Eventually, I must fall asleep, for when my old analogue alarm clock rings, I wake alone. On her pillow, which is still faintly scented with the perfume she loves to wear, Ruth has left a note.

Sweetheart, it begins,

I forgot to ask next door to feed the cats last night.

The poor things will be beside themselves, so I've gone to make amends.

Thank you for a lovely time 'in the dark.'

R x

Sitting up, I reach over and feel her side of the bed: it's stone cold. Either I must have slept longer than I first thought, or Ruth must have slipped out earlier. I glance at the clock with a start, for it is ten o'clock; I have overslept by nearly two hours, and scrambling out of bed, I hastily get ready and leave for work, dreading Harry's sardonic eye as I try to slip onto the Grid unnoticed. Something feels wrong though, and not just because I have arrived late and without so much as a cup of tea or piece of toast. The traffic is worse than I would expect for this time of day, and I feel thoroughly out of sorts by the time I reach Thames House. Jo smiles as I draw level with her desk, headed for my own in the far corner of the Grid, and in spite of the disastrous start to my morning, I stop to greet her properly. "Jo, good morning," I begin, and as I speak my eye falls on the oversized, brightly coloured digital watch on her wrist, and I can't help but stare as I read the digital display: 08:59? "Hi Malcolm, you made it just in time!" she replies brightly, and I blink in confusion, noticing that others around the Grid are standing up and heading for the conference room. I look at my own watch, which reads 10:59, and feel sick as I realise what has happened: Ruth must have wound both my watch, and my bedside clock, forward by two hours, for reasons of her own I cannot even begin to guess at. What a mean thing to do…why? Why would she do that? "Malcolm, are you OK?" Jo asks, concerned, "you've gone a very funny colour…"

I look at her helplessly, unable to breathe or speak through the crushing constriction circling my chest, and she gets up quickly. "Here, sit down in my chair. Where's your puffer?" I don't know, and haven't enough air to answer; so Jo feels rapidly through my pockets until she finds it and presses it into my trembling, clammy hands. She leans against the edge of the desk, breathing slowly and deeply, as if reminding my recalcitrant respiratory system of its purpose. I can't think why Ruth would alter the time; I can't think of anything except where my next breath is coming from. I don't understand, and I don't think I want to, either…

As the medication filters into my lungs, the dizziness and nausea lessen, and I essay a tremulous smile; Jo frowns, worry writ large on her gamine face. "You're very good in a crisis," I tell her, and she sighs, "Yeah, well, I've had a lot of practice with Mum," before straightening up. Beneath the coolness of this statement, I can hear Jo's pain, and deduce that her mother must be more seriously ill with cancer than she cares to admit. I don't want to pry any further, and it occurs to me that we are alone on the Grid; everyone else is still in the briefing. "We're late," I say, and when she grins, it's like the sun coming out from behind clouds. "We are," she agrees, "it's nearly half-nine, and they'll be coming back out soon, so how about we get a coffee before they do?"

"Only if it's my treat," I offer, as she slips an arm through mine and tows me towards the pods, "it's the very least I can do after you were so good with my rotten asthma." She turns her big blue eyes on me, serious now. "Is really that all it was? You seemed disoriented, somehow, even before it started…is everything all right?" We separate to go through the pods, and as we meet on the other side, Jo pursues the question. "Malcolm?" I don't say anything until we are walking towards Embankment Station and Jo's favourite coffee spot, a tiny hole-in-the-wall affair called Jolt. "I don't know," I tell her, which at least has the virtue of being the truth. She adds, "Ruth's been weird all morning too, like she's not quite with it…maybe you both ate something that was off?" I make a non-committal noise in response, and Jo gets the message: I don't want to talk right now. Instead, we lean on the wide stone parapet of the Embankment, clutching our coffees, and watch the broad brown Thames flow by; it is a beautiful day, and I scatter the crumbs from my cheese and ham toastie for the sparrows that are hopping hopefully towards me. "We should go back," I say, after a few more minutes, and Jo groans in protest. "Pity; it's such a lovely day to be stuck inside a giant concrete bunker." Privately, I agree, even as we retrace our steps. Just before we re-enter the massive bulk of Five's headquarters, she steps in front of me and puts one hand lightly on my sternum; I stop dead, uncertain about what's going on.

