Amy sat just knowing Salvador Dali should go off and die. She was searing and the new ice pack donated by a nurse hadn't done her any good. She stopped counting the tiles from the edge of the examination bed. She couldn't see them clearly anyway. It didn't matter now if she used her shirt to wipe her face, the mascara had long since washed off and she did wipe her face then with a sleeve. It was pointless and soon she could barely see through tears again. She'd believed herself when she'd told them all 'I'm alright, you can leave me here now, really' with a smile. She really had. She'd pushed down her doubts with a wave. 'Really, April, come on. I'll be fine, I mean it. Look, I've got ice. What's not to love?' But now it hurt so much that they'd believed her, and that they'd left her to wait downstairs.

It wasn't fair to be brave all the time. She could do it if she had to. But not right now. Right now she didn't give a damn. Let them chalk this up to being ill, Amy, or tired, or whatever. Doesn't matter in the end what the nurses think about you crying, you're not going to see them again. She had a pulsing headache to add to the heat now and tried to stop her mind from spinning and the room from tilting. Propping up half her face up with ice didn't help.

Wait. She looked up from her spinning bed to a green pseudo-leather chair and forgot about the ice, the doctor who was planning to run some more advanced tests when he got back, and everything else from back then. This was room 413. What? She stumbled over to the chair and her hanging satchel. There were no burn marks on it. Nothing. She felt for the bandages. Holy shit, she could lift her shoulder.

"Amy Packard for the goddamn win!" She smashed the bag of ice onto the floor and almost collapsed doing it. Cubes shattered to the four corners of the room like her melancholy from six-odd hours ago. She'd already lived that bullshit once, and it sucked. She remembered this moment. This was the last moment she'd had the time to feel bad that way before Ichor, before the keys, back when this was just a weird day.

"Triumphant over near death, screwed-up purple worlds and time itself. Hell yeah." She stretched her arms out in victory with kittens in one hand and pain-free movement in the other. The room span empty. It wasn't just the heat. Her headache was extreme, and that hadn't been there last time. Screw it, the victory pose was worth the pain. One minute she was with Otter in the land of eternal sunsets, the next she was already here. She put her arms out to steady herself against a wall and back to the chair. There wasn't anything else she'd brought. Just her bag. Okay. She remembered the heat got better for a while last time after this bit, she supposed right after Ichor was made, then had got steadily worse until the three of them showed up. Then she'd been given the whole Ichor spiel for about fifteen while Scott worked out what he'd thought was happening. Twenty minutes total. Maybe twenty-five before Marilyn Monroe, keys, all of that. That's all the head start they had, it seemed. The pseudo-leather chair was comforting, but she forced herself out of the door, then forced a smile and a confident walk down the hospital corridor and waited in agony for the lift clutching at the buttons. Stand up straight. People are watching.

"Hey. Going down? No? No worries, I'll catch the next one," she said behind a weak grin to a janitor in the lift. She mashed the buttons some more. Her prayers were answered and she was practically bent double alone all the way down to the lobby. Foggy elevator mirrors stared back at her the whole way. She leaned her head against the cool glass. Damn this was rough. Not quite future plane bathroom rough, but getting there. Thankfully she spotted her friends sitting by a TV in the lobby. Looks like April and Scott were having their heated discussion. Matt was on the phone with someone. Actually, no, he wasn't.

"A customer complaint. About yourself. For shutting off my 80's jam," said Matt incredulously. An overheating cross-armed shadow fell across the screen. He heard the distinct slam of a kitten satchel hitting the floor as he was violently hugged. His muffled outcry was buried within plumes of hair and sounded like he said 'what the hell'. The figure let him go just as he went from thinking he didn't want to be hugged to realizing he did.

"Amy? What's with the hugs? Not that I mind but-"

"Give me the phone please, Matt." She held out her hand. "Give me the phone. Please. Hand it over."

"What? Aims, what's going on?" he asked.

"Just shut up and hand i-" she faltered under an assault from behind mid-sentence.

"What are you doing out here?" asked a voice throwing down a newspaper and yanking at her sleeve. "What did the doctors say?"

"One moment, Apes. Later." Amy tore off her grip and turned back to face him.

"Have you seen the news?" asked Matt "It's the corner-shop we passed."

"Fuck it," whispered Amy and ripped out Matt's headphones in the process when she grabbed Ichor.

