Zeke watched as Tucker went inside, then raised his head, closed his eyes and puffed out the breath he felt he'd been holding onto since Brigg's office. He was used to containing his emotions at work, but now work was encroaching on his personal life and he felt impotent.

"Damn!" He said, hitting the steering wheel with the palm of his hand and pulled off. As he drove, every set of traffic lights seemed to conspire against him, turning red and slowing his progress. A mile from home, a black saloon car pulled out in front of him, causing him to break sharply and swerve to avoid hitting it in the rear. His front left wheel hit the curb and the jolt shook more than just his person. As the black car continued, oblivious to the near miss, Zeke slammed the gear lever into first and floored the car. The torque of the engine pushed him back into the chair and the engine noise increased to a whine before he changed gear. Very soon he was up behind the car. Checking the road ahead was clear of oncoming traffic, he pulled out, accelerated past the car and then slammed on the brakes. This time it was the turn of the black car's driver to avoid a collision and the car came to a stop mere millimetres away.

"Hey, you bloody idiot," shouted a short man in a tuxedo, with a receding hair and a puce-coloured face. "You nearly caused an accident. Damn drunk-drivers!" he said as he approached Zeke's window. The man looked in at Zeke, who sat staring out of the windscreen. "Hey, I'm talking to you." To further his point, he tapped on the side window several times. Zeke turned to face the man and the look in his eyes, caused the man to take several steps back.

Zeke opened the door and silently climbed out. Now both men stood a few feet apart with Zeke towering over the man, who seemed to be shrinking by the second.

"Now, you could have..., you need to drive more, c..., "his temporary rage and bravado long gone, it was now obvious the man was desperate to return to his car and forget the whole event had ever happened.

Zeke looked at the man, took several steps forward and without any warning, punched him in the middle of his face. Blood erupted from the man's nose as he fell backwards, landing in a heap, out cold. Zeke wiped his scarlet knuckles on his trouser leg, ignoring the stinging, got back in the car and drove off, not once looking back.

Zeke turned the car onto the ramp and down into the underground car park. He pulled into one of his parking spaces, got out and walked over to the stairwell. He pressed the button to summon the lift.

"Good evening, Mr Matheson."

Zeke turned to see Mrs Harrison-Pugh. His grey-haired neighbour looked up at him through her half-moon spectacles which balanced on the end of her pinched nose. Cradled in the crook of her right arm was a small, ratty-looking dog, that he often heard yapping away in the middle of the night, breaking his hard-won sleep.

Zeke nodded politely and turned back to see what floor the lift was on.

"Mr Matheson, will you be coming to the residents meeting this month?"

Zeke rolled his eyes, clenched his fists and replied. "Probably not."

"Are you aware that you haven't attended a single meeting this year, Mr Matheson?"

"Yes, I've been incredibly busy this year."

The lift was currently on floor six, having stopped at floors seven, eight and nine. Never had it taken so long for the lift to arrive. Zeke wondered if the old woman had orchestrated the whole thing, just to get the time to bend his ear.

"Well, you should know that it is within the terms and conditions of your lease that you attend at least two meetings a year. This next meeting is very important. We shall be discussing the suitability of our current service staff. Many of our residents are feeling increasingly concerned that the standard of staff has dropped considerably. Did you know that our new gardener has an SPR of sixty-two! Sixty-two, Mr Matheson, totally unacceptable, do you not think? You mark my words, Mr Matheson, one minute he'll be hacking into the garden, the next he will be hacking into one of us with his axe, just you wait."

Zeke looked at the woman, starting down at her crocodile skin court shoes and moving up over her lilac- coloured, wool suit. His eyes fixed on the dog and it yapped back at him. The woman held up the dog, brought it to her face, cooed at it and then kissed it on the nose. The dog responded by giving her lips a big lick. The sight made Zeke's stomach heave.

The woman continued her rant, but Zeke focused on the spoilt dog, blocking out the noise to a dull whine. The dog, which he'd never seen actually walk, gobbled down a small snack the woman had taken out of her bag. The dog was so spoilt, that every day, a chef from a local finest restaurant arrived with a cool box, full of tasty meals for the mutt. In fact he had once signed for the delivery of food which had smelt so good he had to stop himself from taking a bite. He couldn't believe it when she had taken the box off him at her door and proceeded to call her dog to dinner. The food was even presented in a silver bowl. He realised right then that the dog exemplified everything that was wrong in their society, where this ugly animal received better treatment than their hardworking gardener, who was the sole earner for his large family. Whilst not an animal fan, he was normally against animal cruelty, but right at that moment he felt like picking up the dog and launching it under the descending lift, whenever it decided to turn up.

"Are you going to do something about this gardener, Mr Matheson?" Her rancid voice finally broke through into his consciousness.

"No," he replied, his tone harsh, "quite frankly there are some residents in this building who I would happily see despatched with an axe. In fact I might suggest he starts with that rodent you are holding right there." He pointed at the dog, which seemed to sense the threat in Zeke's words and looked too terrified to yap back.

