UNDERGROUND

"Your contact is Stephen Mullen. You're to meet him in Paris, just like last time. This should run as smoothly as clockwork, Craig, so I don't expect any hold ups. It's a very simple operation. I'll see you back here on Tuesday morning. Tuesday morning... Tuesday morning..."

Craig Stirling awoke with a jump, to the unpleasant reality of a distinctly unpleasant situation. A simple operation. How many times had he heard that? Sometimes it was almost accurate, and he didn't really blame Tremayne for the screw up this time. Tremayne couldn't be expected to know everything. Even if he did like his agents to think that he really did. It was an illusion that worked, most of the time. In his hi-tech office, surrounded by the best surveillance and information-gathering equipment that money could buy, supported by a network of highly trained and specialised agents, William Tremayne had a good chance of knowing much of what went on in the world, as well as when it happened and who was responsible. What he hadn't known was that Stephen Mullen, informer, playboy and international jet-setter, had been bought out. By whom, Craig didn't know. All he did know was that, when he had turned up at the rendezvous in Paris, Stephen Mullen had greeted him, not with an envelope filled with documents and photographs, but with a powerful tranquilliser dart. Craig had a vague memory of trying to get away, his superhuman constitution preventing the drug from taking hold immediately. He remembered... a bicyclist, swerving out of his way... a gendarme, chuckling at the drunken tourist... people on a boat, shouting at him. Everything else was too blurred to serve as a real memory. After the boat was a blur, and after the blur there was nothing at all, save waking up here - and that, miserable though it was, was the sum total of his knowledge. It wasn't exactly inspiring.

'Here' was a room. Perfectly square, by his reckoning - and his senses were good enough these days to judge such a thing without his bothering to do any checking - with bare stone walls and floor, and a plain concrete ceiling. The door was metal, and at least two inches thick, with a hatch that opened up every so often to admit a tray. It was kind of his invisible hosts to bother feeding him, he supposed, but he hadn't taken up the offer of food yet. Craig had been locked up too often before to trust food in circumstances like these. The memory of drugged food and water, and a long, torturous interrogation at the hands of his own employers was far too fresh in his mind.

He hadn't expected to drift off to sleep - or had hoped not to, at any rate. He didn't know how long he was going to be in the room, and fully expected to need to sleep eventually, but for the time being he had hoped to stay awake. Hence the jump, annoyed and faintly guilty, back to wakefulness. At least he hadn't been asleep for long; his instincts told him that, and he trusted his instincts. His watch had been taken away, losing him any precise means of judging the time, but he didn't entirely need it. His senses watched out for him in many ways now.

Fully awake again, he sat up and climbed down from the room's single metal bunk. He had surveyed the room a hundred times by now, checking the door, checking the walls, looking for anything that might allow him to escape. With superhuman strength to back him up, he had escaped from many cells in the past. This one though - this one was different. The door was too strong even for him to break. The ventilation duct was too small for a person to crawl through. The walls were solid and defiant. He had tried using part of the bunk to break through the walls and the floor, but to no avail. It would take explosives to get out that way. There wasn't even a keyhole on his side of the door that he could exploit, and the hatch that opened to allow the food tray to pass was equally unhelpful. He had managed to open it through sheer brute force, but the solidity of the door and the size of the hatch meant that the exercise had been a futile one. He was trapped.

But any prison cell, he reasoned, had to have a way out somewhere - and not just the one that the jailer used. He wouldn't believe anything else. He had tried the ceiling once before, testing the strength of the concrete with his bare hands, but now, with all the other options that he could think of exhausted, he turned his attentions to it again. He had pulled off a piece of the bunk's frame to use as a crowbar, and pulling it out from beneath the mattress, he climbed up onto the bunk and surveyed the solid grey barrier above him. It would not be easy, he could tell that at once, but he had great strength and resilience on his side - and unlike a wall, that could be as thick as it liked, a ceiling usually was not so tough. There had to be something above it, and he was prepared to cling to that thought for as long as need be.

It was backbreaking work. He was reaching up all the time, driving his makeshift tool upwards. Dust fell into his eyes, half-blinding him, and he seemed to make little impression on the concrete; but he had known that it would be tough. That was why he had left it until last, trying every other way that he could think of to escape from this place. If every other means failed, he had no choice but to try the one that was hardest of all; and so he continued, until his arms were aching; until his back was demanding that he stop. He held back then, for a moment, blinking through streaming eyes up at the barrier above him. He had made a hole, though not much of one. The concrete was made to last. Where the hell was he, that it had been built so securely? An ordinary man would never be able to escape from such a place; as yet he had no way of knowing if he would be able to escape it either. A crooked grin fought its way onto his face. He would escape. He always did. And if he couldn't find a way out of here on his own, pretty soon there would be help coming to find him. That was as much a certainty for him now as his own great abilities; for Craig Stirling did not have to rely just on his own skills. When he had been saved from a plane crash in Tibet, and endowed with special skills and strengths that he was still only just beginning to discover, there had been two other people with him. They looked after each other; they each knew when another was in danger. And if he couldn't find a way out of this prison on his own, then Richard Barrett and Sharron Macready would find him in the end. The thought strengthened him, and with a renewed vigour, he attacked the ceiling again.

They brought no more food for him that day - or what he thought of as a day. Perhaps they had finally got the message, taking away the tray untouched every time. How many times had they come, he wondered? Three times? That probably meant that this was his second day here. It wasn't a pleasant thought. His second day of attacking the walls, the door, the floor, skinning his knuckles on rough stone and unyielding metal. Not his favourite way to spend his time.