"Ow, what the hell are you doing? Wait up, what do you kno-"

Amy strolled out between the rows of Accident and Emergency towards the exit. She couldn't help but wince. "Ichor? Are you there?" This sucked, she wanted to curl up with some ice.

The words 'user unrecognized, operator invalid' printed themselves in reply.

"Funny that. I recognize you." Huge sliding hospital doors opened as she typed Matt's password onto the lock screen. He never changed it. The novelty twenty-first century operating system installed in parallel to Ichor overrode the A.I's attempts to shut her out. In the reflection of the sliding exit doors she saw Matt picking up a fallen satchel.

The loading screen gave way. "Stop downloading everything. Disconnect yourself from the internet, Bluetooth, everything," she said.

Words of protest she ignored scrawled themselves across the phone.

"I'll break you. I will shatter you right here, on this pavement. I promise you that." She held the off switch.

'Okay, okay, I need to save th-' the phone text stopped, displayed a 'please wait' symbol. Amy made good on the threat and only flickered when the phone made a Pavlovian smack screen down and caseless on the concrete. It scraped a few feet away while she stood outside the Chelsea and Westminster hospital in the blazing sun. There wasn't a chair anywhere. She settled for a pillar and sunk down into the shade – just for a few seconds, just until the heat and pain died down again.

They approached her slowly. One behind a headline, another creeping wordless to pick up his phone. The third didn't know what to do. He hovered around the door entrance and kept triggering the motion sensor. One of them dropped her bag gently by the pillar.

"Amy, what the hell's wrong? What're you doing out here?" asked the one with the cute shoes. "What did the doctors tell you? Do they know what it is?" No, the doctors wouldn't know what was wrong with her, Apes. They would barely show up at all and, even when they did, then it still wouldn't matter. She had to put together the elements of a plan here. There'd been six hours to think about what to do and she had some good words for Matt to say. Step one was to get rid of Ichor if need be.

"I mean, to be honest, Matt deserved that anyway, right?" said April. "And I'm not judging you. I have to put up with all that shit just for eating avocados," she continued. "Besides, it didn't break, right Matt?"

Matt shook his head in response.

"No, M and I don't discriminate with avocados. We tease you for all the breakfast vegetables equally," said Scott. "And rightly so."

"Hey. Aims, say something." Shall I get a nurse?" April had both hands on her shoulders. Amy relented, shrugged and looked up.

"No, no nurse. I've just got to think things through." She pointed in Matt's direction - "don't turn it on."

"What happened?" asked April.

"So, imagine if all the weirdness, my heat-pocalypse and the newsagent stuff on TV you just saw, if all of it was caused by the same thing, okay? And, part of that weirdness happens because of Matt's phone, which is," she paused because Christ this sounded bad "an intelligent twenty-sixth century A.I."

"Okay," said April, who looked like someone who had replied with 'okay' far too slowly for it to be okay. April was fully ready to go right back inside and call the two nurses from the front desk. Amy had already spotted her friend looking back and forth nervously. No, she thought. It would take too long explaining it like this to them. Amy motioned to her friend to help her up. Scott took the other shoulder. With some effort she managed to stop the world from spinning too hard. The pillar helped.

"Matt, give me the phone please," said Amy. It was handed over with an implicit request not throw it on the ground again. There wasn't a scratch. The screen was fine. Six centuries of innovation in touch-screen technology are a hell of a thing. She flipped, and showed them the 'States of Eyropea'. "Weird, right? It's mis-spelled." She booted up the poor, semi-sentient A.I again. "And you've spoken to Ichor already Matt, haven't you?"

"Is that its name?" asked Matt. Amy nodded.

"You know about this?" asked Scott. Matt told them what he knew, which wasn't much. Yeah, it's an A.I. At least it said so, and it's been speaking to me. No, hell no I'm not joking. They went quiet when Amy turned up the speakers and unlocked it.

"I need to ask it what it's downloaded."

Even sentient A.Is don't like being turned off three times. "Oh, hello. You're all together now."

She asked it what it downloaded.

"Mainly languages, and general parts. I need to interact with my operators, you know, and I need to update my database to try and understand this world, like always. It's the standard thing to do when a phone is blank, or so I'm told." The phone text scrawled and spoke slowly.

"Well I get languages but what are general parts?" asked Amy.

