Raj shook his head. 'This isn't a game, John. You could die. You quite probably wiU die."

The mirrored wall dissolved into its impossibly real pictures. This time they were much more personal. John-an older John-lay beside a hedgerow. His face was slack, eyes unblinking in the thin gray mist of rain. One hand lay on his stomach, a blue bulge of intestine showing around the fingers.

John sat stripped to the waist in a metal chair, waist and limbs and neck held by padded clamps; another device of levers and screws held his mouth open. A single bulb shone down from the ceiling. A Fourth-Bureau specialist dressed in a shiny bib apron stepped up to him with a curved tool in his hands.

"Shame, Hosten, shame," he said. "You have neglected your teeth. Still, I think this nerve is still sensitive."

The curved shape of stainless steel probed and then thrust. The body in the chair convulsed and screamed a fine mist of blood into the cellar's dark air.

Another John stood in the dock of a courtroom. The Republic's flag stood on the wall behind the panel of judges. They whispered together, and then one of them raised his head:

"John Hosten, this court finds you guilty as charged of treason and espionage. You will be taken from this place to the National Prison, and there hung by the neck until dead. May God have mercy on your soul."

The visions died. John touched his tongue to his lips. "I'm not afraid to die," he whispered. Then aloud: "I'm not afraid, and I know my duty. I'll do what you ask, no matter how long ft takes, no matter what the risks."

"Good lad," Raj said quietly, and gripped his shoulder. "You and your brother will both do your best."

Jeffrey Fair looked at the mirrored sphere. "Seems like I'm going to be in action a lot," he said.

He tried to sound calm, but the quaver was in his voice again. Those scenes of himself dying-gut-shot, burned, drowned, the Chosen executioners with whips made of steel-hook chains-they were more real than anything he'd ever seen. He could feel it…