With an almighty blow, born partly through irritation, he rammed the improvised crowbar up into the ceiling, and felt the resistance abruptly cease. A great tumbling of dust fell down, and he shook it out of his hair in a coarse grey shower. A rough hole gaped down at him then, barely bigger than a silver dollar, but the greatest sight he felt that he had seen in months. Another few blows around the weakened edges, and several larger chunks of concrete fell down. It was only a matter of time then - time and persistence - before he had made a hole through which he knew that he could pass. Tired though he was, his enhanced strength was more than enough to allow him to pull himself up through the hole, and into the space above. He half expected to find himself in a cell just like his own, or a room full of startled spectators. Instead he found what looked like a mere storeroom. The door wasn't even locked.

"Alright Stirling. Now let's see where you are." Slipping from the room, he looked left and right along the corridor outside, before choosing left and setting off on his way. There didn't seem to be anybody about, which didn't surprise him. Had there been anybody in the vicinity, presumably they would have heard his demolition work. He heard nothing but his own feet, faint against the hard floor, and the sounds of his own body as it went about its routine business of keeping him alive. Inaudible noises to most, but with his superhuman hearing even the faintest of sounds were clear to him if he bothered to listen.

And he listened. Every few steps, he stopped. Every time there was a corner or a junction of corridors, he listened as hard as he could to everything around him, searching for signs of life. There was nothing. No guards patrolling. No people talking. Not a movement anywhere. Perhaps the place was soundproofed, every room sealed into its own little pocket of silence. Except that he couldn't find any rooms. It seemed to be an endless corridor, leading nowhere and doing nothing.

"I suppose it could be underground." He had barely breathed the words, but they sounded startlingly loud. He hoped that that was due merely to his enhanced hearing, and not because he had spoken loudly himself. Just because it seemed that there was nobody to hear him, didn't mean that it was alright to risk being heard. He cocked his head on one side, listening hard to nothingness, and trying to work out if his guess was right. His senses agreed with him - it did feel as though this place was beneath the ground. All the same, it seemed odd that this level of whatever place he was in should contain nothing save the one small storeroom that had been above his cell. The answer came to him then - an underground bunker, the sort of place used for potentially dangerous experiments. There would be any number of security measures, and safety measures in case of accidents. Changing tactics, he ran his fingers along the wall, and soon found that he had been wrong in assuming that there were no rooms here. There were a number of them, their doors hidden behind the wall. His senses told him that the rooms were empty, and he ignored them all. He wanted out of this place; not into some other part of it.

He pressed on, all the time reaching out with his mind and his senses, scouring the way ahead for possible dangers. Somebody had put him in here. Somebody had brought him food. It would be foolish to think from the silence and the emptiness that he was alone in here. Sure enough, a few minutes later, he heard the soft sound of a footfall up ahead.

He came to a halt instantaneously, aware that it was unlikely that he had been heard as well. Whoever he had heard seemed to have stopped walking as well, though, for he could hear nothing further. He didn't think for a moment that he had imagined the sound, which left him with two choices. Stand still, and see if whoever it was began moving again, or resume walking himself, and take the risk of being heard. He chose the latter, moving more slowly now, more cautiously, concentrating hard on the suspected presence up ahead.

He could feel it now - a definite sense of being. A person - a man, he thought - standing in the corridor. Whoever it was hadn't moved in all this time, which made him suspicious, uneasy - but there was no sense in being coy now. Edging forward a little more, so that there was only the one corner between himself and his quarry, he clenched one fist instinctively, and prepared to move. If there was a gun waiting for him, he might still be able to manoeuvre out of harm's way, but the best thing was to go out there with his fists at the ready. With his superhuman strength he was more than a match for anyone, especially with surprise on his side. Ready for battle, he flexed his fists, and swung himself around the corner - to come face to face with the similarly battle-ready Richard Barrett. They both froze, each staring at the other's raised fist, then slowly broke into matching grins. Craig lowered his hand.

"What are you doing here?"

"Getting ready to break your jaw, apparently." Richard also relaxed his battle posture, looking the other man up and down. "You look like hell."

"And you don't exactly look your usual dapper self. Been here long?"

"About twenty-four hours, at a guess. I was supposed to be taking a weekend's leave in West Berlin." Richard scratched his head thoughtfully. "Well, you know that. I was expecting you to join me, but I can't say that I was expecting it to be here."

"Maybe this is West Berlin. Do you have any ideas?"

"None at all. All I know is that I drank a cup of particularly noxious coffee in some little cafe about twelve miles from the German border, and woke up in an extremely uninspiring dungeon cell. It's taken me all this time to find a way out of it. Talk about built to last."

"Same here. Except for the coffee." By unspoken agreement they began to walk along the corridor, taking the same direction that Craig had been heading in before. Already their tone was more relaxed, the simple fact of their reunion enough to ease the earlier tension. "I've been here about thirty-six hours, I guess."

"And by the look of you it took some serious demolition work to break out. Somebody has built quite an impressive prison." Richard's eyes flickered with sudden gravity. "Do you suppose they have Sharron here as well?"

"You think somebody is after all three of us, or just Nemesis agents in general?" Craig whistled. "This could be nasty."

"It's already nasty. It could be extremely distressing." Richard's mouth quirked into a sardonic half-smile. "It'll be months before I can get another weekend off."

"Maybe this is some kind of offbeat health spa, and we're having a weekend off as we speak." Craig looked around at the solid stone walls, and felt the flash of humour fade away. Things didn't seem so funny after a moment to consider them. Richard clapped him on the shoulder.

"If Sharron is here, we have to find her."

"True." It was something to focus on, rather than on unknown captors and insane jails. "I didn't sense that you were here, though, even when we were right on top of each other."

