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the storm.
    “I was in a combat squad,” said Franco, groggy under imposed violence.
    Betezh nodded, smiling kindly, and gesturing for the trolley which arrived with its one squeaky wheel. Franco knew what that squeaky wheel meant. It was the fun trolley: the pain trolley.
    “What did you do, in this combat squad?” asked Betezh. He seemed suddenly interested. His bushy eyebrows were raised, and an emotion Franco could not understand had hijacked Betezh’s face.
    “I was the... detonations expert.”
    “You used to blow things up?”
    Franco nodded, and as the needle slid into his vein he drooled a little, bloody saliva running from the corner of his mouth. He twitched a couple of times as Betezh stood back and without instruction—the nurses were good at their jobs, efficient to the point of bureaucracy—they removed Franco’s trousers and pulled apart his legs. They strapped his ankles into heavy steel shackles, buckling them tight.
    “Not the green pads,” said Franco through a mouth of phlegm.
    Betezh sighed, as two of the heavily-muscled mental nurses attached small green conductive pads to Franco’s balls, and spooled out the trailing wires to a gleaming machine. The machine looked innocent; functional, but innocent, like a gun without a trigger.
    Betezh rubbed at his jaw, which throbbed from the impact of Franco’s tattooed knuckles. “Franco... there have been rumours that you plan an escape. At the Mount Pleasant Hilltop Institution, the ‘nice and caring and friendly home for the mentally challenged’, we do not allow escape. Now, I will only ask you once: what are these plans?”
    Franco looked up through the drug haze. He raised his middle finger, shackled as it was, to the bench.
    “Sit on this,” he muttered.
    “As you wish.” Betezh’s voice was stone. He looked over towards a nurse and nodded. The man flicked a switch and the machine gave a little whine, then a jolt against its restraining bolts as gears meshed and it found its trigger.
    “Let me out of here,” mumbled Franco, glazed eyes trying to focus. “I ain’t mad! I tell you, I ain’t mad!”
    “That’s what they all say.” Betezh leaned close with a threatening intimacy. “Now, my friend, I would like to say this isn’t going to hurt... but it will.” He nodded and smiled. “It’s going to burn you inside-out, all the way to Hell .”
    Betezh took a step back.
    He gave a curt nod.
    And the nurse turned the digital dial all the way to 10.
     
    It was later, much later. Betezh sat in a broad leather chair with Franco’s screams still ringing in his ears. The kube buzzed in his hand and he initiated a burst, allowing a globe of light to grow rapidly in his palm. It was a long distance transmission; he could tell by the interference.
    “You have news?” said a female voice.
    Betezh nodded. “Yeah. Franco remembers.”
    “Remembers what? I thought he was drugged?”
    “He remembers Combat K, and his position within the group.”
    “Betezh, you were placed there to controlhim, to sedate him, to damn well stop him from remembering . If the others ever found out...” She left the implied threat hanging in the air.
    “We should have killed him, back on Terminus5. We should have killed them all.”
    “Maybe.” The woman’s voice was too sharp. “Well, the time will soon come. Akeez has contacted Keenan; we cannot allow him to proceed down the path we anticipate.”
    “Do you want me to kill Franco? I can do it tonight.”
    “Not yet. He knows a lot about our operation, if only he could remember it. What you have told me amounts to shit. His recall is as blurred as his history. However, he could still be useful to us.”
    “We walk a dangerous wire,” said Betezh carefully. He did not want to antagonise.
    “What is life without a little danger? Without thrill? Without challenge? It becomes nothing more than a stale and second-hand experience; an armchair performance, a fucking banality.”
    “It’s ironic,”