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I lied about not being able to wake up at will. I can do it.

I lied about the two lovers talking fond nonsense as they walked along a beach. There were lovers, but they never walked along a beach. All they had was a couple of nights, and all they left behind them was unhappiness.

I lied about most things, by omission.

Most of all, I've lied about myself.

I hoped I'd be able to keep this together, but life doesn't always work out the way you want it to.

Have you noticed that? It really doesn't.

The apartment felt warm, unbelievably tropical and welcoming. After opening my eyes to check where I was I shut them again for a blessed moment, Alkland's weight enough to reassure me that I'd brought him along. I lay there for a while, listening to the soft drip of melting ice.

Eventually I struggled upright, spilling Alkland onto the sofa. He sprawled at an awkward angle, looking so dead that for a moment I thought that battle was already lost. His face, though no longer green, was horribly stretched and degraded, and the right side was bright red. His hands were covered in liver spots that had not been there before, and the gash on his other cheek had been replaced by an open sore. I leaned close to him until I felt a wisp of pale breath, and then relaxed. A little bit, for a short while. The clock told me I'd been in Jeamland less than three hours, and that it was just after seven o'clock.

ACIA had obviously been here this time. The walls were all black, which meant the power to them had been shut off and the apartment wasn't screened any more. Maybe they'd told the Neighbourhood I was dead. Books were spread all over the floor, and the bookcase lay broken in a corner. It looked like the debris after a GravBenda® fuckup, and didn't really bother me much. I felt like an intruder myself.

When I stood up, I felt the unreality of the apartment shouting at me from every corner. What is all this? it said. Do you know where you are? Is this where you live? It was the kind of feeling you get when you come back home after a time away, and see the objects and space you surround yourself with in a new light, stripped of their arbitrary familiarity.

But it was much, much more than that. For a second the whole thing threatened to shade away, at last to rebel and leave me to face myself and where I was. Then it settled, but grudgingly, and as I walked to the desk I felt I did so on sufferance. The world will only take so much screwing about, and I've been walking a fine line for too long.

The door had been nailed shut from the outside. Due to my somewhat unusual method of re-entry, that actually made me reasonably secure for a while. Unless ... I opened the drawer and got out the BugAnaly®.

'Hi, Stark. Wow. You look like shit.'

'Shh.'

'What? Oh.'

The machine fell silent for a moment, and then a message flashed up on its panel of lights. 'No bugs,' it said, then, 'Oh, hang on . . .' After a pause it flashed up, 'Let's have a bit of a shufti at the vidiphone.'

I carried the machine to the vidiphone and waved it over it. 'You don't have to do that,' the message panel said. 'Just hold me still.'

'Yep, the videophone's bugged' it said, eventually. 'Standard wave-tapping, audio and video. Voice-activated. You want me to kill it? It's not a problem unless you want to make a call.'

'Will they know it's been tampered with?' I said.

'Er, yes. It has self-checking. Bit of a downer.'

'Can you scramble it temporarily?'

'Hang on ... yes, I can white-noise-coat it. Longer than twenty seconds will cause an alert signal though.'

'Twenty seconds is all I need.' I punched a code in and waited. After a moment the screen flicked on and Shelby appeared.

'Stark, hi, wow.'

'I know. Deep shit, Shelby. Way, way deep.'

'Lift?'

'Could you?'

'Your wish, Stark, is like, totally. Where?'

'My apartment roof. Got to go.'

Twenty minutes.' The screen went blank.

Time to spare,' said the BugAnaly® approvingly. I think it must have done a personality transplant on itself. It wasn't irritating me half as much as usual.

'You're sure there's nothing else?'

'Zip.'

I left the machine on the desk and went back to Alkland. Now that most of the ice on his clothes and hair had melted he was sitting in a small pool of water. A little colour had come back to his face, but he still looked very, very ill. The sore looked angry and I noticed that another one was on its way beneath his eye. He was, it had to be said, in terrible shape.

But he was still alive, which meant he hadn't met Rafe. It was possible that Rafe had let him be to draw me on, but such restraint seemed unlikely. He could have dismantled his head and the faint strands of Alkland's dreams would still have been enough to attract my attention. What was going on? What was Rafe playing at?

