Rook lay there for what had to be hours, wide awake. The right side of his face, up above the jaw, ached. His lips felt huge and tender, his left eye was partially closed. There was definitely a problem with one of his front teeth And somewhere in that passage of time he became aware of activity in the machinery around him. Things were going on and off. He craned his head back, there wasn't anyone behind him, but something was happening nonetheless. Weird. A little alarming too, since he was still wired up to the damned thing. Little clicks and whirrs broke the silence. Little lights went on and off. If it was working by itself, what was it doing?

His thoughts circled endlessly over things he couldn't do anything about. It was completely frustrating, but he couldn't stop it. Why him? Why Plesur? What could she possibly know that these morons would want? She was just a goddamn pleasure model. A little kid designed for sex and not much else. And where was she? How'd she manage to get herself and Oakes out of Sangacha's place when he didn't come back? He couldn't imagine that Pipo or Rabbit had been much help. Pipo would have slipped away at the earliest opportunity.

So, had someone else intervened? Some force sent in by Freddy's side of things? Even, dare he mention it, the Ranch? What if they'd had some surveillance, a chip in Oakes somewhere? That made sense, bodyguards were usually pretty heavily chipped up. So someone had noticed that Oakes wasn't at Herb's place, perhaps, and they'd come to investigate, after calls to Freddy weren't returned?

That made sense. And it brought him some relief, because it meant Plesur would be as safe as a Pleasure Model could be in a world that forbade their very existence.

With that realization, he found he was able to relax a bit. His thoughts turned inevitably to his daughter. He wondered what Jenni was doing right then. Sadly, he realized she was probably freaked out that he'd not called since, well, however long ago it had been. Worse, he was a goner and what was he leaving Jenni? Not much, since his house had been blasted to smithereens. Presumably the car was gone too. So there were just his savings accounts and his retirement funds. He could almost hear Aliss's sneer when the will was read. "Deadbeat," Aliss had a sneer that could burn human skin at fifty paces. Poor Jenni, she hadn't been well served by her parents. Regret was a bitter thing sometimes.

The door opened, he heard footsteps, lots of them, and then they were there. Squarehead, Mr. Friendly, and a newcomer to the party, a lady with a big head of unnaturally blonde hair.

"Well, look at you," said the woman with an accent that he placed somewhere in the south, as she took a seat on Doctor Berryman's chair and rolled it up close beside him.

She had a strong jaw, a lean look to her face, and a heavy bustline that was showcased by a tight black blouse and a heavy, platinum necklace.

"Honey," she smiled down at him. "There's some information we need, and you're the only way we can get it. I hope you understand."

"Not sure I have what you want."

"Let's hope you do."

Squarehead pulled up another chair and resumed glowering at Rook. Mr Friendly took a backseat. Neither of them said anything.

"Let's go back to your little group at the apartment owned by the former General Sangacha."

Rook had decided to let this lady do the talking.

"You're with me, yes?" her tone had grown a little frosty.

"I guess."

Squarehead had jumped out of his chair and placed a device that looked like an old fashioned handheld computer on Rook's chest. He pulled away the hospital smock to get the thing down on human skin. It felt cool and alien. He attached a couple of sucker head trodes. Then he slid an old fashioned virt mask over Rook's face and clipped it behind his head and slid the ear plugs into Rook's ears.

"Just give me the word," said squarehead, sounding very eager as he resumed his seat and picked up a little console.

The virt mask was from thirty years ago, or more, a prehistoric piece of equipment.

"What's this?" said Rook. "Virt? You gonna show me some vid?"

"Mr. Venner, I want you to concentrate entirely on my questions. If you don't there will be consequences that you will not enjoy. Understood?"

"Sure." Rook was now having a bad feeling about the thing resting on his chest.

"Good. Back to the apartment then."

"But, you know I already told you everything I remember about that."

Squarehead was getting excited. "Look, just a couple of seconds. Cut this shit out."

Frosty blonde pursed her lips and studied Rook for a moment.

"One second, just to get his attention."

