The guards in Conway's building passed their time waiting for the dawn and the end of their shift by discussing one of their favourite topics.

'Why does your wife let you eat that?'

'Lets me? She loves it! Did you know it used to be a delicacy?'

His co-worker tapped his fork on the hard shell of the animal. 'No one ever believed this was a delicacy, trust me.'

'Suit yourself. I don't know why no one eats it any more.'

'I'll you why, it's because we have real food now. We don't have to eat some ugly scum-drinking, bottom-feeding crustaceans any more. Didn't they used to feed that stuff to prisoners two hundred years ago?'

'They used to wheel this little tank up to your table and let you pick the one you wanted.'

'The prisoners had waiter service?'

'I'm talking about restaurants.'

'This was pre-corporate rule?'

'Not every planet is Parador, but yeah. And so what?'

'People paid for that willingly?'

'I told you, it's a delicacy.'

'It sounds disgusting.'

'You should be a little more open minded. Try it sometime.'

'Thank you, no. I'll stick to mealworms fried in butter. You know, real food.'

'Suit yourself.' He was about to return to his food when he noticed something on the monitors. 'Something's going on up on six. You wanna take a look? I got some messy work ahead of me.'

His companion sucked up a mouthful of mealworms as he wheeled his chair across the room. He put down the chopsticks and dismissed the alert with a wave of his hand. Then he flicked through the options to pull up the access logs.

'It's only that intern of Conway's.'

'Working late? That don't sound like him.'

'Ha! Working don't sound like him.'

They shared a laugh at their joke, then suddenly became serious.

'I'd better check the garage feeds.'

'It'd be quicker if Conway had more cameras in his part of the building,' grumbled the other.

'Got it. It's okay, false alarm. That's his cruiser pulling in.' He relaxed back into his seat and reached for his chopsticks. His companion, still looking at the screen, suddenly grabbed his wrist.

'That might be his cruiser, but isn't the intern kid white?'

'Whiter than that, sure.'

'How long has he been up there?'

'Uh, twelve minutes?'

'Call Conway's security team. Now!'

Mealworms scattered over the security desk as they scrambled to alert someone paid enough to deal with a security breach in the office of Alastair Conway. In less than fifteen seconds the call was made and acknowledged. The real security was on their way.

'Why did this have to happen on our watch?' he complained as he flicked through other video feeds to make sure they hadn't missed anything. 'This is not good, not good at all. You know what Conway's like.'

He shivered at the very thought. 'It's not like it's our fault if his intern can't look after his access card or his cruiser.'

'Oh, you think that's gonna make a difference? We'll be looking for new jobs in the morning, just wait.' The desk phone rang, breaking his flow.

'They're calling back already?' He answered the call. 'Security.'

'You placed a call for Conway security a few moments ago,' said a voice.

'That's right, you on your way?'

'This is captain Typhon. My men intercepted the call. We are en route to assist.'

'Captain, we already—'

'Typhon out.'

The guard stared at the dead phone in his hand, then turned a raised eyebrow to his companion. 'What do we do now?'

'Nothing we can do. We did the part we're paid for. We followed protocol. Let the security teams sort it out.'

'But Typhon...'

'You've heard of him? Well I've met him.'

'And?'

'He's an ugly, scum-drinking, bottom-feeding animal. When he walks through that door it's all going to hit the fan no matter what we do, so sit back, relax and try to enjoy your lobster.'

* * * * *

Jayce stopped pushing Ellie so he could run ahead to throw open the door at the end of the hall. He held out his hand to Ellie who looked back just in time to see Tila diving through the library door. In the hallway one kneeling agent opened fire at Tila's back while behind her a man wrestled with a painting.

'Come on!' urged Jayce. He pulled her through, kicked the door shut and locked it. He threw Tila's staff onto the bed and jumped on beside it. He looked as white as the sheets beneath him.

'You know, this is not the party I had in mind.'

'Don't just lay there, Jayce! What do we do?'

Jayce propped himself up on his elbows. 'I don't know,' he confessed.

Ellie crossed the room and peeked through the window. 'You said this happens all the time.'

'Not like this, believe me! They usually take a few names, scan some IDs and that's it. This is... something else. They're looking for something important.'

'They're looking for us.'

'Don't jump to conclusions, Ellie.' Jayce fought against the soft mattress which yielded too easily and stood up again. 'You don't know that.'

'You said this is unusual, something else. Well, we're something else. We're not supposed to be here.'

'But no one knows you're here. And why would someone want to find you anyway?'

'I don't know, do I? We're not important. We don't have anything or know anything. All we've done is ask questions.'

'Maybe you asked the wrong people. Conway, for example.'

Ellie paced the room. 'But he knows more than us already.'

'Then I guess he doesn't want you to find out anything else.'

She stopped by the window and peeked through the blinds again. 'There's a lot of agents out there.' Ellie's words tumbled out now, each statement spilling out faster than the last. 'What are we going to do? We need Tila. And we need to find Malachi. And we need to go home. And we need to never come back here.'

'Never?'

There was a knock at the door. It was loud and demanded answers. They froze.

Jayce whispered, 'Shhh. Hide.'