Rules of Engagement

The concrete was cold where I sat, my coat being fanned out on the steps behind. I rummaged in an inside breast pocket, found the tin I was looking for and extracted from it a cigarette I'd rolled last night. The match striking against the step was suddenly loud, and Morgan looked up. She was sitting against the other balustrade, the child still asleep on her lap. I shrugged, rested my elbows on my knees and took a lungful of smoke. It was quiet enough that there was little danger of my cigarette giving us away, and we were under reasonable cover. Morgan shifted slightly, and I took another pull.

The door crashed open behind us. "Catch!" called Harley, and a bottle flipped past my right ear. Somehow, I plucked it out of the air, as if we'd been practising it.

"Any luck?" asked Morgan. I didn't hear a reply, but Harley probably shook his head, as nothing more was said. The bottle was a nasty whisky, but better than nothing. Not at this time in the morning, though, so I put it away and started rolling a replacement for the stub hanging from my mouth. We sat in silence -- the child stirred but didn't wake.

"We could try the hospital," said Morgan.

"Yeah, like we're going to be able to walk in there."

"And if their records are still in any reasonable state," I added.

"Any reason why the old records should have been destroyed? You can't cannibalise filing cabinets into anything."

"But hardcopy burns."

Harley must have shaken his head. "Power's the one thing they've got in good supply. Don't ask me how, but they have."

"Right, so how do we get at them?" I flicked the butt over the edge of the steps and returned the tin to its pocket.

"It's only Harley they'll know. If we could look sufficiently civilian and have a good enough excuse for seeing the Director," she paused.

"Yeah, there was still a non-medical administrator last I knew. Jethro. He'll know where the records are, if he hasn't got them to hand anyway."

"We can play it by ear from there," she concluded.

"So what can we use as an excuse?"

Morgan shrugged. "Bootlegged medical supplies?"

"Brilliant if we had any." I could hear a frustrated edge in my voice.

"It'll get us as far as the Director, which is what we really need."

"I might even be able to ferret something out while you're there," said Harley. I heard him stand up and walk down to take the child from Morgan. "This one knows how to keep his head down for a couple of hours."

I sighed. "OK. It's crazy, but at least it's not dangerously crazy." I levered myself upright and jumped to the street.

Harley was right -- the hospital had power, and the atrium was lit, albeit not very well. A few bare bulbs hung high in the gothic vault of the roof, shades long since fallen or removed for the safety of the tidal crowd below. Boots and shoes clicking on the tiled floor and echoing merged into a background hiss with the few muted conversations, otherwise it was as silent as the streets. When I first spotted her, I thought it was merely someone similar-looking, then that I was imagining things, then finally the growing conviction that it really was her. You can't hide that kind of beauty, a delicacy which withstands even this, summer hair sneaking from the porter's cap. I couldn't help staring, I thought she was safely part of the past, and a nagging concern told me that I should look inconspicuous in case she recognised me.

She did. Turned and looked straight at me, signalling Recognition and Suspension, walking towards us.

"Did she just do Suspension?" asked Morgan in disbelief. That broke my spell and I flicked to face her. I hadn't known she was a Player -- I knew Harley certainly wasn't, and of course I'd never thought to Query her.

"Yeah, I think so. Carlisle. First person to get through my defence, and less than half a dozen managed that before I left. And only one of those stiffed me for more than she did."

Morgan looked impressed. "I didn't know you were that good."

"I wasn't. That defence was all I had."

Carlisle had reached us by now, smile as heart-melting as ever, scarcely touched since I'd last seen her. I felt shabby and worn, and even old. She Query'd Morgan.

I interrupted any reply. "In case you hadn't noticed, we're three thousand miles from home, in the only hospital with power in the middle of a fucking war-zone. The Game has no place here." Three years of trying to forget came undone in a single bitter speech.

"Anyway," Morgan muttered under her breath, "You'd already called Suspension."

The smile faded, and her own acid returned. "At least I'm doing something useful, which I very much doubt you are."

"On the contrary," said Morgan. As if there were one single smile which could only attach itself to one of the three of us at any point, it moved to her and transformed itself to a lazy feline grin. "We are performing a most useful function. It's just not that legal. But who the hell cares around here?" She shrugged. Carlisle looked at me, showing a slight pout of uncertainty. The smile moved on, and I kept my mouth shut behind it, not trusting myself to lie to her. "We wish to make a deal with Director Jethro."

Carlisle's pout reshaped itself to the pursed lips of consideration. I had an unpleasant feeling of how this situation needed to be handled, and the smile slipped away to haunt some other trio.

Without thinking about it, I Ended the Suspension.

Carlisle didn't really stand a chance in that encounter. She was certainly the best Player of the three of us, and the least out of practice, but Morgan took Advantage almost before I'd finished the End. Then it was two, implicitly trusting each other without the strictures of Formal Alliance, against one, and we got almost what we wanted. Carlisle led us over to reception and hooked an internal phone out from under the counter, and after a brief dispute with the switchboard got through to Director Jethro. Morgan took the phone and began the spiel about black market medical supplies -- mentioning our real purpose here anywhere outside the confines of the Director's office might well be taking a chance greater than pretending to be bootleggers was. Ironically, there was no way of knowing until we had what we'd come here for.

Our gain had been sufficiently little that when Carlisle put a Closure on me there was no way I could sensibly End it other than playing it out.

