Megan let herself fall back with a laugh of triumph, all her pain and despair suddenly forgotten. She still wasnt home free yet, not by a long shot; and it wasnt long before elation gave way to fatigue. She had slept barely at all on that cold basement floor.

She closed her eyes, intending to rest them for just a minute or two, and fell immediately asleep.

She began to dream of the events following her return from the disastrous Beauregard expedition twelve years earlier. She had used the money she got from Sifra and Tarrant to rent an apartment in an upmarket district of one of Corkscrews principal cities, and soon discovered there were easy ways of attaining the mental oblivion she now craved.

She slowly immersed herself in the citys street culture; the highly narcotic drug known as sans de sezi was everywhere on Corkscrew, which was hardly surprising since the medusa trees from which it was derived grew wild there. At certain times of the year, if the weather was just right, these trees released their orange spores in clouds ready to be gathered and processed before being smuggled off-world.

The streets were littered with the casualties of the drug, but this made no difference to her. She soon became something of a connoisseur of the orange spore, and before long a considerable portion of her fortune had thus evaporated.

But, in the end, even those hazy visions produced by the drug hadnt been quite enough to wipe out the memory of what had happened on her trip out to the Wanderer, and consequently Megan had slowly, albeit reluctantly, found her way back to the real world. She had even managed to re-establish some kind of career for herself as a machine-head pilot, but this time taking advantage of her growing inside knowledge of the routes by which sans de sezi found its way off Corkscrew. Before long she had found a way to gain employment through men like Kazim who had an intimate knowledge of the underworld and its workings.

In this way, she eventually found herself a new life. It was one that led her to believe she might finally lead a normal and happy existence, but her discovery regarding the approaching Swarm had put an end to all that.

Now on the Liberia, she dreamed that Bash was talking to her as they walked along one of Ladesteds broad avenues, back on Kjregrnnested.

Megan Jacinth, as I live and breathe, he began in surprise, gazing at her sideways.

She stared back at him in wonder, wondering how he could be here, and able to speak to her. Then she remembered that it was a dream, and not actually real.