Flick's third entrance into the Tower is perfunctory. She experiences none of the trepidation or humiliation of the first two times, just a sense of anticipation at knowing there's a job to do. She nods at the guard as she passes him, laden with a box full of stuff, handbag included.

A led-gel monitor on a wall in the changing room shows the Davy-bird feed out front. arKhana is dozing on his bed. Flick dumps the box under the table top and sits down on the only backstage chair. She looks at herself in the dressing-table mirror. There's a glint in her eye, a suggestion of the old swagger. She likes it. Behind her, in the mirror, the wardrobe door is slightly open. She turns to have a look at what they have left her for tonight's performance. It seems they're giving her carte blanche. Smart or casual, conservative or sexy; there's a shop-full of clothes in there. It's a small thing but she knows it's a communiqué from Arbitration.

Her phone buzzes in her jeans pocket. She extracts it and notes the time. It's a message from Emelia wishing her luck. Flick's heart dips into her uterus. She unfolds the phone to monitor size and lays it on the table. The nanoprint fabric is gummy, like gelatin, but she loves the way it responds to her fingertips. She opens a new document, calling it 'Campaign', and types Enter Felice Rausch and Rodan arKhana, holding hands...

She writes for an hour then sends the result to arKhana who, presently, saunters from his bed into the backstage area.

''You get a name?''

''No. Parx implied he used a fake ID. I'm not convinced.''

''Why would he not tell you?''

''I think he wants to use it - and me - as leverage to get himself into the room when the extraction takes place.''

''That makes no sense - me and Parx go way back. We fought together. Why wouldn't he trust me with The Chemist?''

''Because it's not just The Chemist that's here. Kersten's with him.''

arKhana's face changes as this sinks in. Then it changes again as he tries to work out what that might mean.

''Don't worry, it's beyond me too. Here take a look at this.'' She shows him the opening of her script. ''Let's work on this for now.''

While arKhana finesses the script on his own slate, Flick downloads an up-to-date map of the Gnostic Hierarchy from the Nest. It is basically a nodal drawing, laid out in a particular format, like a family tree. The connections shown are key to understanding the various political allegiances currently in play. Although there are always seven families at the top of the Hierarchy, it isn't always the same seven. Occasionally a top tier clan's light will dim; either they are left isolated within the seven or they simply run out of energy and become superseded by another, more ambitious family. There are always up-and-comers hanging about on the sidelines. Flick suspects that Vinst and his coalition will be looking to alienate the federalist families and bring along more conservatives, either into the seven or at least into the second tier of fourteen. By studying the subtle connections in the third and fourth tiers, Flick can judge just how successful her brother has been.

She knows what her mother's own alliances would be - a centrist coalition between the guFlecht, the deKhnastre, the tuStöeme and the kiJonsde of the seven top tier clans. A perfectly workable and stable Government of Gnostic Affairs. What the map shows is whom Vinst has been courting recently and that makes for sobering reading. A coalition with the tiTroijn, the faBlanxt and the utPrimde would be much more extreme. That, she was expecting, but it is the connections between the lesser families that Flick is more interested in - the second, third and fourth layers of the pyramid - because that would show her the underlying political weather.

She quickly focuses on the discrepancies between what her mother would opt for and what is actually going on. Her eye is inevitably drawn to the name of utThalé. She would have expected to see the utThalé on the second tier, within the fourteen and tied to the more isolationist families such as the nuSthäll, well separated from her own family and others with whom the guFlecht would share a natural alliance such as, for example, the neStelle or the arKhana - third and fourth tier families respectively. What the map shows, however is that the fortunes of the utThalé have taken a turn for the worst, with them currently luxuriating down in the fourth tier with the fifty-five other families that care enough to want to form part of the Hierarchy but maybe not so much as to let it rule their lives. But the networks the utThalé have found themselves within don't seem to make much sense. There is a clump of five or six families known to Flick from a long time ago who have well documented federalist sympathies. They can't all have changed their allegiances. Two of these - the baTuin and the roDamzkl - helped Flick during the war when she was constantly flitting over restricted borders trying to find a resolution. For some reason the utThalé, down in the fourth, seem to be aligned closely with the kiJonsde up in the first, along with the baTuin, and the roDamskl, in ascending order. A strange coalition indeed and Vinst has kept the guFlecht well clear of it, which Ris would never have done, given the family's close friendship with the kiJonsde.