"The length of Morgan's call," she said. Nothing for me to do but Confirm, helplessly. "We do have unfinished business, you know."

"No. I quit, and I made sure there were no loose ends."

"You can't quit the Game, you should know that. You've clearly not died, rather against the odds, and your defence still seems to preclude the chance of Retirement." She glanced from me to Morgan, who was still talking. A thin smile parted her lips, very cold, very dangerous. I realised that she'd assumed Morgan and I had been Playing off each other, and were quite possibly strong for it. By admitting, more or less, otherwise, I'd left myself vulnerable to her. I was losing this.

"Don't tell me you managed to forget about me just by running away? I won't believe you; you can't run from memories like that."

That was nasty -- anything I did would lead to a successful counter by her, and I could sense that I was being set up for something even bigger beyond that. My eyes refused to meet hers, saw only the cruel perfection of her smile.

Morgan put the phone down.

I Ended the Closure, grinning wide with relief and just a little viciousness. Carlisle shot the two of us a look of such hatred that it seemed to darken her pale skin, and she stalked off across the atrium. Morgan shook her head at me in what may have been pity or disbelief.

"So I lost a bit. It would have been much worse in a couple of minutes. Are you going to Suspend this idiocy, or shall I?"

She did, and pivoted me by my elbow towards the main entrance. "Let's go and see if Harley's turned anything up. Jethro will talk to us, but not until this afternoon. Gives us all breathing space."

I found the atrium becoming frighteningly full of people, although there were probably no more than when we had entered, and was glad of the funereal peace of the streets.

Harley was waiting for us at our camp, a fire going with a pot of anaemic-smelling stew simmering on it. The child was sitting in a corner eating some of the stuff from a billy, quiet and hidden in shadows. A pigeon clattered out through the rafters, showering masonry dust down from the top of the south wall. "Well?" Harley said, pulling a battered ladle out of the pot. I handed him a can and he slopped some stew into it -- good and thick, probably highly nutritious, just completely devoid of taste or colour.

"We're going back to talk to Jethro this afternoon. Nothing's gone wrong yet." She looked at me. I shrugged.

"Ran into someone I knew back home. No idea whether she's going to cause us problems or be immensely useful. Or both." The billy was starting to burn my hands so I sat on a crate and perched it on my knees. "How about you?"

"I've actually managed to turn something up. One of the clinics on the east bank is quietly working as a field hospital for a couple of the local gangs. They've got fridges full of insulin and other stuff which is no use for first aid and they're quite happy to dispose of."

"For a price." Morgan was sitting cross-legged with a can of stew in front of her. Harley shrugged.

P"Nothing more than taking it away ourselves and keeping quiet about what they're up to. They somehow got the impression that I was there in an official capacity."

"Now I wonder what gave them that idea," I muttered, and fished for a cigarette.

"I don't suppose someone in an official capacity could have asked for a sample so we could convince Jethro of our good intentions?"

Harley grinned. "Of course not. So I just lifted some." He waved a small insulated box in the air. "I doubt they'll miss it, and if we do go back for a shipment they'll never know."

The child put his finished meal down with a clatter and wandered off to the latrine pit we'd knocked through to the sewers. "How long are we going to be saddled with this liability?" whispered Morgan.

I shrugged. "He's only a real threat to us if we're right about who he is. If we're wrong, he's just extra baggage to be off-loaded into a decent orphanage ASAP. With any luck, we'll have the answer to that question in a day or so, and if we are wrong, that will be that."

"And if we're right?" asked Harley quietly. We all knew the answer: we'd probably be in this shit for the rest of our lives, which might not be very long.

Jethro's office was on the third floor. As we climbed the stairs, not willing to add to the burden on the ancient lifts, Morgan and I sketched out a hasty plan. She would do the talking and I, if possible, would snoop around. During the negotiations, she would try to determine where the Director's sympathies lay, and if we couldn't trust him and I failed to turn anything up we'd ask for some bogus records so he would at least show us where to look. However, I was needed to at least put in an appearance as Morgan's dumb muscle -- that act was always the best way of convincing people that you were serious about doing business with them. Harley's solo trick that morning had been exceptional.

The corridor, running from the front to the back of the hospital, was indistinguishable from any non-administrative part of the building, red-tiled floor and walls painted cream that had decayed to a bilious grey. The doors were more freshly painted white, fresh enough for splash marks to have crept onto the simple plastic name plate of the Director's office. We looked at each other. I knocked. A female voice called out "Come in!" I twisted the handle and pushed the door open, momentarily taken off balance by its flimsy lightness. North-facing window opposite, light framing the woman, prim but mousy, as were most people around here, sitting at a desk facing us. Jethro's secretary, if we were to believe the desktop sign teetering on the edge, pushed to the brink by piles of paperwork remarkable for being neither too neat nor too chaotic, and artfully arranged to cover more area than they warranted. I walked in and held the door for Morgan, shutting it behind us and remaining standing in front of it. "What can I do for you?" she asked, fixed, purposeful smile.

"I'm here to see the Director. We arranged a meeting this morning," said Morgan. I glanced around the office -- functional, secretarial space, somewhat impoverished, of course, and devoid of ornament, save one very sickly potted palm. I counted at least two patches on the walls where pictures were missing.

