—in an alley behind a laundromat.

These clothes aren't his and his head hurts, his eyes are stinging and dry and there's an earpiece in his hands, turning over and over and over again. He can feel it with more than just his fingertips, can feel the way electromagnetism pulses around it, teases gently at the secret sixth sense, woven into his hands. One hand. Only one hand, the left, holds his headset, the other is wrapped tight in an elastic bandage, his probably-broken thumb splinted securely with medical tape against the side of his index finger. This throbs, but dully, and John imagines he's taken something for the pain of it.

His back is against warm, sunlit bricks, late-day sunshine slanting down into the alleyway. The coarseness of the masonry catches and snags on tiny pills and threads of the t-shirt he's wearing, still a little damp on the back, though the sun has dried the front. His long legs are cased in cream colored canvas, a little worn and faded from khaki, and his shirt is sky blue jersey, worn a little thin, with a faded logo on the front.

He hasn't got any shoes, which is probably going to be a problem.

There are words hanging in front of his eyes but he can't seem to focus on them, can't seem to see them. He reaches up to wave them away, but his fingers pass right through. Frustrated he pushes a hand through his hair, and finds this hot to the touch, damp with sweat. John doesn't know where he is or how long he's been here.

But he's smart. If he's nothing else, John's always been clever, sometimes too clever for his own good. He can work this out.

The scent of laundry soap is overpowering, the t-shirt, freshly washed but not dried. The chinos he's wearing are clean, dried and freshly pressed. He's got a watch—one of those little pebble types that connects as a display for a larger device. He's acquired an earpiece somewhere, and it's on, live and connected to something. It's too bright in the alley, and he shades his hand over the tiny display on his wrist. It's connected to a system called Geppetto, and abruptly the fingers of John's good hand go to the neck of his t-shirt, tug it open and stare down at—

—bandages, fresh. His skin is clean around the edges of a clumsily placed and taped square of white gauze. Up the line of his collarbone, another bandage covers a patch of skin that's still streaky red, but less than it was. John puts the earpiece down, fumbles in his pockets. Tape, gauze, antiseptic pads, a receipt from a drugstore, citing the source of the bandage around his wrist and the medical tape—a bottle of antibiotics. With a picture of a smiling fish on it, makes him think of Gordon. Another receipt, a pet store. Where, apparently, the antibiotics had come from.

His left arm still hurts, aching down from the shoulder, the general area still tender and sore where the pacemaker was installed. John recalls that he's not supposed to move it too much, but with his right hand out of commission, it's not like he he has an option. He's hungry, but he's been sort of vaguely hungry for as long as he can remember which, admittedly, isn't very long at all.

His other pocket yields a fistful of cash and he thumbs through it quickly, comes away with a count of six hundred and thirty-six dollars. This has no associated receipt.

It occurs to him rather abruptly that he's going to get a sunburn, if he hasn't already. He pushes himself up, limbs stiff and sore. He bends to pick up the earpiece, with a soft, aching sigh as his back twinges in protest. Absently he fixes the earpiece into his right ear, and hears a voice, reciting numbers.

"…h-hello?"

"John. You've been sitting in an alley for the past twenty minutes and you haven't said anything to me. I started reciting Pi when I first suspected you couldn't hear me any longer. Are you hurt?"

"EOS."

"Are you hurt, John?" Her pauses are always loaded, somehow. Somehow he always hears what she means in the space of silence, because he imagines worry when she continues. "I don't have a read on your vitals any longer. All I have is your heart rate and rate of respiration, and these have been fine. Are you ill?"

John looks down, looks himself over, puzzled. "No? Did…why'm I…"

"I don't know, John. You stopped in the middle of everything and then you weren't listening and I don't know why."

It's coming back in slivers and fragments, and John's starting to realize that it was missed in the first place. That there's another one of those terrifying gaps in his memory and that whatever happened in the midst of it— "I got you out."

He imagines a place where there'd be a frustrated growl of impatience. "As evidenced by the fact that we're talking right now, John, yes. You got me out and then I got you out."

The GDF base. The Hood behind him. Doors ahead, flanked by soldiers with guns, and the population of the GDF base milling around, as EOS shut down systems and caused general havoc and chaos. Beyond actually getting EOS onto the pacemaker, the plan had gotten a little loose, a little frenetic. He'd known how he was going to get her, and after that he'd just expected that things would start to get easier. It hasn't quite worked out that way, and his own muddled up brain is working against him.

"Does anyone know where I am?"

"You don't seem to know where you are."

John chews his lower lip and glances up and down the empty back alley. The sounds of traffic are distant and through the open door into the laundromat behind him, he can hear the rumbling tumble of dryer barrels and the slosh of water and soap through fabric. There are voices talking and vaguely staticky music from decades past being played over a sub-par speaker system. Down past dumpsters and firedoors and pallets and bins, through the end of the alley he can see cars speeding past a sidewalk. And he doesn't know where he is.

He owes her an explanation. But before that, he needs her help. "Can—can you tell me what's happened? I—I need…have I called anyone? I need to call two people. I have two numbers, I need to call them."

