A man in his early twenties, dressed in dirty jeans and a T-Shirt with the logo 'THE GEEK SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH' optimistically emblazoned on it, stood across the room, a nervous look of enquiry on his face.

"What?" Laura desperately tried to maintain a poker face as the emotions ran rampant through her.

"Can I help you? This is a restricted area. How did you get in?"

Laura jerked a thumb over her shoulder.

"Why is this empty?" she said. Attack was the best defence, and it had worked before.

"Sorry?"

"Here." Laura turned and rapped on the glass panel. "Why is this empty?"

The technician shrugged. "It just is. Look, sorry, but who are you?"

"Listener Robinson." She flashed her own card. "You got the email?"

"Email?"

"Yes. You are in I.T. aren't you? Do you have ID?"

"Um, yeah, sure." He waved the card hanging on a lanyard round his neck. "Teddy Dupont. What email?"

"That would be Edward Dupont?" Laura tried to look as though she were memorising the name for a future blistering email. "The email about the Intelligence Collation team. Last week," she added as Dupont looked at her with a mixture of confusion and panic. "You do read your emails, the ones that don't come from dating web sites, I mean."

"That's not me. I mean, I don't - I didn't get the email."

Laura sighed. "The Intelligence Collation team was formed, well, never mind why. The point is, we need a dedicated server. This gap, it's not being used? It's not earmarked for anything?"

"No. I mean, I don't think so. Not as far as I know, anyway."

"Who would know?"

"Bert. I mean Albert Rose. He's the systems manager."

"Is he here?"

"No. Well, not at this time of night. He works days."

Laura looked at her watch as if to query why this time of night wasn't considered days.

"Should I phone him? At home, I mean," asked Dupont, eager to spread the blame.

Laura sighed and shook her head.

"No, never mind. I'll catch him during the day when he is here. What was your name again?"

"Edward Dupont," he said, misery written all over his face.

"Okay. Your job tonight, Edward, is to find out where the hell my email got to, okay?"

"Um, email isn't my - I'm OS and networks." He looked up at Laura's face. "But yeah, okay, I'll get on to it."

Laura nodded, then strode past him towards the door. She held her head high and back straight all the way to the elevator. She wondered what Dupont would be doing now. Bitching about Listeners and their holier-than-thou attitudes with his geek friends, probably. Let him. By the time they established her unit was bogus she would be gone. The nightmare would have all but ended and she would be free.

She tried to keep an air of aloof determination as she strode out of the building and past the security guard at the gate. He pointedly ignored her as she swiped Allen's card to leave the enclosure. Good. She dropped the card on the floor in the grass by the fence. If Allen had already noticed the loss of his card he might just possibly believe it fell out of his wallet when he left. Anyway, it might buy her a little more time. All she needed was a few more minutes. It was so close.

She forced herself to walk along the footpath by the perimeter fence. When she rounded the corner she could see the east gate into the retreat. She was sick with fear and elation. She wanted to run, the compulsion almost making her stumble, but she willed herself to walk at a normal pace. Just a few minutes, that was all. Into the retreat, grab her bag and walk back out. Christmas would meet her outside the campus, and that would be the end of it all. She screwed up the fingerprint strip and dropped it into a drain.

She walked through the gate, nodding a greeting to the guard. That's right, she was just an ordinary innocent Listener on the run, nothing to be suspicious of. The retreat was deserted as she made her way through the housing blocks and neat gardens. Christmas would drop her off somewhere, and then she would hide. Grab a room in some anonymous motel and hibernate until Christmas appeared in front of the Neilson Committee. That had to be the end of it. Then she could resume her life.

As what, though? Would she still be able to be a Listener after the truth was exposed? Well, of course, on one level she would always be a Listener. You couldn't just make yourself deaf to people's minds. But what sort of world would it be afterwards?

Could it be any worse than this, being sought by the police, the Guild and God knew who else?

There was her apartment. She gave in to the urge and ran the last few yards. She fumbled the latch and fell in, slamming the door closed behind her. She switched on the lights.

"Hello dear," said Babs Jones, looking up from an armchair. "You know, we really didn't expect to find you here, of all places. We were so worried when you left the car. I'm a little hurt you didn't get in touch when you arrived, though." She gave Laura a mock stern expression.

Laura froze, desperately trying to think of what to do now. Her mind betrayed her. After everything that she'd done, everything she had gone through, to be caught at the very last turned her brain to jelly.

"Are you all right?" asked Babs. "You look a little pale. Come on, have a seat here. I'll make us a nice cup of coffee and we can have a little chat."

"Tea," said Laura automatically.

"Tea then. Shall I be mother?" She stood and crossed to the kitchen area. Laura waited until she had her back turned, then whirled round and flung open the door.

"Hi," said Peter Lee, a hand on each door jamb, smiling coolly. "Not going anywhere, surely. Not when you've just got here." He stopped leaning on the frame and grasped one of Laura's elbows firmly, guiding her back into the apartment.

"Isn't this cosy?" said Babs from the kitchen area. "Now we can all have a nice chat about this whole sorry affair."