He leaned in close towards Barbile’s pathetic figure. She gazed at him, timid and terrified.

“Dr. Barbile,” he said levelly. “Something that eats minds . . . including my friend’s mind; a militia raid on Runagate Rampant; the very fucking air around our ears turning into some rotten soup . . . What is going on? What’s the connection with dreamshit?”

Barbile began to cry. Isaac nearly howled with irritation, turning from her and throwing up his hands in exasperation. But then he turned back. She was speaking through her snivels.

“I knew it was a bad idea . . .” she said. “I told them we should keep control of the experiment . . .” Her words were almost unintelligible, broken and interrupted with a slew of snotty tears. “It hadn’t been going long enough . . . They shouldn’t have done it . . .”

“Done what?” said Derkhan. “What did they do? What was Ben talking to you about?”

“About the transfer,” sobbed Barbile. “We hadn’t finished the project but we suddenly heard it was being wound down, but . . . but someone found out what was really happening . . . Our specimens were being sold . . . to some criminal . . .”

“What specimens?” said Isaac, but Barbile was ignoring him. She was unburdening herself in her own time and her own order.

“It wasn’t quick enough for the sponsors, you know? They were getting . . . impatient . . . The applications they thought there might be . . . military, psychodimensional . . . they weren’t coming. The subjects were incomprehensible, we weren’t making progress, and . . . and they were uncontrollable, they were just too dangerous . . .” She raised her eyes and her voice, still crying. She paused, then continued, quieter again.

“We might have got somewhere, but it was taking too long. And then . . . the money people must’ve got nervous. So the project director told us it was over, that the specimens had been destroyed, but that was a lie . . . Everyone knew it. This wasn’t the first project, you know . . .” Isaac and Derkhan’s eyes widened sharply, but they were silent. “We already knew one sure way to make money from them . . .

“They must’ve sold them to the highest bidder . . . to someone who could use them for the drug . . . That way the sponsors made their money back and the director could keep the project going for himself, co-operating with the drug-man he sold them to. But it wasn’t right . . . It wasn’t right that the government should make money from drugs and it wasn’t right that they should steal our project . . .” Barbile had stopped crying. She just sat, rambling. They let her talk.

“The others were just going to leave it, but I was angry . . . I hadn’t seen them hatch, I hadn’t learnt what I needed to learn, for nothing. And now they were going to be used for . . . for some villain to make money . . .”