Chapter Ten;

Out on the scene today

Blasted in every way

Caught on the other side

Some things you just can"t hide

Feel the poison of change in me

All that I"ll ever be

Comes back crushing on into me

Here it comes again

Has it spotted you-oh no

Have they got you too?

Arid-Little Things Of Venom

"You may stand." said the monster.

Seifer stood up. He glanced round, at saw nobody else.

Don't worry. They are gone.

The words travelled straight to his brain without passing through the air.

I must rest. This takes energy. Is there anything I can do for you?

Seifer touched his hand to his head. His skull ached. His fingers touched something smooth and round. "Get this thing off me."

It took all of Seifer's self-control to remain still as the monster moved around to his back and reached up a hand. It dragged a broken ankle as it walked. Seifer stared at the ground as it walked past, watching as bone poked out from a hole in its trouser leg with each step. Seifer leaned his head forwards as he felt rough fingers sticky with blood trace over the transmitter.

This is a man made thing

It wasn't a question, but Seifer answered it anyway. "Yeah. It's, uh, a transmitter. Lets them know where I am."

And if it is taken off?

He shrugged, wary and anxious and not too happy with the way the conversation was going. "Then they won't."

He felt a click, and a burning sensation that made his eyes water. The monster moved back round into his field of vision and tossed something at him. He caught it automatically and looked down.

The little chip of red glass gleamed in his hand.

"Thanks, you know." Seifer slipped the tracking device into a pocket of his coat, making sure he picked one that had no holes.

Is there anything else that you require? I must rest. Do not wander. Later, you will help me.

Seifer remembered Quistis pulling away from him. "Well, yeah, there was one thing. I need to wash."

There is a lake under the castle. The doors will lead you there. Now I must go .I must rest and regain my strength.

"What doors? Where are the others?"

You wil find them in due time. Wait for now. I must rest.

The soldier's mouth opened. He exhaled slowly. A thin column of blue mist drifted across the floor and rolled into a ball. The Galbadian's body collapsed to the floor. The blue orb flicked to a pinprick and vanished. There was a soft pop of imploding air and a sharp smell of ozone.

Seifer waved his hand experimentally in the air when it had been, muttered "Fucking bastard" and kicked the dry dead brand of the torch across the room until it exploded in a cloud of splinters.

He went over to check the corpse of the soldier more out of habit than because he thought the man might actually be alive. He wasn't. Seifer ransacked the corpse's pockets, but found nothing. Most of the soldier's clothes seemed to have gone the way of his entrails. Those wolves must have had teeth like damn razorblades.

He sighed, got up, and investigated the room. There were a few doors recessed into the stone wall. All apart from one were locked. Seifer opened the door and saw only darkness. He retrieved the torch and lit it before stepping inside. He saw a steep flight of stairs leading down into the night. The ceiling was so low that he hade to duck slightly. It looked ancient.

What in Hyne's name is it doing out here?, he thought, then What in Hyne's name am I doing out here?

He reviewed his plan. He'd find the monster and kill it, then go home. Wherever home was.

The stairs continued downwards. The air smelled dank.

The stairs turned so sharply that he couldn't see where he was going. Faint seams of dark wet earth appeared between the stones. The floor grew slick with water. Seifer's footsteps echoed harshly on the stone.

He came out into a huge room. There was a small pool in the centre of the room. The water was black in the dim light.

Seifer kicked a stone into the pool. Nothing moved. He sat by it just in case and listened for a while, waiting for a noise or for anything which might indicate that the water wasn't safe.

There was still nothing.

Seifer cautiously crept to the edge of the pool, knife ready. He scooped up a couple of handfuls of water. It smelt good, cold and sharp and clean. He washed quickly. The water wasn't freezing but it was cold enough to make washing an unpleasant experience. Afterwards he put his old clothes back on, shivering and still soaking wet, since he hadn't anything that could be used as a towel, and rebandaged his feet in strips ripped from his dirtiest shirt.

Afterwards he spent an industrious few minutes cropping his hair short again with the knife and shaving. His pack had vanished so he settled for sharpening his knife on the whetstone in his pocket. He built a small bonfire from the scraps of hair. He knew better than to leave any vestige of himself lying around the lair of an unknown.-whatever it was.