"We got off the GDF base. You needed a change of clothes, money, and some way to talk to me. I wanted to call Tracy Island, you told me not to. Now you need food. If you haven't eaten for an extended period of time, then hypoglycemia may be causing disorientation. I need you to get up and walk."

John blinks. He doesn't remember sitting back down, but he has. "Where're we going?"

"We were on our way to get you something to eat, John. You'd wrapped up your hand, taken another look at your chest and cleaned it up, you'd gotten a change of clothes, and then you said you needed something to eat. We took the back exit and then—I don't know why you stopped, but you stopped in the middle of everything and just sat down. I couldn't get you to answer me, and then it seemed like you just didn't hear me. There's a CCTV camera on the wall opposite, I've patched in and been watching you. I couldn't tell what was wrong and I didn't know what to do. I couldn't leave you."

This makes guilt worm and twist through John's gut and he sags slightly. Twenty minutes. Not that long, in the scheme of things, but he has to wonder—what if it had been something worse? What would she have done? He has a strange fear that she just would've stayed, waiting, counting her way through an infinite number. He shudders slightly at the thought.

"Walk, John. Two hundred metres east and then turn north. There's a small deli. You're going to eat a sandwich and drink some water and we're going to talk."

Well. This is what John's been waiting for, for someone he trusts to tell him what to do. Clearly she's gotten him this far, because he certainly doesn't remember getting this far under his own direction. He's not safe yet. There's a final stage to this plan. He just needs to go a little farther.

Two hundred metres isn't very far, and the deli he's been directed to is right around the corner, just past the end of the alley. It's a small place, bright and clean, and the smell of smoked meat and fresh bread has him dizzily acknowledging the fact that yes, he's starving. It's all white, gray speckled Formica countertops and mutely gleaming stainless steel. There's a long glass case heaped with deli meat, and then a long counter with stools in front of it. Booths ring the walls and the floor is black and white linoleum, checkerboard. John makes it to a stool in front of the where an old man in a splattered white apron gives him a long, studying look. There's a paper cup full of ice water in front of him a moment later and then a menu is nudged beneath his fingertips even as he drains it in a single go and sighs heavily.

"Gonna start you with a sampler," the proprietor announces and glances over his shoulder, makes a gesture to the cook. He has long gray hair in a ponytail, balding on top. His face leathery tan and silvered with stubble, but his smile is kind. "On the house, kid. When you feel a bit better, you take a proper look at the menu." John blinks at him and takes a proper look around the small restaurant. There are a handful of patrons, but he doesn't seem to have drawn undue attention. He must look a little blank, must look around dazedly for a little too long, because the man clears his throat and taps the countertop to get John's attention. "Hot out there, son?"

"Yeah," John answers, sounds fainter and a bit breathier than he expected to. The paper cup is taken away and refilled. John goes slowly this time, let's the cold hit his throat, sink into his chest as he swallows.

"Normally it's no shirt, no shoes, no service, but you look like you've caught a bit of heat stroke. Up from the beach?"

» Say yes.

Black text, hovering in front of his eyes. His HUD. John reaches up and pulls his earpiece free, to help resist the urge to answer aloud.

"Uh huh."

"Yeah, it's a scorcher out there. Get some food in you, feel a bit better. Take it easy a few minutes, okay?"

"Yeah. Okay."

John's dispelled most of his display, but on the countertop within his line of sight, he twitches his fingers a few time, a code of movement that brings up some basic information. Location, time, date, weather. Major news items. There's been an arrest made of an international criminal, subsequent to an infiltration attempt of the local GDF base. The base in town has been reported as put into lockdown, no entry in or out. John blinks dazedly at this and wonders how the hell he managed it, if that's really the case.

A small plate lands in front of him. It's full of neatly rolled slices of ham, salami, corned beef and turkey, interspersed with tidy, square slices of cheese. There's a pickle. It's gone in a under a minute.

There's a hearty laugh and the plate gets pulled away. "Well, you taste any of that, or you just gonna take a blind stab at the menu?"

A little bit fortified, John manages a faint smile in answer. "It was all good. I don't know. You can surprise me."

"You gonna be washing dishes for your supper, son, or you got any cash on you?" There's a patient sort of pause. "Either way's fine," he adds. John realizes for the first time that he might look just a little bit homeless. In fairness, in more ways than one, he is a little bit homeless. That's really going to need to change before he does too much more.

There's a few hundred dollars in John's pocket, but he only pulls out about fifty. "Is that okay?" He pauses, and realizes he's probably overshot on the value of a sandwich and some chips and maybe some lemonade. "Uh, and um, buy some other people's drinks, or something?"

The owner takes the bill he's handed and reaches across the counter to give John a fatherly sort of pat on the shoulder. "Can you spare it?"

John nods, quick and tight and aware that he's blushing underneath a sunburn that stings at his cheeks. "Yeah. Yeah, sorry, I'm not—I mean, I'm not poor. Just been a weird day, I'm kinda mixed up, I guess. Thank you."

"No problem, son. Anything else I can do for you?"

There are two phone calls John needs to make. He hesitates a moment, and it's such a strange question to ask, in this day and age. "Do you have a phone I can use?"