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

It's all a type of magic, as far as you're concerned.

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.

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.

Sixth type... Something really, really, really, really, really, really ambiguous.

His skin has the colour and consistency of chalk.

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

Checks