When the lights go off Calvin Duggai lies still and gapes straight up into the darkness while he absorbs the night through his ears.

He hears the slap of the bolt and the male nurse’s footsteps pocking away down the corridor; he hears the squeak of springs, the rustle of bedclothes along the ward. He hears Joley’s fear-of-darkness whimpering and someone’s catarrhal snort arid the empty bitter cough of an inmate’s laughter.

Duggai’s stomach churns. A tight ache spans his skull. Air conditioning pushes the rancid air around but does not leach it of the sick smells of fear-sweat and incontinence and incipient nausea.

Hate spins through him-just now it is unfocused, directionless. Its only restraint is purpose: he must will chaos away. He pushes the pain far back out of his awareness because everything needs to be precise now and he has no leeway for the carelessness that rage could cause.

He reviews the steps, isolating each move in his mind, visualizing, seeking weaknesses-here a point of risk, there a need for swiftness and silence. The rain came suddenly this evening: until then he wasn’t quite ready; the pumping of blood through his temples has been very fast during the past few hours and now he must double his caution because the impatience of weariness may betray him otherwise. If anything comes awry then the entire scheme will collapse because they won’t merely put him back in here, they’ll take him back to the other place with its armed male nurses and its concrete walls from which there is no escape.

When he judges them to be all asleep Duggai lifts his legs off the bed and sits up until his bare feet touch the cold floor. The air conditioning rumbles and he listens beyond it, judging the sounds of men’s breathing, turning his head slowly to catch every angle against the flats of his eardrums. There must be no alarm.