"It's a sample of everything and anything in the internet. That's why it's general. Otherwise how can I be useful to you? What am I missing here?"

"Okay." Amy tried not to lose her patience and smash the screen against her pillar. She succeeded. "I need to know you didn't break into anything password-protected, or illegal, Ichor. I know you're going to, don't deny it."

This assumed wrongly the factory-setting A.I knew what twenty-first century 'protected' and 'illegal' even meant before it had analysed such ideas. It rifled through the idioms and law it had managed to scrape out of various texts previously downloaded. It took its best guess.

"A truthful and simplistic answer regarding passworded databases? Is that what you want?" Ichor got silence in response. "I don't think so, no, I haven't opened those files, or those databases. Not yet. But I haven't seem anything here that's white-listed or marked as 'do not read'. Everything I've seen is tagged by my algorithms as legacy code so that shouldn't matter, right?" The A.I hesitated. To be honest it was weird to find nothing but legacy code structures in its searches, and all of that legacy code came from talking to antiquated server structures. States of Eyropean pre-programmed instructions and reality appeared at odds. There should have just been more of everything, and a central paternal computer telling it what to do.

"My function is to work with you. Part of that needs me to tailor my algorithms, optimize your life based around current trends and events", it continued. "This is what I'm supposed to do. Download as much data as possible to get a sample of current affairs, then analyse the full load. I did the same thing only for languages earlier to ease communication."

"But why? Why break into password-protected sites?" chimed in Matt.

"There are none. I've told you that."

"Yes," said Amy "there are. Legacy code. What's legacy for you is reality for us."

Ichor thought for a while. "That doesn't make sense."

"So then, is there any way an American and a Psychopath could be tracing you?" she asked.

"Who?" asked Ichor.

"I don't know. Secret services, or police," Amy was getting lightheaded. "Two guys - a bald English dude and this tall American in a grey suit."

"Wait, what?" Amy ignored April's tug on one shoulder.

"I wouldn't know unless I finish gathering and analysing general data. That's how I calibrate. That's how it works. As I said, I gather it all first. Then I analyse it all, and if there's data about something like that, I'd find it then." said the A.I. Life so far had been short, unkind and confusing for the twenty-sixth century software. And all four of them stared at it.

"See. Not a normal day. Not close," said Scott.

Amy concentrated. Right. Just because Ichor hadn't downloaded seemingly much beyond Wikipedia didn't mean it wasn't going to get flagged for the sheer amount of data consumed via who knows what download methods. On top of that was the incident at South Kensington which was somehow related, so she guessed they were already suspects? Schofield had said something like that. You're not in it for one, but for two today. At least she had an idea of what the dark suits were looking for.

"Amy, what do you mean, a psychopath? What psychopath? The terrorists in South Kensington?" Her avocado-eating friend was persistent.

"There are, or were, two guys after us looking for this phone. Ichor thought they were police, or secret service. But now, with luck, they won't know we have it, okay? Still, Ichor or no Ichor we need to leave."

Aims got a soft, troubled 'okay' in response. "Matt, did it really talk to you too?" asked April quietly. Matt mumbled a 'mhm'.

"April, please, we need to get going. We need get as far away from the hospital as we can. I have a plan, alright?" The trio relented. No, April, they're not going to be able to help me here at the hospital. How do I know? I'll tell you when we're not about to be arrested. Just move, and leave your phones off. Even that might not help. Scott took one arm to steady her down the street back towards South Kensington. They crossed a junction or two. Amy explained the first part to them as they walked.

"Here?" asked Scott.

"Sure." Amy was shaking partly from the fever but mostly not. They crossed the road haphazardly towards a bookshop. "April, you go. Get the biggest copy you can find. Think one that could obliterate insects."

April did as she was asked even if she wasn't sure why Aims was upset. Aims was upset, and that was all she needed to know right now. April gave a thumbs up and delved inside the Fulham road bookshop to look for the tome in question. It was one Oxford thesaurus, concise edition, filled to the brim with the kind of phrases only fit for crosswords. She passed the bookshelves. Novels, no. Travel books, no. Languages. It was stacked on the shelf near the easy-to-learn French. She reached for it, the largest hardback. It looked as serious as deforestation from all angles. April paid and prayed she'd never carry the non-concise edition.

"Got it. Now will you tell me why?" she handed over the tome to Amy outside, who took off the dust jacket, crumpled it and handed the book back shaky with a ballpoint pen and a highlighter from the depths of her satchel.

