Deciding that it was far too much of a risk to go for her usual spot in the asylum's car park, Kat instead took her car around the corner to where they had parked before, where by some small miracle the same space was still open. Pulling up, she turned off the engine, and for a few moments the car was quiet and full of elaborate clickings as everyone tried to extricate themselves from their seatbelts in the confined space.

"Sowhat's the plan?" said Chet.

Kat drummed her fingers on the dashboard. "I'm thinking violence, with a side-serving of subterfuge."

Escher raised her hand. "Uh, I'd go more for subterfuge with a side-serving of violence."

"How about violence and subterfuge in equal helpings?" said Chet.

"Done." Kat grinned and got out. Star stuck his head through the window (which he had wound entirely down on the way over) and then followed it lithely with the rest of him, jumping down to the ground.

"Okay," said Kat, walking out from the corner, looking both ways prior to leading the way across the busy street to the asylum, "the first thing w- SHIT!" She stepped back so fast that she nearly knocked Escher, following close behind, into the clump of bushes on the corner, and flattened herself against the wall.

"What?" hissed the younger girl, as Star peered curiously over her shoulder. Chet moved cautiously past them, staring up the street in the opposite direction to the asylum.

"That was Mereii's car" he said, thoughtfully. "Where's he going, I wonder?"

"Who cares?" Kat unflattened herself and turned back towards the asylum. "He's not in there. Advantage, us."

"Hmm," said Chet, and continued to watch the traffic for another few seconds before following.

The first floor of the asylum was pretty much deserted as the foursome made their careful way past offices and along corridors lined with lockers and equipment. Kat wasn't exactly surprised - one of the first things she had noticed about Sporlock was the general lack of activity; budget cuts, poor pay, and general mismanagement having taken care of the morale of most of the staff that would otherwise have bothered to show up on time. This didn't stop her from being as jumpy as hell, though, or from constantly glancing at Chet, hoping to spot the exact moment when the precog became aware of some approaching threat.

They stopped in front of a door that had large, half-wall-sized windows on either side, covered in thin beige venetian blinds. Shielding her eyes from the reflections, Kat squinted through the slats, motioning for the others to stop behind her. Beyond, she could see the first-floor administration centre, a large bare room with a reception desk, a few benches, and the smallish closed-off box-type room that housed the building's security centre. The view through the teller window in the front of this was fuzzy through the glass and blinds, but Kat was willing to bet that the outline she could make out was that of a guard.

Carefully, she reached out for the doorhandle and tried it. It went all the way down, then stuck. She cursed under her breath.

"What's the matter, Kitty?" said Star, brightly. Kat winced.

"Keep it down, Star, okay?" she hissed. "We have to get in there so we can get through the rest of the building without being seen. But the door's locked from the other side, and - hey, where are you going?"

Star walked a little way back down the corridor, turned, then sprinted back towards the left-hand window. Chet, Escher, and Kat realised what was about to happen just about simultaneously, and threw themselves at the floor just as Star hit the glass like a boneless missile, going straight through it with a musical crrrshhhhh and amazingly little loss of momentum. He landed on the other side in a ball and rolled upright, shaking glass from his hair in a sparkling rain, then turned back towards the door and unlocked it, pushing it open with a delighted grin.

"S'not locked anymore, Kitty!"

Kat got up as fast as she could, brushing glass from her shoulders, and grabbed him by the wrist, pulling him down below the level of the ex-window. "Get down here!" she hissed, urgently, and hazarded a tiny look over the frame, just in time to see the guard emerge from the inner room and look around, a suspicious frown on his jowly face. She dropped again, sliding quickly down the wall with her back.

"What's going on?" whispered Escher. "Did the guy notice?"

"Yes! He's gonna see the window any second!"

"I'm surprised he went through it like that," said Chet. "Aren't these kinds of places always supposed to have safety glass?"

"This is Sporlock, remember? Safety probably costs more than regular glass," said Kat, risking another peek. The guard had a hefty rubber torch, and he looked like he wasn't afraid to use it. Out of ideas, Kat looked back to Star, who had hunkered down to her left and was watching her worriedly.

"Star, uhmdistract the nice man for us, okay? Try and get him outside."