Squarehead touched something on the console he was holding and a searing blast of pain surged through Rook's brain. It felt as if someone had stuck a blow torch into the center of his head and was cutting it open. He may have screamed, certainly he sweated. The pain stopped almost at once, but the after effects went on for a considerable time, leaving him gasping for breath. His vision was hazy, his whole body was trembling.

"Now," said the lady. "Are you going to cooperate?"

"What the fuck was that?"

"Honey, don't bother worrying about it. Just worry about what it does to you, okay?"

Rook gasped. The sweat was congealing on his face. He was frightened now.

"So this is torture," he muttered.

"No, sweety, this is your chance to tell us what we need to know."

"Okay." Miz Frosty had a flexible definition of torture, it seemed. Nothing new there, everyone who tortured in the modern world seemed to define torture as someting that they didn't do, even as they did it.

"You left your little friend, General Sangacha's pleasure model, at the apartment, correct?"

"Yeah."

"With Frederick Marion's bodyguard?"

"Right."

"Was anyone due to contact them?"

"No. That's why I went back to the house. To get Freddy's phone so we could call for help."

"Then please explain where you think they might have gone?"

"I really don't know. We didn't, uh, have many choices. Not that I knew about, anyway. Maybe Oakes had a location chip? Maybe the Ranch people, they worked out that we weren't where we were supposed to be? Maybe Freddy wasn't returning calls, so they checked in on things? I mean, I've been thinking about this too, and that's all I can imagine."

"There's no way that the bodyguard could have gotten a second wind? Gotten himself out of there along with the pleasure model?"

"Oakes was shot in the torso, okay? Gutshot from what I could see. Look, he barely made it over there from the house. I was worried he would just die out on the street, okay? So, to answer the question, no, I don't think he could have gotten out of there on his own power. And sure as hell, Plesur couldn't have carried him."

"Plesur?" You've referred to that thing with that name before. You'd grown attached, even in such a short span of time?"

"Look, she's just a kid. Emotionally, mentally, just like six years old. I don't know what it is you want her for, but I doubt she knows anything of any substance. She's a child."

"Satanic spawn, Venner, the work of the devil." Frosty blonde had suddenly turned hot and angry.

"Hey, I didn't create her. I'm not the market for Pammies. I just had to protect her as an important piece of evidence in a homicide case. That's all this is to me, don't you understand?"

"No, Venner, this is much more than that and you know it perfectly well. This is our last chance to save our country and preserve it for God's will."

"What? Sorry, you lost me there. What does God have to do with the murder of General Sangacha?"

"He was an evil man, a practising homosexual."

That again, these people were obsessed with sex.

"Whatever, he was also a murder vic. My job is just to find out who killed him and build a case for the prosecution to work with."

Frosty sniffed, looked away for a moment as if summoning up the courage to talk about something she found profoundly distasteful.

"Mr. Venner, your career in law enforcement is over. You are no longer on the case. Your job now is to assist us in saving the United States."

Uh oh, he was being recruited for the coup d'etat, whether he liked it or not.

"Saving?"

"There's a great deal that you cannot understand. We know that. But what you have to see is that the people running the country have to be removed. They have set up a monarchy of a sort, all run out of Sable Ranch."

"You're right. I don't understand. I was never into politics."

"Of course you weren't. That is a privileged area. But you still must help us bring down the Marion monarchy."

"I don't know how..."

"Just open up to me. Tell me everything you can think of. We have to find that creature."

"Well, okay. We were at the apartment. Oakes was lying on a bed, he was not in good shape. I wanted to get medical help, but he insisted we get in touch with the Ranch. So, I had to go back for Freddy's phone. Plesur was there. She made food, she was, like, I don't know what to call it, trying to help. She was scared. We had nowhere to go, okay?"

"Nowhere?"

"Correct. I called my daughter in LA. I told her." Rook stopped, choking up.

"Yes?" said Miz Frosty.

"I tried to say, well, goodbye. You know, in case I didn't make it back."

"You thought you might be killed?"

"Yeah, I did. Plesur came out and hugged me. I think she was saying goodbye too."

"This is very heartwarming, Venner, but it doesn't help us. We need to find that creature."

"Well, you know what I know."

"Could she have just walked out?"

