THE RESURRECTED MAN

INSIGHT.1

Unit 142, NorthWest Isobloc, Faux Sydney,

UNITED REPUBLICS OF AUSTRALASIA

A dull but persistent murmur woke Jonah McEwen from the deepest sleep he would ever experience.

The first conscious thought he had was how uncomfortable he felt. His body ached along its entire length, from a dull throb in his head to cramps in his feet. When he tried to move, his limbs encountered resistance, as though he was swimming in honey. The same happened when he went to raise his head.

That was when he realised he wasn't breathing.

He lurched forward, arms and legs flailing to find purchase. His hands struck the inside of what might have been a tank, but his fingers slid uselessly aside when he tried to get a grip on it. He had no strength, no sense of balance. He felt like a baby in a bathtub --

Something clicked in his head at that image. He rolled over and found the bottom of what did indeed feel like a bath; the surface was smooth, slippery and ribbed. He kicked downward, arched his back and -- fighting the pain and the weakness that pulled him back down -- pushed up as hard as he could.

With a sucking noise, his head broke the surface. Noise and cold struck him immediately. The muffled sound that had woken him became the shouting of people nearby; the air stung his face like a slap. He opened his mouth to breathe and found that it was full of fluid -- as were his throat and lungs. Choking, he fell forward and struck his head on the edge of the bath.

He blacked out for a moment, just long enough to slip back under. When his head had cleared, he tried to free himself again. But the sensation of weakness had doubled; all the strength had been leeched out of his muscles. Within seconds he was so exhausted he could hardly move his legs at all.

This time, however, there were others to help him. Hands slid under his armpits and hauled him to a sitting position. Again his head broke the surface. He shook it, coughed, and expectorated what felt like litres of fluid from his lungs.

When the spasm had passed, he brought his legs up and rested his arms and head on his knees. A careful pair of hands stayed under his armpits, keeping him upright. Every muscle in his body was quivering with fatigue, as though he had been running a marathon. His eyes were gummed shut, and he didn't have the strength to clear them.

Breathing in shallow, painful gasps, he concentrated on the voices as they slowly began to make sense:

"What the hell is that stuff?"

"Looks like some sort of protein gel, sir."

"I want a chemist in here to check it out, make sure it's safe before anyone else sticks their hand in. And get a medic, while you're at it. I don't want him dying on us."

I'm not dying, Jonah wanted to say. But his mouth wouldn't work properly, and he wasn't sure if he knew what he was talking about. Maybe he was dying.

"How's that ID coming along?" the first voice went on.

"He could be either Lindsay Carlaw or Jonah McEwen, according to the isobloc records."

"The Jonah McEwen?"

"Seems that way, but -- "

"Christ. This is getting weirder by the second."

" -- But the housekeeper isn't talking to us yet, sir, so we'll have to wait for Marylin to confirm it."

"How long?"

"She's with the John Doe in the booth. Maybe five minutes until she's finished -- "

"Well, tell her to get over here now. The other one isn't going anywhere in a hurry."

"No need," said a third voice, a woman. "I'm here. What's the problem?"

"Take a look at this. Ring a bell?"

Pause. "Shit." From the tone of her voice it was clear the woman didn't swear often.

"Exactly. We found him a few minutes ago, trying to sit up."

"Is he -- ?"

"Just give me a name, Marylin. I don't want to lead you."

"Jonah McEwen."

"You're sure?"

"Positive. See the scar on his chest? I'd recognise it anywhere." The woman's voice hitched slightly. "And this is his unit. He inherited it from his father."

"Lindsay Carlaw?"

"That was his name, yes."

Jonah shivered uncontrollably. One hand brushed his chest, and did indeed feel a rough patch of scar tissue where his right nipple should have been. He couldn't remember how it had got there, and how the woman who had pointed it out could have known him so intimately. Her voice cut him deeply, although he wasn't sure why.

"Thanks for the history lesson, Officer Blaylock," said the first voice in a slightly softer tone, "but an ID was all I was after. Log it with Gillian and find out where that medic's got to."

"But -- "

"Just do it. McEwen doesn't look too good. I've never lost a suspect before, and I don't want to start now."

