Ash drifted blearily back. Sanctuary. He shivered at the memory of her wide grey eyes and the knowing touch of her mind, cold as frost, burning like embers. Queen Sanctuary.

*You wanted to know what Wraith are.* Guide's mental tone was almost apologetic.

Unbidden, the image rose up of the dark-eyed man trapped in the webs of the feeding cell, the tendons in his neck standing out as he shrieked and his body twisted, shrivelled. Ash thrust the image at the Wraith in a hot blaze of anger. *That was feeding? That was what you wanted to do to me?*

*Wraith must feed, or die.* Absent again, a tinge of irritation in the tone. Ash swallowed his own feelings with an effort, tasting again the muddle of sensation and emotion in Guide's memory – starvation, like a long-banked fire, that had consumed him from the inside until every breath, every movement, was agony; the prey's fear-scent filling him with the dizzy promise of relief. The hot burrowing stab of the handmouth as it pierced through cloth and flesh, claws pulling it deep to deliver the quickening, and the blessed backwash of energy as he began to drink, cool fingers licking up his arm, steadying his faltering heart.

Then the life-force was wrenched away by hard hands, his claws ripped from his prey's flesh before he was ready, and he was stranded in a fog of desperate physical need, terror bitter as ashes in his mouth: she knew. Somewhere in that nightmare swirl of illusion, Sanctuary had slipped past his carefully-woven walls and discovered his darkest secret. She had found Acastus Kolya, and she knew what he had done.

*Kolya?*

Ash was sharply aware of Guide's revulsion, hate that stank like burning flesh, tasted of his own blood, but the Wraith could not block him out: a bear of a man, tall for a human, black-haired, the skin of his face pockmarked from some old illness and fiercely furrowed round a fleshy nose that had been broken too many times. A mobile, mocking mouth. But it was the eyes that captured your attention: sharp, black, with a fan of fine creases at the outer corners that you could mistake for laughter-lines until you met their empty gaze.

*Enough!* Rage. Rage, and shame that seared like acid. The alien took him and slammed him back into his own body so hard it was some minutes before Ash could do more than lie shuddering on the tiled floor of the Tank chamber, gasping for breath and wondering idiotically why, if he was so very relieved to be out of the thing's clutches, he felt such a surge of pity for it.

"Do you know why you are here, Wraith?"

The words floated to his ears from a tremendous distance, barely audible over the laboured, limping cadences of his own blood. He was sitting in a chair, held upright by straps that cramped his lungs and dug in cruelly under armpits and ribs. They had taken his coat, and he was cold. No clear memory of how he got here, only a vague recollection of the clink of metal buckles as his captors yanked the straps tight. The voice spoke again, more sharply this time.

"Get it some water."

Water... water extinguishes fire... for a delirious moment, he rolled the thought in his mind like a pebble under his tongue. Water to quench the cramping burn in his muscles, water rushing in to flash into steam under the coiled heat at his core, fill up the arid spaces of his lungs, soothe his burning throat...

Footsteps approaching, and a hollow clank of metal.

The icy water hit him full in the face and snapped his head back like a blow; he choked for air, heart hammering, abruptly aware that his hands and feet too were held fast, strapped to the heavy frame of the chair.

Light stabbed at him, too much light after so many days of lying in the dark on the foetid straw. He veiled his eyes, the nictitating membrane sliding across his vision like mist, and stared, shivering, at the uniformed human sitting across the wooden desk a few feet in front of him.

A big man, not some fussy bureaucrat, his uniform jacket unbuttoned and his cap tossed aside on the desk. This man was not as calm as his outward demeanour suggested, but he was not afraid, not like the other humans that surrounded them. Guide felt the prickle of excitement that ran through him as he closed the file he had been affecting to read and placed it neatly to one side, then propped his chin on his hands, studying his prisoner carefully before meeting his gaze for the first time. Black eyes in a scarred slab of a face, their expression deceptively mild. His voice was deep, and not especially loud.

"I am Commander Acastus Kolya. I'll ask again: do you know why you are here?"

Guide bared his teeth and snarled. The man ignored the display of aggression and flipped open the file again, riffling papers.

"My men inform me that you were captured when your Dart crashed and you were cut off from the Ring. That seems... uncharacteristically careless." When Guide kept silent, the man Kolya scraped his chair back and strolled round the desk, the black eyes narrowed, the tone light, musing. "I'm curious... Many times I've seen Wraith kill themselves rather than fall into enemy hands alive. Explosives, poison, even a knife across their own throat. Messy, but effective. A matter of honour, perhaps. Do you creatures understand honour?"

Guide shifted his gaze deliberately to stare past the man, and permitted his upper lip to curl slightly. Kolya paused in his seemingly casual pacing, directly in front of the chair.

"Imagine my surprise, then, when my men tell me they've recovered a downed Wraith Dart, and have the pilot locked up, alive and unharmed!" In his peripheral vision, Guide saw Kolya smile slightly. He lowered his voice conspiratorially, the wicked tingle of anticipation in his mind clearer than ever. "Your Hive must know where you are. But in, what, four months, nobody has come looking for you." He leaned forward suddenly, big hands gripping Guide's forearms painfully where they were bound to the arms of the chair, and stared directly into Guide's eyes. "Now why do you suppose that is?"

Guide hissed and snapped his teeth, straining against the leather straps, infuriated by the man's presumption. Kolya held his gaze a second longer, then chuckled and walked away.

"They will come." As always, the sound of his voice sent a collective shiver through the room. Kolya stopped and turned his head slightly. Guide straightened as best he could in the restraints, and lifted his chin proudly despite the water that still dripped from his beard. "They will come, and you will be Culled."

"No! They have abandoned you here!" Kolya rounded on him, two swift strides bringing him back to his place in front of the chair. He stared into Guide's face for a long moment. "Tell, me, Wraith... are you hungry?"

Guide stared back, a growl rumbling in his throat, unable to quell the trembling that spread from his feeding hand.

Kolya's eyes were black pits. "We Genii have a saying. 'A hungry man is not a free man.'" Acastus Kolya smiled gently, mockingly. "I understand hunger is extremely painful to your kind."