She goes to see the Captain, although she doesn't want to. He's got another job for her - why else would he want to see her?

The streets are dark and slightly slippery. A recent storm has blacked out most of the lights and left embankments of refuse in the gutters. She walks quickly with small steps, glancing nervously in shop windows, trying to pretend she is just another late-night shopper hurrying home. She really doesn't want to think about going to see him. Actually, she has to think about not going to see him in order to be able to see him at all. He is a formidable man.

She doesn't know his name. She laughs a short, bitter laugh as she thinks this. She doubts that anyone knows his name. Of course, someone must, but no-one she knows knows it, except for the Captain himself, and he isn't inclined to give away personal information. To her, to his colleagues, to her colleagues (whom she has never met but who she has been assured exist) he has always been the Captain. Whether or not he actually holds a military rank is unknown.

There has been an accident on the corner and traffic is built up for a block or two in each direction. Without waiting for the lights to change she scuttles between the idling cars, collecting an earful of abuse from a cyclist trying to cheat the queue.

The monolithic grey building looms above her, its lowest two floors erratically illuminated by the revolving yellow light atop a stalled garbage truck. There is one security guard on the door, and, although the foyer is brightly lit, she knows from experience that apart from the guard on the door and the Captain in his excruciatingly well-decorated office, the twenty-five storey building is completely empty. No cleaners, no conscientious executives, no brown-nosing clerks, just the Captain and the guard. It gives her the creeps.

The guard knows her. He nods and smiles like a manic jack-in-the-box as he opens the complex series of locks on the outer foyer door. She hurries in, not wanting to be caught up in small talk; wanting to get in and out as quickly as possible. Her loose, hard-soled espadrilles clack-clack on the burnished marble floor, and she wishes she'd worn sneakers.

Just for once, the lift is waiting, doors open, muzak blaring quietly from the hidden speakers in the ceiling. Usually she has to wait at least a minute for the lift. She looks into it suspiciously for a moment before stepping in. Some paranoid notion about spiders. She shakes her head, gritting her teeth against the "melody" of Julio Iglesias, and presses the button for the 24th floor.

The lift ascends almost 270 feet (she just can't get used to thinking in metres) in 13 seconds, but there is very little feeling of acceleration. This unnerves her, as always. When she steps out into the dimly-lit corridor she mutters, out of habit, a mantra her hippie ex-husband was fond of. Strange, she thinks, the things of his I hang on to when I couldn't wait to be rid of the man himself.

The carpet in the corridor is an offensive shade of green, apparently deliberately chosen (so said the Captain, so it must be true) by the psychologist attached to the personnel department, to discourage unauthorised personnel from wandering around the rather classified 24th floor. The walls and ceiling of the corridor are a filthy yellow colour, and are textured in such a way as to make her think of vomit. She shudders.

His office is at the farthest end of the corridor, so she walks past apparently endless store rooms, several tea rooms (one for each level of employees within the corporate hierarchy), and countless primitively-rendered paintings in green, purple and brown - often all three within the one frame. The decór looks like it was planned by a colour-blind anarchist, but it is only the psychologist being proven right. She thinks with sympathy of the people who have to work here during the day, every day. She wonders (yet again) how they cope with the ghastly "colours" all around them. She asked the Captain this once; he just smiled, steepled his hands and asked her if she wanted to join their ranks. No, she said, no. And he laughed.

The door to his office is wide open. Usually she has to knock, then wait. She knocks anyway, feeling foolish, blushing a little. No answer. She enters timidly, puts her bag on the shelf by the door and sits in the most uncomfortable chair in the room; a straight-backed unpadded wooden monstrosity which someone left in the car park one day and which took the Captain's fancy. She looks around at the co-ordinated decor, the pale blue walls, white ceiling, grey carpet with the black herringbone design, the sky blue curtains, the white Formica desk. Must be the only place on the 24th floor that doesn't make you nauseous, she thinks wryly. She cannot see the Captain, but she knows he is there, somewhere. She twists in the chair to look into the tall file cupboard, and there he is, grinning at her.

   "How did you know, Rebecca, where I would be?" He is dressed, as always, in a pale grey long-sleeved shirt, dark grey trousers, dark green socks, and scuffed black dress shoes. No tie, never a jacket. Sometimes she thinks he lives in his office. Sometimes she thinks he is quite mad. She tries to repress these thoughts while in the same room as him as he seems to be able to read her mind. Like now.

   "I've told you before, I'm not mad. If I am mad, then you are more so for coming to see me at all." His light tone of voice infuriates her, but she remains silent, and tries to smile at him. She's sure she looks at least as mad as him, but hopes otherwise.

   "I suppose you want to know what it is this time, right? Well, it's only a little job. It'll only take a couple of months. You can work from home, too, if you like. Actually, you'll have to. You'll have to move. Not far, just a suburb or two from where you are now. It's a facet of the Puzzle House - you remember, don't you? I was quite pleased with the work you did on that. Very good work. It doesn't matter that it took seven months. I thought seven months was very fast. I said so, to Rick. Did I tell you?"
   "No. You never tell me anything until you're ready. You never tell me anything I need to know when I need to know it."
   "But Rebecca, you hardly need to be told anything. That's why you're so involved with all the new work. You find things out for yourself, now, don't you."
   "The last time I asked you for information and you didn't give it to me I nearly got killed. I wouldn't be much good to you if I was dead!"

   "My dear, we wouldn't let you die. You should trust me a little more." To this she has no response, but crosseds her arms tightly against her chest and tries to steel herself for what he was about to tell her which she would have no choice but to do.

   "It's something we didn't think of, you see. Actually, it's something you thought of, but, of course, we don't listen to you, do we, Rebecca?"
   "What do you want me to say? 'I told you so'? Just tell me what it is and let me get out of here. I've got things of my own to be doing."
   "Dear, dear, dear. Impatient little bitch, aren't we. Well, don't worry about it. It's quite easy really. Like I said, it's a facet of the Puzzle House. Nothing you haven't done before. It's to do with the way the Syndrome moves around, to do with the people it follows, and the way it follows them."
   "Circuit building, you mean."
   "Yes! That's it! I know it seems demeaning, and I know there are a lot of others out there who would like to see you, er, shall we say, incapacitated, because you got the Puzzle House and they didn't, and you'll be lumped in with a whole mob of them for this job, and they are rather good at disabling protected circuits, but you know how you enjoy this work - when you let yourself enjoy it, that is."