"Neither of us was looking then," pointed out Richard. "If she's here, we can find out. You know we can."

"Sure. You want for one of us to try, and the other keep a look out? Or do we just assume that we're the only people down here? I haven't seen a living soul save you in hours."

"You've had a few meals pushed through the door, but haven't really seen anyone?"

"Yeah. That's about the size of it. We're underground, I've figured that much out. I guess whoever has been bringing the food lives on an upper level somewhere. We've got these lower floors to ourselves."

"Floors? You've seen stairs?"

"No. But I had to break through the ceiling of my cell to get onto this level, so there's at least two storeys here that are underground. With all this stone and concrete, if Sharron's on another level we might not find her without some serious concentration."

"This place has been built well." Richard sighed, slowing to a halt. "Have to try, though, don't we. Keep watch and I'll give it a go."

"Sure." Craig moved out into the middle of the corridor, looking up and down its length. He didn't expect to see anybody, but it made sense to check. Richard, meanwhile, sat down on the floor nearby.

"It's pretty oppressive," he observed, settling himself down on the none-too-comfortable floor. Craig nodded.

"Tell me about it. Listen, the level I was on is one below this, and I'm sure it's the bottom. So don't try reaching down any further than that."

"Will do." Richard's eyes closed, and a frown creased his forehead. "It's like a blasted safe. I can feel stone pressing down all around. It makes it hard to concentrate."

"If anybody can do it, you can." Craig had a total belief in his companion's ability to focus. Concentration had always been one of Richard's great skills. Another small smile twisted at the Englishman's lips.

"Thanks for the vote of confidence. Alright, here goes." The lines on his face abruptly smoothed out, and with a single, deep inward breath, he stretched his mind out. Out and up and down.

Stone. He saw stone. Felt stone, smelt stone. Stone and concrete and sheets of thick, thick metal. It didn't take him long to come to the same conclusion as Craig. It seemed that they were in some kind of bunker. There were a lot of facilities around the world that had been built to withstand nuclear attacks. Was this one of those places? Or an underground research centre, perhaps? Either could explain the size and solidity of the place. Neither made his job any easier.

"Sharron?" He whispered the word aloud, though it was his mind that was broadcasting it; sending her name far out through whatever medium it was that carried telepathic waves. "Sharron, are you there?" He felt no answer, so pressed harder; reached out further; stretched out his mind into the unknown places around him. There was nothing. Nothing but stone.

"Richard?" A hand on his shoulder brought him back to himself, and he blinked, opening his eyes to look up at the worried face of Craig Stirling. The worry disappeared almost immediately, hidden away as soon as the American was sure that he was okay. "You've gone a little pale. Maybe you need to take a rest. Get anything?"

"No. All I could sense was the enormity of this place. I'm glad I'm not claustrophobic. The weight of all that stone pressing down..." He shook his head. "It's too disorientating, and far too solid."

"Great." Craig sat down beside him. "Maybe we can take it as a good sign. Assume that Sharron isn't here?"

"All depends on what this has all been set up for, doesn't it. I'd be surprised if they'd got her. She was going to spend the weekend in Calais, wasn't she?"

"With some friends, yeah. Course somebody could have grabbed her on the way there."

"At some charming little caf? with a cup of doctored coffee." Richard nodded. "We can't assume that she's not here, just because we can't contact her. Not until we know who we're dealing with." He climbed to his feet. "Come on. We have a lot of space to cover."

"You get any idea of scale?"

"Yes." Richard shot him a dry look. "And you probably don't want to know. Whatever this place is, it's big. Big and built to last."

"Secure, too. You probably noticed all the rooms are hidden - or protected, anyway. They're behind the wall, to make them airtight, I guess. The stairs must be hidden that way too, but without breaking open every door we find..."

"Maybe we shouldn't be looking for stairs. Or doors. Maybe we should be looking for a lift."

"Maybe. These guys wouldn't want to walk down miles of stairs just to bring us some food, I guess."

"Exactly. We should be looking for machinery."

"You take this side of the wall, and I take the other?"

"Sounds like a plan." Anxious to set to work, Richard ran one hand along the rough stone beside him. Machinery should not be too hard to find. They had located such things without too much trouble before. The problem, when he stretched out with his mind, was in focusing on anything other than the crushing sensation of the stone that hemmed them in. Across the way he saw Craig's eyes flick suddenly open, and could see that the same problem was affecting his friend.

"What are we? A hundred feet underground?" Craig stared up at the ceiling, frowning with disturbed concentration. "It feels... I don't know. Deep. Deep and..."

"Oppressive," finished Richard, when his partner didn't complete the sentence. Craig nodded.

"Like being sat on by a stone giant."

"In a sense." Richard managed a smile, glad to feel some of the tension washing away. "Have you ever heard of a complex like this? I wouldn't have thought that many European countries would have the funds to build it."

"The Americans have built bunkers and underground research centres all over the world." As they walked on, Craig touched the wall with his fingertips, keeping a part of his mind on the conversation, and a part on the search for a door. "That's not my area, though. I've been working in Europe too long."

"It must have taken a long time to build. You can't remember hearing of any projects while you were still in the military? CIA?"

"I was an ordinary operative, Richard. Not even a particularly high-ranking one. You think they issue briefings to everybody when they build some new top secret place?"

"No, I suppose not." Richard sighed, falling silent for a while, mulling everything over in his mind. "Perhaps we should be considering rogue scientists. Is there anybody you can think of who's lost governmental support? There was a British professor of rocket science who was recently discredited, but I can't imagine that he'd be well connected enough to start up his own operations in a place like this."