Suspect?

Again something seemed to fall into place, deep inside his mind, with an almost audible click.

"W-wait." Jonah raised his head. "Wait -- don't -- "

The hands tightened under his armpits, restraining him.

"What the hell?"

"Sounds like he's trying to talk," said the woman.

"Anybody catch it?"

"I -- " Something loomed over him, visible only as a shadow through his eyelids. "No, wait -- "

Metal clattered in the background.

"Will you keep it down out there?"

"Be careful, Marylin -- "

"Let me handle this, Odi," the shadow said. "Jonah? Jonah, can you hear me?"

He rolled his head back on a neck made of rubber, and felt his spine give way beneath him. A hand cupped his chin while the pair under his armpits tightened their grip, stopped him from sliding. For a moment, he thought he was going to faint.

"Jon?"

"I -- " With an effort, he forced one eye open. The light that struck it was painfully bright. He blinked, felt tears stream down his cheek.

"Can you see me, Jon?"

"Can't -- " His throat burned as if it was full of ground glass. "Can't remember."

"Do you know who I am?"

He squinted up at the person bending over him. All he saw was a blur.

"Closer," he managed.

She leaned forward until her face was barely a hand's length from his. As she did so, her features sprang into sharp focus: full lips, a generous nose and light green eyes that stared back at him with startling intensity. Her face revolved around that stare, as though it was the vanguard -- and dissecting tool -- of the mind behind it.

One thing was wrong, though. He was sure about that, somehow --

Click.

"You recognise me, don't you, Jon?"

"Yes." His other eye came unstuck with a slight pop. He blinked twice, and it cleared. "You're Mary."

She half-smiled. "Yes, I am."

"You've changed -- something."

The smile disappeared. "Can you tell me what you're doing in here?"

"In where?" He looked around him. Apart from her face, the room was blurry. The colours were familiar, though, and she had mentioned a unit that had once belonged to his father -- his unit, now. What had happened to his father?

There were three more people in the room: one behind him, supporting him, the other two squatting near the woman he knew as Mary. They were out of focus, too.

He swallowed. "This is my bathroom?"

"Yes."

"I must be in the spa."

"Yes, Jon."

"What happened? Did I fall asleep?" His hands slapped at the gel encasing his body; it was a translucent purple and gave off a bitter, chemical smell. "What is this stuff?"

"We’re hoping you can tell us that," said one of the others in the room, the one with the gruff voice.

"I don't know," he said. Frustration made him feel dizzy. "I can't remember."

"You're going to have to do better than that, McEwen."

"Don't, Odi. He's obviously disoriented. At least give him a chance to recover before you interrogate him."

As he listened to the woman defend him, memory stirred in his hindbrain. Good cop, bad cop: he had known the routine well, once. It felt like a long time ago.

Click.

"Mary," he asked, clutching at the detail like a man reaching for a life-raft, "when did you change your hair?"

She turned back to him. "Six months ago."

"That doesn't make sense."

"Why not? You remember that far back, do you?"

"No, not exactly." He shook his head. "I'm getting flashes. It's hard to explain."

"You have to try, Jon. Really try. I don't think you realise what sort of trouble you might be in."

"Trouble?" He tried to analyse her expression, but she had retreated out of range and become a blur again. "I don't know anything about trouble." Click. "But I do know that you were blonde the last time I saw you, which was definitely less than six months ago."

"No, it wasn't."

"It must have been." Click. "A couple of weeks, at the most. We'd just closed the Banytis file and gone out to dinner." Click. "You were trying a longer length, and I said -- " Click. "I said that if you grew it any longer, you'd look like Monroe." Click. "I did, didn't I?"

"That wasn't two weeks ago, Jonah." Her voice was hard. "It wasn't even six months."

Click. "Oh God, Mary. Oh God." More memories fell into place, and they were worse than he could have imagined. He folded his face in his hands to hide the tears from the people surrounding him. Their blurry silhouettes looked like vengeful ghosts at his death-bed. "Oh God."

His father was dead!

"The last time I saw you, Jonah, was three years ago. You've been missing ever since."