"Apes, take these and start highlighting any words in there that have two meanings when you say them out loud. Like, um, homonyms, right?"

"Excuse me?" asked April.

"Please, just do. Any words with two meanings. They're better if they're obvious, but might still work if they're not. You know, like 'hot' has two meanings. Attractive and," she said pointing to herself 'literal' ".

"Oh."

It wouldn't be long now and they needed to get off this street. The keys had happened when she'd felt at her absolute worst last time, and the heat was steadily progressing now. "Come on. We'll take the side streets."

They passed a cross-roads so far devoid of fatal car accidents, and turned off down a pedestrianized alley. "Matt?" she said

"Yeah."

"I need to ask something weird. When I say so, I need you to think about how awesomely cool I am, alright?"

"How awesomely cool you are."

"Exactly, in those words, or similar. The cool bit's important, the rest not so much" said Amy.

Scott frowned, turned slightly to face the girl who knew but wouldn't tell them. She wouldn't have to tell him however insane it was. Scott guessed the first time. He guessed now.

"But why-" started Matt.

"Don't argue, M, just do it," said Scott. "Amy's right. It's fucked up, it's weird. Do it."

***

Raynes imagined it plenty of times. Somewhere on a mission in China, on a plane maybe, perhaps shot by accident. He'd hear these thoughts through the static amidst simmering insomnia during that utter night grey, where three-am felt like it was an hour lacking more than just simple light. A few thoughts like that happened most nights and couldn't be dismissed with a turn of the duvet. Transatlantic flights back and forth ruin a body clock no matter what you do, he told himself. He'd lie still, and listen to 'what if', and think of the deaths play out against his will with each version of the events more elaborate than the last. The reality was less spectacular but no less surreal. Both he and Schofield regarded the scene of decimation from a safe distance at the other side of a Fulham Road intersection. There was the distinct whiff of burning for which Schofield produced a handkerchief to breathe through. A hybrid car's lithium ion batteries are a hell of a combustible.

"Jesus, it went straight through to the back wall. It's practically unrecognisable," said the Englishman, muffled. One side of the café was perfectly fine, the other half of the frontage was a shambles of spider-webbed glass and, beyond it, an obscured mess of unknown metal smouldering in crumpled heaps. They crossed the street. Nearby, a group gathered around someone fallen. Baristas clutched phones while others seemed to just look straight through them. No-one stopped Schofield from reaching for the empty doorframe. Raynes covered his face with his jacket sleeve against the smoke and stepped over the threshold of the ruined café.

"Do the number plates check out?" mumbled Raynes through soft curse words into wool. He found himself avoiding bent plastic and puddles of what he hoped was coffee while Schofield just pointed at a cracked bumper a few feet along, and gave him the weakest of smiles. Smoke from the hybrid's back seats seemed to surge and sizzle as they approached it with the promise that it was only just getting started. They cleared their way through the smoke and moved chairs and tables in their wake. It wasn't thick enough to stop Raynes from noticing slumped figures, or the dark shapes and splatters from as far away as the door. Beyond the hybrid the un-ruined counter boasted eager descriptions of the house specials and looked fine. He'd rather focus on that. 'Offer ends soon', love-hearts, and motivational coffee jokes about the power of java gleamed through the ashen dust. Raynes passed closer into the smoke and squinted through caustic air at two dead men in a ruined car, and a third crushed beneath. There was enough muddied blood fogging the windscreen for him to be sure, and the strange textures underfoot he forced himself to push through and throw deep down into his mind where they didn't exist except for in that clear three-am moonlight. The smell of soured metal got through when he leaned closer to the passenger seat and tried the door and while it was a smell that wasn't unfamiliar, it was one that was old, reminded him of bad times past and was re-buried back into his mind like the rest.

