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all else around them is only a shadow of things and the only real true thing is the man they wish to kill.
    Sejanus left off suddenly and the Unionist drove his knife toward his belly, but he deflected it uselessly away. The man spun the knife then in his grip and slashed at him instead and this he blocked with his free hand, twisted his arm about the Unionist's to take it in a hold. He made to stab into the man's armpit, into his heart, but the man was quick and threw out a hand to his wrist and caught it. Thus entwined their arms were useless, and so the Unionist drew his leg round to pass across Sejanus's collar and over his shoulder and forced him downard to reverse their positions.
    The Unionist pitched himself forward in a fit of movment and in a way few of the onlookers could see for its speed had pinned Sejanus's arms beneath his knees. He slashed with a wild, hurried strike at the end of this maneuver and before he had settled, all of him moving with the subtle panic of a man on the verge of what seemed the sole opportunity over a fantastic foe. The blade drew across his eye and Sejanus's world filled with red. So blinded, he switched the sit of his shank so that its point hung downward and drove it with his limited range of movement into the thigh of his enemy again and again. He cried out for the fleshwounds and leapt up to slam his knee farther d own onto his arm and immobilize it totally; but the man had put himself in a strange unbalanced position and so, the weight off of his body, Sejanus put his knee into the small of the Unionist's back and launched him forward into the scaffolding of the autostorage. His skull cracked audibly against the metal in a wet, muted crunch and with his hand freed Sejanus commenced to stab him in the sides and between shoulders until he no longer moved atop him except with the force of the blows. He moved the dead man away to fall beside him and got to his feet.
    "Well done." Anders said.
    "Well done?" Sejanus said, breathing heavily, and stemmed the flow of blood with the back of his hand to know if he could still see out of his left eye and could.
    "Kendal Preete." He said and nodded at the corpse. "Unionist second in Tower Nine. Put enough of us in the infirmary I didn't think we'd ever get rid of him."
    "You knew I'd fight him."
    "It had cost too much to get him for revenge." Dibsey said and glided up to him, presented a cloth from his workman's vest and Sejanus took it. "Guards. Constantly watched him. The Unionists, they pay more than us sometimes. But today was no commonplace matter. Hastur Victor Sejanus arrived and we had to be sure of him."
                  "How's the eye?" Anders said.
                  "No worse than my side." Sejanus said and took his hand away from the deep cut. "I need a MedSlab."
                  "It's prepped." He said and stepped aside to let him out of the autostorage's underbelly. "Guards will be waiting to escort you.

Day 2
                 
    He worked through the dithering flow of inmates that he had been released into and who were returning from work detail, the bulk of that horde already deposited back into their cells. He touched lightly the refab sutures above and below his eye and felt the queer bubbling of the flesh integrating with itself and took his hand away. His cell neared ahead and so he forced his way to the edge of the column and then on into his cell when he had come to it.
                  "All fixed up?" Anders asked from where he had sat before on the lower bunk, face cloaked again in the shadows of its own bones from the light above.
                  "More or less." Sejanus said and remained poised within the threshold, snapped his gaze to the sudden green flare of Dibsey's chem-stick in the darkened corner. "When do I meet with Nyar?"
                  "There's something I've got to ask you; something you have to answer for that to