The boy's face lit up. "Okie-doke!" Standing up, he pushed back through the door. The remaining three waited for a few minutes in silence, before a loud scraping thud and a startled yell from the room beyond announced that Star had made contact.

"What the-"

"Got your hat!"

"-hey! HEY! Get back here-"

There was a confusion of echoing, retreating footsteps, squeaking on the rubber linoleum, another crash (this time metallic andequipmenty-sounding) and then quiet descended again. When Kat finally looked up over the windowsill again, the lobby was empty.

"Well, that worked out surprisingly well." said Escher.

Kat gave her a sort of weird look before glancing at Chet. "Do we need to follow that golden path again?"

"Not without no one watching the cameras, I would think." Chet paused to consider. "They may be recording" He shrugged.

"Let's just go." Escher finally said after a long moment of the precog's thought. "And we'll see what turns out, okay?"

"Let's go save some Octopus butt." Kat grinned, and the three headed down to the elevator.

Hello?

Can you hear me?

Talk to me.

It's too quiet in here. The walls eat the sound, the cloth deadens everything. I can't even hear myself breathe. I wouldn't mind if I could hear youbut you're not there.

I need to talk to you, we need a plan, anything, to get us out of here. We don't belong in here, we have to get out. Talkme.

Iremember what you are.

You you are mine. My children

I am here, and so are you. Oursours is a unity that cannot be destroyed.

Only separated.

Only

Only

Otto opened his eyes.

The cell was still quiet and dead around him. He was sitting in the middle of the floor - he had, without realizing it, curled up into that same huddled shape which had worried Kat so much when she had seen it before. His head still roared with static. except

He concentrated deeply, letting the lost, buzzing sensation fill him, searching through it for something different. Layers of deafening chaos, emptiness for a while he rode the catastrophe curve of his psyche, searching the reason and the madness for the shared places, the connections. He had often tried to do this before, over the years, out of curiosity or frustration, trying to better understand the nature of his mind's fusion with its artificial counterpart. It was as close to a meditative state as he had ever managed to achieve, and even in this situation, an odd wave of peace washed over him. For a moment he thought of falling, drifting through warm, caressing water, floating gently down towards release-

father

I'm here.

father we're frightened. cannot hear. cannot see frightened help us

But I'm here. We have to go now. We're trapped in here, and we must leave. Don't be afraid.

can't. please help us

I will not leave you again.

He felt as if he had never had to concentrate so hard on forming a single thought in his life. He was up against a program, an unthinking inhibitive circuit which could not be persuaded by logic, or by any means other than - possibly - superior mental strength. He felt his own intellect raging against it, a bright flame trying to bring down a sheer stone wall. It was a terrible effort, to catch the scratchy, stifled hints of his creation's words under the mental static in his skull, but even as the strain increased and sweat dewed on his forehead a part of him stayed utterly calm, listening, speaking.

I will always hear. I trust you. I am listening.

Areare you there?

Otto's brow knitted. He reached out for the nearest tentacle, still lying on the padding where it had fallen, the marbled rust-and-olive patterns of verdigris that covered its surfaces looking intricate and even warm in comparison to the plain, dull white floor. The metal was cool and soothing under his hand. He concentrated-

-Then, without so much as a flicker; clarity.

We are here. We are listening, Father.

Otto looked up. and smiled.

"You know, if we had some sort of vague idea where Otto is, that would probably definitely help."

Standing impatiently in the ground-floor elevator, Chet and Kat looked back at Escher, who replied by giving Chet a hinting glance.

"Alright, let me try" He paused, leaning against the wall, staring into the space. His eyes widened then narrowed, concentrating, focusing. After a long moment, gritted his teeth and spoke, "Six.one of them" He paused, eyes narrowing further. A bead of sweat formed on his forehead and dripped into one vividly bright emerald eye. "Six.it's a six."

After a moment, he gasped and leaned his head against the wall. The glance into the future had apparently tired him, and he closed his eyes, gathering his breath. "Can't see anymoresorry, Kat, Escher."

"It's okay." Kat stepped out of the elevator as it stopped on the third floor. "Hey, look, I'm going to see what I can do about John's blackmail super-powers, okay? Worse comes to worse that means kill his laptop." She grinned a bit. "You two go on ahead and see if you can get Otto. Chet, if you see anything, tell Escher, okay?"