"Malcolm, there's something I have to tell you. Yesterday, I saw Ruth wandering about all over the Grid, obviously looking for something, so I offered to help, but she didn't want me to. A little while later, I saw her reach in behind the water cooler and take out a book; then I noticed that Harry was watching her from the corridor. I think he smiled when she found it." Jo pauses, gauging my reaction, but my best poker face is in place, and if my hands are clenched into fists, they're buried in my pockets, and if my throat is tight and my heart is pounding, only I can tell. "It was her birthday yesterday, you know. I think he had hidden it there for her to find…" I force myself to appear nonchalant. "Really? How odd," I try, and Jo's sympathetic gaze threatens to undo me altogether. "Yes, really. I think they're…" I can't hear this; I simply cannot. Not now, not after what happened last night, or rather, what didn't. "Come on. We'd better get back in there, or we'll be charged with dereliction of duty," I tell her, more abruptly than I intend to; in her eyes, I see confusion and hurt, until a mask of professionalism drops into place, and she nods curtly, once, before turning on her heel and striding into the building. Oh, nicely done, Wynn-Jones, now you've upset Jo. I follow at a safe distance, feeling thoroughly displeased with myself.

The rest of the day isn't much better; Ruth, as Jo has observed, is very preoccupied with some files that have been sent up from Registry, but she won't let anyone see what she's working on; as soon as any of us approach her desk, she slips everything into her drawers, and turns her attention back to her monitors, only to pull them out again furtively when she thinks no-one is looking. It's maddening, and I sense that whatever she is working on is scaring her; she jumps when Adam speaks to her, and she watches Harry from a distance, a queer sort of indecision on her face as she tracks his movements. Once or twice she gets up, as if to go over to him, but she subsides back into her chair as soon as he glances in her direction. As for me, she barely acknowledges my softly spoken greeting, not even looking at me as she pores over whatever it is that is holding her attention. "Oh, Malcolm. Sorry, I've got loads to do..." is all the answer I get, and for a moment I wonder what it must be like to have the sheer animal magnetism of a man like Harry Pearce, the sort of presence that draws attention from women as surely as the moon draws the tide. The sort of man that can't be ignored, or dismissed without as much as the flicker of a glance. The sort of man, in other words, who is everything I am not, and will never be… With my question about her changing of the clocks unasked and unanswered, I slink away from her desk, and seek refuge in the tech suite, with Colin.

"Malcolm." He looks up as I enter the dimly-lit room; he is still working on the mystery of the DJAKARTA IS COMING graffiti, and sprawling across half-a-dozen screens is CCTV footage from dozens of locations around London. I sit down in front of a pair of monitors. "Would you like some help?" I ask, and he shoots me a quizzical look. "That bad, is it?" he asks acerbically. I avoid his eyes as I reply, "You could say that. What would you like me to do?" He gives me a quick update, and as we start to bounce ideas off each other, I begin to relax. At least in this room, doing this work, I know who I am, and my worries and fears recede as I immerse myself in the task. We settle down to work in companionable silence, and after a while he asks curiously, "So, what's this In the Dark place like, then? Is it any good?" I sit back from the keyboard, stretching upwards with fingers linked as I consider my answer. "Well, I don't know that you'd necessarily go for the food – it's a set menu and most people seem to end up eating with their fingers, as the whole place is pitch-black. It's certainly an interesting experience though, and it does give one pause to consider what life without sight must be like. Ruth seemed to enjoy herself, too."

Colin frowns, "Seemed? You mean you don't know whether she did or not?" I resume working, but he isn't going to let it drop. "Well, did she?" And although I know he's only talking about the restaurant, his innocent enquiry so closely echoes my own self-questioning that I have to remind myself that he couldn't possibly know about last night's dismal failure in the bedroom. "It's a bit difficult to tell, when you can't see your dining partner, but she said that she liked it. Anyway, why are you so interested?" It's Colin's turn to fall silent and concentrate fiercely on his screens, and then the penny drops: he must have met someone, and I've been so caught up in my own life that I never noticed… There are a few moments of awkward silence, which Colin breaks with, "Well, it's early days yet; things mightn't even get as far as dinner." I look over at him, contrite. "I'm sorry, Colin, I've been a terrible friend lately. Where did you meet her?"

He regards me evenly for what seems a very long time, before replying, "Apology accepted," to my great relief; then he adds, "In Sainsbury's at Finsbury Park, three weeks ago this Thursday. She was trying to reach a jar of Branston pickle that was right up on the top shelf, so I got it for her. We got talking about how annoying it is that all the own-brand stuff's always on the middle shelves, and the ones you actually want are displayed up high or down low so they're hard to find. After we'd wandered all around the supermarket, chatting away like old chums, she asked me if I'd like to go for a drink, and I thought, why not?" I smile, genuinely pleased for him. "What's her name?" He grins back, "Jill. She teaches physics and chemistry at Highgate School, she's about the same age as me and she's five foot nothing in her socks. We've only been out twice, but I really like her. She's funny, and kind, and she doesn't seem to mind that I've got a job that I can't tell her about." I hmmm with interest, and ask, "Have you done an S24 yet?" He nods, "It's with Harry now, so if she passes muster, I'm going to take her out to dinner."