"There was a French guy too, wasn't there? Fell out of favour because he wanted to do some kind of banned research?"

"Yes. Something to do with chemical weaponry. That might explain the underground bunker, but I don't see what he'd want us for. It's not like we've been investigating him recently."

"We haven't been investigating anything recently that might lead us here. Our last case was a glorified bodyguard job."

"Precisely." Richard came to a sudden halt. "So if we haven't been kidnapped because of our work, why exactly have we been kidnapped?"

"Interrogation?" The thought had occurred to Craig several times since he had awoken in his cell. Given his previous experience that was hardly a surprise. Mindful of that fact, Richard nodded slowly.

"It's certainly a possibility. Does it really seem like that to you, though? And nobody has spoken to us yet."

"Maybe they're not in any hurry." Craig shrugged, leading the way onwards again. "I don't know. We've got to have enemies though, right? All the cases we've worked on? All the plots we've foiled? There are prisons all over the place with inmates who are there thanks to us. Maybe somebody wanted a little revenge?"

"By sticking us in an underground bunker the size of Mount Everest? Why not just kill us? No, there's something more to this. Something that we're not getting."

"Did you try speaking to whoever brought the food?"

"No answer. You?"

Craig shook his head. "I was in anti-interrogation mode. Don't speak, don't eat, and don't drink the water."

"Probably wise." Richard smirked. "Although the shepherd's pie that they gave me earlier was really quite divine."

"I'm very happy for you both." Craig slowed suddenly, head cocked on one side. "Do you hear that?"

"Not in the audio sense, no."

"Then I think I've found something." He tapped on the wall beside him, a frown marking out a furrow between his dark brown eyes. "There's something behind this wall."

"A room?" Richard joined him, examining the stones for any sign of a hidden door. Craig shook his head.

"Machinery. It's not in operation, but I can sense it. Could be an elevator."

"Could be." Richard shrugged, at a loss. "But I can't see how to get to it. Have you opened any of the rooms along the way?"

"No. I didn't try." Craig took a step back, eyeing the wall thoughtfully. "But I know there's something there, so there's got to be a way to get to it."

"A door made of stone?"

"Or a stone panel hiding a door. I guess if you want to move around in here, you need to know how the place operates." Craig didn't seem at all deterred. "Looks like stone. Feels like stone."

"But needn't be solid stone?"

"Something like that. There's probably a trick to opening it."

"Could be anything. A secret control hidden here somewhere, or some kind of portable device carried by the staff." Richard peered more closely at the barrier. "You know, it sounds a little different when I tap it. Could be it's just a fa?de."

"Then let's find out," suggested Craig, who had had enough theorising for the time being. "Beginning with the unsophisticated approach." He aimed a kick at the wall, and felt it move slightly under the assault. "You're right. The stone is thin here. There's something else behind it. It's going to take some effort to break through, though."

"Both of us together, then." Richard moved back a pace. "Ready?"

"Sure."

"Then on the count of three. One, two - and if I end up breaking my foot, you'll never hear the end of it - three." They kicked. A faint tremor showed in the middle of the wall.

"Alright!" Craig's enthusiasm was infectious. Richard matched his grin with one of his own.

"And again. One, two, three!" They kicked again, a little harder this time. Once more the wall seemed to move - and this time, a hairline crack appeared between two of the blocks of stone. Richard felt like cheering. Stepping back, they dispensed with the counting this time, and by unspoken agreement kicked once again. The cement holding the stone together crumbled, the stones themselves shook, and a hole burst inward in the middle of the wall. There was a loud clatter of falling masonry, and Richard immediately listened out for the distant sound of alarm. There was none. Apparently nobody had heard their demolition work.

"Come on." Craig was already at the hole, widening it with his hands. He peered through. "I think we were right. There's a door here."

"Any way to open it?"

"No handle. There's some buttons."

"Open and close, probably." Richard smiled sardonically. "Or open and explode."

"Probably." Craig pressed the upper of the two buttons, and the metal door before him slid open. "But we're not exploding this time. There's some sort of room back here, and what looks like an elevator."

"Perfect. We should be out of here in no time." Richard scrambled through the hole, taking a moment - now that the situation seemed less taut - to mourn the abuse that he was heaping upon his suit. "Or at the very least, we can find somebody to talk to."

"About Sharron." Craig nodded. "Yeah, I'm worried about that myself. The more time I spend in here, the more I get to thinking that this is a serious operation. I mean, we were both captured, brought here, hidden in some crazy kind of underground building - whoever is behind this is pretty efficient. I don't think we can assume that Sharron got away just because we couldn't find her earlier."

"Precisely. Especially since neither of us was aware of the other's presence until we met. We might not have been looking when we were heading towards each other in that corridor, but when I woke up in my cell, the first thing I did was look for the two of you, to try to see if you were anywhere nearby. I thought that I was alone."

"Yeah, me too. It's these walls, and the floors, I guess. We're going to have to start compensating for that, or we could be in trouble. This is one solid place." Craig froze suddenly, head cocked slightly on one side. "Wait a minute. Can you hear something?"

"I can hear something, yes. I suppose the lift shaft acts like a conduit." Richard listened for a moment, turning his head slightly as though optimising the position of an antenna. "They're speaking German."

"Yeah. You think we're in East Germany?"

"Could be. I can't think why, but it's a theory." He looked around at their surroundings - an uneven patch of rock, giving way to the neat metal of the lift shaft. "We should make use of this place. If sound carries down it - to our ears, anyway - telepathy might, too. I'll have a look around. You look for Sharron."