The two nodded, and Kat took off for Mereii's office, leaving the remaining two quite stunned in her wake.

"Let's go." Chet said, after a long pause. He hit the sixth-floor button on the panel, and the doors creaked, then slid shut.

Kat rounded the curve of the third-floor corridor at a run and slid into Mereii's office, getting her breath back as she scanned the room. It was reassuringly empty, and on the desk

"Bingo," she murmured, scooting the chair towards the desk and pulling the laptop towards her. The outward casing was a bit scuffed from where it had, variously, been dropped down stairs, hit by tentacles, and used as a method of physical assault, but when she hit the powerup the blue lights flickered obediently and the screen started to glow as she pushed it back. Kat guessed correctly that such a high-spec and expensive-looking machine probably had an almighty amount of shock protection built into it.

The screen flickered and refreshed, taskbars and icons appearing. Kat looked at them for a moment, then clicked through to the CLASSIFIED folder, giving the same password as before and waiting with baited breath.

FUNDING, EMAIL, PATIENTS.

"Hmm" Kat tapped her fingers on the desktop. She hadn't exactly expected to find a folder called EVIL BLUEPRINTS OF DOOM, but the lack of anything at all useful-looking was still disheartening. Clicking around in the files for a while turned up nothing new, and it didn't help that her eyes kept being drawn to the clock like there were magnets in her retinas. Mereii had already been gone for more than thirty minutes, and something told her that she couldn't rely on a four-an-a-half-hour break this time. She pulled up the file manager and tried a general search.

BLUEPRINTS

Search is complete. 0 files found.

ACTUATORS

Search is complete. 0 files found.

"Damnit" she hissed, starting to skip through random folders. "Where the hell"

STAFF

PROTOCOL

INSURANCE

Kat blinked. "Insurance"

A double click brought up a request for a password. This time, Kat hesitated only a second before typing in the required response. For someone with so much technical knowhow, her employer appeared to be somewhat predictable when it came to protecting his files. Accessed, the folder revealed one file. Teeth gritting unconsciously, Kat clicked it.

The screen flashed, then started filling and re-filling with the same data that she had seen it display earlier in Escher's apartment. Letting out an Indian war whoop with the volume turned down for caution's sake, she punched the air and sat back, grinning.

"Insurance my ay-ess-ess. Hidden in plain view, you arrogant bastard. Now, let's see"

She leant forwards again as the schematics stopped redrawing, and started to poke at the folder options. The program itself seemed to be written specifically for handling and displaying the blueprints, and was surprisingly intuitive. There was

RECENT TRANSFERS

"Yes!"

FILE CURRENTLY QUEUED FOR DOWNLOAD. RECEIVING SERVERS

She stared at the long list that came after this heading. Mereii hadn't been kidding. The blueprint file was linked to servers situated everywhere from Germany to Guam. If she screwed up, removing just one destination from the list

hang on

Clicking on the main filename again highlighted it. She stared at the screen for a moment, then closed her eyes. Offering up a short prayer to the goddess of technology, or the guardian of beleaguered eight-limbed scientists, or whatever the hell else deities happened to be listening, she right-clicked.

And there it was.

DELETE

Hardly daring to breathe, let alone hope, she clicked again.

CONFIRM DELETE

Are you sure you want to delete this file?

Kat had never been more sure of anything in her life. She clicked, again, and the laptop hummed. A bar appeared, and after a nerve-mangling moment when it seemed like nothing was happening, the first notch filled in with bright, blessed blue. She leaned back, watching, letting out a breath she hadn't even known she was holding, while she waited for the second

The lift was slow climbing to the sixth floor. Inside, Chet leaned against the back wall, allowing his head tilt back on the cool brushed metal, letting the breath escape from him in one long sigh. For a moment, he stayed there, enjoying the feel of the chilled surface against the back of his head. From the outside, he looked quite relaxed, and could almost have been sleeping; but in the amberish glow that was the world behind his closed eyelids, a multitude of paths played themselves out, strands of future events unfolded around each other like threads unravelling from an old sleeve, twisted and tangled with such bewildering intricacy that they were almost nothing but a meaningless jumble of perceptions and images. And, in the centre of the interweaving maelstrom of happenings, riding in the eye of this temporal tornado as he had for most of his adult life, Chet watched evenly, waiting to understand.