The woman gasped and wobbled on her two-inch heels, covering the dogs ears with her left hand.

"Goodnight, Mrs Harrison-Pugh, I think I will take the stairs, the air is a little noxious down here."

Her mouth gaped open and shut like a fish caught on a line. The small amount of her skin that hadn't been surgically altered wrinkled into a frown.

Zeke left through a set of doors, leaving the old woman gasping for air.

Upon entering his apartment, he went straight to his bedroom, threw on a pair of jeans, a dark sweater and placed his holster over his shoulder. In a routine rehearsed many times, he took a holdall from his closet and moved swiftly around his apartment packing. In addition to several pairs of underwear, a wash bag and Emily's photo, he also packed a beige envelope, containing a few documents, some legal, most of them forged. From inside a cereal box in a kitchen cupboard, he removed a large bundle of money, secured by a red plastic band, a little grey box with a small stubby antennae and a pencil- sized silver object. Finally, he placed his revolver into his holster and put a couple of extra boxes of ammunition in the holdall. At the door, Zeke took one last look around his apartment, turned off the light and walked quickly down the four flights of stairs, leaving his Council- issued mobile phone on the counter in the kitchen.

Zeke checked that the old woman had left before entering the lift area. Having pressed the button to summon the lift, he dragged over a small refuse bin. The lift arrived quickly this time and as the doors opened, he positioned the refuse bin across the opening. After a few seconds the doors tried to close, but sensing the bin, they opened again and then repeated the process over. Zeke then entered the underground car park and swept his eyes over the myriad of gleaming, expensive vehicles. Confident that he was alone, he walked over to his spot. Ignoring the government-issue car he'd parked up earlier, he opted, instead for his very own four-wheel drive jeep, parked in the next space.

The grey utility vehicle was fast and versatile, both on and off road. It wasn't an old car, but was one that wouldn't appear too much out of place for where he was going. More importantly, however it was supposedly free from tracking devices. He took the grey box and silver pen from his holdall. Zeke pressed a button on the box and waved it over the inside and outside of the car. The box remained silent, so he put it back in the holdall which he stowed in the boot of the car. Then with pen in hand, he kept to right hand side of garage and walked up to the rear of the single surveillance camera which monitored the comings and goings of every car, twenty-four hours a day. He clicked the end of the pen and then pointed it carefully at the back of the camera. A small red dot appeared, the pen clicked again, followed by an intense red beam of light. A hiss escaped from the camera aperture, followed by a hot, plastic smell. Satisfied, he returned back to his car, turned over the engine and sped out.

The roads were thankfully quiet and most of the traffic lights remained green. He chose his route carefully, travelling down roads he knew to have less surveillance, or surveillance less advanced in nature, using only simple number plate recognition software, which wouldn't pick up anything with the false plates he had attached earlier. There was no way he was going anywhere near the legal sector, for their cameras used advanced imaging software, which could map the contours of a person's face and then match said image against the Council's database, all within a matter of milliseconds.

He turned north just past the last 'perfect' neighbourhood and headed along the bypass. It still amazed him how the road had been built straight through a housing estate. The walls of the dilapidated houses were mere inches away from the asphalt surface. This was the main route out of town linking it to the other strategic centres around the country. Zeke wondered at how much noise the road would create at rush hour. The people who'd lived in the houses demolished to make way for the road were given no notice. The bulldozers arrived one day and it was up to the occupants to either vacate immediately or be crushed under a pile of rubble. Not a penny of compensation was offered and those that lived side-by-side the bypass, considered themselves lucky to have a house at all. Typical of the Flawed population, many of the evicted families now shared the remaining homes to help pay the rents of the houses left standing; rents, which had been wildly inflated to help pay for the new road.

Zeke took the next slip road off the bypass and drove into an even grottier suburb. After a few turns, he parked his car down an alley and progressed on foot, his holdall retrieved from the boot. Several minutes later, he approached the café. The lights out front were off in accordance with the limit on business hours, imposed in the recent crack- down. Zeke looked at his watch, pressed the illuminate button and saw he had just over an hour to do business before he had to be on the road again before the curfew commenced. It was at this point Zeke realised that he hadn't even noticed it start to get dark. He walked past the café and took the next passage way on his right. At the second gate, he pushed it open and went into a yard; empty cooking oil drums littered the floor, the smell of decaying food matter was ripe. He side stepped a dead mouse and approached a door. He checked behind him a final time before knocking five times on the door, then a pause, followed by five further knocks.

The door opened to reveal a young woman, the light coming from the room behind so bright he couldn't quite make out her face. The tell-tale curl of her hair gave away her identity.

"Hi, Melody, Is your Dad in?"

"Maybe," came her guarded reply. She scanned the yard behind him.

"You needn't worry, I've come alone. I need a favour from your Dad."

"What makes you think he wants to do you a favour?" she retorted.

"He will, when he hears what Briggs has planned later this week."

The young woman, whom Zeke could now see, since he'd now adjusted to the light, paused looking at him straight in the eyes.

