Angus is late. Keiran waits in the corner of the Prince Albert, a diminishing pint of Kronenbourg on the table before him, increasingly annoyed, trying to ignore the noise and the smoke of a London pub at ten PM. Angus is thirty minutes late by the time the small, fine-featured Scotsman finally enters the pub from Coldharbour Lane and weaves through the crowd towards Keiran. With his colourful tattoos, and the gold strands woven into his dreadlocks, Angus stands out vividly even in the sea of spectacular humanity that is Brixton.

"I remember you used to be punctual," Keiran says sourly, as Angus sits.

"Did I? Really? Must have been all those drugs." Angus smiles. "I apologize. Usual Tube problems. Why are we here?"

Keiran says, "I'm giving up."

"Giving up what?"

"Giving up your project. I quit. Find someone else to do it. Sorry."

Angus blinks. "What prompted this?"

Keiran shrugs and sips from his Kronenbourg. "I just have too many other things going on to keep working on this too. Sorry. I shouldn't have agreed to try to do you a favour in the first place."

After a moment, Angus says, "Did you at least send Jaya's passport to your friend?"

Keiran nods. "They should already be back in Goa by now."

Angus studies Keiran silently for a moment.

"I'm sorry," Keiran says. "I just don't have the time. I've made zero progress anyways. Two weeks and I'm still nowhere. I'm probably too rusty to help you in a timely manner."

"I don’t understand. Last I knew you, you would have lived for this. You would have been positively bubbling with excitement. You would have been up hacking all night, every night."

"Last you knew me was four years ago," Keiran says. "When I was probably off my head on drugs all night, every night. Things are different now. I'm sorry. Of course I'd like to help you out. I just don't have time to waste on things like your project."

"As simple as that. You just don't have time to waste."

"As simple as that."

"Well," Angus says. "Of course I'd hate to waste your time. I know it's just enormously valuable." His voice is thick with sarcasm. "Thirty pounds an hour, no? Is that what they pay you to keep the virtual cogs of capitalism running smooth? Is that how much you sell yourself for?"

"Angus. There's no point arguing. My decision is made. You asked me for a favour, I took a hack at it, I didn't get anywhere, and now I'm done. End of story."

Angus studies him. Then he says, "Do you remember the car park?"

Keiran twitches. After a moment he says, "Vividly."

"You remember your last words to me then? Of course you do, mind like a black hole, nothing escapes. Refresh my memory. What were they, exactly?"

After a moment, Keiran says, "The exact words were 'I owe you my life.'"

Angus nods and says nothing.

"Angus, for Christ's sake. I know what I said. But you can't just waltz back four years later and demand I throw my life away on one of your pointless gestures."

"I'm not asking you to break the Bank of England. Just to do a little research."

"In blatant violation of the law. No. I've already taken too big a risk for this. I have a life now. I have too much to lose."

"A life?" Angus asks. "It is to weep. A man with what is widely described as the most gifted technical mind ever to come out of the UK, a man who once believed in a better world, reduced to working at an investment bank. How exciting. How inspirational. Come on, LoTek –"

"Don't call me that. I've given up all that bullshit. And I can't believe you haven't. Fucking grow up already. You're over thirty, man. Rebellion isn't sexy any more. You're not seriously still an anarchist, are you?"

Angus says, quietly, "I still believe in a better world."

Keiran, suddenly uncomfortable, retreats into cynicism. "Well. So do I. A better world for me."

"Come on. Even if I believed you were that selfish. Posh birds, expense accounts, your own flat in Clapham Common? That's the extent of your ambition? That's your dream world?"

"Closest I'm likely to get in the real world."

"You should fucking own the real world," Angus says, a little anger seeping into his voice. "People speak of you in whispers."

"I'm flattered. Which gets me nowhere. Here's another real-world shocker; the opinions of anarchists, crusties, and cipherpunks count for very little. What does count is that I don't have a degree, and if I tell the truth about that massive gap in my CV, I go straight to prison. Most gifted technical mind? How nice of you to say. The truth is I'm lucky to be where I am. Remember LoTek's Law."

"Ah yes. Always be invisible. Corollary: I succeed to the extent that I do not exist. What good is all your access if you never fucking do anything with it? Tell me something, mate. How can you not have woken up every single morning since you took this bullshit City job feeling like you're slowly pissing your life away? "

Keiran pauses. The dreadlocked Scotsman's sharp instinct for the weak spot has not deserted him.

"Come on, Keiran," Angus says. "You're not an ordinary human being. You've been trying that on for, what, three years now? You must be about fucking bursting by now. Stop trying to make yourself a zombie. It's no good to anyone. You should be making a difference, and right now you barely exist. If you died tonight, if you walked out of this pub and in front of a bus, what difference would it make?"

"Enough," Keiran says. "Save your breath. You are not going to recruit me to your oh-so-noble cause."

"Maybe not. But you owe me nonetheless. And I'm calling in that debt."

"Maybe it's too late."

Angus shrugs. "I remember you were an honourable man, once. Maybe that's changed too."

Keiran looks at him for a long time.

"What are you saying exactly?" he asks. "When it's done, if I can do it, then we're all square, the debt is done, I owe you nothing? Is that the proposed agreement?"

"That's the proposed agreement," Angus says.

"And what if I can't? I wasn't lying, before. I have been trying. And I'm nowhere."

"What the good people tell me is that if you can't, no one can."

Keiran inclines his head. "Might be some truth to that."

They look at each other. Eventually Keiran raises his pint glass to Angus, as if in salute, drains it, and sighs.

"I pay my debts," he says. "Always have, always will."

Angus nods.

"All right. I'll find a way in. I'll give you all Kishkinda's secrets."

Angus smiles. "Of course you will, mate. Never doubted you for a minute."

** *

Much later that same night, Keiran sits in his flat, stares dully at his laptop, and wonders if he inadvertently told Angus the truth when he claimed he was too rusty to be of use. Breaking into Kishkinda's corporate network should be straightforward. They're a mining company, not a technology concern. Information security should be an afterthought, their network replete with unpatched weaknesses and vulnerable computers. And there are plenty of possible entry points: Kishkinda is a large enough corporate entity that their network spans offices in Europe and North America as well as the mine itself. But despite truly applying himself to the problem for the first time, Keiran has failed to carve out so much as a toehold on any of their machines.

Again he refreshes the network map he has generated that shows all of Kishkinda's gateway machines, those which connect their corporate network to the wider Internet. Again he feels like a rock climber staring at a wall of sheer steel. Every one of these machines is tightly firewalled and runs no unnecessary software. Those programs they do run have been religiously patched with security updates, some as recently as this week. And much of the traffic he has been able to sniff going to and from Kishkinda, via intermediary machines owned by others that he has been able to hack, is protected by military-grade encryption.

"Who are these bastards?" he mutters to himself. He would expect this level of security from an intelligence agency, or an Internet security firm, not a midlevel mining concern. He wonders exactly why Angus is targeting Kishkinda, and who exactly Jayalitha is, and why she is important. Then he wonders why Danielle hasn't emailed him a confirmation that Jayalitha's passport delivery is complete. She was supposed to be back in Goa by now. But then she is in India, world leader in excessive bureaucracy and incomprehensible delays. Keiran decides to give her another few days before writing and asking her for an update. Then he returns to his search for some kind of chink in Kishkinda's impregnable steel wall.