Colin's face has lit up like a Christmas tree while he's been talking, and just for a second, I feel the tiniest twinge of jealousy: it all sounds so uncomplicated, so straightforward. We met in Sainsbury's, got chatting, and went for a drink… howI long for such simplicity in my own personal life. "Anyway, how're things with you?" he asks, but I swiftly hold up a hand for silence, listening intently; and yes, there it is, the faint and yet unmistakable sound of a voice I thought I'd never hear again: Miss Wells. Angela. I'm out of my chair in an instant, unable to believe the evidence of my own ears. Colin stands up too, startled, as I tell him excitedly, "It can't be, but it is…oh, I can't believe it!" and I hasten towards that well-known, husky voice, with Colin close on my heels.

Oh, she hasn't changed a bit, is my first thought on seeing her, she's still lithe, graceful, and as ever, surrounded by admiring colleagues, the golden girl of the Service. "Glory… Miss Wells!" I exclaim, stepping forward to embrace her, and actually daring to kiss her on the cheek in my astonishment at seeing her once more on the Grid, before asking like the techie that I am, "Is, er, the tooth …" She smiles back, "Still operational," and a ripple of interest goes around the room; so this is that officer, I can almost hear Zaf and Jo thinking. It certainly was one of my finer moments of lateral thinking, and Miss Wells is quick to credit me for it. That's one of the things I always liked about her: she was fair in her distribution of both praise and criticism. I still can't quite bring myself to use her first name; back when I first joined, she had already been a senior field officer, and techies had not been encouraged to mingle with the field staff, except when required to kit them out for an op. It had been a much more hierarchical organisation then, and old habits die hard: and so to me, she will always be Miss Wells. She is still explaining how she came to have a microdot canister installed in one of her lower right molars by a Harley St dentist, when Harry approaches, all smiles and twinkly-eyed charm at the sight of one of his favourite officers, and former lovers, returned to the fold. Time has been less kind to him; if Miss Wells has hardly changed, the same cannot be said for Harry. She had first known him when he had still been fit enough to work in the field, and God knows he had played it, too, following the breakup of his marriage. Miss Wells wouldn't have been the first, nor yet the last, to join him at that particular game, for he had been both prodigious, and promiscuous.

"Angela! You've bedazzled," he beams, putting a hardly-avuncular arm around his former protégé's shoulders, preparatory to leading her off to his office to talk about the good old days of the IRA and the Communists and the CIA, who were almost as bad as the rest of them put together. In the same instant, Ruth, who has been glowering at Miss Wells in what I thought was dislike over her cosiness with Harry, stands up and shouts in a voice I have very rarely heard her use, a voice of absolute certainty and command. "NO, get her out; get her out of here NOW!" Harry, unused to hearing her speak in anything other than a deferential murmur, looks startled. "Ruth, what's the problem?" Miss Wells, no longer cuddled into Harry's side, steps forward, and there is something in her demeanour that chills me to the core as she says smoothly, "Oh, I don't think I'm going to leave this early, do you, Ruth?"

And then the world turns inside out, as Miss Wells produces a Sevegola detonator and proceeds to tell us that she has smuggled enough plastic explosive inside her oversized handbag to blow us all to kingdom come. I listen in utter disbelief as she instructs me to explain, for all the world as if this is just another routine briefing; and I must be in some kind of shock, because I do.

"Er, well, Concentrate 34 is very powerful, it's a very sweet explosive," I begin, and Jo says "Sweet?" in a tense tone of voice, not understanding. "I mean effective, yes. Effective," I clarify, while staring at the big beige handbag as if it is a cobra poised to strike, "An ounce is equivalent to at least a kilo of TNT." Miss Wells comments off-handedly, "I have five ounces," and I look at her in horror. "Do go on," she tells me. My brain racing to make sense of what she's just said, I continue, "The, ahh, Sevegola detonation system was developed by the Czech secret service, way back in the seventies…actually, it's never been bettered for reliability." Miss Wells nods as if in confirmation. "Tell us what the effect would be if I pressed this button." I answer slowly, while praying that this is all just a bad dream, "It would…kill…all of us, and probably many more people in the building; actually, the building itself probably wouldn't survive." Pleased with my explanation, she says, "Well, Harry, it looks like you've been handbagged." He has his back to me; I wonder what his face must look like right now, as he asks, "What do you want us to do, Angela?" She says crisply, "I want you to order a lockdown," and with those words, I realise the awful truth: Harry's not in charge any more. Harry, Adam and Zaf try to stall her in their own ways, but in the end they have to do what she wants, and we all know it. Miss Wells was a formidable field agent; I cannot even begin to imagine what she has in mind, taking us all hostage and threatening to blow up Thames House, but it must be bad.

