For more than twenty years, Ray had been roaming those computer-generated mazes and getting as much from them as an adult as he had as a geeky teen. This was not, he would fiercely contend, because he had never grown up; he had, and could point to the wife, wean, job and mortgage to prove it. It was because the games had grown up with him. If he was still playing pixelated and antiquated teen-era fare such as Jet Set Willy or Skool Daze for hours on end, then yes, he'd be referring himself for therapy (the occasional late-night drunken resort to a ZX Spectrum emulator for nostalgia purposes didn't count), but gaming had turned into something much more. Between the virtual environments within the games and the social subculture surrounding them, it provided what often seemed like a whole other world. Sometimes it was a world Ray knew he was retreating to, but mostly it was a place that augmented the world he was already in, a place to visit in order to meet old and new friends and to have a good time. Not for nothing was his favourite newsgroup called games.pub.

'But don't these games make you violent?' he was unavoidably asked, by people who had never played; just 443.

like it was people who never watched horror movies who wanted Video nasties' banned back in the early Eighties. Ray regarded this as such a frank confession of the questioner's stupidity that he considered it futile to even respond. His favourite maps back in the early Quake days were The Abandoned Base (DM3) and The Cistern (DM5), because both contained the vastly entertaining combination of the Lightning Gun, the Pentagram of Protection and large quantities of H2O. The funniest and most satisfying trick in the game was to grab the LG and the invulnerability power-up, then hop into the drink and pull the trigger, instantly frying everyone else who happened to be in the water. Pretty soon players began to interpret the distinctive sound of the Pentagram as 'Everybody out of the pool', but now and again you still caught out a few newbies or someone who just couldn't get clear in time.

Doing this made Ray laugh, gave him a buzz and earned him lots of kills. It did not make him want to bring a three- bar fire along to the Pollokshaws Baths so that he could lob it in and frag the swimmers.

Horror movies made you a serial killer, porno vids made you a rapist and playing online games made you a psycho. And people said Ray was living in a simplistic fantasy world.

'But don't these games make you violent?'

In the past, if he had been forced to answer that question, he'd have pointed out that he hadn't committed an act of violence since he got into a fight at Primary school. If asked right then on Loch Fada, however, his answer would be: 'I fucking well hope so.'

Angelique cut the speedboat's engine and let it drift as they rounded a truncated spur and the dam came into view on the mountain above. They were both clad in wetsuits, 444.

diving masks around their necks, O2 tanks on the floor of the vessel next to the binoculars, torch, crowbar and two spearguns, these last being the only available weaponry. They weren't for hire, the receptionist had nervously stressed to Angelique as she handed them over; they belonged to one of the centre's instructors, who had brought them back from the Caribbean. Ray had found them very useful in the underwater areas of Sin, but not as effective as a rocket-launcher or a shotgun.

He had been scuba-diving once before, on holiday two years ago. Angelique assured him that it was just like riding a bike, but Ray was acutely aware that if you fell off a bike, you generally tended not to drown or develop hypoxia. The holiday being somewhere a lot warmer than the Highlands in September, it was the first time he'd ever worn a wetsuit. It was also the first time he'd worn a kevlar vest. Angelique had two in the boot of her car, placed there yesterday when she was supposed to be driving herself and a colleague to the farmhouse. Her encounter with the Sheriff of Calton Creek had led to a change in plan Ray was now seriously regretting, but not as much as he was regretting his own soul-searching trip to the frigging airport on Wednesday. But for that, he'd have known nothing about any of this until it made the TV news. And what would he have done to help then, he asked himself? Buy the charity record for the disaster appeal?

Angelique at least looked like she knew what she was doing, though she had no idea how reassuring it was for Ray to see that she had tied her hair back in a ponytail, making her look even more like the Athena player-model who kept coming to his rescue. Dressed head-to-toe in black rubber, and with that lithely petite build, she also resembled one of the black-ops assassins from Half-Life. That was 445.

reassuring too, as those sneaky wee besoms took a hell of a lot to put them down.

She lifted the binoculars and looked up at the dam, then handed them to Ray to see for himself just how depressingly correct his hypothesis had been. There was a gantry on the front of the buttress, about halfway up the walls, and on it he could see four men, split into pairs, each pair standing beside a bulky item of machinery from which clouds of dust were billowing.

'They're drilling,' he said.

'Looks like it,' Angelique agreed. 'A buttress wall like that would probably just deflect the blast if you put a bomb in front of it. If you really wanted to rupture it, you'd have to put your explosives deep into the concrete. Shield door is closed too.'

