The first time Sly woke he thought he heard hypnotic music, Erik Satie’s ‘Gnossienne: No. 1’. He knew it should be ethereal, nostalgic, sad – but through it all he was in excruciating agony. Through the searing pain, and over the sound of the music and the blood pounding in the veins behind his clenched teeth, he thought he heard a voice.

  It said one word, over and over.

  Recalibrating... Recalibrating...

  After a moment the pain stopped and he fell limp, fading to black.

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  The second time Sly woke he was on his side being sick. He didn’t remember rolling over. His vision rolled like his grandfather’s broken television. There was no pain, no self, everything bad was happening to someone else. He wasn’t dead, but he didn’t know or care if that was a good thing. He had no expectations, wishes or desires. He was hardly there at all.

  The third time he woke he was again in anguish, and he groped for the Sig but it wasn’t there. He wasn’t sure what he needed the gun for. Perhaps to end the pain, to shoot the person torturing him.

  Or himself.

  Sly was very thirsty when next he woke, on the twenty-first of October.

  He was alive, and no longer in agony.