"S 'pose you'd better come in then," she said and moved backwards away from the door frame.

Zeke entered the rear lobby-come- storeroom, filled with assorted canned goods and packets.

"This way." She said and walked off through a door, covered by a beaded fly curtain. Zeke closed the door behind him and followed, parting the curtain with both hands. The narrow corridor led to a staircase which Zeke climbed, the wooden steps groaning under his weight. At the top of the stairs, they entered the living quarters above the café, which had been sectioned into two abodes by a wall and two doors. Taking the left hand door, they entered a musty apartment, which smelt of cooking fat and stale coffee.

"Dad's in there," she said pointing to a room, where an old radio set, played a jazz tune that Zeke knew and disliked immensely. Zeke considered knocking, but a voice welcomed him in.

"Come in Zeke, we don't stand on ceremony here."

Zeke entered and found the male occupant sat in an armchair, reading a newspaper. Not a 'Flawed' publication, but one from the wealthiest sector of the town.

"Did you know, Zeke that Hobson's has a sale on right now? Buy one coupe, get the second half price. I'll think we'll take four, don't ya think?" He laughed, but the tone of his laughter, suggested that he didn't find his joke even remotely funny.

"Well, you know what they say over there, there's no point being rich, if you don't show it."

"Indeed they do, Zeke."

"Come, tell me why you have risked this journey to see me tonight."

Zeke looked at the man, who had recently lost so much. Zeke had known him on and off for years, a stand-up citizen, many would have said. Even taking account of his covert activities within the opposition, Zeke had always found him good natured and reliable. They had shared a common view point, but recently since that fateful night and subsequent loss, it was as if his heart had calcified and his head warped almost to the point of madness. Zeke was never surprised by the effect grief could have on a person. Some rose above it, transformed for the better, others succumbed to it, forever broken. This man was an example of the latter.

"I need your help." Zeke said quietly.

"Oh, so you need my help. I kind of remember you telling me my help wasn't needed and that you and whoever you're working with had it all under control. How are your plans going, Zeke? You're sure you wouldn't like to fill me in on them?"

"No, I'm sorry I can't. A process has kind of started, but we are a long way from anywhere right now. In fact, I'm not sure whether anything anyone does will be enough."

"So what is this favour then?"

"I need some documents created quickly. In fact I need them tomorrow."

"What is it you need?

"Two identity books, two passports and access to a safe house should it be needed."

"Tomorrow, you say. That's gonna cost you."

"I realise that. I have the money; I can give it to you now if that will help facilitate things."

"So why the hurry, Zeke? Normally you give us at least a couple of days' notice for such requests. How is the lovely Cecily these days? "

Zeke chose not to answer anything about Cecily. He took a deep breath before continuing. He didn't want to share anything with this man, but how else would he get the documents so soon. He was after all, the best forger in the area. His documents looked so authentic, that when held up to close scrutiny against a legitimate document, the chances were they would think the fake original and the original a fake. Zeke had to know that these documents were the very best, that they would be as safe as could possibly be.

"Briggs is making a big announcement later this week."

"Ok," the man replied. "What is it this time, higher taxes, increased powers?"

Zeke faltered. He knew that his next sentence would be incendiary, the ramifications unimaginable, but he could see no other way. He knew he was about to make a deal with the devil, one that could blow up everything they had been working towards, but he had no choice.

"Come on, man, spit it out!"

"Later this week, Briggs is going to announce that the Flawed threshold is to be increased to eighty-five."

The man before him froze, except for the blinking of his eyes. It was like his brain was frantically analysing the information whilst his body went on stand-by.

After a few moments, the man stood up and began marching from one side of the room to the other. His inner dialogue was almost visible to read.

"Zeke, let me get this straight. Briggs, you say, is simply going to demote a significant chunk of the population. How many people are we talking about here?

"Across the country, approximately sixty thousand people."

"Why on earth would he want to do that?"

"Why does Briggs say or do anything- because he can."

"That girl has something to do with this doesn't she?"

"Yes and no. I think he's using Hannah..."

"Don't utter that girl's name under this roof, "he spat.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to upset you."

The man sat down and picked up an old picture frame that had been face down on the side table. He stroked at the water-stained image and a tear rolled down his cheek.

"Just after it happened, many told me that time would be a great healer. They lied."

"I'm sorry, I can't begin to understand the pain you are both going through, but Ha..., the girl is merely a pawn in all of this."

The man shook his head violently and then sat back down. "Thank you for the information, Zeke. So onto your request, who do you want the documents for?"

Zeke took another deep breath. "My daughter Emily and my ex, Liz."

The man looked up from the picture again in surprise. "I didn't know you had a daughter, Zeke. Can I ask why you want them to disappear, so soon? I have my standards, Zeke. I won't go helping just any 'perfect'. "

Zeke sighed and rubbed at his temple. "Unfortunately, it appears my daughter is no longer good enough and I won't have her subjected to whatever Briggs is about to do."

"I don't get you, Zeke. What do you mean she isn't good enough?"

"Emily is an eighty-four," Zeke replied.