Glimmer of hope. Maybe she's been doing alright without you. Maybe she's figured herself out.

Closing the neat nutritional loop as the culture digests itself.

He has no idea how many parts of his life bear your fingerprints.

Karolina's never told him that Tempo was your asset, too.

He's genuinely proud of what he and Karolina are able to accomplish here.

One of the few people he can call anything close to a friend.

Know them? You introduced her to them.

These implications have never occurred to him before. Now he won't be able to un-think it.

And demand is high. Higher than it's ever been.

A criminal syndicate like that will come for him eventually. Nicely at first. Then with weapons.

Eyes: blood-shot.

Something about him has relaxed at this information, a performance partly abandoned.

An infamous image, from Nestor's 64 campaign -- the dictator, holding a baby with his own face superimposed over the infant's, moustache and all -- 'Soy Nestor'.

He assumes he won't make it past 40.

Squinting, you overlay the image of the phantom you saw at the Palace of Culture on top of this lanky young fuck.

Same nose. Same dark eyes. Wildly different posture.

It's hard to see any resemblance to the proud, mustachioed leader behind the coloured hair, the spindly pale legs, and the permanent sneer.

Squinting, you overlay the image of Nestor from his t-shirt on top of this lanky young fuck.

Squinting, you overlay the image of Nestor you've seen in a hundred faded murals on top of this lanky young fuck.

Other people's distaste is a warm blanket, familiar in its itchiness.

Nestor had already been forced from power the last time you were here. The toppled regime was old news.

Sure, you could use that as an excuse for your ignorance. Or you could just admit that the Hershel of five years ago was somehow even more self-centred than the Hershel of today.

A scab across his heart he can't quite stop picking.

In truth, it was Portofiro that got 'fucked' when the local economy collapsed and EMTERR swept in with another round of 'stabilisation' packages that only tightened its clamp on the city's collective throat.

Nearly two decades gone, and he's still making his home in a cinema: a love that's never died.

Sense memory.

Artificial, canned laughter.

The comparison to his sire is inevitable. He's resigned himself completely to the umbilical tie -- a noose, a lifeline.

A name he has no business knowing.

KINDRED. You played down the cryptonym when she asked you about it half-drunk one night. Nothing to it, you shrugged. First name that came to mind. Which wasn't a lie -- it was the first. You just also happened to mean it.

Blatantly incorrect. Evidence of a malformed creative spirit.

RARIFIED OPPORTUNISM.

His father directed a whole city-state -- he wants to do the same, minus the hassle of elections, or governance, or approval ratings.

Pussified behaviour.

DYNASTIC INHERITANCE, SQUANDERED! NEPOTISTIC FOOLISHNESS, DELUSIONS OF GENETIC SUPREMACY.

One name, no context, as if you're expected to already know him.

He knows without a doubt that you are not a real cop, and is playing along solely for his own amusement.

Probably thinks you're a strip-o-gram.

His tone changes as your identity dawns on him -- wary, curious, teetering on the edge of hostile.

In his tone there's a spark of excitement not sufficiently smothered by anger.

Eszti wasn't just trying to hurt you -- she was telling the truth.

For some spies, interrogation is a proving ground. For others, it is a distant shore from which they can only wave, and never return.

You once heard an old hand say that the tortured walk their own province.

He finds his girlfriend's dark past equal parts enraging and intriguing.

He was born within one. Knows little else.

All systems go down. A brief but total outage.

Don't act surprised. The network was blown, this was inevitable.

And thus, off-limits. Hence his guard-dog duty in front of the velvet curtain.

He does not elaborate.

The padlock on the door breaks easily. Dust motes in the air, a sneeze, a flashlight shining around the darkened room -- threadbare velvet, faded posters, a broken glass box office window.

Checks