Bad news: It appears that ESTOC no longer considers herself your direct report. Or your asset. Or your friend.

ENOUGH OF THIS INSUBORDINATION. SHE IS YOUR ASSET, COMPEL HER TO OBEY.

Ramses used to love this stuff. The perfect balance of pointlessness and grit.

Representatives of whichever syndicate happened to control illegal imports at that time.

She picks up on your sarcasm, your lack of fear -- echoes it, little cuckoo.

Eszti Newitz. Competent. Unlikeable. Ultimately invaluable.

A delicate fragrance rises from the bush: jasmine.

A hangover massages your skull. The sound of a blender makes your eyes itch.

Voice was strong. Good. Ignore the twisting in your stomach.

Upside down, the planes of the bathroom wall and floor form alien geometries. It's hard at first to tell what exactly you're looking at.

Light flickers with the singsong iridescence of open flame. Candles.

You'll need your flashlight to compensate for your pathetic fleshy corneas.

That's way too fucking boring to remember! We've already forgotten it again.

Awful waste management. The ex-pilots did know what they were talking about.

Between that and the intercom, Hauzmann wasn't kidding about recent security upgrades.

Hauzmann mentioned recent security upgrades. That'd be one of them.

Quite the investments in security, between that door and the intercom.

Quite the investment in security.

That, and the intercom. The heartless man in the bar wasn't kidding about security upgrades.

The heartless man mentioned recent security upgrades. That'd be one of them.

Your fingers itch for grip.

A sneaky way in, far from prying eyes...

Looking out over the canal, a thought surfaces: that of PSEUDOPOD's soiled, wet trousers.

We're sniffing around here for a reason, right?

Like the one over there, to the east.

And it seems the GM is no longer blocking the door...

What about a cat? Cats roll deep. Lurking in dumpsters, owning streets and rooftops, ruining ecosystems.

Recall the emblematic cigarette. Mystery, composure, lives lived on borrowed time -- an homage to your craft.

You could just leave it as is. Restraint's also a choice.

This silo is also where you'll find the mysterious 'MIHO', according to the fax you received.

The vestiges of Portofiro's disastrous 77 space program. This is the place you saw on television, back then.

And where the mysterious fax told you you'd find 'MIHO'.

You made a note about this address. Those are the offices of the Noscorrentes literary journal.

The boarded-up windows were mentioned by the ex-pilots too.

This could be where the engineer on the pylon saw the human-sized package...

A faint current dances across your skin, as if frantically searching for ground.

Matching what the ex-pilots told you about an EMTERR jail.

A violent, pressurized hiss is heard as the lock drains through the immense pipe to your right.

That worked. It's draining.

The large pipe outside the window catches your eye again as you turn away from the console.

As you're about to turn away, you notice a large pipe out the window. Might be worth taking a closer look.

With this you can drain the water in the canal outside and see if that mysterious door really exists.

This rejected submission would imply that their offices are near the bin you found it in -- perhaps the building directly behind it.

Old schnapps and the faded sour cologne of body odour and bleach. Soft yellow light filtered through cracked shades. The rumble of the ice machine, a hissing television.

You discover your thumb rubbing itself along the numberless business card you found on your double.

The Opera's psychomancers had high expectations for your levels of 'It', based on their initial examinations...

The bullet, the monotheist agent who fired it, all of them in on it.

THE PEOPLE'S CHOICE, AUGMENTED WITH PERFORMANCE ENHANCING ADDITIVES UNKNOWN TO CAPITALIST SCIENCE.

It's not really your answers that interest him, it's how you answer.

Sweetish, faintly burning. The odour of leaking refrigerant.

Checks