<P>He didn't want to have anything to do with Maggie Chow, but now, as he stepped through the automatic glass doors of the building, onto the plush carpeting of the interior, and as the air-conditioned air crawled around his skin, he didn't have much of a choice.
<P>
<P>The man behind the counter, dressed stiffly in a dark blue suit and tie, displayed his fake smile for one of many times in his day, addressing Jock plainly, and initially in Chinese. Jock stared, rather stupidly, having only a small grip on the language.
<P>
<P>"I'd like to speak to Miss Chow," Jock said, in English.
<P>
<P>The man's smile immediately collapsed beneath a frown. He made a simple, hesitant gesture towards the elevator behind him, then returned to whatever business he had been performing beforehand.
<P>
<P>She's probably watching me right now, Jock thought. She probably listened to what I just said. He would have been more surprised if she hadn't. 
<P>
<P><JC>--- --- --- ---
<P>
<P>Bishop sat at the well-kept bar in the Luminous Path compound, propped upon a stool, leaning with his elbows upon the reflective countertop... Lost, as he usually was, amongst the activity of his thoughts, disassembling things in his mind until they became great nothings, then piling them back together again...
<P>
<P>Dominic tried to remember when any sort of routine left his life. He stopped sleeping on a schedule long before any of the changes had begun. He ate when hunger hit him. He drank when needed. He lived in whatever quarters were available and urinated in whatever spot was convienient.
<P>
<P>His life, not different from his mind, had collapsed to chaos long before he ever actually acknowledged it. Not to say that the NSF had impacted his life negatively; On the contrary. He was lost before them... And then when they came to him, or he came to them, he belonged to something, and he achieved a reason. Fighting the shadowed enemy. Outcast into the dark corners of the world.