After a minute, he snapped an eye open and registered Escher, who was leaning against the side wall at a distance which didn't quite add up to the cramped space of the lift. He saw her flinch as he opened his eye, only a quarter of a centimetre perhaps, but enough to be a massive jump by his hyper-sensitive standards. Opening the other eye, he leaned off the wall a little and spoke.

"Are you okay?"

Escher nodded, a little too fast. "I'm fine."

Chet sighed. "Look, you really don't need to be so nervous of me. I admit, I may have been. less than nice to you a few times, but I also have yet to bash you upside the head with a computer."

The girl blinked at this, then grinned ruefully and touched her chin, where a neat Band-Aid marked the spot where she'd been KO'd earlier that day.

"There is that, yes," she said. "Always a big redeeming feature, that."

He smirked back at her, then became more serious. "I just want to make sure you know what side I'm on. Whatever it might look like, I'm not tagging along or helping you out for the entertainment value. I want to I need to" He paused, brow creasing, his breath coming hard while he tried to find the words. "to see what happens, here. To make sure it's the right thing, if I can. Does it matter to you that I'm not here because of your friend? That I'm doing this for closure? For, essentially, me?"

Escher looked at him hard for a minute before replying. "I don't think you're selfish, if that's what you're saying. I mean, if I'd had all that junk done to me, I'd be right in there with a scythe, first chance I got."

Leaning back again and rubbing the skin under one eye, Chet half-laughed. "Funny, that. People always seem to peg me as the vengeful type."

His companion raised an eyebrow. From the multi-hued assortment of clothes she had uncovered in her apartment, Chet had gravitated straight towards a long-sleeved black t-shirt, the cuffs of which drastically overhung his long, spidery hands and had had to be turned back twice, and a pair of black pants which were sufficiently baggy to nearly hide the off-white rubber toes of his (shockingly, black!) tennis shoes. This ensemble, plus his gaunt, slightly equine features and Tim Burtonish frazzle of black hair, made him look as if he was just about to a) slope off and perpetrate some particularly mournful poetry on a wall somewhere or b) go queue for a Manson concert. That was even before you got to his those-have-got-to-be-contacts fevergreen eyes, or the hollow shadows beneath them.

"You don't say," said Escher, her face commendably straight.

Chet sighed. "Escher you and Kat and Otto you're pretty much the only people who have ever trusted the things I saw enough to act on them. Whether you intended it that way or not, that's like the biggest thumbs-up anyone has ever given me, ever since this first started happening. Apart from anything else, it's the first time I've ever had the chance to use this so-called gift' for anything other than pissing people off."

"Or creeping them out."

"Exactly. I'm not used to being believed I don't know if you can understand-"

"What are you talking about?" interrupted Escher, eyes widening. "You don't think I can understand about not being believed? I am like the queen of not being believed, Chet. It's my Jeopardy subject. If being talked concernedly about and worried over and analysed and just about everything bar actually being listened to was an Olympic sport, I'd be heading the damn team. After the stuff that happened with Otto, I had to put up with years of stupid sympathy and pointless medication and a squillion different types of theraputic'" rabbit ears, "shit, before I was old enough to say I was fine and actually be taken seriously. I promised to protect my friend, which was fine, except it turned out that in order to do that I had to play the poor little traumabunny for so long, I nearly wound up believing it myself. I've stared at enough damn inkblots to last me till I'm seventy! I'm not saying I had it anywhere near as bad as you, but please believe me when I say I know exactly where you're coming from. Like, if you're Cassandra, I'm Helen." Escher paused at this juncture, frowning slightly, her extended index finger wandering somewhat as if trying to trace the path of her point. "If, uh, if Helen had actually not minded being abducted by Paris and then had to go back home to Troy and have everyone hovering around her going on about how terrible it must have been." A longer pause. "It wasn't Troy, it was Greece. Troy was whereyou know what I mean, right?"

A deep Zen-like silence reigned for a moment after this query, while Chet quietly tried to coax his logic processes back from wherever they had run off crying to during the latter part of Escher's tirade. He eventually managed a sort of steamrollered smile, and a nod.

Escher beamed sunnily. "Cool. Glad we got that straight. Anyway you're not all that creepy. I know about creepy. Creepy is looking in someone's eyes and seeing nothing there. No-one could say that about you."