He hardly heard her, the sense of dislocation was so strong. His body didn't feel like his any more -- so weak and hairless, so thin his arms looked like sticks -- and he didn't even know how he had come to be this way.

Had he died too? Was this how Lazarus had felt?

Two more ghosts edged into his tomb. The woman he had been talking to backed away, made room for the others. One looked into his eyes and placed something down his throat. A new voice asked him questions he could no longer understand. His body went limp as the effort to think took its toll. His eyes slid shut, but the ghosts wouldn't let him sleep.

He didn't feel the hands under his back and around his legs, but he did feel himself being lifted out of the gel and into the air. There was nothing he could do to stop them. His head lolled back and he was too weak to raise it. His body no longer responded at all. All he wanted to do was drift away, leave his body behind, rest forever --

Something cold pressed against his neck. He felt a sharp sting, and blackness enfolded him again.

#

Marylin Blaylock followed the stretcher out of the bathroom, feeling sick to the stomach. As she passed through the lounge, she avoided looking at the d-mat cubicle on the far side of the room. She had already seen its contents in explicit detail, and didn't want to be reminded just yet. There would be time later, once she had assimilated the reality of Jonah McEwen's reappearance into her mind-set. It was too easy -- too tempting -- to associate facts that might have been separate, to prejudge before all the data was in.

Still, she had had two bad shocks that morning -- one in the d-mat cubicle, the other on seeing Jonah again. It was him; she could not deny that, but at the same time she could hardly believe it.

The skeleton on the wheeled stretcher tried to move as the medic brought it to a halt in the spare bedroom, the only space in the unit not already taken over by the MIU away team.

"Easy." The medic administered another injection to the skeleton's throat, pinching the skin to bring invisible capillaries to life. Vertebrae stood out like bony fists. Try as she might, Marylin couldn't see a single vein -- let alone a pulse -- in the waxy flesh.

"Is he going to be okay?" she asked.

The medic looked up. He wasn't the team's usual and looked too young for Marylin's liking. "I think so, if we get him to proper facilities soon."

"Are you sure? He looks terrible."

"He's lost a lot of weight, obviously, but we can fix that. His heartbeat is regular and strong. He's responding to external stimuli, so his brain is functioning on some levels at least. I've seen people worse off than him make a complete recovery within a week or two."

"But how did he get like this?"

"My guess? A combination of viraemia and starvation. He's been in that bath a hell of a lot longer than he should've been."

Three years? she wanted to ask, but was interrupted by the arrival of Odi Whitesmith, officer in charge of the MIU team, and the team's chemist.

"The gel is a military nutrient cocktail," said the chemist, still holding a sample of the stuff in a plastic flask. "It's loaded with waste products, hence the colour."

"Not dangerous?" Marylin asked.

"On the contrary. It's probably been keeping him alive. Covert divers breathed it during the Taiwan War, to cross the Strait of Formosa."

"Well, he certainly wasn't going anywhere," said Whitesmith, bending his large frame over the stretcher to take a better look. The medic glanced up at him, then went back to his work. A patch drip delivered a viscous, blue-white liquid into one bony arm, while a network of fine, black lines had begun to unfold across the fish-white scalp. The chemist grimaced for Marylin's benefit and left them to it.

"Find anything yet?" Whitesmith asked the medic.

"I'm mid-way through an inventory now." He rolled Jonah's head further back and began feeding a black nanowire into his nasal cavity. "There's something in his system apart from the usual, that's for sure. Given the nature of the gel, I'd guess it's a complementary device of some sort. There are kits designed to preserve the body through a prolonged period of inactivity. He might have used something like that."

"How long for?" asked Whitesmith.

"Typically such things are recommended for six months maximum. Nanomachines can only do so much. I've no idea what would happen if used longer."

"Maybe you do now." Marylin didn't realise she'd spoken aloud until Whitesmith glanced sharply up at her.

"You think he really has been in there for three years?"

"Well," she said, "there's the gel, and the maintenance kit -- if that's what it is -- and his memory-loss -- "

"He could be faking it. All of it."

"He could be, yes, but why go to so much trouble? We weren't expecting to find him here, remember?"