"Yeah, sure she could have, but I seriously doubt she would. She's really kind of young. Inexperienced, you know, doesn't know anything of the world. She'd be frightened on the streets on her own."

"And she'd attract attention, too."

"I guess. She's illegal."

"She has not been arrested."

That info chilled Rook. These people knew whatever the NYPD knew. That could only mean one thing. This was a coup d'etat. For real.

"Then, I don't know what to tell you."

"You are lying."

"What?"

"You are holding something back. What is it?"

He was and he wasn't going to give it up. He wasn't going to....

The blast of pain was indescribable. And it went on, and on, and on, and on and he may have been screaming, he didn't know, but when it stopped he was panting, gasping, shaking.

"What are you hiding?"

He coughed, sputtered. He refused to talk anymore. Miz Frosty was not amused, not at all.

"Alright, Gaines, you can have him for a while. See what you can get out of him."

Squarehead, or Gaines, took Miz Frosty's place with a look of pleasurable anticipation on his face.

"We'll see how you like drowning, dirtbag."

Gaines held up a little controller wand. He pressed some buttons. There was a momentary silence and then it began.

The sense of drowning was remarkably lifelike. The view through the virt eye screen was of an ocean, waves, and then submerging under the surface. The virtual water felt cold, his feet and hands were numb already, and he was trying to hold his breath, but, of course, he couldn't, not forever, and when he opened his mouth the water filled his lungs. He choked and could not breathe. He was dying. It was excruciatingly horrible. He struggled, he had to get to the surface, he had to get air. He had to breathe, and he couldn't and he couldn't and he had to and his brain felt as if it was going to burst, and then it stopped, just like that.

And he was breathing and he was okay, and he wasn't even damp, let alone soaked in cold seawater.

Gaines was staring at him, waiting for him to recover.

"Okay, dirtbag, you gonna talk now?"

Rook could only gasp and suck air into his tortured lungs. There was mucus, an ungodly amount of it. It was even in his eyes. His body had taken the virt drowning thing to heart it seemed.

"Look," he began, when he could finally speak.

And the drowning resumed. It was just as bad the second time. And the third, and however many times it happened after that, but Gaines was some kind of sick puppy, playing with a new toy and he didn't even seem to want any answers. He just seemed to enjoy pushing the buttons and listening to Rook choke and gurgle on an ocean of virtual cold water.

At some point Rook came out of the virt to find Gaines and the other dude holding their noses.

"Shit himself," said the dude.

"Told you he was just a dirt bag."

There was a stench in the air and something felt wet under his thighs.

"Fucking stinks," said Mr. Friendly.

Rook choked, gasped, tried to see through the spit and vomit in his eyes.

Gaines and Mr Friendly had backed away.

Gaines had a little commo device in his hand.

"Get someone in here to clean him up. This is just disgusting."

Gaines and Mr Friendly left.

A pair of unsmiling black women in green scrubs came in. One of them had a blue bucket and a bag of plastic sponges. The other one had a small suc-vac.

"Goddamn, this is bad."

"He's tied down, how we supposed to...."

"Dolores, just do your job, okay, honey."

They removed his scrub pants. None too gently and washed and swabbed him down. To reach under him, one of them put her arms around his waist and lifted him up bodily while the other worked with sponge and suc-vac.

"I didn't see this in the job description," said the chubby one, called Dolores by the other, taller one.

"Around here, honey, you just do as you're told and collect your check. They pay well, so don't ask questions."

Rook finally found his voice while the tall one was swabbing down the inside of his thighs.

"Where is this place?" he said.

The woman looked at him for a moment. "You don't know?"

"Of course not. I'm a prisoner. What do you think?"

That frightened her. "I can't say nothing to you. Understand? I'd like to help, but they'd fire my ass in no time."

"Grace, we gotta get this done. We can't be talking to him." The chubby one was packing the fouled sponges and some waste towels into a plastic bag.

"Get outta here."

And they left him.

He thought to himself that if he could have moved and found a window he'd have jumped out of it. But he couldn't move and there were no windows in the room as far as he could tell. Indeed, for all he knew he was underground somewhere.

Hell, or the closest thing to it. Where was God now that he needed him?