Before Chet could reply, the lift dinged, and the doors slid back, with a complaining rattle that spoke of long-overdue maintenance. Looking around carefully, Chet headed out straight away, and Escher followed him, wrinkling her nose at the scenery that greeted them. Perhaps the lights were a touch more bluey, or the ceiling a shade lower, or maybe it was something intangible in the air, but this corridor's atmosphere was definitely even more of a clinically desolate mental wasteland than the one above it. The girl shivered, and almost without thinking about it increased her step to catch up. As a result, she nearly walked straight into her taller companion, who had stopped dead in the middle of the passageway.

"What is it?"

"Not sure-"

So saying, Chet tilted his head to one side, like a dog listening for a whistle. Then he turned and half-sprinted back past her, beyond the lift doors to the stairwell and the single window this contained. Escher hesitated, then hurried after him. By the time she arrived by his side, the lanky precog was stretched up off the highest step which allowed him to reach the window, craning to see out and down, head inclined as far as safety allowed, and then some.

"What is it?" Escher repeated, knowing full well that her own just-over-five-foot height wouldn't let her get anywhere near the narrow frame.

Chet let go of the sill, dropping down and landing in a tense stoop a few steps down from her. He looked up, and it took no special ability whatsoever for her to be able to guess what he was about to say. His expression was answer enough.

"Mereii."

Running systems check

Receiving diagnostics

Parletal lobe connections operating at 100. Cerebral connections operating at 0.

Otto sighed. He was still sitting on the floor of the cell, one hand still spread against a closed claw. The fact that he could hear their precise, anxious chattering through the static in his mind made his claustrophobic surroundings incrementally easier to bear, but he had to admit that his physical situation hadn't actually improved. He was, for want of a better word, stuck.

You can't move at all?

We are trying. The motor and movement inhibitor circuits appear to be a closed system. We do not think it is possible to interrupt them.

Otto tapped the claw with his fingers, like an orator on a podium. In that case, he thought, when Mereii comes back, please be quiet and don't distract me with anything which might make it difficult for me to act neutralised.

The actuator's voices were innocent. What do you mean, Otto?

Their host smiled dryly, and shrugged his trenchcoat collar a little higher up his neck. I know you too well. Let's just say that I would find it difficult to keep a straight face if all I can hear is you telling me exactly how you'd like to deal with him.

Father There was a greater twist of worry in the voices when they next spoke. If he if he hurts you again, you may become unable to hear us.

I know. The smile slid and was replaced with a frown, although the fingers still didn't cease their thoughtful tapping. We can only hope that does not happen.

The actuators gave the mental equivalent of an uncertain nod. Sighing again, Otto shifted a little, trying to get more comfortable on the uneven, padded floor, and continued to think.

Barely thirty yards away, in the sixth-floor corridor, the panic was mounting up nicely.

"What, he's back already? A-are you sure?" said Escher, giving Chet a rabbit-in-the-headlights sort of look. He nodded at her, vehemently, his own expression tinged with nausea.

"Believe me, if you felt the way I do every time I know' that man is going to be included in my short-term future, you wouldn't be asking that. It's like a cross between drowning and a slug trailing across my brain."

"Ew."

"Yes, exactly," said Chet. "Go get Otto, and if I don't come back up by then, try and get out the back way."

"Hadn't we better warn Kat-"

"There's no time!" He shook his head, agitated impatience in every movement. "We're talking minutes - I have to hold him up - one way or another"

Anything further was lost to her as he turned and began to pelt down the stairs, taking three at a time.

"Be careful!" yelled Escher, as the clattering of his footsteps died away. When there was no reply, she backed up onto the sixth-floor landing again, shook herself slightly, and started along the corridor, looking through windows and observation slots into the deserted cells beyond, searching for the right one.

"COME ON!"

Kat's nose was about a quarter inch from the laptop's screen. Her sang-froid upon solving the puzzle of the hidden folder had not lasted very long. In fact, it had deserted her as soon as she'd realised the kind of time it was going to take for the deletion bar to fill up completely. At the moment it was only about halfway there, and to add insult to injury it was completely unpredictable; the blue level creeping up in fits and starts that seemed to the waiting girl to be the program equivalent of Chinese water torture. As a result, her heart was thudding like it was trying to escape her chest, and she was quite literally on the edge of her seat.

