The man in Klader claimed he had seen Rimsc and knew where he now was. The man’s information would cost, but that did not matter to Keech: he would have readily paid for it himself if he had not had ECS funding. Rimsc had to die for the things he had done - just as all of them had to die.

N-FACT MESSAGE: HEART RESTART.

A sudden thumping drowned out all coherent thought. It was his heart, of course, yet something was telling him that he hadn’t heard it in a long while. He felt sick now, and there was a huge pressure growing in his head. A sudden swirling all about him made him aware that he was submerged in some kind of fluid. I’m in a tank, I’m injured, he told himself. But surely that was wrong? He was dead. He knew he was dead.

Suddenly the fluid was draining away from all around him. As it went, he found himself lying at the bottom of a slimy hollow in a tangle of tubes. He stared up at the two faces hovering above him and he could feel the machinery attached to his body. This wasn’t right. Who were these people?

ERROR MESSAGE: PHYSICAL RESISTANCE TO CYBPLANT.

DISCONNECT.

Keech tried to ask them who they were, and what was going on. A colder part of himself already knew, and it tried to tell him as fluid jetted from his lungs and from his mouth. He felt he was drowning, and started to struggle.

You are the reification Sable Keech. You have been dead for seven hundred years.

Keech gave a liquid gasp, and the sound he next made was more of a croak than a scream. The cold part of himself acknowledged that there was only one thing to do.

MEMPLANT MESSAGE: FULL DOWNLOAD TO ORGANIC BRAIN.

The memories began to return. As they returned, Keech could no longer fight: he was paralysed. A door opened before him and he walked into the apartment, drawing his EC-issue thin-gun. The stink he recognized from Spatterjay: the almost savoury smell of charred flesh. He only recognized his contact because the man was still wearing the bright green shirt he was wearing when he’d left the com message. The face itself wasn’t recognizable, as there was no face. Whoever had done this had obviously taken pleasure in it: they’d tied the man to the chair and done it slowly. This much was evident by the way the man had torn off his own nails by clawing at the chair arms.