I rubbed Alkland's hands for a while, trying to will warmth into them, and was rewarded with a small moan. He was not going to surface for a while, but he wasn't going to die. Not yet, anyway.

I covered him with a blanket and then rummaged round the apartment for a while, changing out of my own wet clothes into identical dry ones, locating some more cigarettes, that sort of thing. It didn't take very long, and I started to feel that type of tense nervousness you get when you're in a hurry and suddenly have a block of time you've no use for.

For something to do I headed towards the kitchen to nuke some water for a couple of cups of coffee. I never got there.

I was halfway across the living room when I heard the distinctive sound of aircars decelerating rapidly. A dread impulse took me to the window. I lifted the shade and looked down at the dark street below.

Three ACIA cars had pulled to an untidy halt down by the side of the building, and a pair of men emerged from each one. They glanced about with the time-honoured smugness of those who are above the law and carrying guns, and then headed for the entrance to the building.

'Bug, you shit' I hissed, turning towards it. 'You said the place was clean!'

The machine said nothing. I picked it up and shook it, uselessly.

'Give yourself up, Stark,' it said tersely. 'Game's over. It's a wrap. Finito.'

I realised why the machine had sounded different. The only bug in the apartment was the one I was holding. They'd found the BugAnaly® and reprogrammed it. The bastard machine had changed sides.

Furiously, not caring that I had far more important things to worry about, I strode back to the window and prepared to send the machine sailing out into the night. Then I had another thought, and slammed it back on the table before running over to the sofa. I called Alkland's name several times and received only another low, unconscious moan in response.

Swearing heavily, I grabbed the desk and pulled it into the corner of the room. The BugAnaly® slid off and landed hard on the floor, but I found I didn't mind that very much. When the desk was in position I slipped my arms under Alkland's and hoicked him up. I steered him over towards the desk and let him fall gently onto it, back first. Then I picked up his legs and slid him forwards so he was lying on the desk.

I picked the BugAnaly® up and ran to the bedroom where I grabbed a MiniCrunt from the bedside table. Carrying them both I took up a position behind the door. I levered the BugAnaly®'s back panel off and slipped the MiniCrunt inside, first setting it for maximum sensitivity. Then I balanced the machine on the doorknob.

'Hang on, Stark,' the machine said. 'What's that? What have you put inside me?'

'MiniCrunt' I said. 'Have a nice day.'

Ignoring the machine's wails I ran back to the desk and jumped on. I located my Furt and set it for cutting, meanwhile cocking an ear towards the corridor. There was no sound yet, and I hadn't heard the elevator doors ping. I hoped it would take them at least half a minute to get through their own handiwork on the other side of the door. It wasn't much time, but it was all I had.

Shielding my face with my hand I held the Furt up to the ceiling and flicked the switch. A green needle of light poked straight into the plexiplaster, which was a relief. Never having tried to cut holes in my roof before, I hadn't been sure it could be done.

I knew I'd got through when I heard a startled yelp from the apartment above. As quickly as I could, hoping that the occupants above would have the sense to keep out of the way, I described a circle about two feet in diameter in the plexiplaster. I left the last couple of inches in place and shoved upwards hard. The disc of floor popped up and into the apartment above.

Two faces of different sexes but similarly advanced years immediately took its place.

'What on earth do you think you're doing?' the old man asked petulantly. He wore glasses and had a deeply lined face sparsely capped with yellowy-white hair. He looked like a dictionary illustration of the word 'old'.

'Cutting a hole in your floor,' I said. These opportunities happen so seldom. You have to take advantage of them when they come. I do, anyway.

'Don't get smart with me, young man. You just stop that cutting right now.'

'I already have,' I quipped with manic joy. His feedlines were too good to be true. I could have stood and chatted with the old twonk all day. 'And now I'm afraid I have to leave my apartment via your apartment.'

'You'll do no such thing!'