"GET A GODDAMN MOVE ON!" she screamed suddenly, slamming a palm into the desktop next to the keyboard.

The bar filled up one more notch.

Escher raced down the hallway, her shoes squeaking. Chet's urgency to run into his future had only made her more nervous, and she found herself hurling head-first into her own. She eyed every room equally quickly, figuring as a man in a brown trench coat and giant mechanical tentacles oughta catch her eye pretty quickly. Also, most of the rooms were empty. Sporlock was a wasteland.

She spotted him in 618 and checked every one of her six pockets for Kat's keycard. Murphy's Law being what it was, it was in the very bottom of the sixth pocket under two pencils (which injured her hand) an open marker, and a pair of crumbled pieces of paper. She slid it through the door, and it opened (thankfully) with a hiss.

"Otto!" she nearly shouted, dropping to her knees in front of him. "Otto, it's me Escher, you've got to remember me, you saved my life before and we almost fl—"

"Escher." Otto looked up, setting a hand on her shoulder. "I know who you are." His dark brown eyes didn't smile like his mouth did, but he tried. "I'm fine, and so are they."

Escher beamed her now-trademark pinball smile and hugged him briefly. "So why haven't you broken out yet?"

"The link between my mind and theirs is a different circuit from their ability to move."

Her smile failed. "Huh?"

"The barrier keeping me from hearing them is different from the one keeping them from moving. We need to break the collars in order for me to get out of here."

Immediately Escher nodded, groping for the nearest one, trying to find out what she'd popped out the first time around. The metal was smooth under her fingers; whatever she'd undone last time, she couldn't feel now. She frowned this was getting more and more annoying. A little bar in her head was filling up, preparing for the super-special pinball attack.

"Where's Kat and the others?" He asked.

"Kat is on John's computer, Chet is distracting John, Star is.I don't know where Star is." She shrugged. The thought of that doctor' only made her more aggravated, and she didn't want to think about what John would do to Otto if he (eventually at least) got here.

"Come on, we have to go back to Kat!"

"If I could move, maybe"

Escher decided that she would go by one of her old theories, which had been successful for both annoying bugs and little brothers. This, coupled with her growing agitation, would make a combination that had to work:

When it annoyed you, step on it. Step on it a lot.

Escher put the actuator down and stomped on the collar as hard ash she could. She stumbled off several times, but after a minute of angry jumping and throwing a nice tantrum on the collar, there was an unpleasant whrck. Followed by much better noises.

click. whirrrrrr. kreeee-skritch.

The actuator lifted, a pierce of the collar falling off, and bared the familiar spike. It reached over to one of it's cousins as Escher found another actuator to stomp on as hard as she humanely could. All in all, it was good for taking out her anger on.

When she had finally exhausted all her fury at John and the collars and the general state of the world on the inhibitor, it rose up. The other two had been successfully freed, and Otto stood, smiling.

"I'm pretty sure Kat can handle herself. Where is Chet?"

"He went to distract John.let's go find him."

The two of them sprinted off to the stairs, heading to the garage.

Chet arrived in the asylum's side lobby quite a lot faster than he had intended, skidding the last few yards in a stationary position as he turned to see out of the door. What he saw made him thank whatever gods might have been listening that he hadn't delayed any longer upstairs; Mereii had already gotten out of his car, which was parked in its usual space in the almost-empty lot, and was now halfway across the area, heading for the main entrance.

Without putting too much thought into what he was doing, Chet sprinted forwards, whomped through the heavy glass seal door, took the steps in two jumps, and fetched up against the side of Mereii's BMW. Wincing, though not so much at the shock of the impact as the lack of effect it had, he slid around to the opposite side of the vehicle, huffed in and out a couple of times to restore his breathing to normal, then took a step back and kicked the car squarely in the sleek curve of its front left wheel arch.

The alarm went off, quite spectacularly. A small flock of pigeons erupted off the asylum's distant roof, and somewhere nearby (as is almost a certainty with this type of thing), a dog started barking. Mereii stopped in his tracks, stayed like that for a moment, then turned around slowly.