"Of course," her smile became more genuine. "If you'd both go through ..." she gestured to the door to our left, foiling any plans I had for taking a closer look at the fading ink on the filing cabinet labels. Morgan stood and let me fetch the door again. This one was more solid.

Jethro was leaning back at his desk watching us. I closed the door quietly and, as Morgan was stepping forward to shake his proffered hand, I moved round to stand by the window. If Jethro noticed, he was too accustomed to this tactic of dividing one's opponent's attention to be unduly concerned by it. Nevertheless, I had to assume that a corner of his eye was on me. The office was more opulent than next door -- half panelled, although the wood looked and felt pretty cheap, an imposing book case behind the desk, and a couple of ferns which were doing a lot better than the palm. The man himself had an easy bulkiness, although clearly not as much as he had had once, and his skin and carefully maintained suit hung on him loosely. Steel grey hair swirled untidily about a substantial bald spot. Whatever reasons he had for keeping this post, personal gain was not one of them.

Morgan and Jethro got down to business, not that I was paying any attention. There were two filing cabinets in the room, neither of which looked large enough to be of potential interest. The one whose labels I could read claimed only recent administrative matters. Somewhere in there there was probably something about Carlisle, but I was trying not to think about that. The bookcase could conceivably have been concealing something, but it was doubtful that what we were looking for was subject to such especial secrecy, which also ruled out it being concealed, or even just locked, in Jethro's desk.

The window overlooked what had once been the hospital gardens, but the groundstaff had long since let it go wild. I carefully traced a route that would get us from the back wall to a point just below me which required breaking cover only once for a five metre stretch in the middle. Fortunately, the window itself had not been painted shut, and had no locks -- not too difficult to open from the outside, particularly with a bit of discreet preparation, which I now applied.

"So, you want a down-payment," Jethro was rumbling, "of information?"

Morgan shrugged magnanimously. "It may seem trivial to you, but to my friend finding his family is more important than any amount of hard cash. And I am generous enough to give you time to come up with that. I don't even insist on a single payment. A hospital is unlikely to go anywhere."

Jethro gave a humourless snort of laughter. "Unlike bootleggers. Still, we have nothing to lose with your deal, and much to gain." He tapped the insulated box, which was now sitting on the desk before him. He paused for a moment, faking consideration. "Come with me." He stood up and gestured us both towards the door, making sure he was last to leave his office. If he was that cautious, he might just notice what I'd done to the window. We crossed the secretary's office, and through the door on the opposite wall, to be greeted by row upon row of filing cabinets. Morgan turned to catch me signalling Score, old reactions dragged to the surface by the events of the morning, and grinned slightly. "Here," Jethro was saying, two rows over, slapping great fleshy hands against the cabinets, making the entire room resonate gently, "are the admissions around the time you'll be interested in. If you search through those with no known name," and he thumped the cabinet again, to emphasise its location, "I can look at under the alphabetical listings."

Morgan eyed the drawers suspiciously. "There's a lot more than we found in the transit camp records."

Jethro had moved a way down the line. I had no idea what name Morgan had given for this imaginary friend. "Not surprising." He shrugged. "If you're fit enough to get as far as one of the camps, you're generally capable of telling them your name. People winding up here are often not so well." He disappeared from my view, groaning slightly as he crouched down to reach one of the lower drawers. Morgan and I looked at each other, then I began hunting through the other aisles, looking for a hopeful label on one of the drawers, while she commenced her fake search. When I'd got through about two-thirds, without success, Jethro called Morgan over. "This any good?"

She glanced at me. I shook my head, as if she needed to be told. After a few moments bent, presumably over Jethro's shoulder, in careful study, she pointed to something and said "No, that's not her." Jethro made some kind of noise, and we all resumed. Within seconds, I found the cabinet I was looking for, neatly labelled and locked. I turned to find Morgan looking across the room at me. She smiled wryly and I shrugged. It was here, but right now there was no way we could get at it. Replacing the record she was holding, she pulled out one from earlier in her search that had presumably been earmarked as being a close match to whatever she'd told Jethro. "I think I've found something."

Jethro hauled himself to his feet. "Let's see." It was his turn to peer over her shoulder, a difficult task given Morgan's height. "Yes, that does seem likely. Evacuated at the start of the second southern offensive." Morgan was scribbling something in a notebook, presumably the location of the cabinet I'd found, as though I'd forget. "I'd let you take a copy, but the copier hasn't worked in ages. We might be able to come to another agreement if you happen to come across any spare parts."

Morgan snapped her notebook closed. "I'll bear that in mind. Thank you, Director Jethro."

Jethro returned to close and lock the other cabinet, and while his back was turned Morgan restored the file to its proper place. Meanwhile, I'd checked the windows and found, to my disgust, that they had been painted shut. Still, that gave me plenty of time to return to the door and pretend I'd been standing watch all along. Jethro ushered us out cheerfully, adding a knowing "Hope to see you soon." We were half way along the corridor, boots thumping on the tile, before Morgan turned to me.

"Well?"

"I'm pretty certain it'll be in there. Opening the cabinet shouldn't be too much of a problem, but it's not something I was going to try in the circumstances."

"How about getting in in the first place?"

I shrugged. "Through Jethro's office. Lots of cover in the gardens, and I prepped the window. The windows of the records room itself won't open, unfortunately."