We soon find out, and it's not just bad, it's far worse: she's mad. She appears to be operating under the delusion that MI5 plotted, planned and successfully carried out the assassination of Diana, Princess of Wales, mother of the future King of England. When she orders Ruth to explain, I am overcome with further shock and revulsion: so, Ruth knew about this before Miss Wells ever set foot in the building. There's a peculiar connection between them; mutual dislike, yes, but there's something else, too, something darker and stronger. As she starts to speak, I feel that I no longer know who Ruth is, that I've never known who she is; the woman I have loved for so long is just an illusion, and in her place stands a cool, calm stranger, facing down an old enemy. As Ruth speaks, I watch Miss Wells closely; there is no doubt that she believes that a clandestine MI5 cell killed the people's princess, and even less doubt that she is prepared to die on this bizarre quest for her version of the truth, taking us with her.

Unwisely, but understandably, Jo snorts in disbelief at the idea that Five could have done such a thing, and thus earns Miss Wells' especial ire; I can see it in the hardening of her expression every time she looks at the junior officer. In short order, we are deprived of our mobile phones, Harry categorically denies the existence of the Contingent Events Committee, we learn that Angela was in love with Ruth's stepbrother, Peter Haigh, who had been on the Princess' security detail until his drinking could no longer be overlooked; and Zaf attempts to tackle Miss Wells, but Adam shows better judgement, and stops him. For Zaf's efforts, she handcuffs Jo to her handbag, and marches her away to the meeting room, with orders to the rest of us to prove her insane theory is true. She assures us that she wants to die, and I believe her implicitly; her eyes glitter queerly in the red-tinted emergency lighting, and there is a certain desperate resolve in her actions that I have hitherto only seen on a handful of operations involving radical extremists of one sort or another, when they believe themselves to be on a suicide mission. To find such fanaticism in one of our finest officers is, quite frankly, terrifying. And I am terrified; in fact, I am more afraid than I ever been in my whole life, only I can't afford to let it show.

None of us can; and although my heart is racing and I feel as though I might be violently ill, my breathing is not too bad, thanks to the Ventolin I took earlier, and my brain has clicked into operational mode. I feel oddly removed from the situation, as if I am watching it from the safety of the observation van; it seems that all these years on the job, and all that training, are finally coming into their own. Next to me, I can sense that Colin is working hard at staying calm, while on my other side, Ruth has barely turned a hair at the death threats issued by her could-have-been sister-in-law. The only thing that seems to have perturbed Ruth at all was Harry questioning her about Peter Haigh; she hadn't liked that, and in a remote and coolly logical bit of my mind, I find the time to wonder why, even as Jo is led away by Miss Wells, who brandishes the Sevegola at us like the deadly weapon it is.

With Miss Wells out of sight for the moment, the whole room seems to let out a sigh of relief; Harry nods at the rest of us, and we join him for a council of war at Ruth's desk. I'm reasonably sure I know what he's going to ask me, and I am dreading it. "Right. How do we deal with a Sevegola?" At Harry's question, Colin gives me his hey, you're the senior officer look. Oh, Lord…now I'm for it. Aloud, I tell Harry as calmly as I can, "The trouble is, it's an old device." Harry persists, "But it's operated by a radio signal, surely we can neutralise it?" Shaking my head, I say, "Short range, high frequency." Not that it means anything to you, hopeless Luddite that you are, I think in frustration. Colin, noticing that I'm becoming terse, weighs in with, "If it were more modern, then maybe we could make something, but this is old technology, the best for this type of job." Zaf pipes up with, "She knows her field gear, where the hell did she get it from?" Praying for patience, I explain, "Well, agents do have an unfortunate tendency to build up private collections over the years, I mean, someone in this department walked off with a microdot reader!" And a very expensive bit of kit it was too…Just as I'm thinking this, I see a strange expression pass across Ruth's face, and a second later, I know what I've seen: surprise, followed by embarrassment and guilt. I should have known, after the Tessina…I briefly consider mentioning that, too, just to see what she'll do, but the moment is gone, and I realise that Harry is speaking again.

"Right, we'll treat this as an operation – Adam, you're in charge. I'm going to dip into the files, see if I can profile her." Adam, ever the consummate field officer, asks, "Is there a physical way we can get to her?"Zaf notes, "We've got mace and we've got firearms, but that Sevegola in her hand, it's too risky." Well, I'm glad you've finally seen sense, I mutter under my breath, but no-one notices. Looking at Zaf, Adam says in a voice that is very nearly happy, "We're down to mind games, then," and Harry warns, "Don't underestimate this woman, she mastered in psychological manipulation." Adam shrugs, "Well, let's do the simple thing: we'll prove that she's right." What?! Apparently I'm not the only one who is confused; Zaf asks uncertainly, "Even though she's not?" and Adam grins, "Absolutely." Incredulously, Zaf says, "What, send a false story to the press and television?" Adam's grin becomes wolfish. "It won't be false, though, will it. It'll be how MI5 murdered Diana."