Once he had dressed he made his way cautiously up the stairs and tried the doors again. The first door was huge and firmly locked, and looked like it hadn't been opened in aeons. There was no way, Seifer decided, that he was going to get it open short of a few sticks of dynamite and a crowbar. The second door was smaller, barely twice his height, and rotten, but it still resisted all Seifer's attempts at opening it.

Shit, he thought. At this rate Quistis was going to die of old age before he found her.

He searched the room and found a rusted metal pipe wedged between two stones. Seifer hefted it, pleased at its weight. The smaller door lasted five or six minutes before it gave up the ghost. It felt good to have something physical to waved a cautious hand inside the opening. When it didn't activate any spells or traps he walked through.

A few seconds later the room was empty, and something smiled.

Isak wondered what to do.

He had woken up alone in a cell several hours ago. The damp seeped up from the flagstones like evil fingers and made his bones ache like he was already an old man.

He sure felt older since he'd left Galbadia. He'd seen new and interesting scenery and met lots of new and unusual people, at least half of which hadn't been trying to kill him

He still had his weapons, gun and bullets on the leather belt he always wore, but he doubted they would be much use. The monster had made it abundantly clear that there was nothing he could do with them. Isak almost wished it had taken them away. It at least would have been some indication that the creature had found them a threat. It was like it didn't care because there was nothing they could possibly do to it with cold steel.

He'd checked all the flagstones diligently just in case this place had secret tunnels like any self-respecting castle, but the cell stubbornly refused to co-operate. He'd tried prodding all of them, individually and then a few at a time, tracing round the edge of the stones in the hopes of finding a secret hinge or a gap that could be cadged wide open enough to fit a knifeblade in/ Nothing worked.

So Isak just sat and listened to the silence, ears singing with the thick silence of nothing. Several times he imagined he heard footsteps but there was never anyone there. He wondered where the others were for a while and then gave up and started trying to figure how to get out again.

The voice interrupted his reverie some time later.

"You seen Quistis?"

"No," Isak said automatically. He had managed to chip away a millimetre of cement in the last thirty minutes. He glanced round and stared right into a now familiar sardonic grin "Hang on, you shouldn"t be here."

Seifer rolled his eyes. "According to you lot, I shouldn"t be anywhere, apart from six feet under."

"I warn you, I'm armed and dangerous." Isak's voice chose this moment to break, He wished he looked armed and dangerous, something that the man standing in front of him clearly had no problem with. Surely you had to practice or something?

"One out of two isn't bad." Seifer said.

Isak held the knife up in front of him, edge chipped and gritty with the remnants of wall, and then remembered his gun. "Did you come to gloat? Because I warn you I'm a tough nut to crack."

Seifer shuddered. "Hard though it is to believe, I have no interest at all in cracking your nuts."

Isak backed up towards his pack. " "You admit it! You"ve joined up with that evil thing. You"re going to take over the world and kill us all!"

"Been there. Tried that. Would have got the tee shirt but they weren't selling any. Didn't work. Do you know where the hell Quistis is or not?"

Isak's boot scraped against the strap of his pack. "I might."

"Much as I'm enjoying this talk, some of us have got demons to slay. Now where the fuck is she?" Seifer said. He looked faintly amused, but his voice had turned dangerous.

Isak spun, brought the pack up with this foot in one smooth movement, slipped his gun out of the holster and pointed it with both hands at the man in front of him. Well, it should have, but what actually happened was that his foot got stuck in the strap and he fell over slowly and ungracefully, flailing for the gun as he fell.

Armed. Dangerous.

Riight.

Brushing the loss of dignity off, Isak brought the gun up from a sitting position instead. And then his brain caught up with his mouth. Demons to slay.

"You aren't helping it?"

"Give the little man a big cigar." Seifer snapped.

"You could just be faking it."

"You"d know. Believe me"

"So get me out of here!" Isak shouted. "We can.."

Seifer leant against the bars. "No."

"Wha..?" Isak said. "No. You've got to be kidding. You can't just leave me here to rot!" He tried to grab Seifer through the bars, but the ex-knight easily evaded him. "Not unless you tell me where Quistis is."

"I don't know." Isak moved again towards his gun. He'd always prided himself on having a long fuse, but right now the wick was burning down.

"Yeah, that's right. Shoot me. You"ll really get out that way. Hyne, what do they teach you at that school? You"re supposed to wait till I fall asleep and then prise the keys from my belt with a device made from the frame of your rucksack and half a foot of steel wire you just had lying about. Apart from I'm not staying here. I'm going back upstairs. And, fuck me, you Don't have any wire. So I guess you"re staying right here until you convince me to let you go. Bullets kind of interfere with my conversation skills."

