Death

The experience of saving life had imprinted itself on the mind of Michael Lee. He thought a long time about it, questioning his life, experiencing feelings he was not used to at all. He had never really considered whether he thought that killing or experimenting on witches was right or wrong. The STNJ was just who he was working for, like he could have ended up working for the CIA or several others, there was no choice. But now he had a choice, albeit a limited one.

He cursed. It was like with horses, he thought, having spent a summer, years ago, with his horse-mad cousin in Connecticut. You keep them in their stable and they get stressed, but eventually calm down. But put them from the small stable into a little pen and they go mad, they never seem to settle. He remembered watching the behaviour of the horses, noticing that about them. He was now feeling the same way, like he could tolerate total captivity better than this façade of freedom. He wanted to save life, and he was becoming less and less sure that the STN network did this. And worse, to know that they experimented on witches like the eugenicist of the early 20th century!

The truth was, he was still leashed though, even if Kosaka allowed him to have his own apartment and to leave at night. Before the attack on Factory, Kosaka had explained how the tagging system on his collar worked, how it had a tracker in it which was activated when he crossed outside the building. It had been why Kosaka had made him climb out of Ravens Flat through a little hole where a load of pipework left the building when they had first decided to stand against Zaizen, to stop the activation. Someone could still see him, using the tracker, every time he went outside. So going outside was sweet, but it was a tainted sweetness, and it just made him realise that they would hang on to him if they could, that their Japanese hacker was too valuable.

Kosaka had at least let him try to salvage what he could of his old life. Whereas Zaizen had completely blocked him from looking at any record of his own life and the modifications made to the record after his capture, Kosaka allowed the boy free access. He discovered that he had been registered as deceased six weeks after his capture, that his parents had divorced about eight months after, that his father had returned to America and his mother had reverted to her maiden name and was untraceable. He also discovered how difficult Zaizen had made it for him to salvage anything, he would definitely struggle to rebuild any sort of identity with which to function in the outside world. That realisation was like a body-blow, hitting him on his seventeenth birthday, when the extent of Zaizen's reach had been apparent. Michael had smashed up an unused storeroom that day, so, so very angry. It was definitely true that a little freedom is worse than none at all.

But he carried on, feeling more and more disillusioned as time went on. The only thing that mattered for him now was maintaining his precautions for Robin, who was still being hunted. There had been no sight, no sound, but that was a good thing. For surely any sight or sound would be in a cold, grey morgue somewhere. The hunting continued, but there was growing suspicion in the non-SOLOMON community that something was not right. They had been inspected so many times at Ravens Flat, under the guise of government regulations, health and safety, etc. Every time, Michael had been up all hours to ensure that the building was clean, that no records of their true activity remained. Occasionally he thought about the little girl, he could still remember how her hair felt soft in his had as he protected her head, how she was so warm, so alive. He still wanted to save lives, he still wanted to change the world, only he did not know how to go about it. He would go home and look up at the handwritten psalm, still stuck on his wall, and think that those two women were the only lives he had ever managed to save, that he wanted to do so much more.

It was on his eighteenth birthday that the directional shift hit him again, that he found himself once more in the path of the storm. He was putting in another day at work before heading down to Harry's with the gang. A thick, A4 envelope had just arrived for him, bearing an Airmail sicker and Russian stamps. He opened it, out fell a selection of documents, a passport, birth certificate, NHS card, all British documents. There was an air ticket to Heathrow and a letter, typed anonymously

"Michael,

Thank you. You know what for, had we realised sooner we would have responded sooner, but we did not. We know what you have been looking for, we think these will suffice. You can make your own decision when you get there about what you wish to do next, I know you have been making some preparations in that regard.

We hope to see you again soon, one way or the other

nam et si ambulavero in medio umbrae mortis non timebo mala quoniam tu mecum es virga tua et baculus tuus ipsa me consolata sunt"

And so, a few days later, Michael Lee died. Again.

Officially, he jumped from the top of the office into the atrium, where he was found by Kosaka, who registered the death through SOLOMON channels and disposed of the body in the usual manner before the police became involved. Though they were all upset at the STNJ, they were not surprised. All the hunters had been saying how introverted Michael had become and how he appeared far less happy than when he had been kept there. Deep down they had all known that he would eventually be unable to take any more, and reaching a milestone in his life, like his 18th birthday, would be enough to tip him over the edge. It had happened before, to other STN's with similar arrangements. He was not the first, and would not be the last.

Nobody gave any thought to the enrolment of a Michael L Hughes on a Computer Science course in London.