What stretched out over the next few seconds couldn't exactly have been called a silence', because it is somewhat difficult to categorize anything as silent when it is filled with the urgent clamour of a high-end, 120 decibel car alarm. Nevertheless, it somehow managed to feel extremely silent.

Chet leaned back against the side of the car and looked at Mereii, and Mereii looked back. Eventually, and without blinking, he raised his keyfob up to about head height and aimed it at the car, which lapsed into silence with a final sulky bwoop. With the alarm gone, the lack of any noise seemed to slam back over the parking lot like a wave, just as startling as the racket had been. Chet held the psychologist's gaze for a few more moments, while he waited for the ringing in his ears to subside, and then smiled.

"Hello, Johnny."

Mereii had changed his clothes, once again a smart and tidy blank page of normality in his black jacket and white shirt, the inevitable tie like an arrow-straight exclamation mark inked on his narrow chest. His eyes narrowed as he regarded his ex-patient, the bruising around the left still clear but well on the way to fading.

"Karos," he said. "Well, well. I really would have expected you, of all people, to have more sense. Me agreeing to leave you alone does not equal a licence to come back here and assault my property."

"Oh, absolutely." Chet smiled. "Just wanted to make sure I had your attention, that's all."

Mereii edged, impatiently, shooting a quick glance back at the building behind him. "Right, well, you've got it. Now what?"

Chet tsked, shaking his head. "Why the big hurry? What's wrong, can you see it too? That something's coming for you? If so, I'm impressed, even I can't tell what it is exactly" His voice hardened. "But I can see enough. There's a shadow creeping up on you, Johnny-boy, I can see it hanging over your head like the biggest tidal wave you ever saw. The Big One. And when it breaks, well" Chet smiled, then continued. "If you leave, get in this car and go right now, you might just outrun it." He held up a hand as Mereii opened his mouth. "Ah, don't get me wrong. I know you won't listen to me. Butoh, I just wanted to tell you anyway. Because now, you'll know - afterwards - that you could have done."

A short silence, then Mereii sneered. "Put a sock in it, Karos," he said. "I've had just about enough of you and your threats."

"Come on, now, John." Offended or amused, the ghastly grin didn't change. "This is me. That wasn't a threat." Before the psychologist could move, he raised a hand and touched him directly between the eyes with one long index finger, pulling back easily to evade the reflexive swat. "That was a prediction."

Mereii glared at him, backing off, rubbing his forehead with his knuckles to get rid of the feeling of contact. "Don't ever do that again."

"What makes you think I'd want to?" said Chet. "You've come out of this pretty well, haven't you? Your secrets are safe heh you still have all your limbs I have to say, it seemed kind of unfair to me. Not any more, though." He shook his head, laughing softly. "Not after what I saw."

He took a step forward, equalising the distance between them. The wormwood-green flare in his eyes was even more pronounced than usual, and each iris seemed to float on a wall of serenity, of calm, irrefutable knowing. And then, just when it seemed to Mereii that the psycho couldn't possibly get any creepierhe started to sing.

"On topof the skyis a place where you goif you've done nothing wrong"

"Shut up, Karos," said Mereii, weakly. He started to walk forwards, although it was unclear whether he knew why, or even if he knew he was doing it. "Shut up."

Chet paced backwards, out of reach, grinning. His mellow, drawling voice was remarkably loud in the silence of the empty lot,the rhythm unstoppable as a bee bouncing against a windowpane. It was like a spellor a curse. It certainly sounded more like the latter to the infuriated psychologist, and each further word seemed to deepen the strength of it, to grind the syllables into his brain like salt in a wound.

"And downin the ground"

"Shut UP, I said-"

"is a placewhere you goif you've been a bad boy-"

"SHUT UP!" They had now nearly completed one full circuit of the car, one stalking angrily forwards, the other stepping back with an easy unintimidated grace.

"Don't like that one, Johnny? The old ones are supposed to be the best, you know." Chet cocked his head, that viper's smile even more terrible for the delight in his eyes. "Or are they? Sometimessometimes, the old ones are the worst."

Mereii stared at him. Then he made a disgusted sound in the back of his throat, and turned away towards the main doors.

As if his next action was written in bright neon in the air before him, Chet suddenly saw what came next. He took one-two-three steps forward, reached down and scraped a fair-sized stone out of the parking lot dust, and threw it without aim or discretion. Almost entirely caught up in the flood of events as they swept through the present, giddily one jump ahead of the world, he was only marginally surprised when it bounced off the back of Mereii's head.

