'Stay out of trouble, maybe you'll get it.' There was an attempt at humour floating in her voice, rather like a corpse in a swimming pool, and she must have realised how it sounded because the sentence was bitten off. An awkwardness was growing between us, something that had started as soon as they re-sleeved me in Ryker's body for the real-time committee hearings. During the inquiry we'd been kept too busy to see much of each other and when the proceedings finally closed and we all went home, the pattern had endured. There'd been a few gusty if only superficially satisfying couplings, but even these had stopped once it became clear that Ryker would be cleared and released. Whatever shared warmth we'd been gathered in to was out of control now, unsafe, like the flames from a smashed storm lantern, and trying to hold onto it was only getting us both painfully scorched.