"Paul, get me my CD's while you're there, okay?" asked a rasping voice forcing open the boot with a broken table leg. He didn't say anything back and went through the window to reach and mindlessly open a slick glove box. The guy's face was turned away, arms splayed with his suit seeping soaked from grey to great patches stained black. He'd look methodically in a moment, and strip him of resources. Raynes stacked the CDs, found his dead-eyed place and turned the body towards him. He studied it, then searched for a second box of subsonic ammunition, bloodied mints and another ceramic Starlite pistol. Reaching over, he discovered an empty revolver, and a cigar. He tossed the guns and kept the ammo while the rear of the car jerked violently forward with blows from a destroyed table. Schofield forced the trunk to squeal its way open and recoiled at the rain of indicator lights onto the floor. There a grunt of triumph, followed by more grunting and a muffled shout of "I've bloody got it." Raynes watched his partner pry out a case from the boot. Disassembled sniper-rifle parts were dumped out of the hardened plastic shell and discarded on the floor. They had one already, and two were just too many. The guitar case itself ended up somewhere halfway across the café. Schofield waved magazines of .50 BMG ammunition triumphantly, set them aside and reached for two sets of as yet un-key-damaged Kevlar. He motioned to Raynes and they regrouped outside. The civilians stared, but no-one was stopping them as they locked shut their guitar case with an extra twenty rounds of ammo, then walked out of the café with a carrier bag from a certain hardware store brimming with CDs and two fresh vests. The servicemen paced their way to the Chelsea and Westminster hospital.

"Shame about that coffee place. I'd have tried it. It had good prices," said the Englishman turning back to the carnage. He elbowed Raynes "you could say we discovered it late."

"I don't remember the truck. There wasn't one," replied Raynes eventually, "I'm sure there wasn't. I'd have noticed for sure."

"We missed a taxi or two on our way, but that's normal. Speed up, Paul, or the back-up team will get there before we do."

"Don't pretend that wasn't fucked up."

"There'll be more, Raynes. We can't stop now. This is too far to stop." The duo passed a bookstore, and continued. "Packard and the rest try to escape at eleven forty-three?" He glanced at his watch that stubbornly maintained it was half-past one, which it was somewhere in another world on the other side of an Escape key. Raynes nodded, eleven forty-three sounded right.

"The glovebox was closed," said Raynes. "Last time I opened it when we were driving down here. I flicked through your CDs. It was different already." In truth Raynes had taken the split-second decision moments ago to drop one or two of the worst CDs 'accidentally' back at the café.

"Of course it's different. We're dead back there, Raynes. We were going to be dead when we saw it through the loop back in the Brompton oratory. You've managed to get blood all over these goddamn discs. Just move forward to get answers, don't look back. Just enjoy it, it's a beautiful day." Schofield asked for his cigar, snapped it in half and lit it.

Raynes declined the other half, and ate one of the metallic-tasting mints from his pocket instead, then scrutinized details of the street for inconsistencies, and was troubled he found none. "There's still at least a twenty minute head-start on Navari, more if the bodies burn in the car, and we've got a lot of ammo," he said eventually.

"I don't think we'd need to go that far." Even Schofield furrowed a little at the line of thought. "We don't need to start in-fighting."

"She might. They're a hundred-percent going to be armed even if they're not supposed to be. They will find out what just happened there within twenty minutes," replied Raynes. "It's your car Schofield. There's bodies in it that look like us. And we're here in the city with the most dense surveillance on the planet. They'll take an interest."

Schofield let out a hiss of cigar smoke in front of the monolith of the hospital, threw the smouldering end down and stamped it out. "Well hopefully then we won't need that long. If in doubt, we can always just use that key again and see what happens."

They passed through the double doors of the hospital, breezed past reception and punched the elevator for the fourth floor. Good, the elevators hadn't been deactivated without Schofield's permission, and there was no sign of anyone clearing out the fourth floor of its staff. They stormed down the corridor towards room 413. Raynes had his hand on the safety of a ceramic handgun as Schofield knocked, peered in and found it empty. They hadn't even had time to put on the new Kevlar vests. The Englishman swore when a cheap clock on the wall confirmed they were just about early. Their suspects should be here.

The American crossed into the room and had to steady himself on the doorframe as he slipped and went down on one knee. His palm came away wet.

"You alright?" asked Schofield

"I've taken the wrong shoes for this. Look. Wet."

"We can stop and get you a better pair, but I doubt anywhere in Chelsea sells trainers my friend."

Translucent skipping stones melted quietly here and there from a destroyed bag of ice. Schofield took the liberty of lying on the examination bed, and made for a fat Tutankhamun.

"My arse is wet, and this bed's too narrow, but it'll do for a rest," came the regal voice from the bed.

"They've been gone a while. We can't trust what happened last time, Schofield. Too much is different."