"Right." Craig leaned back against the wall, feeling the cool metal through the material of his shirt. He thought of Sharron, and reached out with his mind to look for her. It didn't take very long. ~Sharron?~ He used telepathy to speak to her, but she didn't answer him at first. ~Sharron? Are you okay?~

~Craig?~ She sounded surprised. ~Are you here too?~

~Yeah. Me and Richard. Listen, do you have any idea where here is?~

~Not exactly. Sort of. Listen Craig, you have to be careful. This isn't just an ordinary prison. I-~ The telepathic contact broke off, and she was abruptly silent. Craig stepped away from the wall, stirred into physical action by the mental shock. "Sharron?" He spoke her name aloud without realising it. "Sharron?"

"That was strange. It was almost as though contact was just switched off." Alarm bells ringing in his head at Sharron's abrupt silence, Richard glanced up. "We need to find her. Come and look at this. I think I've found something useful."

"Is that a map?" Craig joined his partner, looking at the sign he had found bolted to the wall. It was a diagram, apparently of the layout of the complex. "It's pretty big."

"It's very big." Richard traced along some of the lines with his finger. "Six levels, by the look of things, and I think we're one above bottom." He whistled softly. "No wonder we could feel the weight of all that stone. We've got one lift, and one exit, by the look of things. You know, if this place is some kind of research bunker, that doesn't seem very safe."

"Security above safety. Not unheard of." Craig tapped a point at the top of the lift-shaft. "No way of knowing what's up there. Might be a secure building above ground. Any number of guards."

"True." Richard shrugged. "But we can't think about that right now. We have to find Sharron before we can think about leaving." He saw the look in his friend's eyes. "We'll find her. She'll be fine."

"Yeah. Yes, of course." Craig nodded, already heading for the lift doors. Richard followed him, and together they regarded the controls. They looked ordinary enough, and a few moments after Richard had pressed one of the buttons, a door slid smoothly open. They both went inside.

"What level do you think?" asked Richard, eyeing the row of buttons by the door. Craig shrugged.

"We've worked that kind of thing out before." He closed his eyes, hovering one hand above the buttons. "The last person who was in here went to level three. I guess that doesn't necessarily help."

"Maybe it does." Richard eyed the relevant button appraisingly. "How far away would you say Sharron seemed?"

"Not far." Craig frowned for a moment, then pressed the button for level three. It seemed to him to be the one to choose, and he knew to trust his instincts. "What do you want to do when we get there?"

"Now he asks." Richard smiled faintly. "Only one thing to do, isn't there."

"Sure. Grab Sharron and run." Craig nodded, bracing himself for the moment when the door would open. "Not like they're going to be waiting for us, right?"

"Right. The way that those cells were built, they wouldn't expect us to find a way out in a million years. Which is somewhat disturbing. Whatever it is that we've done to these people, remind me not to do it again."

"Sure. As soon as I figure out exactly what we have done." Around them the machinery carrying them upwards began to slow, the change in engine sounds indiscernible to anybody else. "You ready?"

"I'm ready." Richard flexed his fingers, unconsciously limbering up. The lift was almost silent. Nobody else would be able to hear it, he was sure. Even if they did notice it arrive, they would never suspect who was inside it. There was no reason why anybody would.

~You take the right. I'll go left,~ Craig's voice inside his mind was the last thing that he heard before the door opened and the lighting changed. The cool blue of the metal box was sucked away in an instant by a rush of warm, bright yellow from the room beyond. There was no time to register any more than that. Craig was already running, and Richard followed suit, ducking to the right and heading instinctively for cover. Only then could he take the time to look more fully at the space around him.

It was a big room; more like a cavern carved out of rock, with a great domed ceiling above. The walls had been smoothed off lower down, but above they were still natural; rough and coarse; and marked with the veins of lurking minerals. The floor was of stone flagging, polished to a bright whiteness that spoke of sterility. Richard was reminded of the earlier conversation about experimentation and rogue scientists, and felt decidedly ill at ease.

"Sharron!" Craig had broken cover, spotting the third member of their team over at the far side of the room. Never one to sit and think for too long before action, he was already running towards her. Richard followed suit. There seemed no sense in hanging back. His sixth sense was sparking a myriad alarms, though, and he could sense Craig's unease as well. His partner was also well aware that something was wrong, then. Something. He was damned if he could work out what.

They slowed to a halt when they reached her. She hadn't moved, or tried to acknowledge their presence in any way. She just sat where she was on the floor, surrounded by beams of light, for all the world as though she were trapped in a cage.

"Sharron?" Craig crouched down on the floor, wary of the bars of light. "Sharron?"

"Craig?" She didn't look up, or open her eyes. "You mustn't stay here."

"We're not planning on staying here." Looking about with an increasing sense of nervousness, Richard kept his voice low and steady. "We're leaving, all of us, just as soon as we can work out how to get you out of there. It's some kind of cage, yes?"

"Yes." Still she didn't move, save for the barely perceptible motion of her lips. "The light is some kind of laser. An energy beam. They said that if I move, I'll get blasted." She sounded perfectly calm. "I can sense the power. I know that they weren't lying."

"Who exactly are 'they'?" Richard's eyes flickered once around the room, searching for any sign of surveillance. There were no cameras that he could see. Sharron gave a short, humourless laugh.

"I have no idea. They didn't bother to tell me. They know about us, though. They said that I wouldn't be able to communicate telepathically with you once they turned these light beams on, and I think that they were right. I lost contact with you very suddenly, Craig."

"I was worried about you." He smiled gently, though her eyes were still closed. "Don't worry. We'll get you out of there in no time."

"If it was that simple I'd have found my own way out. I doubt that you can just pull out the plug and have done with it."