The psychologist spun, hand flying to the place and coming back slightly bloody. He stared at the blood like it was some kind of alien substance, and then looked up at Chet. The expression on his face, in those pain-narrowed grey eyes, was truly frightening. It spoke plainly of a resident shoulder demon which had not only murdered its halo'd opposition, but also buried it without a trace beneath the metaphorical patio. Chet, himself a master of all things creepy glare-ish, nevertheless found it seriously difficult at that moment to resist the impulse to get the hell out of the way, and let whatever it was that lived behind those eyes take its fury out on the nearest inanimate object. The trouble there, however, was that he could all too easily imagine who that inanimate object would be. Balancing on the buzzing highwire in his head where the future rushed into the past, high with the one-way thrill of it, Chet saw clearly that only one more push was needed, and exactly where it should be placed.

"You're going to crash and burn, Johnny-boy." he said, lazily. "You've lost. You just don't know it yet."

In the moment of stillness that followed this pronouncement, Chet saw John's right eye twitch, just once, a perfect textbook spasm that yanked his lower eyelid up like a cricket jumping under a glass. It was so quick and classic that Chet wasn't sure if he had actually seen it or not, and what happened next made it a little difficult to enquire.

"DON'T," screamed Mereii, suddenly, "CALL," hefting his slim black briefcase like it was some kind of samurai weapon, "ME," and hurling himself across the space between them, "JOHNNY!'"

Startled, Chet brought his arm up just in time to save his face from the briefcase, which struck his elbow and sent shockwaves right up his arm and across his shoulders. Before he could even gasp, Mereii slammed bodily into him, and he was knocked flat on his back, landing painfully in the loose gravel of the lot.

Well done, said a little voice in his head, as he landed. Diversion successfully created. Now, perhaps we can move on to extracting ourselves from it, before we end up in intensive care.

Rapidly, he tried to turn over, and succeeded relatively easily, but since all this meant was that instead of lying on his back with Mereii on top of him he was now lying on his front with Mereii on top of him, it wasn't really much of a gain. He felt a knee, bony as hell, hit him between the shoulderblades, and then his thoughts were forcibly derailed as the psychologist grabbed a double handful of his hair and started to slam the side of his head repeatedly against the ground.

Chet gagged and struggled, spat gravel, and tried to shake him off. Taking advantage of the next time his head was yanked up, he managed to lift his head and keep it up, despite the pressure. Encouraged by this, he kicked sideways, attempting to pull himself out from underneath.

The next second, Chet learned a new and interesting fact about John Mereii; to wit, that he was a secret nail-chewer. He discovered this detail by proxy, as the severely short but ragged things were dragged viciously across the side of his face. Realising that Mereii was trying to find his eyes, Chet panicked, lashed out with a foot, and felt it connect. His opponent let go with a yelp, and Chet threw himself forwards, snarling, temporarily abandoning the idea of escape to another, far older impulse.

The two men rolled over, spraying gravel, kicking, punching, struggling. Chet curled in on himself and rocked back like a ball, then uncoiled and thudded the soles of his shoes squarely into Mereii's stomach. The psychologist howled incoherently, and punched him in the ear. Recoiling, Chet tried to do it again, but this time he missed, and before he could attempt anything else, Mereii's hands closed around his neck.

It was like being strangled by a vise. Wherever the scrawny doctor was getting the strength from, it probably had less to do with his actual muscles than with the psychotic fury that was currently possessing him. Choking, Chet looked up into a pair of eyes that had as little to do with reasoning humanity than the sights of a guided missile, and redoubled his efforts to prise Mereii's long, constricting fingers away from his throat.

"Youhave no idea" wheezed the blurring shape above him, squeezing harder, "howmany times I'vewanted to do this."

Chet struggled, but even this was becoming progressively more difficult. His stamina, weakened by years of incarceration, was fast draining out of him, and darkness was starting to crowd in on the edges of his vision. Try as he might, he couldn't see so much as a flicker of his own future now, nothing past the roaring void that was partly the blood in his ears and partly the throttled rasp of his own breath. As the darkness spread and opened to enfold him, blinding at last

he realised calmly why that would be.