"We've missed them by quite a bit, you're right." Tutankhamun's arm moved from being crossed together in the Ankh position to point toward the floor, then the chair where a mint-dot green hospital gown lay. Next to it was a mop, bucket, and attempt at a clean-up. "Unless they've been assigned a different room we're out of luck, Paul." Tutankhamun sat up.

"I checked the texts of the other version of me, and they were pretty much the same. They were just sent later than before, and the report on the data breach is missing."

Schofield groaned and resumed the horizontal position. "Nokia to me, please. We'll meet Mark out front and start canvassing the nearby area. How long will your CCTV take? Same as before?"

"Yeah, sure." Raynes brushed off water from his suit trousers. All traces of protective foam for the disassembled rifle had been gutted from the guitar case and was replaced by phones. He handed over the phone and it made him think of Lou Bega's Mambo No.5.'Ladies and gentlemen this is Nokia Number Three' echoed in his head. Schofield moved from Ankh position to put the phone to his ear and called Mark.

***

Matt tried arguing it over with Amy. He thought that situations this humiliating had died out for him. They harked back to early pre-history, maybe fourth or fifth grade, long before the mass purges of people from his life in sixth form where life had settled down. Good times? Doubtful. Maybe good times if he picked his battles over drinks with old mates. People who didn't remember their first meeting with one another told old stories, nice ones, and Matt wondered how much of the reminiscing was true. As always laughing with old school enemies was half nostalgia and good times, half betrayal of a young kid having a tough life. Memory was skewed, sure, but the rules for life at primary education level he reckoned he still knew. In his mind those rules should have died along with the purge in sixth form, at a time when former enemies stopped picking on him, and the crap from the past years turned suddenly into just banter. Guys who'd doled it out too hard became friends, and life became better when the mob mentality folded. But now what? Throw out the new textbook of rules? Realize the old one didn't leave so quietly? Scott, sure, he could imagine asking for strange requests, but not Amy. And now she held that look on her face that was straight out of fifth grade, a hatred for something he just couldn't understand.

"Listen to me, M. For fuck's sake just do what she says."

"Are you repeating it? Try to get into the rhythm. Look into my goddamn eyes and keep repeating it, okay? Out loud. Those exact words. Amy Packard is goddamn cool. I know it's weird, just do it."

"Amy Packard is goddamn cool," said Matt.

"Keep going. Again, louder this time. Chant it," said Amy throwing her arms out "come on keep going, like a tongue-twister. Again, and faster Matt."

He repeated.

"Okay, good, keep going. Think the words as you say it, concentrate," she said.

"So, when does it happen?" asked Scott.

"Not another word. He can't get any more clues. And I don't know." She turned to Matt "did I tell you to stop? Keep at it."

"Should I be chanting?" asked April. Matt gave her a glance, maybe someone would save him yet.

"Sure," said Amy, "we can all join in."

And so the four of them stood in an alleyway off Fulham road shaded by the brick walls and treetops. And something akin to the truth clicked for Matt, and the fifth grade 'rules to live by' he was so ashamed of fell back into the oblivion they deserved to be in. Scott outstretched his hands and took both of the A's. Mtt shrugged. They might as well do it right. Amy's words faltered close to a whisper. Her hand became slippery enough that Scott held her by the wrist. It progressed towards letting her lean on him, one arm around his shoulders.

"Don't stop, guys, keep going. Don't worry about her," said Scott. Amy nodded, looked to the flagstones that might as well have been lava and kept chanting. She was practically dead weight. And nothing much happened. Aims coughed, spluttered and tensed up against him. She gripped his shirt. I got you, Aims, just please don't let go and smack the pavement because I'm struggling as it is. I hope to hell you can handle both the heat and the cold.

"Okay, stop." Amy raised her head.

"Well?" asked Scott.

"We'll see. It's better each time after you pass the worst of the heat. It dies down, and gradually gets bad again as you get close to the next one. I'll know soon. Can you just let me down? I need to sit."

Matt didn't say anything. He looked out onto Fulham road and didn't really see it. The traffic was barely moving with half of the roads in South Kensington closed off. He dropped April's hand. The others laid Aims down against the wall gave her a bottle of water and let her rest with her kittens propped against her back.

"Dude, hey, y'alright?" Scott appeared before him in the shade of Fulham road. "M?" A hand slapped him on the shoulder

"Yeah. What just happened?"