"There doesn't seem to be a plug, anyway." Richard's dry humour brought a faint smile to Sharron's face. "We'll have to have a good look at this cage, and at the rest of the room as well. Try to find-" He broke off, distracted by a grinding sound nearby. "What-?"

"That's the door." Sharron was noticeably tense, as though she had had to fight the urge to move at the sudden sound. "You have to leave. Quickly."

"Over there." Craig was pointing to where a section of the wall was sliding aside. There were shadows showing beyond the hidden door; people, clearly, waiting for the space to grow big enough to allow them entry.

"Blast." Richard could see no immediate cover; not that he had really been planning to take Sharron's advice and run. With a silent word to Craig, he rose slowly to his feet. Craig did the same, eyes never leaving the opening door.

"Gentlemen!" There was a man in the doorway, with several others lurking in the gloom just behind. It was the man in the forefront who spoke, stepping through the door with a brisk, leisurely stride, his face bright with a cheerful smile. "I'm so glad that you could make it. I was afraid that your cells had been too secure for you after all."

"I beg your pardon?" Richard kept his voice level, determined not to rise to the other man's obvious bait. He could handle a bit of gloating without losing his temper, though he wasn't entirely sure about Craig.

"What do you want with Sharron?" Craig's voice was not nearly so level, though he showed no sign of anger as yet. The smiling man smiled still further.

"With her individually - nothing in particular. With the three of you as a unit - rather a great deal. Come on, Stirling. Don't disappoint me. Don't you know who I am?"

"I know you." Recognising the man was easy. One of the gifts that the three friends shared was that of memory, and they could recall almost anything, in unusual detail. Craig had recognised this man and several of his companions almost at first sight. "You're Andrew Wells. We shut down your operation in Manchester about three months ago. You didn't look like this then, though."

"I shaved off my beard and moustache. Dyed my hair. I'm told that my own mother wouldn't recognise me, so it's interesting to see that you do."

"You're supposed to be in prison," pointed out Richard. Wells nodded.

"I am aware of that. I escaped a fortnight ago. I'm surprised that you weren't informed, though I can't say that I'm sorry. It might have put you on your guard."

"I doubt it." Craig's tone of voice couldn't help but be insulting. A flicker of anger showed on Wells's face.

"But no matter." All of a sudden his own voice was like ice. "We're not here to talk about me, gentlemen. We're here to talk about you - and specifically the predicament of dear Miss Macready. Doctor Macready, perhaps I should say. If she moves, she dies. However it is possible for somebody on the outside of the cage to rescue her. If somebody were to have, say, unusual strength, and a particularly high threshold for pain, he might be able to reach the control lever set into the floor on the far side of the cage, just between two of the bars. You see? And if somebody were to have a nice turn of speed, and extremely good reactions, they might be able to pull Doctor Macready out of the way in time before the security measures are implemented. You see, if the lever is pulled, the bars disappear - but at almost the same moment they incinerate the person contained within them. I'm sure that none of us want that."

"You're mad." Richard's eyes were drawn irresistibly to the lever. "You make it sound as though nobody could possibly manage it."

"Nobody possibly could." A smile curled at Wells's lips. "Nobody human, that is. But you're not entirely human, are you. The three of you, with your tricks and your little skills. Why do you think that you were brought here? For fun? Hardly. You were locked up, in cells that no human could escape from. You escaped. Well now you're going to rescue your partner, gentlemen, or my assistant in the control room nearby will pull their own lever. One that is considerably easier to use. Poor Doctor Macready won't survive any longer than a millisecond, and-" He glanced at his watch, with an exaggerated gesture of raising his wrist and pulling back the sleeve. "And it appears that you now have less than two minutes. My apologies for keeping you talking. So what's it to be? Show off your talents to my colleagues and I, or stand back and let the good lady die? Either way, I'm sure it will be interesting research on our part. I wonder what the death of one of your number will do to the other two?"

"I ought to tear your-" Craig stopped before he could complete the threat, looking back at Richard. Wells smiled.

"Are you communicating with each other? Fascinating. We had theorised that you had the ability to speak telepathically, but it wasn't something that I was able to observe in action the last time that we met. You're discussing the situation, I assume?"

"Shut up," growled Craig, without bothering to look at him. Wells merely laughed.

"You want to toss a coin?" Richard, unconcerned with what their master of ceremonies was up to, seemed focused entirely upon the study of the bars of the cage. Craig shook his head.

"I'll get the lever. I'm stronger."

"Like hell you are."

"Maybe, maybe not. We don't have time to argue." The American crossed over to where the lever showed, tinted yellow, between two of the bars of the cage. "Just get ready to move her."

"It'll burn your hands off, Craig." For the first time, Sharron's voice showed signs of strain. The others could sympathise. It was one thing being in danger yourself, but when others were in danger as a consequence, the situation was entirely different.

"No it won't. By the look of things, the intensity of the light is a lot less on this side than it is in there with you." Craig glanced up, his eyes meeting with Richard's. ~On ten.~

"Right." Richard tensed up, ready for action. Inside his head, Craig was counting; outside his head, Wells was staring at them both, a sharp little smirk on his face. It made rather an inviting target for a well-aimed punch.

~Seven.~ Craig was flexing his hands, and Richard could feel him searching for the inner calm that gave them all their best chance for withstanding even high levels of pain. There was no telling what it would be like, sticking his hands between what amounted to the beams of a laser. Hot, certainly. Possibly rather more than that. ~Eight. Nine.~

"Craig, I-" But even as Sharron was making her protest, Craig's hands were darting forward. Richard felt some of his partner's pain, but put it aside in an instant. There was no time for empathy now. As the lever clicked into place, and Craig fell backwards, Richard was darting forward, snatching the frozen woman, and dragging her aside. They hit the ground hard, rolling once, and came to a halt just a short distance away from the cage.