Isak sighed. "Look, I don't know where Quistis is. But you can't just keep me here. I could help."

"Just because I'm not brainwashed doesn"t mean I'm going to be nice," Seifer said. " It's nothing you hadn't planned for me. Wait, instead of being given a trial, it"ll just make you into its mindless zombie slaves. I can live with that."

"Well, so what are you going to do?"

Seifer sighed. "I have no idea. And I can't let you out. I don't have a key."

Isak could not believe his ears."What? I thought-"

"What did you think the fucking thing was going to do? Here, I've known you for all of two minutes, have a copy of my most secret plans and a skeleton key for the entire castle and do you know my secret weakness is water and damn, there seems to be a hell of a lot of buckets round here."

"You really have no idea what you"re getting into? What the hell were you going to do when you found her anyway? You need help."

"Damn, I know," Seifer said.

"There's no way you can take this thing on your own."

"I can't not do it alone. I don't trust any of you bastards. Especially you. You talk too much."

"It's proof that I'm alive." Isak came closer to the bars. "Just take this before I really start regretting it." He held out his gun and a handful of spare ammunition. "They probably won"t do any good, but...just in case."

Seifer stuffed bullets into his pockets. "Don't think that this"ll stop me kicking your ass when we get out of this. " He sighted down the barrel of the gun. "Not bad. Thanks." He turned away and then back. "Got any cigarettes?"

Isak fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a crumpled pack of Marlboros.

"Cute name." Seifer took one and then when Isak didn't immediately snatch the packet away, a handful, grinning as the smaller soldier fumed."Matches? Lost my lighter."

"Is there anything else you"d like? A kidney?"

Seifer regarded him as one might a small and furry animal that that He'd just stomped on and had, against all expectations, run up his trouser leg."Fuck, a bottle of vodka, make that two, the raspberry pavlova, ten minutes of rest and an ambulance." He glared at Isak narrowly. "And if you lot'd just stop chasing me, that'd be great…"

Isak flipped a matchbook through the door. "No chance."

"True." Seifer shuffled in his pockets, feeling obscurely guilty, and pulled out half of the cigarettes, threw them back. "Keep them. Like you"ve got anything else to do." He turned away.

Isak watched him walk away, boots scuffing on the flags."Good luck."

"We're all gonna die." Seifer said as he walked away. His voice echoed among the passages…die…die…."

Isak shivered. Despite his distrust of the ex-knight, it felt darker now he was gone. He thought Seifer was honest, if only because he couldn't be bothered to lie. What you saw was what you got. Of course, they were both pretty unpleasant, but hey.

Seifer's boots crunched on unseen objects in the shadowy half darkness as he walked along the corridor. Out of curiosity he bent and touched the ground, threads of tattered gloves catching on rough edges of the stones. Tiny bones drifted through his fingers like sand.

He hadn't seen mice or rats since they"d came. Mind you, it wasn't like he'd been looking.

He wandered down more corridors, trying to memorise his steps. No more rooms. No more cells. No more people. The tunnels-surely he'd gone below the level of the floor by now-were clean, rectangular and bare, though in places the roots of trees pushed themselves up from the floor or walls. The same light was everywhere, pale and bluish without any visible source. Creepy, though to look on the bright side, now he knew what he was going to look like dead.

Sooner or later he worked out that he wasn't going to find any one else. There was no sound of people moving and talking and he lost his wariness as nothing appeared and tried to chew his head off. There were no monsters and not even any evidence that they might have laired here in the past, no toothmarks on bones or piles of nested litter.

Dawn was hours away.

He walked on until he reached a window. It was huge, easily twice his height, heavily carved and empty of glass. The wind blew in flakes of snow, but there was nothing but blackness outside. Why wasn't the sun coming up? Why had he somehow managed to get from below ground floor to a third storey window without climbing any stairs? Why wasn't he just leaving? But the thought of going out again into the night made him shiver. There was something comforting about solid stone walls, no matter how weird and draughty they were.

He walked on. Forty minutes later, there was still no light, Seifer hadn't reached a corner or climbed any stairs, and from a quick glance out a second window, he was now on the fourth floor. The corridors were studded with gargoyles. Their eyes gleamed in the halflight like little malevolent raisins.

