Tom reads about twenty-five, but carries a few more actual years. He's got the blond dreads and washed-out clothes of the downtown radical, along with the requisite number of piercings and tattoos. Terry is older looking, say fifty or so. His style is more old school: ponytail, beard, John Lennon glasses, Earth Day T-shirt and Birkenstocks; that kind of thing. The third is Lydia Miles. Call her twenty, short dark hair, leather pants, white tank top, bodybuilder muscles, and an upside-down pink triangle tattooed on her shoulder. Just another ragtag band of East Village radical-socialist-anarchist-revolutionaries hanging out and plotting the overthrow of The Man. Of course this band of revolutionaries also drinks blood.

Lydia stands there watching while Tom goes at Terry and Terry pulls a passive-aggressive mellow hippie thing in response. Guess who's the topic of discussion?

— I'm telling you he's working for the fucking Coalition. Why else would he be there?

— Well, Tom, that may be. But to me, the real question here, and I think Lydia may agree with me, is what were you doing there? I was under the belief that we had agreed.

— Fuck your agreement. You agreed, I didn't agree to shit. This creep is hip-deep in the Coalition. He's their ratfink spy down here and now they have him, they intentionally have him causing trouble on our territory. He's a saboteur, he's a fucking saboteur and we should execute him right now.

Terry pushes his slipping glasses back up his nose.

— Well I, for one, certainly think that would be more than extreme. Even, for the sake of argument, even if it came to the point where we might execute him, I think our first step should be to question him.