Babbage’s eyes opened.

A wave of nausea rolled up and down his body, and he coughed and tried to sit up. His head hit a wooden lid and he lay back down quickly and concentrated on not throwing up. He was back, dragged back from somewhere. He blinked his eyes to make sure they were still working.

Eyes, that’s what he’d last seen. Her eyes. She’d taken him, pulled him down into the blackness but he’d been brought back.

“Feeling better sir?”

Warmth flooded him as he realised he was no longer alone.

“Adlai? Where have you been? You had me worried for a while there.”

“I’m not quite sure myself sir – I could see, but I was trapped, locked in somehow.”

“Yes. Well, I know how you feel.”

Babbage lifted his legs and met the same wooden board. He was boxed in. What had she done to him?

The visit to the captain, it had all been part of an elaborate fantasy constructed around him, a music fuelled vision to drop his guard and let her in to the deepest parts of his brain. Then she’d found what she wanted and left him for dead. Buried him here, to be forgotten.

But he’d woken up. One minute there had been nothing, the next he was back. It was as though something had sparked into his brain, powering it up again, getting the cylinders flying.

Something familiar.

He had another flash of memory, something Gretchen had dragged up. A lone figure at a bar, someone she was looking for. There was more though. She’d said it was his connection to the other side, his dreamer.

“Dreamer, sir?”

“I’m not too sure about that one myself Adlai. It’s something important though. Something we have to find.”

She’d found what she wanted and left him to the virus. Left him to be obliterated by that song, by that woman. He’d looked into her eyes yet somehow he was still here.

Trapped, but not for long.

Babbage reared his legs back and kicked out. Light streamed in as the wood shattered and broke away. He sat up and looked around at the microphones and speakers lining the walls. Gretchen was gone.

The bunker was just that now, a collection of lifeless cables and stands, the spark had left it.

“The ghost in the machine.”

“Sir?”

“Just something someone once told me. Come, help me make sure this place never hurts anyone again.”

Babbage ducked under the control table and started yanking out cables.

He was angry. Angry at himself for falling into her trap, but also angry that he didn’t know what he needed to. Investigation is the uncovering of the past, revealing facts obscured by time and circumstance. It was in his nature. His purpose was to look backwards, recall what had become lost. So why couldn’t he remember anything about himself?

A thick black power cable came free on the fourth attempt and he pulled it out and across the room.

Madigan had hinted something, about his pipe, said he had moved on from that character, more of a Holmes now than a Dupin. Were they talking about the same thing?

He looked across the room and memorised the path to the exit. Not too far, twenty paces at most. Easy.

The visions Gretchen had shown him, what she’d claimed was the past, it had been familiar too. He’d seen it before. Why couldn’t he remember?

Babbage grabbed a microphone stand and curled the power cable around it. A large speaker lined the wall just within reach. It would do nicely.

He had to find that figure in the bar. His ‘connection’. There was one place that could give him the answer. Besides, his report was overdue.

He reached back and drove the stand and cable deep into the heart of the speaker, which let out a metallic yelp before popping and sparking as all life in the compound shorted out.