Seifer reached out and struck a match on one to light one of the cigarettes he'd bummed off Isak and was almost disappointed when it didn't move or try and bite him. He needed something to hit. Without much hope, he tried a simple orientation spell, but the magic didn't work. He tried it again with the same effect and then cursed, kicked one of the smaller floor level gargoyles until it crumbled into little pieces but still refused to fight him, and wandered off again.

The castle gave him the creeps.

Seifer came to another window -second floor this time-and checked the sky again. This window had once had glass in it and the jagged remains spiked upwards like dragon"s teeth from the sill.

He shouted "Is anybody alive out there?" without much hope and then regretted it when he thought exactly what things might be crawling round outside.

He leaned on the windowsill and stared out, ignoring the fierce wind. Right now, back in Marduk, He'd be reaching for another bottle, avoiding dealing by getting dead drunk. The nicotine helped a bit, but not enough.

It wasn't that he was afraid. In Garden they"d been trained to walk through the most sophisticated security like it wasn't there, locate the target and pinpoint and get out fast, but his ignorance; the gut feeling that someone was fucking with the law of physics and wondering where the hell everyone was was getting on his nerves.. The forest had been bad, but at least He'd always known which direction he was heading, following the sun by day and the stars by night.

Seifer dragged a hand down his face and saw dark eyes ringed with shadow reflected in the broken glass of the window. The paler bits where he'd managed to shave and wash the best part of a month"s worth of grime off contrasted oddly with the tanned skin of his cheekbones.

Hyne, he looked like a fucking refugee or something.

Hardly a hero.

Ironic, that he'd looked so much more of a hero back in the old days, when he'd been doing everything wrong. No one in their right mind would have cast Squall as the saviour then, with that pimp coat and jewellery, for Hyne"s sake, and his habit of sitting in corners all the time and answering every question -or taunt- with "Whatever" and a kind of amused detachment that just made Seifer fighting mad.

And now he was back in Balamb, doing pretty well for himself He'd heard, with the job and the glory and the girl

Damn it. He'd liked Rinoa.

When he'd met her in Timber he'd thought they were all a lot of idealistic idiots, and hadn't bothered to hide it. So they"d fought, or at least as much as you could with Rinoa and her puppy dog eyes and her little way of asking why, in her cute little voice, and the long and the short of it was that He'd travelled back to Garden alone in September.

And then she'd got in touch with him again, asked him to do her a favour.

And he'd said yes.

Seifer mentally shook himself.

He'd been doing too much thinking lately. A mistake. If you kept opening up old scars it only hurt the more.

A finger absently traced the line of the old one across his face. He rubbed his hands across it, feeling the slight ridge of the skin. His vision blurred and he wondered if it would hurt just to sit down. The floor was dusty and covered in dead leaves, but he'd slept in worse places and he was so tired right now that the bare boards looked better than a five-star hotel.

Seifer stamped on the floorboards harder and though they creaked they held. He walked across the middle of the corridor, boots squealing an unholy cacophony of groans, slid down with his back to the wall and wrapped himself in his coat. If he couldn't do anything, he might as well sleep.

He closed his eyes.

Not so far away, Quistis woke up.

Her head was pillowed on something hard, which after a few seconds of panic she realised was her arm.

She blinked, adjusted her glasses sleepily and sat up fast as consciousness came flooding back, carrying unpleasant flotsam with it.

It all came back to her, floating down the river of her mind like a drowned rat. The snow. There had been that thing. They hadn't been able to move, shouting, and then it had all gone dark.

And Seifer.

How could she forget?

She looked around.

She was in a cell. Or an empty room with a locked door, anyway, which was the same thing. The room was bare, no doors, no windows, a perfect little square room that appeared to have been hewn out of the rock. The walls were smooth and featureless and slick with water.

The water dripped on the floor and pooled among the prone bodies of three people, all wearing torn Galbadian uniforms.

Quistis rose. She winced and adjusted her spectacles.

She checked each soldier's pulse and breathing. Everything appeared normal. She recognised the third person, lying against the back wall, as someone she'd vaguely noticed in the crowd. She was slightly older than Quistis; tall with acne-scarred cheeks and heavy black hair hacked off at jaw length.

Quistis shook her and then the two men. They did not wake.

What in Hyne's name was going on?