Scott stared back. "I suspected it could be something to do with us." he said. In the background April was telling Aims to drink some water, and take it slow. More coughing.

"Hey Scott?" asked Matt.

"Mhm, ya."

"I'm going to sound like a piece of shit, but why's it me? Why? Why in the hell would it be me?"

"You're right, you do sound like a piece of shit," Scott said. "We don't know if what Amy thinks is right, is right. It might well be that whatever happened this morning works on double-meanings. It's your phone that suddenly went haywire. It's Aims who's suddenly feeling hot. It's happening around us."

"You should've told me-".

"I didn't know until now. We'll work it out. Stop worrying, don't be a prick, and give me a hug, deal?" Matt felt not much, but maybe a little better.

"Did you know before, or after Aims said to stop?" asked Scott.

"Before."

"Well, then, that's one less thing to worry about. You being aware of it might matter, or it might not." He looked to the girl leaning against a wall. "There's that, and we'll know whether you can cancel them out."

"Hey, you guys done brooding?" asked April.

"Yeah, yeah Apes. Don't forget you lost a bet. Something fucked up is going on after all. We're cursed. It's not random."

"No way do I owe you and don't call me-"

"Like hell you don't. I told you this wasn't normal. Now we have the proof, as Matt is my witness." Scott waved his hand up and down at his witness.

Amy got up with some help, slung her kitten satchel over a shoulder, blew her nose and tried her best to perk up.

"Come along, people," she said, "on to phase two, off we go." She walked backwards facing her followers and ushered them along towards Fulham road, even considered skipping, then reconsidered and thought it a bit ambitious. "Don't forget the thesaurus, Scott. Come on."

"You know that he knows now, Aims. Matthew here figured it out," said Scott.

"Oh, really? That helps. I still feel odd, like super-strange, but I don't feel it getting worse like before."

"How are you all taking this so calmly?" asked Matt.

"How are we supposed to take it, M?"

"This is fucked up. Do you know what this means? For, like, physics? For the wider world?"

"No," said Scott. "I don't. Don't you think we all realize how screwed this is? How mind-shakingly bullshit what we just did is? I know, but right now we've got to accept the weirdness and get moving, M." He turned to Amy. "Aims has a plan."

The heat was better, sort of. Part of her was feeling hot and cold simultaneously. She put on a brave face. "Look, I've had time to think about this and I'll take it as a compliment that you called me hot. Let's move on. We need to go."

"Fine," said Matt. As they rounded the corner to Fulham road he added, "Aims, do you know how it works then?"

"You tell me, Matt. I think it was April who was talking about the magazines near the corner shop, but did you say I was hot out loud?"

"No."

"So you just have to think it at a certain time, and the other one happens," she said. "Simple enough, no?"

Matt didn't say anything to that. A hug had helped, but he was far from well.

"Alright, well next on the list we find the best place to escape from an American and a Psychopath," said Amy.

"Oh yeah?" asked April.

"Oh yeah, my friends. We're going to Hyde park."

***

By the upper end of Fulham Road lies a series of entrenched boutiques which fall into two broad categories: 'Frenchism' and 'good luck selling that'. The burgundy flag-fronted Cornilleau and Foster's Antiques, where at six-thirty on a Monday morning you can watch the manager washing its floor-to-ceiling windows in his suit? Clear Frenchism, the name's a dead giveaway. Scott on the way back from the hospital much like on the way there stopped to peer beyond the reflective glare of its storefront and into the eyes of the antique shop's phantom stuffed lion. Yes, the stuffed lion was full-sized. Oh yes, it was definitely real. And hell yeah, it only cost POA pounds to buy. Next to Corny's lion you'd move on to the disgraceful kitsch of B.Yu.T interiors. Benjamin Yu maybe was the only one impressed by the bold gold lettering.

"Hey, come on. Stop staring. We gotta go," said Matt.

Scott couldn't leave quite yet. This piece of modern art before him was on a new level. You couldn't tell if it was nasty-looking like that purpose, or not, or if it really was meant to be bent and jagged like that. Twisted Rust, No.3, said the tag through the shop window. This one deserved its POA. And if you combined the art with the white leather porn-ready sofa stood behind it? Good god he was coming back for a photo. Alone he guessed each piece could fit a room without a thought. Put together Benjamin Yu's assistants had made the fine imports into something unholy. This was second category, easily. Scott reluctantly followed the group down the triple-width pavement and resigned himself to return later, maybe once all this was over. Next up on the list was the shield and sword-crested Montreau's Books (MSS and signed volumes available), and up against the street corner finally the wooden heart-and-bird motifs of Belle Émilie where no more than a handful of dresses might be sold weekly. Categorizing them kept his mind occupied. He pushed away the other thoughts, the ones that agreed with Matt about how screwed this was.