"We were led here, Marylin. Someone knew we'd find him."

"Not him. You can't lose that much weight in a few hours. It would've killed him."

"By the looks of it, it almost did. Jesus."

"Now you're clutching at straws. He's pumped full of maintenance nanos, not fat-strippers."

He shrugged. "Too true. Maybe we should avoid jumping to conclusions until all the facts are in."

Marylin nodded; her thoughts exactly. Playing devil's advocate was all too easy when his suggestions were based on such scant evidence.

But . . . He called me 'Mary'. No-one had addressed her by that name for three years. This more than anything convinced her that he had no memories of the time in between. And she had called him 'Jon' in return. She didn't like to think what sort of compromise that made her party to.

"There's something else," the medic said, frowning at the results of the latest test. "His brain-scan is highly unorthodox."

"Damaged?" asked Marylin, her stomach roiling again.

"It's hard to be sure with this equipment. He's in a complex deep alpha/early beta state, beating between seven and ten Hertz measuring one hundred and twenty-five and fifteen microvolts respectively. I don't recognise it. His cortex is a mess: prefrontal, parietal and temporal lobes full of old implants, most of them dead. There are breakdown products everywhere. He was short-sighted, right?"

She nodded, understanding the question if not the details that had preceded it. "Yes, severely. He had corrective implants installed when he was a child."

"I thought so. They're dead too, so he won't be seeing too well when he wakes up again."

"He wasn't before."

"There you go. His limbic system is completely out of wack, too. There's something's going on in his amygdala and hippocampi, but I've no idea what. The activity doesn't correspond to anything the pathology DB has seen before."

"V-med?" Whitesmith suggested.

"I've compared the scan to those produced by known vegetative-meditative states. There are some similarities, yes, but nothing that quite fits."

"What are the closest?"

The medic raised his eyes to consult his database. "Three inducers, all illegal: ReLive, InSight and AirBorn."

"When were they banned?"

"ReLive and AirBorn almost a decade ago. InSight more recently, within the last two years."

Whitesmith folded his arms and bit his thumb: a sign of deep thought, Marylin had learned. "If McEwen's telling us the truth, then InSight was legal when he took the plunge."

"So?"

"Just a thought. How soon can we talk to him?"

"Give me a few minutes and I'll wake him."

"Good enough. Make sure we're here when you do."

"I don't know what sort of condition he'll be in -- "

"He was lucid enough earlier. I'll take my chances."

Whitesmith stepped back to give the medic room to work. Marylin followed him. They stood together in the doorway, not too far away from the noisy swarm of MIU officers examining the rest of the unit but removed enough to talk in private.

"Interesting," he said around the thumb. "What do you think?"

"I think I've changed my mind. He might be faking it after all."

"Really? What makes you say that?"

"Jonah wasn't into v-med," she said.

"Not to the best of your knowledge -- "

"Not at all, Odi. It wouldn't have been like him even to consider it."

"But it fits, dammit! Prolonged usage of InSight must've caused permanent side-effects, or else it wouldn't have been taken off the market. If we find that inducer's agents in his system, then that explains the odd brain scan. And to have sustained brain damage because he used InSight too long, he must've been in the gel a significant amount of time -- just like the other evidence suggests. Right?"

"Not necessarily. I knew him, remember?"

"Sure. But we'll find the agents anyway, I'll bet. Mark me." At her reluctance to concede the point, he removed the thumb from the corner of his mouth and jerked it in the direction of the bathroom. "Listen, what if he wasn't in there for three full years? Maybe it was only two and a half. That leaves a window of six months between the time you last saw him and him doing this to himself. A lot can change in that time."

"I still don't believe it. He had too much to live for to throw it all away like this." She rubbed her eyes with one hand and leaned against the door frame, amazed how exhausted she felt. "But I'll admit I could be wrong. We never know someone else completely, no matter how close we are."

"Quite. And not even ourselves, at times."

"What the hell's that supposed to mean?"

He shrugged. "Air." His usual reply when caught spouting aphorisms. "I guess I'm just trying to say that I know how hard this is for you. That's all."