"Richard." Breathless, Sharron opened her eyes at last, smiling into his eyes with obvious relief. "I thought I was stuck in there for good."

"It's nice to have you back." He stood up, pulling her to her feet as well, before turning back towards Craig. The third member of their team was slowly standing up, looking at his hands as he did so. "Are we all alright?"

"We'd all know it if we weren't." Craig came over to join them, and they could see that there were scorch marks on his skin. Sharron caught hold of his hands in an attempt to examine them, but he waved her away. "It's nothing. Just superficial."

"She was quite right, though, you know." Wells was still smirking, now more than ever. "Your hands should have been burnt off."

"Maybe your technicians don't know what they're doing," growled Craig. Wells laughed.

"No. No, they know what they're doing. And there's one of them who no longer has any hands, who can testify to that. All of which goes to prove the theory quite nicely, I think. A man your size should never have been able to shift that lever, Stirling. And I can't think of anybody who could have reacted quickly enough to get Macready out of that cage before the security program incinerated her. You're not human, though. Are you."

"Human enough." Richard narrowed his eyes. "What is it that you're after, Wells? You and your friends. Don't think that we can't see them back there in the shadows."

"Really?" Wells strolled closer, and behind him the lurking spectators also advanced a few steps. "What we want is quite simple. You always think that you get away with it, don't you. That nobody notices. But sometimes they do. You shut one firm down, and maybe while you're doing it somebody sees something. Like a woman who can throw a man across a room without the slightest effort. Like a man who manages to see two miles without binoculars. And maybe, when that's all finished with, you shut down another gang. And this time somebody notices something else. Like a man with inhuman hearing. A man who manages to send a warning to his friends when they're three miles away, and he's tied up and under surveillance, and shouldn't be able to do anything at all."

"Well, now-" began Richard, only be cut short by one of the people standing behind Wells, a thickset man in a grey flannel suit, who stepped up to continue the story.

"And perhaps these people, who see these things, they don't put two and two together quite at once." His voice was accented. ~Drugov,~ said Craig's inner voice, and Richard nodded slowly. Like Craig he had recognised the man earlier, putting a name to him whilst he had still been shrouded in shadow. Vladimir Drugov, a Russian scientist who had hidden himself away in the Fiji Islands with a store of stolen weapons-grade plutonium, and made a lot of threats to a lot of countries. "But then, these people who have seen things, they end up in prison. They end up in the same prison. And they talk. They mention three agents who were responsible for their capture. Three very distinctive agents. The British man and woman, and the American, all working together for some international organisation - Nemesis - that seems to have no tie to any one country. And soon there are theories, and suspicions, and plans. A determination to find out the truth. Do you understand now, the three of you? Prison cells that you shouldn't have been able to get out of. We watched you, though you didn't know it. We even made things easier for you, by making sure that you were undisturbed once your work had started in earnest. We set up a little experiment featuring Macready, so that you would have to show something of your abilities in the open. And now there will be more experiments, so that we can be sure of what you can do, and see about finding out how to do it ourselves."

"It's not that simple," Craig told him. Drugov glared.

"I don't expect it to be simple, Stirling. I just expect results. I will find out what you can do. I already know about the enhanced eyesight and hearing. I witnessed both for myself in one degree or another. The chances are that only dissection would allow us to discover the truth there, and I'm not entirely ready to attempt that yet. It would be a waste."

"I'm so glad you think so." Richard shared a look with his friends. "Look, what is it that you want to know? And what exactly is it that you're planning to test? It strikes me that if your rather outlandish theories are wrong, somebody could get hurt. Probably us."

"And it strikes me that if that happens, the only people here who will care will be you." Wells smiled unpleasantly. "So I don't see any drawbacks. The plan is quite simple. Some tests, to see how you react. To find out if we're right about what you can do."

"And then?" asked Craig. Wells looked him up and down, his gaze at once both appraising and contemptuous.

"And then we decide what to do next. We set about finding out how we can have what you've got. Because either you're not human at all, which doesn't strike me as being terribly likely, or you've had some kind of upgrade. And if you've had it, I don't see any reason why other people shouldn't have it too."

"Everything I've got I was born with," Craig told him. Wells smirked.

"Maybe. And maybe I'll cut you up and find out." Craig's lip curled.

"I thought that was more in Heissen's line. Yeah, we can see you Jan, just like we could see Drugov. Stop lurking."

"Interesting eyesight that you have there, Stirling." Footsteps scraped on the stone floor, as another shadowy onlooker came forward. Sharron eyed him with distaste.

"And I suppose you're where they're getting all these ideas," she muttered. He smiled at her.

"They had already reached their own conclusions, more or less. My observations merely strengthened the theory." His voice was sharp and cold, touched by an obvious dislike. "I'm flattered, though. My insistence that I was captured by people with superhuman abilities nearly led to me ending up in a straightjacket. But you remember me, don't you. You remember what I saw." Jan Heissen's voice was touched by his German origins, but only slightly. He spoke English fluently, something that had stood him in good stead when he had attempted to defraud several British and American museums out of hundreds of thousands of pounds. Richard raised an eyebrow.

"I don't know what you think you saw, but yes, we remember you. We tend to remember the people that we meet."

"Somehow that doesn't surprise me." Heissen shot him a dark look. "I'm sure that there are all manner of things that you can do. A faultless memory would sit rather well with the heightened senses, wouldn't it."

"Heightened senses." Sharron spoke the words so scathingly that anybody less determined might have been swayed. Heissen and his companions barely reacted.