Then she picks out Shem's clan, the loJain, who were never affiliated with the guFlecht when Rux was around. They're currently third tier but making progress towards the second, judging by their affiliations - not least of whom are the guFlecht. They don't seem to be ideological at all, hence their tendency towards the darker arts of security and intelligence. It would appear that they were chosen by Ris as they seem quite well established within guFlechtian circles. Flick decides they're probably not a threat and would work with her just as closely as they currently work with Vinst.

As far as the utThalé fell, another family has made an equivalent rise. The muShiel are a vicious family of assassins and mercenaries. They did well out of the war but preferred to stay down in the fourth where they could operate in relative obscurity. They have risen to the second, and seem affiliated to the utPrimde and the tiTroijn in the first, along with the guFlecht, there are also another two Prohibitionist families in this nasty little cabal - the utGhtwun of the fourth and the azKeert of the third.

Flick could study the map all evening and still keep finding things but she needs to focus right now. She needs to consider her own position politically. The sooner she can get out of prison legitimately, the safer she'll be. Hence the need for a properly scripted narrative this time out.

''Have you read it yet?''

''Audacious,'' says arKhana. ''You think it'll fly?''

''It better. I'm running out of time.''

arKhana checks his slate. ''We've got an hour ‘til dinner. How's your head?''

''I'm still clean. I'm going to need to be jacked in though. I think I can manipulate the nanites' this time,'' Flick gestures to the box beneath the dressing table.

''This I have to see.''

''I'm going to need Boomboom. A triple dose.''

''On it.'' arKhana texts his source.

''Okay. Let's rehearse.''

Flick and arKhana enter the cell hand in hand. Flick is wearing a Volkveuler skin-tight pant-suit in lilac and gunmetal with silver Fermessien Slippers. Rodan is in jeans and t-shirt.

''Thanks for coming over,'' says Flick. ''I couldn't think of anyone else I'd rather do this with.''

She gestures to the dining table in the corner. They go and sit and the Davy-bird settles close by with a zoom of lenses. The led-gel walls display neutral magnolia paintwork on textured flock wallpaper; generic art adds to the hotel-room feel, as does the picture portal, which looks out across the Huguenot Quarter south towards the Neon Cliffs. As soon as they sit a guard enters from backstage and lays the table. He exits without leaving a menu.

''Well... I'm glad I could help,'' says arKhana, feeling clunky as the Davy-bird.

Flick over-compensates by becoming silky-smooth: ''The things I've seen,'' she says, ''out in the hinterlands. Habitations and factory orbitals plunging through the vacuum, with hardly a thought for those I'd left behind. The people like you with whom I'd fought, those like my clan, for whom I'd fought.''

''It's not like you had a choice,'' says arKhana, almost as if he means it.

''I know but...'' Flick pauses for effect, ''there is such a thing as a sin of omission.''

''I think you might need to explain that one to me.''

''You're right, I need to articulate myself properly.'' Flick makes a show of having a think without hamming it up too much which is no mean feat. She keeps it up until the guard returns with their food.

arKhana prods the vegetation, looking for a piece of meat.

''Salt?'' says Flick.

''I don't need any. Thanks.''

''You don't mind if I have some?''

''Go ahead.''

Flick takes the salt cellar and delivers it to her food. She tucks in.

''So,'' says arKhana, after a minute or two, ''what did you omit?''

Flick purses her lips. The nanites will take a while to enter her system but she doesn't need them just yet. ''The time I was gone,'' she says, ''wasn't spent preparing for some magnificent return. I thought I had left for good. I made a life, travelled. Learned a lot. I changed.''

