He wondered how many people in all the mental hospitals in the country - or the world, come to that - were really fallen Warriors who had either cracked up from the strain of trying to live in this hell-hole, or simply made the wrong choice and thought that the test was just seeing through the whole thing and then having the courage to stand out and make that challenge.

Well, he wasn't going to end up like one of those poor bastards. He would see it through, he would find the Way Out. And he might not even stop at simply escaping; he might just smash up the whole foul contraption of their testing and imprisonment apparatus - this "life" - while he was about it.

He was starting to feel faint. He had about another ten paces to go to the next parked car, within the wheelbase of which he would be safe from the laser-axles of the passing traffic.

All the traffic, every single vehicle which passed him was equipped with lasers in its axles; they could register a hit on his legs unless he was above them, or shielded by a wall, or between the wheels of a parked car, or holding his breath. Of course, he knew that the lasers didn't hurt; you couldn't see them and they did no harm by themselves, but he knew that they were another of the ways that they - the Tormentors - took points off him. He knew all this from dreams, and from having worked it out. As a child he had done the same thing, as a game; something to make life more interesting, give it some purpose... then he had begun to have dreams about it, to come to realise that it was real, that he had had an insight when he started to play the game.