She nodded. "Security around here looks like a bit of a mix. I don't think they're going to be geared to deal with people trying to sneak off with their records." I agreed -- that was probably a long way down their list of concerns. All the more reason to be cautious, though, if what they were expecting was more serious trouble. Not that we couldn't be serious trouble when we chose to be.

Harley confirmed our assessment of hospital security. "Their main concern is keeping the area neutral, so patients actually stand a chance of getting in and out. The next most important thing is protecting their medical supplies, closely followed by stopping stray loonies from wandering in intent on killing someone. So basically they're on general look-out for a head-on assault or a sneak attack at a specific location. We're going to be sneaking in to a completely different location, one they care little enough about that it doesn't get special attention from security."

"Would've been easier if it did," I muttered, lighting up. "Then if we'd known we weren't going to be able to deal for the records openly, which never did seem too likely, we could've just gone in on your directions."

Harley grinned. "That's a lot of ifs."

I shrugged and took a drag. "Life's nothing but a sequence of choices. Choices can be characterised in retrospect by ifs." Game attitude. The presence of Carlisle had shaken me even more than I was willing to admit to myself.

"What about guard dogs?" asked Morgan.

"Ever seen a guard dog in body armour?" I said. She admitted that she hadn't. "They're not terribly effective. And bear in mind what Harley just said. An unprotected dog would be expected to get shot up in very short order."

"Plus a dog takes a lot of resources that they can't very well spare." He stood up and went over to the corner where our equipment was piled -- you can't check too many times -- nothing more to be said. Morgan was drinking some disgusting reheated coffee.

"So tell me about you and Carlisle."

I really didn't want this conversation, but on the other hand talking about it might help. "Not much to tell. We were at school together. I was a hideously late developer, but that's what gave me my defence. Watching everyone else starting the Game from an outsider's position, then when I finally joined it was easy enough to keep hold of that detached viewpoint. I wasn't worth anyone's bother, and I was so inexperienced I couldn't do anything myself, save a couple of calculated moves which I knew were going to fail harmlessly."

"I knew someone like that. Just watched, learning by observation. A couple of years later he wandered in off the sidelines and mopped up. I just about got out in time. Left home and went to find a new set of Players, one I could drop into and maybe gain a bit by surprise."

"I wasn't so lucky. I was relying on that fact that I wasn't of value to anyone unless they went all-out on something major. And I figured that, with my years of watching, I could spot that coming from far enough off to be able to deal with it. Carlisle sneaked past me. I saw it too late, tried to get away, move out of the area. Thought I'd gotten away with it, but she followed me, and took me down big-time. She was inside my defences, and anything I tried to do just made it worse. Eventually there was nothing more for her to gain, so she just grinned smugly and went home." Morgan had been nodding in familiarity. "Is that what happened to you, why you quit?"

"Yes. I was getting nowhere fast. I didn't even have the confidence in my defences that you did, just a reasonable line in offence. I'd been slowly sliding for a while, since getting away from that watcher, and then suddenly I'm being taken for everything I've got, and it's too late for a counter-offensive to turn it around. So I gathered what I could and jumped onto a convoy. You too?"

"No, I hung around after Carlisle returned. Played out another two dismal years. Then I began figuring out how stupid the Game was. How ludicrous it was that I should be sticking to its rules, when there were plenty of folks out there who weren't. Thought I'd grown out of it." I ground the cigarette out on a brick.

"You think the Game's childish?" Morgan was slightly incredulous. I, in turn, was wondering why someone who took the Game seriously was out here anyway, losing streak or no. That thought included Carlisle.

I shrugged. "Ask Harley, or anyone else who grew up in a culture of non-Players, whether they think it's sensible behaviour for adults."

"You've obviously changed your mind."

"Well, old habits die hard. And someone came along and got me thinking like a Player again, thinking I could get enough to look seriously at Retirement. Then everything flipped inside-out. I got utterly shafted, spent a year and a half so out of control that I got two more major losses before pulling myself together enough to jump ship. So I'm here."

"And Carlisle's here. And unlike either of us she clearly isn't trying to give up the Game."

For the first time I noticed that we'd been Playing this conversation. "Which means we've got nothing to lose, not caring about the outcome. Anyway, I was just fazed by seeing her this morning. The years have sealed up the hole in my defence she got through."

Morgan stood and stretched with a generic End. "I believe you. Good job we're under Suspension, otherwise I hate to think how much I just lost trying to get through to you."

Everything went smoothly. Jethro's window was as I had left it and proved no problem, and both of the internal doors were unlocked. The filing cabinet, as I'd predicted, was straightforward enough to open, and helpfully quiet. Digging out precisely the right records was a little more time consuming than we had anticipated. Many of them were hand written, rather than being nicely typed up -- I suppose even hospital secretaries can be trusted with only so much confidentiality -- and I, at least, started off with the wrong assumption about which language they were written in. That turned barely readable scrawl into illegible gibberish. Maybe it's a feature of bilingual countries that if you spend all your time using one tongue the one you need in a crunch situation is always the other. Then we had a lengthy, if hushed, debate as to whether we should lock the cabinet up again. In the end, we decided that yes, we should, which was a much trickier procedure than getting it unlocked in the first place. By this time, Harley had spotted the copier in the corner, and suggested we take copies and return the originals to cover our tracks the better, but Morgan and I remembered Jethro's request for spare parts. Which was just as well, because we would have had to unlock and relock the cabinet again. Finally, we got out and into the back street, still undisturbed. Had we not stopped for our tactical debate, we could have been in and out between security rounds, if security rounds had included checking that room.