She folded her arms across her chest, unhappy with herself for snapping at him. She and Whitesmith had worked together in the MIU -- Matter-transference Investigative Unit -- for three months, in which time she had been forced often enough to update her opinion of him. At first he had seemed a parody of a law enforcement officer: conservative and tending to emphasise his masculinity whenever possible. His size -- which, like his skin and hair, spoke volumes about his mixed Polish-African ancestry -- didn't help. Gradually she had realised that he was much more intelligent than that; he simply preferred to let his colleagues think with him, or for themselves. That made him seem arrogant at times -- or caused him to be brusque, when he believed people weren't reacting quickly enough -- but she acknowledged that it was an effective technique overall; it kept the team on its toes.

And now, with his career on the line, he had taken time to empathise with her own emotional state.

"Sorry I'm so screwed up, Odi," she said.

"That's why you're with us, remember?"

"It's still not very professional."

"Crap, Blaylock. You're the best C-2 I've had in ages, and I'll be sure to say so in my assessment. Tell me otherwise and I'll report you for insubordination."

She smiled, recognising the retreat into game-playing as something they both needed. "You wouldn't dare."

"Oh, wouldn't I? All I need is -- "

"Officer Whitesmith?"

Both of them turned.

"McEwen will be conscious any moment," said the medic. "I've given him a high dose of a mix of boosters. He'll be perfectly lucid, but not for long. Ten minutes is the most I can give you."

"That'll do." Whitesmith swung his massive frame closer to the stretcher. With his help, the medic raised the skeleton to a half-sitting position, arms strapped securely -- and futilely, Marylin thought -- to its sides. She doubted if the thing that had once been Jonah McEwen would have the strength to sit up, let alone lash out. His body was covered with a white towel from the waist down; purple splotches marked where it had been used to wipe his face free of the gel.

"Let me handle him, this time," Whitesmith said, watching her closely from the far side of the stretcher. "I don't want him losing it again, and he might be more stable talking to a stranger."

She nodded. "If he doesn't respond -- "

"Sure, over to you. Just give me a chance, first. When he's told us everything we need to know, he's all yours."

But do I really want him? Marylin asked herself.

Jonah's hands moved like dead leaves in an autumn breeze, and suddenly his eyes were open.

"Mary?"

Whitesmith leaned over the stretcher and patted the skeleton on its right shoulder, his hand easily engulfing the bone standing out under skin. "Marylin's here, Jonah. I'm Officer Whitesmith of the MIU."

Jonah blinked and squinted up at the stranger addressing him, but displayed none of the panic he had earlier. His voice was stronger too, Marilyn noted. Whatever the medic had given him, it had had an immediate effect.

"What's going on?" he asked.

"I'd like to ask you some questions. Can you tell me your full name?"

"Jonah Ran McEwen."

"Your address?"

"I -- uh. It's on record, isn't it?"

"We can't access it. You're covered by the Non-Disclosure Indemnity."

Jonah frowned. "I am?"

"Yes. You took the Privacy option in '66, paid-up for five years. Don't you remember?"

"I'm not -- " Jonah blinked, translucent lids flickering across ice-blue irises. "Unit 142, NorthWest Isobloc, Faux Sydney. Is that it?"

Whitesmith glanced at Marylin, who shook her head. She'd never known the address, having only d-matted to it on two occasions.

"That's where we are now," Whitesmith said, "so I assume that's right."

"How'd you get in here?" Jonah asked. "Did I call you?"

"Your housekeeper reported an intrusion," Whitesmith explained. "I should point out, Jonah, that we weren't expecting to find you here, even though we'd been looking for you for some time."

"Why?"

"That doesn't matter right now. I don't want to put ideas into your head. Rest assured, though, that if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear."

The skeletal hands clenched into fists. "That's a stupid thing to say to someone with a Non-Disclosure option."

"True." Whitesmith pulled a face, but his voice remained soothing. "I just want to talk to you for a while, to find out what you remember and what you don't."

"I can't tell you what I don't remember."

"I understand -- "

"Do you? Perhaps you can tell me, then, how I got be like this."

"No, I can't. We're doing our best to find out, right now."

"And I suppose you'll want to use the cage to make sure I'm telling the truth?"

