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have to report to the giant and that would be bad enough. Would he get dragged down into that office as well? Would he be forced to stand in front of that big wood and leather desk and explain his failure like an errant school child? God, he hoped not.
    As he watched, one of his squad opened an unlocked door and, just for a moment, Quinn’s spirits were lifted. But as the glare of the torch beam revealed nothing more than an empty shed and the rotting remains of an old bicycle under some moth-eaten wormy blankets, they plummeted to earth once more. Undeterred, his man shut the door and moved on.
    Quinn tried not to think about some of the darker, more outlandish tales he’d heard, stories about those found plotting against Control or speaking to the outside world. Still, his mind returned to them none the less. People removed in the dead of night and never seen again, vanished down the winding stair. That much Quinn knew to be true, dissenters came and went although to what fate he was unsure. But he had heard whispers of what went on in the lowest levels, of experiments carried out and tests endured. He dismissed them, in the main, and was careful never to repeat any of them as the walls all had ears. Still, people did disappear, and the midnight trains rumbled in and out along their abandoned lines.
    He found himself wondering who the second man they hunted might be, the unknown stranger who had helped the driver back to his apartment. Whoever he was, Quinn thought, in doing so he had signed his own death warrant. If we ever find them that is, he mentally added ruefully.
    The thoughts troubled him, but he did his best to push them to the back of his mind, something he found himself doing more and more frequently of late with troubling questions. Best not to think about it, he warned himself, orders are orders and there for obeying. Better to let others worry about the morality of them.
    Water trickled from a broken gutter, tracing an icy trail down his back. If he could just find them, he told himself, then it wouldn’t matter what was true and what wasn’t, at least for another day. Taking a deep breath of the alley’s cold, damp air, Quinn looked once more at the ticking digits of his wrist watch. He could put it off no longer.
    "Hendriks," he said into his close range radio, "Patch me into Control."
    He sighed. Thoughts of failure and what it might mean on his return had robbed him of any sense of freedom the night might have offered. The reality of the situation came back to him. This was still his first command and he had still lost his quarry. And it was time to make his report.
     
    "Here," Corg whispered, coming to a stop in front of a set of large burnt orange monochrome doors indistinguishable, to my eyes at least, from any of the others in the row. He fumbled for another key then spent a few moments battling with the lock as the rain beat down, plastering my hair across my skull. My scrubs hung wetly against me, saturated and clinging as water like ice slid under my collar.
    Then, with a click, the lock gave and we bundled in out of the night.
     
    Quinn stood with a thumb pressed to his ear-piece, making report over the fizz and crackle of the line. Something was interfering with the signal, he thought, as he made his despondent update back to Control.
    "Two men down," he said again. "Request immediate cleanup. Targets temporarily lost." He listened to a voice through the static for a moment, the suppressed blue light of his ear-piece lending his skin an unearthly, ghoulish tint.
    "Affirmative," he said stiffly, at length. "We’ll find them."
    The burbling static cut off abruptly as the line went dead.
     
    It was dark in the storage shed, the air heavy with a musky damp perfume.
    Gradually, as my eyes acclimatized to the gloom, grey silhouettes began to flow into abstract focus. Vague box-like shapes were stacked against the walls, their contents a mystery although I’d guess they housed, at times at