Uncharacteristically dense today, Zaf frowns, "Don't get you." I do, though, and the audacity of what Adam is suggesting is staggering, even for him. "I want you to put together how MI5 could have murdered Diana, the most convincing case. And that's what we'll sell to her." To his credit, Zaf doesn't even blink, simply says "All right," and leaves the Grid with Harry, who is bound for his office to review the hard-copy personnel files he keeps close at hand, in direct contravention of about six HR directives. He keeps the inactive files too, of those officers who have either left or died, in a locked cabinet that bulges with cardboard folders and CD-ROMs full of service records: and what a terrible legacy it is, too. Men and women who had once been the best and brightest, killed in the most horrific ways, or burnt out, chewed up and spat out by the Service, irrevocably damaged and utterly disillusioned. Ruth watches him leave with a haunted look in her eyes; she's obviously feeling apprehensive at the idea of Harry poking about in her past, and what he might find out. The truth, perhaps, whatever that may be: I certainly don't know.

Adam also observes Ruth, his face carefully neutral, before he turns to me. "Malcolm, see if there's any way you can knock her out in there, bearing in mind she's got Jo with her." Even though I know it's impossible, I reply briskly, "Will do," like the STO I am,and leave, but not before I hear Adam say to Ruth that he wants to talk with her, and her one-word reply, "Good." I wonder what sort of story she is going to spin for him as I head back towards the server room. No doubt it will be a good one, I tell myself bitterly: the love of my life is apparently very well-schooled in the art of deception.

By the time I return to the tech suite Colin is already there, taking all the Djakarta CCTV footage off-screen and preparing for our next task: breaking out of the impenetrable fortress that is the Grid in lockdown. I had gone to retrieve the Blue Book from its hiding place beneath the server room floor, a fat ring-binder full of detailed blueprints of Thames House, and I sit down to study it with a sigh. "There's no way out, you know," I say to him glumly, as I open the binder and flip to the Grid plans, and he peers over his glasses at me questioningly. "So, that's the famous Angela Wells, then. Only no-one ever mentioned that she's a murderous, mad bitch. Funny, that." His voice is unusually sharp, and I recognise that like the rest of us, he's afraid. "She wasn't always like that. She was brilliant, as brave as they come, and when I knew her, she was kind, too. She used to ask after Mother, when she first came to live with me, and she always remembered the technical staff at Christmas…" I trail off, for Colin is staring at me as if I have suddenly grown another head. "She's in there, with Jo hooked up to five ounces of the most effective HE that MOD's boffins have ever cooked up, and you're talking about her like she's the heroine of some soppy Victorian drama? Have you lost it, or what?" Perhaps I have, at that, for I'm still having difficulty in reconciling the nice Miss Wells I worked with and admired for years, with the insane, suicidal woman who's currently in the briefing room with Jo and a terrifying amount of Concentrate 34.

"I'm, I'm sorry," I stammer, and Colin says accusingly, "You liked her, didn't you," as the hot blood rushes into my face. There doesn't seem to be any point in trying to deny it. "All right, I did, but she never once looked in my direction; you've got to understand that things were different back then. The techies and the field officers lived in separate worlds: we were just stage-hands hidden in the wings, and they were the stars, playing their parts in the great drama of espionage and counter-espionage. It wasn't until the rise of the World Wide Web, and the explosion of technology that followed it, that the powers that be realised our true value in operations, and we were afforded the same respect as our colleagues in the field." He shakes his head in disgust, but before I can offer any further explanations, Adam strides in.

"Malcolm, Colin," he greets us, and I force my attention back to the here and now. "Is there really no way that you can warn them outside to clear the rest of the building?" Adam launches straight into the hard questions, but sure of my ground, I answer steadily, "Not with the lockdown. No way at all." Thoughtfully, Colin adds, "Short of digging our way out," and Adam leaps eagerly on this harebrained suggestion. "Could you do that?" Swiftly, I flick to the relevant sections of the Blue Book, and consult the schematics. "Well, the main ventilation shaft's on the other side of that wall…" Adam, never one to shy away from a challenge, asks, "Can you get through it?" Surely he's not serious? I look back up from the plans, and his eyes meet mine. "We could try," I say cautiously, all the while wondering exactly what he thinks we're going to do: this is hardly the Boys' Own Adventure Annual. It must be enough to encourage him, though, because the next thing he says is, "OK, it'll have to be just one of you doing it, the rest of us will have to stay in view." Privately, I consider this to be a madcap scheme, and I can only hope my scepticism isn't showing on my face. "Colin," Adam decides, and he nods, "Right," as the other man continues, "When you get the hole big enough, go through it," and even claps him chummily on the shoulder. He knows he is asking the impossible, but like the born leader he is, he does it with conviction and charisma, and Colin actually looks pleased to have been chosen. Half a league, half a league/Half a league onward, I recite glumly to myself. Will we never learn that the price of bravery and heroism is nearly always death?

