It's possible that Yana's intelligence was faulty, and that the old Luzian guy's disappearance had nothing to do with the 'hyper incriminating shit' he said into the payphone.

They probably listen in through the wire. Try making a call and then saying the words.

Say a few words into a random payphone? Easy.

Surely you have better sources than the natterings of deranged old men.

Time seems to hold its breath with you as you wait, listening.

Then it all lets go, dissipating into the micro-traffic of the imperceived world.

Maybe you imagine it. Maybe you heard it, infinitely faintly... a slight, barely perceptible, click.

The old man was kidnapped for what he knew or had discovered, and you know nothing.

Just address them.

An absolute lapse in stagecraft that plays to your advantage just now.

Occurring at a perceptual level so low that it's hard to distinguish from things merely imagined, you hear a click somewhere down the line.

You become aware of an infinitude of tiny movements. A total convergence on your surroundings -- all drawn to you, here, right now...

The damp tells you that you must still be in the lower city, near the canal.

First, the prisoner. Then, a way out.

In the silence after she speaks, the audio momentarily wavers. The telltale sign that the line has just been interrupted.

In the silence after she speaks, you sense, rather than hear, something on the line. A presence. Someone is listening in.

Spared from catastrophic error by your own incompetency.

Straight to the basement of the magazine office. You can't be sure, and yet you are.

Somewhere down the line is a makeshift switchboard with six phones manned by six bored assets. One of those assets is listening in on this call.

It's a common joke that the Opera have preemptively bugged all public phones to spare the Superbloc's citizens the awkwardness of uncertainty.

The whisper of a smile at the corner of her mouth suggests she even enjoyed it.

The Housing Campaign, bathed in purple light. A man in a brown jacket and no pants looks up into the face of an angel. She regards him with radiant indifference.

She's often lingered in that doorway here, after you've gone to bed and in the odd hours of the day.

The club hates to see an operant abandoned on the pitch, deadly for morale.

'Yes', she means.

Immediately.

In actuality, an urban myth prevalent among more casual ether users. Still, sweet of her to look out for you.

She takes a long, slow look around the little photo shop, as though committing it to memory.

Burning the image into the gelatin silver of her amygdala.

Behind her eyes, flickers of fear and apprehension. But she's keeping them down, for your sake and hers.

Her, you, and the breathing mannequin.

Upstairs, your double twitches, electrical reflex running to a dead switchboard.

Unwelcome terrain. Tread lightly.

Younger than your mother, but in her mind, she's an old woman.

Some days pass without a single customer.

An age old recruitment technique. Let those with a sufficiently 'international' perspective reveal themselves.

She likes remembering him this way, in her shop, pretending to discreetly examine her list of services.

Whatever made this woman a plausible asset, it wasn't her knowledge of chemistry.

The disconnected fantasies of someone who only knows how to be alone.

This is a woman who's planned countless 'perfect' murders in her idle hours.

The image in her mind growing fainter, like it might disappear the second she stops believing in it.

She recognises no neighbours -- only potential threats.

No match for us.

You swim with sharks and jellyfish.

So this rumour about Luzian 'imprints' goes back at least a generation.

Somewhere within your third left intercostal space, the bullet by your heart makes its presence known with a nasty twinge.

A long time for a rumour to linger.

Reports from Operant PROBABLE suggest that 'Proyecto PESCADERA' was aborted in early 78 after one of the study's dolphins developed a violent sexual obsession with his trainer and committed suicide by sinking to the bottom of his tank.

How long dead? How many generations of ministers does this theory implicate?

Checks