

No wires, switches, or screws anywhere on that thing he's holding. Remarkably untechnological for a Ramses project.

Instruments do not sound like that. That was the scream of something alive.

Instrument in hand on his sickbed, he could easily be a dying melancholy poet strumming away on his lute.

Clay teeth. No eyes.

Unbelievable. He finds the sound comforting.

Something tells you your head would fill with nasty images right now if your imagination was a little more vivid.

Each flash reproduces the world in monochrome, and the body on the bed spasms in time.

Galaxies of desperation sucked into the pupil's widening void.

HIS STATUS AND FINANCES MATTER NOT. NO ONE SHOULD BE SHUSHING YOU LIKE A DOG.

One, two, dead. One, two, dead -- a precise interval. The lightbulb isn't flickering, it's pulsing.

Payment. The price of Ramses' nervous system.

From the floor, a noise -- low, almost human.

It is the future. Your old asset, aged one hundred years in the five that have elapsed.

Asset RADIAN. Comms specialist. Skillset: audio engineering, surveillance, forensics, applied maths, transmission security.

Or at least -- he was.

Morbidly transfixed, you as much a slave to what you are watching as the unblinking spectator.

The command runs through paralysed limbs. The only response the body gives is nausea.

You've left far too much Hershel in the room, CASCADE. This is a security nightmare of your own making.

Checks