There was a sort-of curfew. Nothing officially enforced, but it was widely understood that anyone abroad in the middle of the night was liable to be shot at by anyone else. The one good thing that the gangs had managed was to clean up the snipers with IR scopes, so folks like them and us could sneak around with only each other to worry about. There was a mutual understanding that encountering each other would be a bloody business on both sides, and was something to be avoided. We had our assault rifles stashed in the undergrowth just inside the wall while we raided the hospital and now carried them conspicuously to emphasise the point. Of course, streetlighting was patchy to non-existent, but there was still a surprising amount of light available if your eyes were accustomed to using it.

Carlisle was lurking at the end of the street. Morgan saw her first and stopped dead in astonishment. I caught up with Morgan. She clearly hadn't seen us yet. "What the ..."

"... Fuck is she doing here?" completed Morgan.

Then she spotted us and started walking towards us, arms raised, unarmed, body language trying to express hesitancy and innocence. "You don't want to shoot me," she called, more of an order than a statement. I realised that she was still Playing, so I Suspended it.

"Really?" said Morgan under her breath, while I called back "The thought hadn't crossed my mind." I don't think it was a lie. We met in the shadows under a shot-out streetlight, where she smiled sweetly and Ended the Suspension.

"I know skulking around at night is the sort of thing you people indulge in, but why skulk around here? Could there be just a chance that your dealings with Director Jethro are not as honest as you claim?"

Morgan immediately re-established the Suspension, incidentally taking a Score off her for Bad Form, which I assumed to be for an inadequately long Suspension, but neither of them took the matter further and I certainly wasn't going to. "Our business with the Director does not affect any of his staff. You would be well advised not to interfere."

"But if that business affects not just the Director, but the hospital as well, that is my concern. If your actions are threatening the safety of patients, or our security, I will interfere."

At this point, Harley, clearly wondering why we had stopped to talk to her at all, pushed through. "Cut the crap. We're the ones with the guns. For your own safety, keep out of this." And he moved on to scout ahead.

"Don't try to threaten me," she called after. Then, to us, "You are definitely up to something, and I'm going to find out what. And then we shall see who can make the best threats."

Morgan sighed. "It wasn't a threat. If you go sticking your nose into this, you'll discover that it's a very dangerous situation, and we're not the ones posing the danger. Don't say we didn't warn you." She left to follow Harley.

"I am going to find out." She nailed me on those blue eyes of her, although of course I could only imagine the colour. "And when I do, I'm coming back for you." She jabbed a finger at me, bitter, unrelenting. She'd been Playing throughout the Suspension, and I was tempted to call her for Bad Form on that, too, but of course I couldn't Score off it, and anyway I had no wish to propagate this nonsense more than was necessary.

"Don't. It really isn't safe. Not for us, and certainly not for you. Trust me."

"Why should I trust you? You've never done what you've said."

For a moment, I thought back, saw her, saw us, in a crowded bar, warm in the depths of a winter night, in a summer meadow filled with scents and birdsong, and now, standing on these war-torn streets. Somewhere in there stirred a memory of something which might have been. "No. I've never done what you thought I should." And that was it. She had her expectations of how I would behave, and I suppose I had my expectations of her, and we were both wrong. I Ended the Suspension, turned, walked away, not believing that I felt tears in my eyes.

Perhaps the most important, and easily overlooked, detail for a small band like ourselves is getting a good night's sleep in very little time, and that night I needed it. In a well chosen and established camp like we had, this could most easily be achieved by setting up a really good system of tripwires and forgetting about tedious things like establishing a watch. That way, taking six hours out of the day gives you six hours of sack time each, as opposed to four, which isn't really enough, particularly if you're the poor sod with the middle watch. If we weren't mucking around after curfew, there was enough time to revert to the traditional system -- six hours kip requiring nine hours out of action. The other key trick is to be able to wake up instantly without that moment's disorientation -- this is one of the places that getting enough sleep helps. If you're a real bastard, or, for instance, don't want to disturb the child sleeping farther into your camp, you make the alarms on the tripwires capable of waking you up without anyone noticing. You can also position where you've been sleeping so as to have a clear line of fire, from cover, on anyone entering your camp. Of course, you make sure you're not sleeping in the way of anyone else.

If we have one flaw, it's curiosity, which usually involves taking people quickly, quietly and alive, so the intruder was unaware that he had had three weapons locked onto him for about a minute. The first he knew of us was when Harley clubbed him in the stomach with a length of pipe or something, then took his knees out from behind with the same weapon, pushed him onto his stomach and pinned his hands between his shoulder blades. In which time I'd removed his gun from its holster and jammed the barrel between his teeth. Morgan had slipped outside to look for accomplices. I suspect we had better dark-adapted eyes, as well as surprise, on our side. Harley moved to kneel on our captive's back, getting a better grip of his hands, and I twisted his head to keep his gun pointed away from Harley. He was still recovering his breath, and, I guess, trying to decide if, when he had finished doing so, he would be able to scream long and loud enough for any good to come of it, when two bursts of fire came from outside.

"How many of you?" I asked.

He mumbled something which might have been "two" or "five" around the gun. If there'd been five, they wouldn't have wasted four on guard duty, and sent only one in, so it must have been two. Morgan came back in.