And so I find myself relegated to the role of scrounger to Colin's tunnel king; well, he's far more optimistic than me about it, for one thing, and for another Adam wants to talk to me in private, as becomes clear the moment that Colin slopes off to begin operations on the wall in our old alcove. It's both nearest the ventilation shaft, and furthest from the meeting room which Miss Wells and Jo presently occupy, so it's the safest bet. Adam leans his long frame against the desk next to me; there are a few moments of uneasy silence, and then he speaks. "Ruth's far more involved in this than she's letting on," he says eventually, and it is a statement, not a question. "Erm, ah…" I really don't know what to say; other than noticing her reaction to Harry's announcement that he is going to look through the files, and her obvious personal link to Miss Wells, there's nothing I can think of that will contribute usefully to this discussion.

"It's OK, mate, I know how it is. Fiona could play a blinder too, when she wanted." The profound sadness in his voice as he says Fiona reminds me yet again of how great his loss is, how much he misses her, and I am filled with guilt that I have been so bound up in my own life recently that I haven't had time to ask him how he is managing. I know that Harry had lent them his pudgy, under-exercised Jack Russell for a while as a distraction for Wes, but even he can't be so emotionally retarded as to think that a fat, yappy little dog will make everything all right again. "Adam," I say softly, and before I can go any further he straightens up. "Better go and make myself obvious out there, then, in case Angela's watching," he says briskly, and the tone of his voice carries a warning: Don't. I can't go there, not now. I dip my head in acknowledgement of his unspoken wishes, and watch him stride off again; at the door he turns back. "Be careful, Malcolm, she's in this up to her eyeballs, or my name's not Adam Carter."

In this world, either could be equally true: but I share his suspicion about Ruth's involvement, as well as a growing sense of anger towards her for her deceptions, which extend from appropriating government equipment for her own use, to concealing a personal connection to the Royal Household, no matter now tenuous: Peter Haigh, I recall now, had killed himself last year; Ruth had taken a few days off at the time, but had not seen fit to confide in me. I had only heard about it much later, on the security services grapevine. I draw a sharp breath as the pieces fall into place: this must be the anniversary of his death. Adam pops his head back around the door to the tech suite. "I nearly forgot; Colin wants something to hack at the plaster with," he informs me, and disappears again. I don't move immediately; I'm still musing about Peter Haigh, and wondering just what Ruth's relationship with him had been. Eventually, I recall the paper guillotine in the forgery suite; the cutting arm on that might do the trick, and I fetch it for Colin, unbuttoning my top collar-button and loosening my tie as I go: it's going to be a long, long night.

Walking through the Grid with the awkward thing in my arms, I pass Adam and Ruth having a heated, if low-voiced, discussion, apparently about what data we do and don't have access to; they stop as I approach, and watch as I go past. In the dim emergency lighting, Ruth looks haggard; deep lines crease both sides of her face from nostrils to mouth, her skin is sallow, and her hair is lank. There are deep shadows beneath her eyes, and for the first time since I've known her, a treacherous little thought enters my mind: Why, she's not beautiful at all; in fact, she's as plain as a suet pudding. Then my more gallant self re-emerges, and reminds me that she could only have had a few hours' sleep, if that, and that no-one looks good in this sort of light: no-one, that is, except for Adam, who would doubtless look good under a blacklight. No wonder Miss Wells has dubbed him 'Pretty Boy'…she might have meant it as an insult, but it's true.

As I reach the alcove, Colin is hunched under a workstation in gauntlets and goggles, glaring gloomily at the rat-sized hole he has managed to make thus far. "Take the cutting arm off, and use it as a knife?" I suggest, and Colin growls, "Great," his tone of voice suggesting it is anything but. I suit actions to words, and when I have removed the long, heavy knife-arm, I crouch down and hand it to him. "Are you still cross with me?" I ask, but he has begun work with the knife, and lacking goggles or safety gear, I have no choice other than to beat a hasty retreat, or risk losing an eye. He goes at a furious pace, and enlarges the hole to twice its original size before running into what I have known all along would be there: the inch-thick steel bars that reinforce every load-bearing wall in Thames House; I hope Miss Wells doesn't notice the vibrations. When the swearing begins, it is both inventive and accurate, but after a minute or two, I can't bear to listen to any more, and so I slip off to join Adam and Ruth back on the Grid, where Zaf is elucidating his theorem of exactly how Five and Six could have murdered the people's princess.