"Aims, how you holding up?" he asked.

"So so," she said, waving her hand. On one side, yeah, no more heat. On the other we're pursued by murderers who I watched shoot you, Scotty. Kinda mid-way at the moment. "It's patchy with the heat and the cold, a bit like a lava-lamp."

"Like one of those '80s plasma jive ones?" he asked. "My Dad loves those."

"Sure, jive and all. For a minute my hand is cold or warm, but if I notice then it disintegrates pretty quick and just leaves pins and needles. It'll do." She shrugged. She did feel better. She was at least able to walk without the pain of a stab wound and able to shrug. The heat was still all there, but the temperature equation creeped to the extremes on either side equally. It slowly got hotter, and more freezing. The two cancelled each-other out, but not completely.

"So Matt didn't screw it up. Glad you're feeling jive, Aims. Are you sure you're good?" Scott was momentarily distracted by a category two lighting specialist store.

"Yeah. It's hard to explain," she said. The four of them crossed at the intersection. Fulham road doesn't have many real pedestrian crossings. In some parts you just wing it. "I think I can feel the cold's been layered on if that makes sense? They don't just cancel, it's more like two parallel lava lamps moving in sync."

"Well, that sounds poetic," said Scott "just give me the word, and I'll have them commit you to a padded room."

"Uh-huh. And then I'd tell them your secrets once I'm there and then you'd join me. You'd go down with me, son," she said. "If I'm insane then we all are and you'll never see another piece of lycra again."

"You wouldn't."

"No more lyyycrraaaa forever, Scotty."

Scott turned. "M, she's a monster. She's using drunk me against sober me. Help."

"Mhm," said Matt, and left it at that.

The route back was faster even with the detour around the closed-off areas of South Kensington. Mademoiselle Packard forged a path up the criss-crossed cobbles of Exhibition Road where, for once, you could tell where the sidewalk ended and the road began. The pure weight of marooned exotic cars made that clear. Aims had her shades on, smudged and badly-wiped, but ready for war and better than nothing. The next part of Project Dali was beginning. Her first phase had been a success. The park phase she'd tentatively called 'pyrotechnic giraffe', if nothing else because the surrealism felt bitterly right.

It seemed Exhibition road's combo attack of engines, stranded schoolchildren and tourists were loud enough to shut Scott up for good. He walked beside her, and kept pace, but no more. Matt and April were no better. At the end of Exhibition road was the entrance to the park. They'd make it before the heat and the cold reached its peak, she thought, she wasn't quite at the off-balance level that she'd expected. A mathematician, chemist, biologist and a physicist entered the gates of Hyde Park. Full house, one of each suit, one of each science degree, thought Amy. Two queens, a king and a joker wasn't any hand she knew of.

"When's the next one? When does Matt do his weirdness, Amy?" asked April. "We're worried back here."

"It'll be a few minutes, Apes, a few minutes more," she replied. "Matt, you told me that the first time this happened was on the bridge, right?"

"Did I? I told April at breakfast but-"

"Yeah, you did, you guys mentioned it later on," It wasn't quite lying. Was she supposed to say 'oh, oops, um, you didn't mention it this time around, but back in the hospital you accidentally created a whole bunch of strangeness, including odd key-based time travel. Ah, and also I got stabbed, and it was metal as hell?' Nah. She'd need more time to explain that. "Shall we head to the bridge?" she asked.

"Maybe it'll make a difference. I don't know," said Matt "there was all this steam, and a lot of weird visions. It might still be happening."

They did go to the bridge but it wouldn't make a difference. The damage had been done earlier that morning and, screwed up physics or not, the damage wouldn't be undone so easily. Making their way from the hospital none noticed that Ichor's circuit boards had spontaneously fried somewhere along the journey at about the time that a coffee shop demolition took place, and in its desperation it had attempted to vibrate and display some last words. The law wouldn't allow for two of the same sentient being at once, human or machine.