‘It’s me.’

‘Where are we?’

‘The Siddons,’ I said, feigning a quivering lip. ‘Thank goodness you’re here. Hugo Foulnap and his RealSleep nutjobs tried to kidnap me – I think they killed one of your agents up on the ninth.’ I gave out an award-winning sob. ‘You’ve got to help me.’

‘Everything’s all right now,’ she said in a soothing tone, taking my hand in hers. ‘I promise.’

Orientation

‘ . . . The HiberTech facility was originally designed to alleviate the long-term suffering brought on by the occasional side effects of hibernation, before medical science began to get a handle on potential cures. Hibernational Narcosis sufferers constituted the majority of patients, and those with emaciatory muscle loss and calcium migration equal close second  . . . ’

– HiberTech: A Short History, by Ronald Fudge

It was lucky I did what I did when I did it. Six more HiberTech Security agents were through the door of the Siddons within a minute of Toccata turning into Aurora. She seemed curiously accepting of the fact that she was in different clothes in a strange place, but presumably she was used to this by now. While the HiberTech Security agents went up to the ninth floor to investigate, Aurora sat me down and quizzed me on what was going on.

‘Hooke and I were ambushed when he was taking me to safety at HiberTech,’ I explained, trying to make it all sound plausible. ‘He goes out in the Winter and vanishes, and I go to look for him and I find him, dead, but then I lose the line and make it to the – um – museum, and Danny Pockets is there, who is actually Hugo Foulnap, and he gives me all this bullshit about needing a cylinder and the dreams being projected into my head and we go to the Siddons because he’s convinced there’s a dream machine in 902 but then one of your agents killed Foulnap who is then killed in turn by  . . . Toccata.’

Aurora looked around nervously.

‘She’s here?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘she left just before you arrived.’

Aurora frowned and her unseeing eye twisted and turned in its socket.

‘She keeps on doing that. Why does she keep on doing that?’

The last part of her sentence she delivered in an angry, almost frightened tone, and she gripped my arm so tightly it was painful.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Toccata’s up to something,’ she continued. ‘She wants to bring me down. Why would she want to bring me down?’

She glared at me dangerously.

‘I still don’t know.’

She stared at me some more and then seemed to relax.

‘Tell me more about the cylinder that Foulnap mentioned.’

‘I don’t know anything. He didn’t elaborate.’

One of her agents came downstairs and whispered in her ear.

‘So the Foulnap part of your story is correct,’ she said. ‘Do you know what he was doing in Sector Twelve? Something to do with RealSleep?’