I listen with my arms folded, my posture defensive, and every fibre of my being keenly aware of Ruth's presence. As conspiracy theories go, Zaf's isn't bad, and I should know: part of my job is to monitor the online communities, the forums and chatrooms where such things are discussed by those whom Harry dismissively refers to as 'spotty paranoids'. I even occasionally go into the field to interact with some of the more vocal groups, just to keep tabs; and whatever else the members may be, they are rarely as easily categorised as Harry would like to think. His intolerance for those who are different, or those who don't fit into his definition of normal society, can be difficult to stomach, especially for someone like me who has never quite belonged, either.

Ruth refuses to look at me, and for once I'm glad of it; before Zaf finishes explaining, I decide I've heard enough, and I take myself off to the tech suite to see if there's anything I might have overlooked in the plans, trying to find a way of getting Jo to safety. She must be so frightened, sitting there with a bagful of explosives attached to her wrist…I wish I could reassure her, let her know that she's not forgotten, that we're working to free her, but I know that to approach her would be an exercise in foolhardiness, with Miss Wells in full operational mode and suicidal into the bargain. No, the best thing I can do is to try and think my way out of this situation, for us all, but my brain…my brain is so tired, it's going in circles, making no sense of the images before me, or the words on my screens, and I feel sick with fear, for Jo, for myself, for us all…

I must close my eyes for a minute, for when I open them, Harry is standing before me. "Have we got a medical dictionary somewhere on the Grid?" he asks, and if he had requested a fluffy kitten, I could hardly be more surprised. "Um, actually, yes, I do," I say, standing up, before remembering that it's in the alcove, along with Colin and his crossness. "May I ask why…" but Harry cuts me off mid-sentence. "No, you may not, just get me the damn book," he snaps, red-eyed with fatigue, and I decide that facing a cross Colin is by far the lesser of two evils, and leave the room precipitately.

"Come in, I know you're there," Colin mutters, sitting back on his heels to survey his work: the hole is considerably larger, exposing more of the steel reinforcing. "I…I just came to get the medical dictionary." At that, he turns to look at me, curiosity piqued. "What's happened?" he wants to know, and I shake my head. "No, it's nothing like that. Harry wants to look something up, I suppose, that he's come across in the files." Colin nods slowly. "A…are we OK?" I say uncertainly, and he clambers to his feet, groaning as he eases the kinks out of his spine. "'Course we are; why'd you ask?" His eyes search mine, puzzled by the question. Embarrassed, I cough, then reply, "It's just that before, when I was telling you about Miss Wells, you seemed angry with me, for liking her." Understanding dawns on his face, and he chuckles, but it is not a happy sound. "Yeah, OK then, I was. It's just that for such a smart man, Malcolm, you're remarkably dumb when it comes to women…but then, so are we all, I suppose. Everyone has a type they fall for, a pattern, if you like, that they're bound to repeat, if the opportunity arises; and it looks like yours are pathological liars who suck you in by noticing you at all, and then you're so grateful to them, you build them up in your head as the ideal woman, but all the while, they're leading you up the garden path…"

He stops as he catches sight of my face, stricken by the devastating accuracy of this description. "Ah, don't mind me, mate, I'm so tired I could drop, and you know how cranky I get when I'm sleep-deprived and under threat of being blown up, and by the home side, too." Distressed, I tell him, "But it's true; I do do that. I thought the sun shone out of Miss Wells if she so much as nodded at me in the corridor, and I never saw what Sarah was really like until it was too late." He watches me steadily as I speak, and in his eyes I see the truth that I cannot bring myself to admit: and I'm afraid I've done it again, with Ruth… Colin's sigh seems to travel all the way up from his toes as he claps both hands on my shoulders warmly. "First, let's get out of here, and then we can talk about it over a decent meal and a few pints. How does that sound?' Sincerity shines in his eyes despite his exhaustion, and my stomach unclenches a little for the first time since Miss Wells held the Sevegola aloft and declared her dishonourable intentions. "Like the best thing I've heard all day," I reply, copying his hands-on-shoulders gesture and returning his smile. "Right, I'd better get back to it then," he yawns.

