The Freeholder had locked her in a basement room measuring maybe five metres by three, which was lit only by a single, faintly glowing panel in the ceiling. The walls were bare and undecorated, the illumination insufficient to reach even the corners fully. She saw a single narrow cot pushed into a narrow recess, the dark sheets balled up and rumpled, while a spigot, with a bucket placed beneath it, protruded from the wall facing the door.

Megan slumped against the nearby wall, letting her back slide down against bare concrete, till her head was resting on her knees. She risked accessing the local data-services again, but this time got nowhere. This room, she realized with a sinking feeling, was almost certainly shielded against her implants.

She closed her eyes, and saw again those two mogs yearning to rip her throat out. She reopened them quickly, clenching her fists tight until the fingernails dug into the soft flesh of her palms.

I have fucked this up so very, very badly.

Something moved on the other side of the room.

She froze, realizing with a start that what she had taken for a bundle of discarded sheets on the single cot was, in fact, a living body. Whoever it was, they seemed still asleep.

She got up and edged over to the cot, discerning the outline of knees pulled up close to the chest beneath the blankets. Reaching down with trepidation, she pulled the blankets gently to one side, before gazing down at the smooth, untroubled face of the man lying there.

She gaped in astonishment, hardly believing her own eyes. It was Bash Imtiaz Bashir the very man with whom she had once shared her deepest secrets and whom she had once abandoned to certain death.

He looked emaciated, half starved, and she lifted up one corner of his blanket to see that he was still fully dressed beneath it, although his clothes were filthy. He was in a terrible state, but she had never been so glad to see another living being in her whole life.

He showed absolutely no awareness of her, as his eyes stared past her into some unknowable place. His expression was calm and his lips slightly parted, as if just on the verge of saying something.

A terrible sadness came over her. Had he been suffering like this all these years, since Megan had last seen him? Was there still some part of him locked inside his head that knew where he was or what had happened to him?

From the look of him, that possibility seemed remote.

I told you Id come back for you, she said softly, kneeling by the cot and stroking one hand across his forehead. He smelled terrible, and she guessed he hadnt been bathed in quite some time. Ill bet they keep those mogs in better condition.