"It wasn't hard, you know," Wells told her. "A little research. Questions in the right places, the right records looked at. Much of it is far from secret."

"Much of what?" asked Richard. It was Drugov's turn to take on the sarcastic smile that he and his colleagues seemed to be using on timeshare.

"Richard Barrett," he announced, with a certain degree of theatricality. "Born 1938. You had a rather impressive education, but a fairly ordinary career. You excelled at code breaking, but your work for Nemesis was no better than anybody else's. But then suddenly one day... everything changed."

"Sharron Macready," continued Wells. "It's a similar story. Your life, your career - nothing particularly special. Turned to a rather more... interesting... line of work after the death of your husband. Oh, my apologies if that's a sensitive subject. You seemed to have a promising career ahead of you with Nemesis, but it was nothing incredible. Until one day..."

"Everything changed?" asked Craig, his tone distinctly mocking. Heissen shot him a sour look.

"Craig Stirling. Born 1939. Career in the United States Air Force. More distinguished than some, less distinguished than others. And with you the story is the same. You joined Nemesis, you got your work done. You made a name for yourself, but it was nothing that impressive. Until suddenly the reports started to change. There were even concerns about just how you were getting such results. Questions were asked. There's nothing in the files that says how and when this great change happened, or to give any clues as to how you suddenly came to be getting such results, but every file tells the same story. Three above average agents suddenly becoming very much more. Very much more."

"I don't know what kind of story our records tell-" began Richard, but Heissen laughed, and he gave up his protest. It didn't seem likely that anybody here was going to listen. "Oh, this is nonsense. We're trying to tell you the truth, and you're not listening. What exactly is it going to take to convince you that you're wrong? One of us dying?"

"One of my technicians lost his hands trying to operate the lever that Stirling just used." Wells sauntered over, and snatched Craig's left wrist. Craig didn't try to stop him. There were a pair of red marks at the base of his thumb, faint signs of the burns he had received during the rescue of Sharron. They were already almost healed. He smiled nonchalantly, and shrugged.

"Maybe the cage thing wasn't working properly."

"Oh, it was." Wells let go of him, his whole manner changing abruptly. "Enough talk, I think."

"Now hang on..." began Sharron. He silenced her with a look. Not the type to be disheartened, she backed off as much to hear what he was going to say as because he had clearly wanted her to shut up. Pacing away from them all, he turned back at last to face the room, like a professor about to deliver a lecture.

"We've devised a series of tests," he announced, much as though it were something that his prisoners were supposed to be excited by. "Three tests, specifically, in addition to the one you've just performed."

"Are we supposed to cheer?" deadpanned Richard. Drugov smiled.

"You're supposed to prove us right," he said, with obvious relish.

"What if we refuse?" The answer to that seemed obvious from the outset, but Craig asked it anyway. Heissen shrugged.

"You die. Simple. Each test will be fatal to one of your number unless the others do as expected. Your choice."

"Perform like circus monkeys or die." Richard's expression was sour. "What a delightful choice."

"It's not a choice." Heissen was walking away, heading back to the sliding door. "It won't be the circus monkeys who die; just the colleague that they fail to rescue. It's not your own lives that you're gambling with, remember that."

"What if your tests are too difficult?" asked Sharron suddenly. They were all walking away now, back towards the door, leaving the three agents alone in the middle of the room. Drugov shrugged.

"We don't know what you're capable of. If we have set the bar too high... it's unfortunate. But there are often casualties in experiments. Good luck, all of you."

"Now wait just a minute-" Starting forward, Craig attempted one last protest, but it was clear that it was falling on deaf ears. Richard called out to him, a telepathic word to still his advance, and break through his rising anger. His colleague shot him a heated glare.

"You think we should just give up and go along with this?"

"I don't want to, certainly." Richard spoke very, very quietly - far too quietly for anybody save Craig and Sharron to hear him. "But sometimes it's better to play along, at least at first. Let's see what's going to happen before we make any snap decisions."

"I guess you're right." Craig rejoined them, though his body language did not speak of the acquiescence he had just voiced. "But I don't like being treated like some kind of puppet."

"No, me neither. I don't think we'll find it that easy to fight back just yet though. Too many people around, and probably armed. We need to bide our time - and you know it."

"We all need to cool down a little," suggested Sharron. Richard nodded.

"Right. And we can find our way out of anything, given the right opportunity. Can't we?"

"Sure we can." Craig dragged up a smile. "Okay, so we play by ear for now. But as soon as the time is right, I plan on showing those three just exactly how strong I really am."

"Now that is a plan that I'm happy with." Richard met Craig's smile with one of his own. "Looks like we're alone for now, though."

"Which leaves me feeling rather nervous." Sharron looked over at the sliding door, disappeared once again into the wall now that it was closed. "I think our little floor show may be about to start."

"And I think I know how." Richard's expression was suddenly set hard. "Do you hear that?"

"Hissing." Craig scanned the walls, turning in a rough circle. "It's gas. Hold your breath, everyone."

"I don't think that's going to help. I can feel it taking effect already." Richard's voice showed his considerable displeasure. "It must work by skin contact. Now that's not playing fair."

"It might not be strong enough to knock us out," suggested Sharron, though she knew in her heart of hearts that it would be. Even they could not resist tranquillisers, and she was sure that Wells and his confederates would be taking no chances. Craig flashed her and Richard a grin that somehow managed to retain its usual optimism. Oddly enough, even now it was strangely infectious.

~Good luck, guys,~ he sent, a private message in case they were overheard. ~See you on the other side.~

A moment later they were lost in sleep.

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