Remember what the MIHO fax said: 'GO ALL THE WAY DOWN'.

Far below, a rhythmic thumping. Organic maybe. And is that the smell of sweat you detect?

The obscenely loud crunching sounds rattle through your skull. It's like he's pulverizing gravel.

One of the reasons, he told you, that he always took the nasal route with his blow: concerns about receding gums.

Your friend's little vanities seem especially hopeless now.

Tempo was a consummate appreciator of the finer things in life. Reno's treating this incarnation according to the rules of the man he already knew.

ALL THAT IS LEFT IS ANIMAL.

Silent treatment.

WITNESS THE IMPRISONED REVOLUTIONARY. DESPITE HIS HARDSHIPS, HE STAYS TRUE TO ECONOMIC CHASTITY.

He's just got something in his eye.

Ready and willing to guard his food to the hilt.

He'd give anything to hear Tempo call him a cunt just one more time.

He's staring at the sky like it's his first time seeing it.

Wide, slick, animal. Only two words behind them: friend or foe?

From this altitude, it looks like Portofiro has been caught in a web of dark yarn.

Goosebumps on the back of your neck. As if all those of absent, lifeless eyes have turned to watch you.

Deep inside narrow and winding mucosal cavities, stretches of black mould wither and perish in the chemical mist.

His relief is such that it's almost a shame to correct his illusions.

The disappointment he feels is unjustifiable even to himself, but you can read it in his eyes.

He wanted to meet his nemesis head on. He wanted it to have a face.

He struggles to wade through the sedatives still weighing him down.

You've taken the tools up one by one in the intended order -- now comes the final tool and the logical end.

The moment we've been waiting for our entire life, Herschen. Stoop to the occasion. Trepan him.

Trepanation was the earliest form of treatment for brain tumours, relieving the buildup of pressure inside the skull.

Life and death. Kill or cure. No middle ground.

REVOLUTIONS UPON REVOLUTIONS!

Centuries-old paintings of patients, sans anesthesia, getting bloody chunks removed from head. The agony. The insanity.

Feel that. Life and death trembling beneath you, a single gram of pressure between them.

A porthole opens into vein-crossed dimness.

Somewhere within: A hard drive of perfect memory, each scene evenly catalogued and ready for playback.

Light shines for the first time on territories it has never before reached.

Tarsier shaped! A little curled-up tarsier!

<<Good job, CASCADE. M.I.H.O. salutes you.>>

At the edges of your ears, a tiny scream.

Best not to think about it. But also, definitely brain.

Maybe it's just a random nerve firing, but a smile flutters at the corner of your former double's mouth.

A tiny, wet SKIRCH as it slides in.

He looks like PSEUDOPOD.

Slowly, with a kind of chemotheraputic drip, the knowledge of what you have just done sinks in.

Primal howling from the depths of your brain.

Operational silver lining: the body comes pre-disposed at the bottom of an abandoned silo.

Words useless. Can't hear. Void.

By now you are an expert in speaking to the non-responsive and the absent.

If you want to eulogise him properly, use someone else's words.

The mirror-corpse cannot absolve you of anything.

The stillness of death is different from that of catatonia -- the conversation that results from it more unnerving.

You are actively courting schizophrenia at this point.

Hissing radio silence. The darkness between planets.

Not exactly eulogistic material, but better than anything you can produce.

There is, however, a response from within.

Checks