I find the dictionary, and I have just settled in to keep him company for a bit, when I am startled to hear a sarcastic "Every man's dream, escape from Stalag 13," coming from an irate Miss Wells, with a very pale Jo in tow; Colin stops immediately, seeing as she is holding the Sevegola. "Steel bar's in the bloody way, anyway," he says in exasperation, and she snarls "Get out," which we are very glad to do. I just catch her hissing "Dawn, you've got till dawn," at Adam, and then we are out of earshot. Colin heads to the tech suite, while I recall I still have the medical dictionary tucked down the front of my capacious, classically cut shirt, and go to deliver it to Harry. I find him sitting perfectly still, illuminated by the sickly glow of his computer monitor. He doesn't look up or acknowledge my approach at first, holding out the book. When he does, it is to bark, "You took your bloody time about it! Right, find this: rad." I blink, thumbing rapidly to the R's. "Rad…is it an abbreviation of something?" Harry growls, "I don't bloody know, but I'm pretty certain it doesn't refer to a unit of radiation, not if it's written in someone's personnel file." I hunt a bit further, and then my eye falls on it: RAD is the acronym for Reactive Attachment Disorder. I read out, "Reactive Attachment Disorder is a rare but serious condition in which an infant or child does not form healthy, normal attachments with parents or caregivers, often due to major emotional or psychological trauma." Harry glances up. "Is that all it says? What about its effect on adults?" I look back at the page, but there is nothing further. "If it's a psychiatric disorder, there'd likely be more about it in the DSM-IV; I think I have a copy of that, somewhere about, if you want me to…" "Yes," is all he says, curtly, but I finally have a chance to do what I do best: research against the clock. I have to hunt for the manual, and as I do, I wonder about the book that he had hidden for Ruth to find. Poetry, probably...

I find the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM-IV, for the fourth version, in the kitchenette, gathering dust on top of the refrigerator. If only people would return things to their proper places… I wipe it off carefully and tuck it inside my shirt again, stooping a little more than usual to hide its bulky presence as I walk towards the tech suite. Fortunately, Miss Wells doesn't see me, and I am relieved to sit down in this most familiar of all spaces, and begin some real work. Colin, out of practical ideas for escaping, is now working on ways of hacking the emergency IT systems and getting a message out into the real world. "You could always unleash one of the worms or viruses we've quarantined over the years," I suggest, "some of the older ones would still be on the earlier, backed-up versions of the emergency system." He shakes his head, "Yeah, but I think that might create more trouble than it's worth, and we still wouldn't have any guarantee of it working - most of those were written to hack into our systems, not the other way round." All very true, but desperate times call for desperate measures… "So, rewrite one of them. You could do it, you know you could." He groans, "Yeah, if I had enough time I could, but we've got about an hour before the sun starts coming up…what do you think 'dawn' means, to someone like her?" I sigh, "Cock's crow, if I'm any judge, but we have to try." He rolls his eyes, but turns back to his screens diligently, and my attention moves back to the weighty tome in front of me. When I have enough information to give Harry a lucid synopsis of RAD's likely effects on adult sufferers, I open an IM window, and send him the details, grateful that the emergency system now includes this application. In fact, I wrote the upgrade patch for it myself while I was on secondment to Section C… A few minutes later, he responds: Thanks. Leverage identified. Good, I think, my overtired brain forming the words sluggishly, I hope you leverage wretched Miss Wells to death with it, and get us all out of here, alive and in one piece…

My father was often heard to say, when I was a very small boy, and contemplating naughtiness of one kind or another, "That which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I." I soon understood that it was better not to do whatever it was that I had in mind, when I heard those words spoken. In more modern English, he might have said, "I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate I do." Had I known what I was doing when I sent Harry that IM, I would have hated myself for it; but for the moment, I am still innocent of the chain of events I have just set in motion, and in utter exhaustion, I put my head down on my arms and seek just a few moments of blessed sleep, while Colin keeps watch for us both.

Suspended somewhere between oblivion and the waking world, in the strange gloaming of the subconscious, I imagine that I hear a cock crow, several times; and then there is only darkness, until Colin shakes me awake excitedly. "Malcolm? Malcolm, it's over! We're free!"

But in truth, it is the beginning of the end of my life, my world, as I know it; I can see that, now.

A/N: Quotes and references are from the 'Charge of the Light Brigade', by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, The Great Escape (scroungers and tunnel kings, of course), and the KJV and NIV translations of Romans 7:15. Obviously, there's a lot happening in 4.10, plus a lot more happening in H, L, & S, so I decided to write it across two chapters. Apologies for the wait between updates: I'm going with 'better late than never!' It's just turned out to be one of those years, or perhaps last year was the exception, in terms of having as much time to write as I would like. Anyway, I hope you enjoy my FF anniversary update – it was on the 20th of September a year ago that I re-posted this story, and have kept going with it ever since. My thanks go to all my readers and FF friends who have read, reviewed, and encouraged me to Keep Going. Your patience, kindness and enthusiasm are what keep me writing (that, and my utter determination to finish this fic by the end of the year, with any luck).

Malcolm would also like to extend his very humble and grateful thanks to everyone who has written such lovely things about him over the last year, in his various appearances, and who still value a kind soul, good manners, and honour above all; in short, who recognise that gentlemen such as himself aren't yet completely obsolete, even in this day and age.