She shrugged off her pack and did a cursory check, rooting through equipment and tossing most of out onto the floor. Seifer had the tent, but there was enough food for three days and a couple of can of self-heating coffee. Matches. Her sleeping bag. Hyne, the thing had even left her weapons. She lifted out a can of coffee and activated it, juggling it from hand to hand as it heated up. The smell of coffee filled the cell, reminding her of early mornings and late nights and study periods.

She sat there for a while, clearing her thoughts with the can of coffee cradled in her hands. After a bit she saw a slight movement out of the corner of her eye. The Galbadian woman was coming round. As Quistis watched, she groaned, propped herself up on one elbow and rolled to hands and knees. She spoke in a voice like gravel. "Shit."

Quistis dangled the remnants of the coffee under her nose and the woman grabbed it like a lifesaver.

"Sweet holy Hyne, what was that?"

"I don't know." Quistis was surprised by how calm and analytical her voice soundedThe woman drew herself up to a sitting position and swept the cell with her eyes. She saw the men and looked concerned.

"Don't worry. I've checked them and they're all right. You know them?"

" Sure. Stren. Dom. And I'mRahel." She managed a sharp smile. "Pleased to meet you. Damn. I just wish the circumstances had been different." She set the coffee down. " Thanks. I guess we're stuck here for now. So. Like to fill me in?"

"Who was the girl? The one it killed?" Quistis asked

"Eshe. Good soldier." Rahel"s hands played idly with the plastic trim on her jacket, not looking at Quistis.

"Were they ..lovers.? Her and that other guy?"

The other woman made eye contact for the first time. "Nope. She didn't even like him." She laughed, tipping her head back. "Funny, that. But I recognise your face. You"re Quistis Trepe. The war heroine." It wasn't a question."So, whaddya think?"

"About what?"

Rahel rolled her eyes. "This. This whole situation. The fact that we"ve got no backup, since all the coms are out, no magic, no chance of escaping, and no hope. Plus that our homicidal ex-prisoner seems to have gone to the Dark Side, which let"s face it, isn"t really a surprise"

Quistis pushed up her glasses, a characteristic gesture those who knew her well would have recognised from whenever she was worried. "You, know, I'm not sure he has."

"Please." In a kind of sarcastic, "pull the other one, It's got bells on" tone."Just like he did with the Sorceress." The older woman"s face was a thin flat line." "After what they did to Trabia, nothing that man could do would surprise me. Including joining up with whatever kind of force trapped us here."

"He's no angel…"

"Damn right."

"But you forgave Edea. Why can"t you do the same here? Let us have him. He's Balamb's problem."

"That woman was a teacher before she went bad. And she completely changed character. She was possessed." Rahel said.

"Then why can"t you accept that he was being controlled too?

"Well, let me think. He was never a model of good behaviour before it happened, he didn't change his manner much, and oh, yeah, since the wars he's been involved in a number of activities that are shady to say the least. I didn't notice Edea hiring out as an assassin. Fleeing into the wilderness is not the act of an innocent man."

Quistis sighed. Damn Balamb for sending her on this mission. Damn Seifer for making her have to defend him. And damn the monster for putting her in this situation. "He belongs in Balamb." She raised her chin, adjusting her glasses in a way that any of her students would have recognised as meaning that the gloves were off.

If he's so damn innocent it'll come out in the trial," Rahel muttered.

"Really? Because who are you going to get to judge him without bias? A military Galbadian trial? A jury of civilians? You?"

The two women glared at each other. The angry silence was only broken by a groan from the corner. One of the male soldiers was getting up, moaning. As he rose he kicked the second, who also began to stir. Quistis couldn't work out which one, they both looked kind of the same, except one had brown hair, and one was blond.

The blond one got up first. "Rahel."

She nodded. "Stren. Hope you"re okay."

He blinked. "Think so."

"Scared?"

"Nah. I'm only scared of two things. Spiders. And women." He grinned and turned to Quistis. "And spider women. Talking of which, you are…?"

"Quistis," Quistis said.

Rahel pointed at the dark haired soldier. "Bron. And Stren."

Stren looked her up and down, obviously.

"We were just talking about the ..situation." Rahel added, emphasising the last word.

"Door locked?" he asked.

"Obviously."

"We"re just sitting in here for no reason at all." Quistis snapped. This whole situation was making her nervy. "I'mworried about Almasy. He scares me because I know what he's capable of when pushed and he's going to do something stupid if we can"t help him."