"Just one on guard?" I asked.

"Yeah, looked like it, and more competent than your friend there. I almost didn't spot him, and didn't manage to hit him until he broke cover and ran for it."

"What damage?"

"Winged, left arm, quite bad I think. He didn't stop running." She came over to us with a flashlight and a roll of tape, and while I held the light with my other hand she bound our captive's hands in place. Then we rolled him into a sitting position against a crate and secured his knees and ankles. He had a small cut above his left eye where he'd hit the ground, but was otherwise unscathed. He was in hospital security uniform.

"Fuck," said Harley, started to swing a blow at his head, thought better of it and stalked off to check on the child.

Soon after dawn, we made our way to the hospital, figuring to arrive during breakfast before most of the day staff did, and when things were pretty busy. Harley led the way, being apparently escorted by our prisoner, but in fact he was being watch from a discreet distance by Morgan and myself. This all worked as smoothly as we had hoped to get us inside, with nothing more than a casual greeting between our man and one of his colleagues. We marched our way up to Jethro's office, reassembling as a group of four, and walked straight into the secretary's office. There was no-one there, so we burst in on Jethro. He looked suitably shocked by our entrance.

"Thought we'd return this chap to you in person," said Harley with a forced casualness. "Don't worry, we haven't hurt him much. We didn't want to damage our business relationship with you. And we thought it would be so much more satisfying to hear you explain why you sent him to spy on us."

Jethro looked genuinely perplexed, although not surprised at finding Harley with Morgan and myself. "I never sent him. I would not, as you put it, wish to damage our business relationship."

Morgan perched herself on the edge of Jethro's desk, which meant that he had to crane his neck a long way to look her in the face. "Of course you'd want to deny it, but, seriously, this is one of your security guards, who has already told us that he was acting on direct instructions from you. Now, I can't think of any good reason to disbelieve him and not you."

"I most certainly did not issue any such instructions."

"Well, he says you did," and the prisoner nodded enthusiastically.

"Did he give precise details of the orders?"

The three of us looked at each other. Maybe we had been jumping to conclusions. "No," admitted Morgan. "We weren't really in the mood for a full interrogation.

"Maybe now would be a good time." Jethro stood up and directly addressed the guard. "I am intrigued to know the story behind orders which are claimed to be mine, yet I know full well are not. Somebody is abusing my name, and I am not prepared to stand for it."

The guard said nothing, refused to meet anyone's eyes, so I poked him in the ribs. "Go on," said Harley, "tell us who gave you the instructions, and what exactly they were."

"A woman with a staff pass," he muttered into his chest. "I didn't have chance to read the name, but I know it was a real pass -- I've seen her around. Very fair hair, very blue eyes. She said she was acting as an intelligence gatherer for you, Director," and he looked up, to somewhere in the region of Jethro's throat.

"And what else did she say?" he rumbled.

"That these three," he made a sort of gestured at us with his shoulders, as though afraid that moving his arms would be seen as a threatening action, "were posing a risk to hospital security, and that you needed to know the precise nature of that risk. She said she had helped you to set up a trap for them, then you had gone for some well-deserved sleep, and that she was waiting for the trap to be sprung, and required someone from security to collect what information they could from their camp. Sir."

Jethro sank into his chair. I had been watching him through this explanation, and his shocked expression bore more traces of fear than outrage. "I see." He turned to Morgan. "I can assure you that this woman's story is a fabrication. I don't even have any idea who she might be."

"I do." Harley and Jethro turned to look at me. "It's Carlisle."

Morgan sighed. "And I thought we'd warned the little idiot off."

"I think that just made her more determined to ..." I glanced at Jethro, trying to think of an unincriminating way of phrasing this, "to find out what she can about us. That would be just like her." Just like any Player, really, collecting any information possible, on the basis that it might prove useful.

"You'd think she might at least have some idea of what kind of trouble she could be ..." Morgan caught herself, realising just as I had that if Carlisle were to find the truth out, and try to use it in the Game, there would be no question of anyone respecting that restriction. Word would get out, and never mind any danger she would be in, we would be in far worse. "Oh, shit. She wouldn't put our lives at stake, just for the Game, would she?"

I nodded. It wasn't something she'd do deliberately, but I didn't trust her to see beyond her own actions to the larger political ramifications they might have.

"Well," said Jethro, "it seems that you have some cause to want to stop her schemes, although I fail to follow your reasons. And I have no wish to have my authority so lightly used in those schemes. So," he unlocked a desk draw and, slowly withdrew a trio of security passes, "I give you authority to hunt her down. You appear to be somewhat more effective than my own people." He fixed the guard, who was still looking at his boots, with an unkind stare. "You're getting what you want -- consider that payment. These," he handed the passes to Morgan, "will give you access to any area where our own security can go. Do return them."

"Hadn't you better ring Laszlo and tell him what's going on?" asked Harley.

Jethro shook his head. "You know how easily she could intercept a 'phone call around here. I'll just tell him that someone is on their way to see him. You can give him the details yourself."

"I'll look forward to that," and, grinning humourlessly, he strode out.

Morgan crossed to the prisoner, and turned back to Jethro. "This one's all yours," and left.

"We just want Carlisle," I added.

Harley brought us to a stop as soon as we were out in the corridor, which gave Morgan a chance to hand the passes out. "There are several ways to get to the security office from here. I think. I don't really know this particular section."