Flick ruminates on her vegetables thoughtfully.

''Everybody changes,'' says arKhana. ''I changed in that time. It's not a sin.''

''No. And I dare say some of the skills and knowledge I picked up along the way will be useful. I could pass them on, to my family. The Hierarchy.'' She leaves that hanging a moment then continues: ''But while I was gone there were things I should have kept close to my heart which maybe I didn't. Things I should have sought closure for which I simply let myself forget.''

And things I didn't, she thinks, feeling a slight fizzing in her mind as Arbitration's nanites take hold. The magnolia walls shimmer slightly but remain as they are.

''You mean your father?''

''Yes.''

''You never did tell me the full story.''

''I never told it to my mother either. That was my omission. My sin.''

''So confess it. Confess it now,'' arKhana urges her.

''Oh it's too late for that,'' says Flick, falling quiet.

They finish their meal in a twitchy, clunky silence, with much whirring of lenses. The magnolia shimmers impatiently until arKhana picks up the narrative.

''Is that why you're in here? For what you did to your father?''

''I'm here for political reasons but even so, I have a personal penance to pay. Who doesn't?''

''I certainly do. Political reasons you say?'' arKhana cringes inside. That's just a bad line.

''Family shit. It doesn't matter. I know I can trust my brother to make the right calls.''

arKhana looks questioningly at her. ''Surely your mother has the reins?''

''Yes of course. You're right. Some say Mother has retreated but I'm sure it's not true.''

''She won't speak to you?''

''I don't want to talk about it. It's too late for me to ask her forgiveness.''

''Maybe if you explained about your father, she'd understand.''

''Father was a complex man. I wouldn't know where to begin.''

''I heard he got religion.''

''He was a field engineer and a damn good one. Even did some work for Paradigm and you know how twitchy they can be about piety.''

''I know but... towards the end?'' arKhana doesn't know if he got the inflections right on that line and would like to try it again. He's wondering also if his character is consistent with the rough-arsed bastard he started off as. He supposes it doesn't matter. Character development is necessarily going to be compressed in such an environment. Anyway, Flick is talking. This is the start of her big monologue. He can stop listening for a bit.

''Towards the end,'' she is saying, ''he was pursuing the Dreamtime Equation - something I set him off on. Which is why Mother blames me for where it took him. I mean I know that ultimately he thought that if he could find Dreamtime he could get to Gnüth but he wasn't driven by a pursuit of angels. He was driven by the science of it.

''Not that he wasn't religious,'' Flick continues, thinking about her Base, ''far from it. But his understanding of what the soul is completely transcended traditional scripture-orientated thinking.''

arKhana originally thought this part was too technical for the lay-person to understand but Flick had insisted on going into it. Probably because that's the type of thing that really turns her on. She simply doesn't agree that the masses should be pandered to.

''He understood that consciousness exists within Gilbert Space,'' Flick continues. ''A combination of fields relative to Spacetime. The field itself consists of information only - a kind of potential energy if you will - information without mass. Its energy, and therefore its mass, only appears when the field interacts with the surrounding gravitational field and this only happens via the wetwork: the brain, the body. Manipulate gravity - which we do all the time - around the body at the point of brain death and, with the right technology you can contain the consciousness field. This is what he was working on.''

Flick pauses, in her mind to let the technical stuff sink in. arKhana suspects she is crediting the audience with a level of intelligence which they simply don't possess. If they did, he reasons, they wouldn't be watching this feed, they'd be watching MBC4.

Flick, however, takes the view that everyone likes to watch the suffering of others, whatever their intelligence. She carries on.

''He did develop a belief system though. And he became careless because of it. The device he built was based on an equation we'd both been working on. I thought we had misapplied Frank's Constant but he was so eager to proceed he was blind to it. The device was supposed to inhibit the Verbensteizer Reflex, allowing a secondary gluon valve to extract the information contained in the consciousness field, like candlefloss from a drum, before it dissipated into heat. He called it The Pupator, because, in theory, it could be used to transplant the soul into another... vessel.

