This is a man with a system. A tried-and-tested one.

You went East -- he went South.

This is not a short term solution...

He's subsisting on these alone.

There's a coil wired into the wall, fused to the socket with melted plastic and faith. That's where he eats, listening to currents crackle overhead.

A body in a ditch. A back alley arrest. A name scraped off a plaque and folded into bureaucracy. You'd assumed a lot, but not this sad half-death.

You were a full world away. Counting down days in cigarette stubs -- a thick curtain drawn over Novessa, watching a phone that never rang.

Famous for sterile logistics, tax-flexible exports, and a stunning aversion to political alignment.

You sense the long shadow of EMTERR hanging over this.

Curtains twitch at the windows. Inside, stacks of dog-eared dream and memory contaminate each other.

The remote viewers! Spoon-bending vöyeurs!

If he did, he moved fast.

Rhetorical question. You're the only one standing, of course it was you.

The one that looks just like yours.

There's something in her hand.

Trying to displace herself again.

She smiles. Huntress.

It's KALEIDOSCOPE's.

Excitement sliding into her voice. This gorefest is a painting of her own personal revenge.

She shivers, smiles. Trying to dispel an unwanted thought.

It's Yana's.

Her mind's catching up to her, too. Adrenaline wearing off.

A slightly weightless tone in her voice. Gravity suspended.

And as you've established, it's possible that hiding somewhere within it is a secret jail.

And an operant should always be thorough when searching for clandestine spaces.

Congratulations. You're as complicated as an inanimate object that literally has nothing in it -- it's completely hollow.

The ins-and-outs of plumbed architecture aren't your strength. But you can find it in other technological fields.

Asked as if the question scared him.

You'd say 'eerie'. An eerie moment.

Better for everyone that you just take him at his word. The alternative... well, there's a recently vacated room at the bottom of a silo, if you're interested.

You have more pressing things to worry about than this. Better for the assignment that you just believe him and move on.

His voice is reasonable, calm -- utterly at odds with the sparks of fear behind his eyes.

He can't face them again. A part of him still believes he let them down.

A lost cause. He's not going to budge on this one.

Standard Operant Bureau procedure: once burned, an asset is not to be revived except under exceptional circumstances.

They are natural enemies, organisms which, if placed in a jar together, would slaughter one another instantly.

Pia mater: the thin, almost transparent final membrane protecting the brain. On top of which you found the small controller.

Just the tip.

Void is exactly what it is. The body is weight, presence -- the mind is conjecture, absence.

He doesn't think it's for the best at all. Part of him is still hoping that the visions will arrive, albeit late.

Trepanation is hardly the most extreme thing an operant has done in pursuit of becoming a supranaturally-inclined spy. Nor is it, for that matter, the only one involving bodily mutilation.

He's been out staring at the sky every night since you forcibly inserted that drill into his skull.

The air charges as he recites each name.

Like a ritual.

Photons propelled through silver halide gelatine, nothing but the momentary flash of a false star.

The narrow space where anything which is not can safely exist within his mind.

You can almost hear the warm hum of his brain as it processes and cools itself.

As unfavourable as the scenario is, there is a comfort to seeing it lucidly played out before you.

He's right -- if you fall for a decoy instead of the real thing, all your careful planning and execution will have been for nothing.

Comical, yes, but also horrifying. The last place you would suspect.

Checks