"Otherwise you could have told us where the records were."

"Look, don't go on about it. The point is that we can split up and do a hasty quarter of the building and meet up again there. Alright?" Morgan and I nodded. "OK." He told us where we were heading for, then turned to me. "You can start off here in administration as you're so keen on pointing out that I don't know my way around this bit. I'm sure you won't get lost. Try and get to the rear stairwell and head down to the basement to check in on the storeroom. Then go straight across to security." I gave a brief nod, and was off before he'd started giving directions to Morgan, trying again to think like a Player, much as it galled me, to think like Carlisle and where she might be.

My search, although rapid, was tedious and unproductive, and didn't even begin to threaten me with getting lost. I gave it up as a bad job and headed down to the basement and the main stores. There were two guards on the main door, keeping watch, as Harley had said, over the hospital's most valuable assets. They moved subtly to block the entrance, without actually challenging me, while I asked if they'd seen Carlisle recently. After a moment's pause, one of them nudged the other and whispered something, and their demeanour relaxed. Presumably they'd finally spotted the pass which, I have to admit, wasn't terribly obvious clipped to my belt. The recipient of the nudge knew who I was talking about, but, no, they hadn't seen her this morning.

"But she could have used the other door," said the more observant one. "You might as well go through. You can't actually get there without going up to the ground floor and coming back down on the other side." I thanked them for their help as they let me in.

Inside was a warren. Rooms adjoining the original store had been knocked through and had their doors sealed to create additional space. Even with this, they had stockpiled more than they really had room for, trying to buffer themselves from the effects of a virtually non-existent supply line. Apart from just inside the doorway where larger pieces of equipment stood, everything was piled up to the high ceiling with tiny aisles between. In places, arches had been built between shelves to create just that little extra storage space. I was glad I wasn't carrying any serious weaponry -- I don't think I would have fitted down some of the passages. Suddenly, I was in a more open area, facing the door of the cold store. The instinct that I was on a hunt prompted me to go up to the chill metal and place my face against the glass porthole, trying not to breathe and steam it up. It looked as crowded as the room behind me, and for some reason that got me curious. I opened the door and slipped in. It didn't take long to determine that there was no-one else in there, but there was still something nagging me. There was a stack of small insulated boxes which turned out to be empty, but there was nothing really wrong with that. I turned one over in my hands, and then the connection happened. It was identical to the one we'd presented Jethro with yesterday. There was a large cabinet above the boxes which I opened. It was over three-quarters full of insulin, at a rough guess about twice the amount we could have supplied from the clinic. And there were plenty more cabinets. Jethro was short of nothing.

The guards on the back door were clearly suspicious of my motives for sneaking through the stores, but respected my pass. However, they hadn't seen Carlisle either, so I headed off to the rendezvous, somewhat distracted by my discovery.

Harley almost ran into me as we arrived at the security office simultaneously. "No sign," he said, "but there were a couple of people in the staff room who are sure she's around somewhere. Let's talk to my old friend," and it this point he crashed the door open and opened his arms in greeting, "Laszlo!"

Laszlo was officially Captain Laszlo -- it said so on his door -- but Harley had told me that he preferred just Laszlo to try and remove the militaristic air from hospital security. I found that a touch ironic, because, sitting there in his office, he was better armed than a lot of people who fervently believed themselves to be militaristic. I was thinking in particular of a self-styled captain who had tried to put a few extra holes in me a few months earlier. In the moment of initial confusion, Harley walked round behind the desk and planted his hands on the Captain's shoulders. Laszlo stared straight ahead at me, and I smiled. "Now," said Harley cheerily, "you're going to have to trust me, for once, because the good Director has told you to. And I'm going to be standing right behind you while my friend explains the situation to you, and he won't even blink if I decide to remove your spine vertebra by vertebra." This last was a blatant lie, but I saw no reason to let Laszlo know. So I just told him what was going on. He kept quiet, and nodded every so often, very slightly, as if scared of exposing his neck to Harley.

"Well," he said, after it was clear I'd finished, "I'll alert our people as best I can. But we only have the internal phone system for communication, and it is clear you understand the problem with that."

"Brilliant," I said. "A security force with no secure means of communication." I raised my head a fraction to Harley. "I'm not surprised you left them," then turned and left before either had a chance to correct me. Morgan was waiting in the corridor.

"Sounds like that went as well as could be expected."

I shrugged, started to fish for a cigarette, then thought better of it, and stepped away from the door just as Harley left the office. Sometimes our timing is immaculate, at others it stinks. "There's something funny going on," he said. "Laszlo had the time sheets for last night's patrols on his desk." One of us must have looked blank, because he started to explain, "Grids with time of round down one side and location across the other, and a box that gets initialled when they've been checked. The patrols have been changed since I was here. They do look in on the Director's office and the records store."

"So why weren't we spotted?" asked Morgan.

"Because no-one checked last night. There's a dirty great blank column -- security was told to steer clear of the entire area."

We were interrupted by some member of security arriving, disappearing into the office for a few seconds, and leaving again at a respectable trot. Presumably to spread word about Carlisle. I didn't want to return to the disquieting issue of the blank time sheets, so I raised the disquieting issue of what I'd found in the cold store. It was like combining two and two to get four, but not being sure whether you'd multiplied or added.