"If you'll let us. We need your express permission first, of course -- "

"I know. And that depends."

"On what, Jonah?"

He lifted his head, fixed Whitesmith with a disconcertingly alert stare. "On what you think I've done, of course."

"Can you guess?"

"If I could, I wouldn't be asking you, would I?"

"Not necessarily."

Jonah blinked once, with a lizard's careful consideration, then sagged back onto the stretcher. "What the hell. Get the cage. It'll probably help me as much as it will you. Anything to work out what's gone wrong with my head. I -- " Jonah stopped, swallowed. "I'm not thinking very clearly at the moment."

Whitesmith indicated that the medic should attach the device to the fine web of nanowire already enclosing Jonah's hairless skull.

As the medic worked, the fleeting energy that had animated Jonah's thin frame ebbed. His half-lidded eyes drifted to Marylin, then back to Whitesmith.

"Where's Mary?" he asked, again using the nickname she had abandoned along with him.

"Right here, Jonah, next to you. You can't see her?"

"No. I can't see a thing." He gestured weakly with one hand. "In the bedside cabinet, there's a pair of glasses. For emergencies."

Whitesmith nodded at Marylin, who crossed the room to the cabinet and began rifling through drawers. At the back of the second, she found a hard plastic case with the initials A.L.C. inscribed upon the lid. Inside was a pair of antique half-moon glasses with silver frames and imitation ivory ear-pieces. She returned to Jonah's side and showed them to him.

He nodded. "Put them on for me, will you? I can't seem to lift my arms."

She did so awkwardly, avoiding looking at him too closely; the shallow rise and fall of his chest emphasised the prominence of his ribcage. She backed away as soon as the glasses were in place. They made him look old, but his eyes were piercing through the plastic lenses, almost malicious. For all the apparent dysfunction indicated by both the brain scan and his own admission, his mind seemed as sharp as ever.

That bothered her -- made her wonder if Jonah was faking infirmity to lull Whitesmith into a false sense of security -- but she didn't voice her doubts. For the moment, she was in the back seat. If Whitesmith lost control, then she would step in.

On the heels of that thought came another realisation: the look in Jonah's eyes wasn't one of malice. It was fear.

"That's better." Jonah glanced down at himself, then to one side as the medic reached down over his head to adjust the nanowire in his nostril. "Have I been sick? I look terrible."

"We'll need to run some tests to find out for certain," said Whitesmith, "but it looks like nanoware's involved."

"I've been blitzed? Is that it?"

"I doubt it. If you had been, you'd probably be dead now."

"True enough, I guess."

From behind Jonah's head, the medic gave a thumb's-up to indicate that the cage was in position.

"Okay, Jonah," Whitesmith said, "we're ready if you are."

"What's the procedure?"

"I'll ask you some questions and you can answer them to the best of your ability."

"What sort of questions?"

"Minor details at first, to test how much you remember of everyday life. Then we'll move onto more pertinent information, like what you've been doing since you opted for Privacy. Okay?"

Jonah turned to look at Marylin for a second, then said to Whitesmith: "No."

Whitesmith hesitated. "I'm sorry, Jonah? I thought -- "

"I know what you thought, but it isn't going to happen like that."

For a moment, Whitesmith was completely nonplussed by the sudden change in Jonah's behaviour. Bingo, Marylin thought.

"Can I ask why?" Whitesmith eventually managed.

Jonah raised a hand as high as he could. "You're looking for information, right?"

"Yes -- "

"Well, so am I, and letting myself be interrogated isn't the best way to get it. Instead I'll tell you what I remember. I remember being woken up in my own home by people I didn't invite in. My physical condition was poor, yet apart from the bare minimum necessary to keep me alive and talking, these people haven't administered any form of medical treatment or given me a diagnosis. Neither have they offered an explanation as to why they're here or who they really are. All they do is mutter dark warnings about 'leading' me, as though I'm a witness to something, or under suspicion myself."

"Jonah -- "

"Let me finish, Whitesmith." For the first time since his awakening, Marylin saw colour in Jonah's cheeks; all semblance of mental frailty had vanished. "I'll say right now that I have no memory of seeing or doing anything recently that would warrant investigation -- but until you tell me what the hell you're doing here and who you represent, I'm not saying another word."