''However,'' Flick continues, attempting to modulate her voice to stop it from turning into a low, stultifying drone, ''like every stereotypical mad scientist,'' she punctuates the atmosphere with her fingers, ''he simply didn't have the patience to spend his time writing papers. Or to hang round while his peers scrutinised the work and the experimentalists got round to designing something controlled and safe to test his hypothesis. He just went ahead and designed the thing himself, based on what turned out to be flawed data.

''And the fact of the matter was, I was so eager to see how things turned out I just didn't try hard enough to persuade him out of it. Although, to be fair, I also knew there could be no persuading him, once he got an idea into his head. And he was my dad. I didn't want to be the one to disappoint him, so I went along. I helped build the thing and a thing of beauty it was. It had these perpendicular Titanium winglets that didn't really serve any purpose other than to make it look good. They offset the working parts, which were all on show. It wore its heart on its sleeve, just like Dad. The Pellatine Manifolds he used for dislocating the gravity field were scavenged from an old racing skiff and they gave it an odd, incongruous sense of streamlining, like aero wings on a tractor. We spent hours in the junk yards, me and him. Talking. Looking for stuff. Good times. We came across one of those old galvanised baths they used to use in the cloning sheds. He couldn't believe it. He actually jumped up and down with glee. A genuine piece of the past! He laid down in it and it fitted him like a coffin. We polished it up and built everything else around it: the Nitrogen pumps and field-weft differential plates we clamped around the stasis cups, obviously. The Alderman Flasks connected directly to them with multi-phase superconductor tunnel joints, hung off the sides like great beaks. The occular scoops were a bit of a faff, to be sure - we had to solder them onto the old deflector panels and they held well enough, you just had to be careful about knocking the Bickerdale Funnel out of position. But it was the anaesthetist's injection collar, flush to the point of seamlessness in the head restraints that brought the whole thing together aesthetically - it spoke to the machine's function. Then we set it all on a freight-bed with more manifolds on it than a Jehovan moon-hopper. It looked like a beast. It was, quite literally, a death-trap.''

arKhana, whose mind has drifted, almost misses the cue: ''It is,'' he blurts, ''presumably still Anathema?'' Does that sentence even make sense?

''I suppose it works two ways,'' says Flick. ''On the one hand there is an undeniable leaning toward death, a tendency to suicide which absolutely is Anathema. On the other there is a desire to supplant death, to control it. You'd have to say that also is against the will of Godh but the Hierarchy were willing to overlook this because of where it might lead.''

''So your mother's in the clear?''

''Absolutely. I've looked into it. We could pursue our investigations - continue Dad's work with immunity.''

''But your mother won't?''

''She's nervous. She has The Pupator but she doesn't want to mess with it, just in case.''

''Just in case what?''

''In case I'm right. In case Dad is actually still in there, still retrievable.''

''She doesn't want him back?''

''She thinks I might do him in for good this time. We already messed it up once.''

''Do you think he might have... evidence?''

''Of angels? I'm sure of it.''

Flick and arKhana let silence expand into the room. This is a bold claim. A big moment.

''If only she could find it in her heart to trust me again. To forgive me. I'd work on it night and day. I could bring him back to her! And return the angels to our people.''

That's it. That's the deal.

''That's it. That's my confession,'' says Flick. ''I killed my father.''

She knows this is what her mother wants to hear her say. She's always refused to say it until now.

There is a short spell of silence, then: ''That takes you to seven hundred thousand Likes,'' the Davy-bird says, in what can only be described as an awestruck, metallic stage-whisper.

''But the numbers don't mean anything,'' says Flick, pointedly. It's too late for that.'' She leaves that in the air then says: ''I have to pee.''

''Seven-twenty,'' says the Davy.

Flick takes arKhana's hand in hers as she rises and looks him in the eye. He nods, almost imperceptibly but just enough for the camera to catch such an intimate gesture.

Her phone buzzes in her pocket. Vinst, no doubt. She's going to have to work fast.