"And if we do help him he's still going to do something stupid but that way we"ll be mixed up in it too?" Rahel pointed out.

Quistis sighed."Good point. But he claims it doesn"t worry him and then spends every waking minute trying to prove he's someone to be reckoned with. It doesn't stop him being an arrogant, self-serving bastard but it probably explains the reasons behind it."

"Can't you get him back?" asked Rahel."You said you have a transmitter. Linked to your vital signs."

"Well, yes, but I don't think it's doing anything at all." She hoped that it wasn't.

""Well, at least we have a way to kill him. It's just something you should think about." The older woman leaned back against the wall, deceptively relaxed, hands dangling over crossed knees. She spoke with her eyes closed. "I don't see why you"re so bothered anyway. He's a murderer."

Quistis' eyes narrowed, behind her glasses. "Whatever he is, he's Balamb's."

"And you did such a great job of dealing with it before? You and your sorceresses.."

"What exactly are you suggesting?" said Quistis.

This time it was Stren's turn to pour oil on troubled water."Look, no-one's suggesting anything."

"But under Galbadian law a person who is a member of a terrorist group or a threat to national security can be imprisoned indefinetly on the basis of evidence inadmissible in a trial and on a significantly lower level of proof. The Crime and Security Act, paragraph five, subsection A," Rahel said. "It's the law. And I'd say that attempting a military coup was pretty much a threat to national security. You know what we"re saying's right, you just don't want to admit it."

And the thing was, she was right. Quistis had stuck to the rules all her life and the last thing she wanted to do was defend Seifer Almasy. She imagined the trial would go something like this. "You almost destroyed the world and killed a lot of people. Now lock him up and throw away the key." No crown court in the world would release him.

They"d be mad to.

But somehow, she couldn't help thinking that the ragged, haunted man sHe'd travelled with in the last few days was different from the arrogant SeeD cadet she'd taught. Maybe more dangerous, as he seemed to have most of the sense of honour he'd always had scoured away by the last year, and sometimes she'd got the feeling that that was the only thing that kept that lot going, after all, the posse always stuck to the rules, even if the fact that the rules were theirs in the first place did make that kind of irrelevant

But there was justice, and then there was doing what was right. And right now, Seifer was doing what was right, much as she hated to admit it to herself, and, of course, he was just doing it to get his ass out of trouble and didn't care much about anyone else, but maybe he really was going to save them. Personally she didn't think that this cancelled out trying to end the world, but right now, it had to be a good thing.

And what would she do? Meekly hand him over to the Galbadians? Take him back to Garden anyway? Let him go?

Something watched.

It didn't have a name, being either too old or too new, but it knew when an opening was presented and it took it when it was offered.

It could see the man, sitting leaning against the wall wrapped in his coat in the middle of the hallway, and it waited.

This one was…different. It could feel the marks of power, like snail tracks in the early morning over leaves. .

It watched until it was sure that the man was asleep, his breathing slow and regular and then it pounced.

It was always easier to follow a trail that had already been laid down. It delved deeper, sorting through memories and half-formed dreams and picking images, choosing some, discarding others.

Thousands of years ago it had come into existence, back when the world was young and the smell of snow blew through these dark forests. The woods had been populated only by small bands of wanderers who had first settled here, found shelter for a while, lived, died, and buried their dead, recognising the power in this place and giving it a name. The belief had run like a sharp clear mountain stream and every death had made it stronger. But then the climate had changed, and people had moved on, south to warmer climes and left this harsh unforgiving land behind. Oh, there had been little pockets of belief, but tiny sparks compared to the raging fire it had once gloried in. Over the years, it had learned to take what it needed, to stay alive. And over the years it had not survived by making mistakes.

It intended to live. There could be no error.

It focused in harder, turning over forgotten thoughts and old scars like a child on a beach sorting through stones. Despite its nature, which was fey, and therefore mistrustful, it kept getting a sense that something was not right. Something, therefore, that should be examined.

Aahh. It delved deeper, and suddenly it knew. Knew about him. The blisters on his feet and the tattoo spreading across his shoulders and the deep scar on the sole of his right foot that always hurt when it got wet, old old callouses left from gunblade training, the memory of a white coat and a red cross and a little blondhaired girl, and a woman with dark hair and amber eyes like bottle glass. A beach long ago, and the wind coming in from the sea like it was blowing up a storm.