Maybe breathing is slow-acting poison that takes eight decades to kill. Death's contingency when he can't get a clean shot at you.

SURVIVAL IS SECONDARY. ANONYMOUS MARTYRDOM, ETERNAL.

A shot far beyond you, or any of your known and revealed Crew.

HOLOCENE thinks, and the fog of war dissipates before the both of you. The landscape does not look inviting, but at least it is visible.

The bump of his pupils moves rapidly under the convex domes of his eyelids, as though he were dreaming.

For a moment, you catch a glimpse of HOLOCENE's schematics, a machine of moving parts where the alteration of any single piece sends reverberations through the entire structure...

'Muerte cruzada'. A firing squad arranged in a circle.

You've done it before. You could do it again. Couldn't you?

The freckles and splatter patterns of blood droplets are indistinguishable from one another on the face of a tram driver pinned under rubble. The steel beams that have crushed her legs are the only thing keeping her blood inside her body. Even an inch of motion, and the arteries gush...

He plays with your potential future selves like a child with soldier toys.

The toys always seem to die horribly.

A shocking demotion. Rung number one on the ladder of being.

A familiar tick. Like he's caught a glimpse of an alternate future and can't look back.

Is he engaging in Advanced Cognitive Manoeuvres... right now?

Read between the logistical acrobatics -- he just really wants to work with you again.

It seems... largely fine...

It's not even that messy!

'TEMPORARY ASSET'? HE HAS LOST HIS MIND. THERE IS NOTHING 'TEMPORARY' ABOUT OPERANT CASCADE.

There is a new mutedness to him, and new shadows too.

A hollowness to him -- a ghost whose ectoplasm has run out.

Something's off -- soundtrack not quite syncing with picture.

When a statement says nothing, readers are forced to invent a statement of their own, most likely in conflict with that of the author.

His skin has the colour and consistency of chalk.

That childhood book has a strange grip on him, even now.

His infallible recall must distort time. With every memory the same weight, they become the unit of measurement -- and down here he's not making many new ones.

What does midnight alone feel like down here?

A ghost in the system.

Woah, woah, woah, easy! That nickname is offensive and unapproved.

So what, we partake in 'interpretive masturbation'? We think not.

A faint heartbeat from a long lost vein.

You sense the weight of the structure above you, the inverted tower hanging over your head.

Fück us, he's been down here a long time.

You'd take a week of the Weeping Eye fiddling with you over five years down here.

It remains unclear what exactly is 'on' in this gutted space pit.

You never met Twitchitov, but you were always aware of his presence on some unknowable higher level.

A rumour whispered among the more seasoned Remembrancers: That Director Twitchitov asphyxiated himself under auto-erotic circumstances.

AS-YET-UNDISCOVERED ENEMIES CERTAINLY MADE IT APPEAR AS THOUGH DIRECTOR TWITCHITOV HANGED HIMSELF WITH THE FLAG OF THE PARTY IN HIS DEAD MOTHER'S CLOSET.

Let it go. This is as far as you'll get on this.

For a long moment he looks switched on without the sound.

By HOLOCENE's logic, you bear none of the blame for what happened. Everything you did was an expression of institutional logic.

LUDICROUS! THIS ISOLATIONIST POLICY HE'S PURSUING HAS UNSHACKLED HIS MIND.

After a certain point the logic of betrayal becomes its own motive.

SOLVENT ABUSE ALLEGATION. UNSUBSTANTIATED. HOSTILE.

The size of a small cat's coffin.

And he can't wait to tell you.

REACTIONARY THEORISING. HE SHOULD DIRECT THIS DOORSTOP-SIZED CRITIQUE INWARD AT HIS NEXT IDEOLOGICAL STRUGGLE SESSION.

You hurt his feelings.

In a dark basement in Novessa, a female controller in her mid-thirties shifts uncomfortably in her seat.

He keeps mentioning this 'M.I.H.O.' thing... ominous.

PSEUDO-INTELLECTUALISM. SILO-SELF-EXILE WAS THE APPROPRIATE COURSE OF ACTION.

Checks