Sam had drifted into a restless, fevered doze and Al had taken the opportunity to get out of the Imaging Chamber and talk to Doc Beeks. Not that he thought Sam was really going to miss him, just before he'd z'd off, he'd been having this great conversation with his mother about chicken soup, and then tried to catch butterflies that weren't there.

'Wish we could get some antibiotics into him,' Beeks said. She frowned at the readout. 'Even some soap and water to clean the wound would help a little. Are you sure there's no way…?'

Al shook his head. 'I don't think those nozzles he's with ever heard of soap and water. There's just nothing and no way they'll take him to a doctor. When I left, the ringleader was reading the riot act to the other guys. He knows the score. They have to get away, out of the country, before Susan can identify them. I mean the odds of Sam surviving this leap are still…'

'In the low zeroes.' Ziggy's voice echoed around the room. 'I estimate that Sam's Dr. Beckett's chance of getting out of this one are worse than, to use the vernacular, a bit ca-ca, they're totally f…'

'Cheez!' Al snapped. 'Do you mind? There are ladies present. I still can't believe your programming came from the mind of the biggest boy scout this side of anywhere. What'd he do? Take some Jekyll and Hyde potion?'

'Guess he just gave the best parts of himself to me. The other parts are from you.,' Ziggy said, sounding smug.

'Well how about using some of them to help?'

'As if I could doI am willing to consider anything I could do from the here and now,' Ziggy said.

Al exchanged a glance with Beeks. 'Guess that's my cue then. Is there anything?'

Beeks shrugged. 'The chicken soup was good. Maybe he could ask for more. Aspirin will help with the fever if he can get some, and a cold compress. He just needs help, Al. That's what he needs.'

Help, and a friends right there on the spot wouldn't do any harm, either. Al stepped back into the Imaging Chamber, into the strange half world of holograms with his best friend looking like a beaten and delirious teenage girl. Her face so dirty, the mattress and bunched up ticking that she was using as a pillow wet with sweat, and inside her somewhere, there was Sam.

'Hey, kid.' Sam's eyes didn't open. Sweat sheeted his face, soaked around him in dark patches on the mattress. Over by the fire the three kidnappers had broken out a bottle of cheap bourbon and were trying to impress each other with stories of bravado.

Alesio's talk was sexual, ugly. 'I could do her right now while she's asleep, she wouldn't even know.

'What are you, a necrophiliac? She almost dead.' said Trimble.

'Aw, listen to the perfesser and his five dollar words,' Bancroft said, laughing.

'She's just a kid,' Trimble said.

'So'm I. We're perfect for each other.' Alesio made calf eyes at occupied bed.

'You want your first time with something worthwhile, a real woman. I'll buy you one, day after tomorrow,' Bancroft said.

Alesio took a long, slow suck at the bottle. 'She needs to be broken in and I'm the man to do it.'

'Just can't wait to pop your cherry, can you?' Trimble said.

'Hey I've done it before. Lots. There was even this teacher…'

Al turned away, not wanting to listen. 'Doesn't count when you're on your own,' he murmured. He walked back to the bed, crouched beside it. 'Sam.' Nothing. No movement, no response. Sam was out cold, exhausted. Someone should have been putting a cold compress on his head.

The cockfight in the corner was getting louder and more ridiculous, if Alesio's claims were true, at least half the girls at school should have been pregnant. Al checked Ziggy's handlink, just to reassure himself. At the time of Alesio's death, still reading as a drug overdose within the next twelve months, and for the nine months following, his name did not appear in the "father" field of anyone's birth certificate. A small mercy to be thankful for. Susan's fate was still an ugly death looming in less than a day, there was no certain time of death, they couldn't exactly pin it down by the time they found her body, but her last minutes were clear: rape and strangulation.

'Show you this little trick I learned about.' Alesio, staggering to his feet, was undoing his belt.

'What? How to make your pants fall down?' Trimble was sniggering through his bourbon.

'No.' Alesio dragged at his belt, twisting in a circle as he followed it, then realized he was pulling the wrong end. ' 'S called ozzigen depervashn. Makes em really gooooo.' He giggled and wove a staggering course towards Sam, unconscious and helpless on the bed. Naked under that blanket. Alesio's hand was on his pants, fumbling the buttons.

'Come on, Sam, get up, get up!' Al screamed in his ear. 'I promise you, if you don't, you're gonna get such a nasty surprise.'

One eye cracked open, a millimeter of hope. 'H'm? Al?'

'Yeah, baby, it's me!' Alesio, still trying to undo the top button of his fly, but looking more like he was groping himself, fell onto the bed, on top of Sam and started humping.

'Oh, nice technique, kid.' Al was only disappointed his sarcasm was being missed. 'Yeah, I bet all the girls really love that.'

'Whadaya doin?' Sam's hand came out from under the blanket, wrapped itself around Alesio's throat and casually flung him across the small room.

'How in hell did she do that?' Bancroft, sounding outraged and a little awed, wove across the room to rescue his cousin, who was lying in a heap, giggling.

'Very nice move, Sam,' Al was appreciative. It was easy to forget, sometimes, that the person he was looking at, however puny-seeming, was a holographic cover created by Ziggy, and underneath there was Sam. Six foot something with a tendency of spending way too many of his lonely hours working out.

'Just wanna sleep now.' Sam laid back down on the mattress. Al was glad he couldn't smell it. 'Just goin' sleep.' This time he pushed the blanket away from him. It was a disturbing image of a teenage girl, naked, sweaty.

She looked wanton and Bancroft had noticed. 'Look at that.' He hauled Alesio to his feet and pointed at Susan. 'You just let that throw you across half the room.'

Alesio stood beside him, blinking his eyes as if he couldn't focus properly.

'I'd get him outta here if I was you,' Al warned. 'Coz I know what's coming next.'

Alesio's stomach started working and he retched.

'Get outside if you're gonna hurl!' Bancroft shoved him towards the door and then came over to Susan's bed.

'Oh, Sam. You're in trouble. Get up, can't you? At least cover yourself.'

Bancroft propped in front of the bed, thumbs tucked in his belt. 'I dunno how you did that to my cousin, but you won't be throwing me anywhere round the place.' He was right. He had at least five years and fifty pounds on Alesio, who was hardly more than a boy. Even in a fair fight Sam would have been almost equally matched against him. 'But I do think you need some breaking in.'

'That what you think?' said Trimble.

'You can have seconds.'

'You really want firsts of this?' Trimble grabbed the corner of the blanket and twitched it back off Sam to reveal the black and fiery red of the wounded leg, pus dripping down onto the bed. From the reaction by both men, Al could only imagine that the smell was every bit as revolting. Bancroft spun round and headed for the door. Trimble turned away, inhaled a deep breath and held it, then turned back to cover Susan back over with the blanket.

'You're some kind of knight in rusty armor, aren't you?' Al said.

Trimble stood for a long while, looking down at Susan, at Sam. He pulled the now grubby handkerchief from his pocket and used it to wipe the sweat away from her face.

'Still got a chance, kid,' Al murmured.