'Oh yes, I will, and what's more, I need your help.' I ducked down, slipped my hands under Alkland and manhandled him into a standing position. A slumping position, to be more accurate: unconscious bodies are sodding heavy. I lifted Alkland's hands so that they stuck up through the hole in the floor. The old man pushed them back again. I stuck them through again. The old man pushed them back again.

'Oh, Neville,' said the old woman crossly. 'Don't be such an old turd. Grab the gentleman's arms.'

'Nora,' hissed the old guy, scandalised by this subversion from within. The woman ignored him, reached one of her hands into the hole and grabbed Alkland's arm.

'You'll have to excuse my husband,' she said, 'He's very old.'

Neville dithered for a moment, and then, making it absolutely clear that it was against his better judgement, grabbed hold of Alkland's other hand.

'It'll all end in tears,' he said, sourly. I didn't tell him that I thought he was almost certainly right. Bending my back, I grabbed Alkland round the waist and shoved him upwards as hard as I could. The hauling power of the couple above was not Herculean, but another shove sent Alkland clear just as I heard the sound of footsteps thundering down the corridor.

I leapt off the desk, swung it as close to the corner of the room as I could, and then leapt up to grab the sides of the hole. I pulled myself up through it to the sound of shouted warnings from outside the door of my apartment. As soon as I was in the old couple's living room I placed the disc of ceiling material back into its hole. The jagged spur from the part that I'd broken was just enough to stop it from dropping straight through. Okay, that was just plain lucky, I admit it.

I flipped Alkland onto my shoulder, almost fell over, and then got my balance. Thanking the old woman, and agreeing to reimburse Neville for any costs involved in the fixing of their floor, I pulled open the front door as a loud crump from below told me that the BugAnaly® had finally got what was coming to it. Some rather distressing screams suggested that a couple of the ACLA agents had been standing a bit too close. Still, never mind, eh? For one, you think Alkland and I would have left my apartment under our own steam if they'd caught us? For two, I don't give a fuck. I'm where I am now because when I was young I wanted more. I wanted to live in a film. I looked, and I found. Now I live in that film, and here the bad guys are everyone who isn't you and if they die you don't have to give a damn.

Now I don't care much for that younger me, and I wish to God I could take back what he did, unfind what he found. But I can't. I did what I did and I was who I was. That was me once, just like the teenager who wanted to be a rock star was me, like the child who'd never had someone's brains splashed over his face, and whose fingers were small and warm and safe in his father's hand. They were all me, and they're all in there somewhere, standing alone and lost in twilight. But I can't find them. I can't find them because they hide when I try to look for them. They hide from me. They don't want to know me, because they know nobody's really there.

Oh fuck, ignore everything I say from now on. I'm not myself. Or maybe I am. It's been so long I can't remember. The more you get to know someone, the more there is to dislike. If you get to know them well enough, you hate them.

And who knows me better than anyone else? Rafe does.

I didn't hold out much hope of the ACIA men being confused by the old 'hole-in-the-ceiling' ruse for long. As I trudged up three flights of steps as quickly as I could, I hoped to hell that Shelby was going to be early for the second time in her life.

May Shelby marry the least boring and stupid doctor, lawyer or orthodontist of her generation. May their dinner parties be the most celebrated and exclusive soirées Brandfield has ever known, and may they have a golf club specially formed for them to be the sole members of. She was there, is what I'm saying.

As I took the last flight of steps two at a time, feeling my back pull and twist with the weight of an unconscious administrator, I heard the stair door bang down on my floor. They'd seen the circle in the ceiling. Or Neville had grassed on me, which is probably more likely. I kind of hoped he had, in fact: that way he and his wife would have been less likely to have harm done to them.

When I crashed out of the access door on the roof and saw Shelby perched on her heliporter looking poised and cool in the glow of light from her instrument panel, I felt relief wash over me like a kiss of flowers. I stumbled over to within ten feet and then slipped Alkland forward off my shoulders as gently as I could. It wasn't terribly gentle, and he made a quiet groaning noise, the first sound since we'd left the apartment. I dragged him over to the heliporter and kissed Shelby resoundingly on the cheek. She blushed and looked at me sideways.