Or maybe it's your budding techno-fascist consciousness expressing itself.

Naturally, if this were the Paleolithic, and if you were the Paleolithic huntress, you would experience this sensation all the time.

If the words of the old Luzian prisoner are true, you have days, not weeks.

He must be referring to the building's song.

Picking up an asset in-theatre, without the target even knowing. Remarkable stagecraft.

You've listened to enough Opera lore to recognise his voice -- this is the legendary Operant PROBABLE, still young.

It's another one...

More ghosts! Ghosts!

Tune in to the building's frequency.

One props up a sign which says: 'INTERNATIONAL PARTY CONFERENCE PARTY 66'.

Ghost gäng. Huddle up.

Gäng don't fuck with ghosts. Scatter.

A banner dragged down one of the support beams. The ceiling stays in the air out of sheer will.

THE BUILDING DECLARED THE OLD PARTY REACTIONARY AND DID AWAY WITH THEIR IMAGE. DESTROY THE BANNERS, PRAISE THE REVOLUTION!

You hear catches of the song, words, a man's voice and a guitar.

For a moment you hear a few words of a song, but it's gone before you catch what they are.

You hear faint snatches of what sounds like humming, gone before you can focus.

The mic is in the vicinity of the speaker, but out of focus, his mouth pointed away from the receiver, liquifying the consonants.

Make out what they're saying.

You are listening to here. This place. Now.

Spirits invoked by a well-placed cricket somewhere in the shrine.

There is no undercover. This is just Ramses, doing what he does.

Director General. The asset with the airy voice addresses his superior by his formal title.

And in each eye, a tear. A hundred assets. A hundred vanishings.

The only explanation is that the delegation is not what it seems. There is another motive behind the ceremony.

Around the ceremony, another ceremony -- above it, below it, enveloping it.

Metal sting of blood in your nose.

It's a cricket, that much is obvious. Picking up a conversation happening right here, right now -- a live ceremony.

The conjured spirits have fallen silent. The machine hums and crackles with failed ceremony.

Has he been smoking this whole time?

He's got something for you. Ears on your enemies.

Silently, he asks you to trust him.

Gone. Just gone. It was insanity to bring him on a hit.

The likelihood that he is playing a cover instead of having merely lost the plot drops by the sentence.

Oblivious.

RADIAN is a support asset, not a theatre-primed asset. Currently, he is an operational own goal.

Oral imitation of double bass blastbeats. One kick with two pedals thundering nonstop thirty-second notes.

It probably sounds a lot more impressive on an actual drum.

Motorcycle go fast, vroom vroom.

He changed... his t-shirt.

Behind the customary barbed wire-tangled corpses, the outline of a riot cop suggests political rather than wanton violence, and the logo -- now that you look at it -- does seem slightly more intelligible than his usual fare.

In the diffuse wilderness of Ramses' cognition, the line between irony and honesty is blurred to nonexistence -- and in this liminal space he is home.

It's unclear whether or not he's joking. Does he even understand the gravity of the situation?

Yana is her own person now. You don't need to betray her trust just because Ramses picked up on some speech patterns.

Not a second of hesitation, doubt, or curiosity. You couldn't fake that kind of acceptance if you tried.

In Ramses' imagination, the L-pop physically leaves Kaleidoscope's body in perfumed and colourful vapours as he is repeatedly pummelled.

He wishes you hadn't asked him that.

ALL PERSONNEL HAVE BEEN BRIEFED ON A NEED-TO-KNOW BASIS AND ARE SUFFICIENTLY AWARE OF THE RISKS.

Of all your assets, none knows better than KINDRED. Wilful ignorance is another matter.

A delicate ship constructed out of the flotsam of spy dramas and revenge fantasies sails headlong toward this rock, where it will shatter into a thousand lacerating crystals.

Checks