"Listen, Jonah," Whitesmith said, "I'm sorry if I underestimated your alertness -- "

"And overestimated my strength?" Jonah jerked against the restraints as hard as he was able, barely making the stretcher rattle. "You've got me strapped down, for Christ's sake!"

"We're operating under extraordinary circumstances. As I told you earlier, your housekeeper reported a disturbance -- "

"What sort of disturbance, exactly?"

"It's not in your best interests to know -- not at this point, anyway."

"No? Why not? It's my unit. Surely I have a right to know when something's wrong with it?"

"Not necessarily." Whitesmith's voice remained carefully level as he tried to make up lost ground. "You were deprived of certain rights the moment we found you here. There's enough material evidence inside this unit to get us any warrant we want, be it for your private files or the inside of your head. If I haven't bothered with the paperwork, it's only because I'd rather spend the ten minutes required going over this place while the scene is still fresh. Best if you cooperate and let us get on with it, eh?"

"What evidence?" Jonah shook his head in exasperation, perhaps sensing the half-truth in Whitesmith's words: a warrant wouldn't be that easy to get without more concrete evidence. "I'm telling you, Whitesmith, I have no idea what the hell you're talking about. As far as I know, the last time I saw my unit it was empty apart from my furniture and me. If anything's changed since then, it wasn't my doing." Jonah swivelled to catch the medic's expression through his glasses. "Well? Am I telling the truth?"

The medic looked uncomfortable. "It's hard to say. This isn't really my field, and your brain scan is irregular. I'm fairly certain the memories you've examined in the last five minutes aren't fake or implanted, but I'd hate to guarantee it."

Jonah turned back to Whitesmith. "That's good enough for me. What about you?"

"I'll need a more definite response than that -- "

"How much more definite can I be? I've permitted you to attach a cage, so you can't say I'm being non-compliant. It's not my fault if it can't tell if I'm lying or not. Just give me what I want, and I'll happily and truthfully answer every question you ask. You can poke around in my head until your heart's content provided only that you tell me whether I should be worried or not. And if so, why. That's all I really want from you. Is it so much to ask?"

Jonah's hands shook as he pleaded for reason with Whitesmith. His eyes were sinking into their sockets, making his head look even more skull-like.

Feeling it was time she stepped in, before he lost what little remained of his strength, Marylin broke her promise to Whitesmith and spoke up:

"You should be, Jonah. Worried, I mean."

"Thanks, Mary, and now I definitely am. But of what? Stop scaring the crap out of me and give me some answers, please!"

"Odi?" she asked, turning to her fellow officer. "How about it? The interview's almost over, anyway."

Whitesmith locked eyes with Marylin. She was momentarily taken aback by the anger she saw in his expression, until she realised that it wasn't her doing, even if it was directed at her. He was frustrated by himself for letting Jonah out-manoeuvre him, and by the world for denying him an easy solution to his problem. Exactly what he would do next, how that anger would manifest itself, she had no way of guessing.

The trouble was, she thought, both of them had a point.

"All right," Whitesmith finally said through clenched teeth -- to Jonah, not Marylin. "If you really want to know what's going on here, I'll show you. Marylin, give me a hand."

It took her a second to work out what he meant. By the time she realised, he had picked up the medic's field kit -- still connected to Jonah by numerous patches and filaments -- and began pushing the stretcher to the door.

"Wait -- Odi, you can't be serious!"

"I don't recommend it either," said the medic, grabbing one of Whitesmith's arms and attempting to hold him back. "My patient is in a serious condition -- "

"Fuck your patient," Whitesmith snapped back. "My investigation is as good as dead, which matters more to me at the moment." To Marylin: "And if he says he doesn't remember, well, this is a sure-fire way to jog his memory. Are you going to help me or not?"

Against her better instincts, she nodded, grabbed one edge of the stretcher and began to push.

All trace of colour vanished from Jonah's face as he was wheeled unceremoniously for the door.

"Get the hell out of the way!" Whitesmith bellowed to an officer standing in the hall. "We're coming through!"