We lapsed into a silence which let us hear the telephone ring in Laszlo's office. A moment later, the Captain burst out. "She's just been seen near the loading bays." Harley was already setting off at a run. "Maybe she's trying to get away by the goods entrance," Laszlo called down the corridor after us.

It wasn't far to go -- presumably that's how word to be on the lookout had got to the guards there so quickly. But it was far enough for her to have slipped through to the staff carpark by the time we arrived, and I was left with the sight of her disappearing into the ruins of the city on a bright red motorscooter, golden hair free and wild in the morning sunlight.

"Fuck!" screamed Harley. "How come she's got a set of wheels and we didn't know?"

Jethro was alone when we burst back into his office, sitting, leaning on desk, looking pensive. Security had clearly phoned in, and presumably he'd sent our captive home, or some equally humane gesture. "I think it would be wise for you to track her down before any real damage is done. After all, she doesn't know what you've really been up to." The window was securely fastened. I whirled and kicked the desk, Jethro jerking up to find the business end of my gun taking a bead on his nose.

"No, but you do, you bastard. You've known all along and you've been playing us." He was probably cool enough to notice that my finger wasn't even on the trigger, which must have helped him keep his composure. Scaring him too badly would be unhelpful.

"Please, I don't know what you're talking about. And all you've told me is that you're honest, if illegal, traders."

"Then you gave us those passes a little too easily. What have your spies told you, old friend?" asked Harley, closing one of the filing cabinet drawers with more gentleness than I could have managed. He handed a couple of files to Morgan, and stood with his back to the door, ostentatiously taking the safety off his gun.

"I ... I don't ..." Morgan passed one of the files to me. Details of Carlisle. Not just administrative records, but regular habits, contacts, hangouts. Political opinions. Harley had said nothing about the hospital's information gathering system to us because he hadn't been told about it, and now that he'd found out he was seriously pissed off. And Jethro realised this. And that had blown Jethro's cool.

"Let me remind you," said Morgan, apparently reading one of the files. "They told you that your former employee, our friend Harley, had taken up with two other foreign, let's translate it as 'mercenaries,' that's us, and in due course they'd come into the, well, possession of a male child who, instead of placing with an orphanage or hospital, they kept hold of. Which piqued your curiosity, so when we came with our cunning disguise to trick information out of you, you played along to see what information we were after." She slammed the file on the table, and Jethro found himself to be in the company of three drawn guns. "I don't like being strung along, Director. It makes me jumpy." We don't believe in the 'good cop, bad cop' routine -- it's tricky to pull with three. 'Bad cop, bad cop, bad cop' is a much more rewarding strategy.

"Except," I continued, sitting on the corner of the desk, "the disguise wasn't that cunning, because apart from knowing who we were anyway, you already knew about the clinic we got the sample from, because you yourself use it to keep an emergency store a distance away from here. You saw that I'd rigged the window, but you left it alone. For once, you left the office doors unlocked, for our benefit, and instructed security not to patrol the area. Having your suspicions as to who the child might be, it was a simple matter for you to check this morning to see which records we'd taken." Some of that was pretty wild guesswork on my part, but Jethro didn't look like he wanted to deny any of it. "Now, finally, we've caught up with your information."

There was a nervous silence. If we'd been Playing, Jethro would have been dead and buried. But we weren't, and he was a tough old bird. Under the tension, it was the phone that broke first, and Harley blasted it before the first ring had completed, belatedly checking that the secretary was still to arrive. It disadvantaged us just enough for Jethro to recover. We let Harley curse himself -- don't criticise people for mistakes they know they've made.

"A tidy solution would be to let me take custody of the child. You do not like looking after him, and I'm sure he'd be better off not staying with you. Then we could use the facilities here to find out who he is, and ..." Jethro shrugged.

"If he's not who we think he is, fine." Morgan put her gun away. Threats over, time to talk. "But if he is, how can we trust you with him? How do we know what your political motives are?" Jethro looked up to find Harley still armed, looked down.

"The files," he muttered into his chest. Looked up at me, then at the cabinet Harley had raided. "Check the records." I went to do so. "They should make it pretty clear where my sympathies lie. I assume you would have left the child to die if your politics were any different to mine."

"Don't be so sure," growled Harley, stepping away from the door. "Maybe we just don't like killing innocent kids. And maybe we don't have such qualms about hospital Directors who yank our chains."

I don't think putting Jethro back into panic would have achieved much, but I happened to find some really conclusive documents almost immediately. "He's on the level. Dumping the kid here would be a pretty smart move. We were always going to need to find a friendly medical facility for anything like conclusive tests. And I'm sure he," gesturing at Jethro, "can keep him safe."

Jethro sagged in obvious relief. "Then maybe you should go after Carlisle."

Harley smiled humourlessly at Jethro and holstered his gun. "Maybe."

By the time we caught up with Carlisle's apartment, she was long gone. To judge from the state of things, she hadn't been prepared for a quick getaway, and had left a whole load of stuff strewn around. I didn't want to be reminded of her so much, and quickly left.

"So, are we going after her?" asked Harley, passing round that cheap whisky. He didn't want to stay in the same city as Jethro. Morgan shrugged. She wanted to stay, but not badly enough to speak out against leaving. I was unsure, fiddled with a cigarette. I'd rather forget about Carlisle, consign her to the past. But.

"Yes. We have unfinished business."