#

The first bump cost Jonah his balance along with any remaining pretence of strength. He sagged down into the mattress, head rocking limply on his chest. Calling Whitesmith's bluff had taken more out of him than he could have imagined. His heartbeat pounded like a drum in his temples. He thought for a terrible moment that he was about to pass out, but held on to consciousness with all the will he could muster.

He only needed another moment or two; just long enough to find out what sort of mess he'd gotten himself into. After that, he could sleep for a week -- if Whitesmith would let him.

Black and grey uniformed officers scattered as they burst out of the hall. Time seemed to slow as the stretcher swung into the combined kitchen and dining area, then through an arched doorway, along another hall and past the bathroom. Everything he saw was loaded with significance, not all of it immediately obvious. Partial memories exploded in his mind like firecrackers.

Click. A painting of a mountain his father had sketched while on holiday in Quebec and finished shortly before his death --

Click. The sink in which he, Jonah, had vomited the night after taking a black market dose of anti-fatigue agents --

Click. Four statuesque sunflowers preserved in nanofilm, plucked from a field next to the graveyard in which his birth-mother's body lay rotting --

Click.

Click.

Click.

The stretcher swung into the spacious family room and collided with a multi-limbed automaton of unfamiliar design. The machine glided out of the way, followed by curses from Whitesmith as he wrenched the stretcher to face the far wall. There, framed by spotlights and surrounded by still more uniformed officers, was the unit's private d-mat booth.

The stretcher jerked to a halt. Jonah slid further down, assuming a near-foetal position. His body was becoming increasingly vague, distant, irrelevant --

"You sonofabitch!" Strong hands hauled him upright and lifted his head. Whitesmith's olive-skinned face pressed close to his. Fingers dug into his skull, wrenched him forward until he could see into the booth. "Look, damn you!"

Jonah did look. At first his vision was blurry, despite the glasses. Then, suddenly, it cleared and he saw --

Click.

This was the most vivid and painful memory of them all. He was bending over his father's body where it lay still tangled from the waist down in the wreckage of QUIDDITY. Blood had spread in a pool across the floor, and every step he took splashed more onto his shoes. He couldn't stop moving, even though he knew he was spoiling the crime scene; he cursed himself for it even as he cried. Pain in his shoulder nagged that he hadn't escaped the explosion unscathed, but he barely noticed it. All he felt was grief and guilt in equal portions.

It was clear what had happened: the bomb had been planted in the Science of Consciousness Applied Research building and Lindsay Carlaw had been as much its target as the experiment called QUIDDITY. But it was too late now to change anything. His father was dead because of him and there was nothing he could do to bring him back -- not even Resurrection. Not for Lindsay, one of the few people Jonah considered worthy of a second chance.

It wasn't until the bomb squad finally arrived and gently but firmly pulled him away from the body that he realised how trapped he was in the ruined laboratory. He was in a loop, enduring the moment of his father's death over and over again, unable to change the outcome but equally unable to stop himself living through it again.

Barely had he gone two steps when he was filled with an urge to run -- to flee the scene he had left behind as though he could outrun it and escape to another reality in which his father had never died.

But he couldn't. He had nowhere -- and no-one -- left to run to. Not now that Lindsay was dead, and Marilyn -- Marylin had told him that morning -- had told him --

"Why are you crying, Jonah?" she asked.

He raised his head and found himself back in his unit, strapped to the stretcher. It was her hand tipping his skull forward so he could see more clearly -- see the pieces of flesh that had once been a human being piled like chopped wood in his d-mat booth.

He tried to look away, but she wouldn't let him. The tears in his eyes made the blood run afresh, even where it had dried and stained his carpet brown.

"I killed him," he said, the words appearing in his mouth as though spoken by someone else. "It's all my fault."

"'Him', Jonah? What are you saying?"

He shook his head, scattering tears. "Mary, please. I can't take any more."

"Jon!"

He turned away and closed his eyes, but he could feel her stare lingering on him like a brand. The accusation in her eyes hurt all the more because part of him -- the part that was still, and would always be, trapped in the loop with the body of his father -- knew he deserved it.