'You absolutely sure they couldnae be just givin' the walls a clean? Bit of sand blasting, maybe?'

Angelique reached for her mobile, giving Ray a wry and regretful smile.

Her conversation sounded like a rehash of what she and her boss must have discussed earlier, without so many ifs but plenty of buts. Evacuation, if it was going to happen, would have to be immediate, as they had no idea how close the terrorists were to finishing their preparations; but there was every likelihood this would mean everyone in Cromlarig drowned in a tailback rather than at home or at the Highland Games. Back-up, and lots of it, was on its way from every available source, but the clock was hard against them. They could get a helicopter full of highly trained soldiers there in forty-five minutes, but its approach would be visible for miles, especially from up on that mountain, negating any element of surprise and possibly precipitating the same response as an attempted 446.

evacuation. Alternatively, they could put down in the next glen, but that would at least double their road-journey time and give them less than an hour to do whatever they thought they could.

The alternative was nonetheless considered better than nothing (and certainly better than anything that brought the disaster forward), so the order was given and Angelique was assured that the assault team would be airborne within minutes. For the next couple of hours, however, it was still up to them.

'You got any experience of this sort of thing?' Angelique asked.

'What? Runnin' around in caverns and corridors, takin' on a team of headcases armed to the teeth? I'm a virtual expert.'

'A vir . . . Oh that's right. Games. Tomb Raider and all that stuff.'

Ray bit back a response. If Quake was the new Punk, Tomb Raider was the games world's Mariah Carey.

'You can't start again if you get killed,' Angelique helpfully reminded him.

'I'll try and bear that in mind.'

It was team deathmatch, Ray thought, Rocket Arena rules: no health packs, no spare armour, no respawns; if you die, you stay dead, first team to get wiped out is the loser.

The only way to get through this, the only way to avoid freezing up with mortal fear, would be to think of it as a game, and play it with all the skill, tactics, savvy and common sense he had learned to apply from his first ZX81 to his last Q3 league match. He had to use what he knew, because little as that was, in this context it was all he knew. The US military had famously used a modified version of 447.

Doom to train their Marines, so if even bad-ass soldiers could learn something from virtual fragging, surely so had Ray. He just wished he'd played a little more of the anti- terrorist mod Counterstrike.

'So what's the plan?' he asked. 'Sneak inside, kill all the bad guys with our mighty spearguns and then take in the caber-tossing down in Cromlarig?'

'You got the sneaking part right. But given the weapons and numbers imbalance, I think we have to make the most of the fact that they don't know we're here.'

'Sounds good to me,' Ray agreed. He thought of Thief, in which stealth was always advisable over combat. If you killed a bad guy, his mates would come running; they were bigger than you, had more weapons than you and there were more of them. Sneak in, stay quiet, stay hidden, stay alive.

Angelique picked up one of the Dubh Ardrain leaflets they had brought from the watersports centre, which very helpfully included some topological schematics of the facility to supplement Ray's own hazy memories. They were going in through the tailrace tunnel, that part was decided, but that part only.

'We can't win a stand-up fight with these guys,' said Angelique. 'It wouldnae just be suicide, it would be Cromlaricide. I think our best chance is to let them get on with it while we make for the dam, hopefully unseen, then ditch their explosives before they can detonate.'

'Do you know how to defuse a bomb?'

'I shouldn't need to. We're not lookin' at some sophisticated device for blowin' up a public building here. This is a demolition job. They'll wire the charges for detonation and pack them into the boreholes - all triggered via a remote, 'cause I cannae see anybody volunteerin' to stay up there an' push the plunger, can you?'

448.

'Not unless he's a hell of a surfer.'

'So if we can get up top, it would be a case of pullin' the rigged charges back out the holes and chuckin' them as far down the hill as we can throw. Then, when they press the button, the blasts'll take a big chunk out the hillside, but the dam itself should stay intact.'

'Won't they have somebody guardin' their handiwork?'

'I would expect so, but they're no' gaunny stay there right up until kick-off, are they? When Darcourt decides it's showtime, they'll pull back inside the mountain, where they'll be plannin' to wait out the big flood until it's time to leave on their speedboats. That gives us a window.'

'It also gives us a ringside seat. We'll have no way of knowin' how big this "window" is. These charges could go off while we're up there playin' frisbee with them.'

'Then we'd better be quick.'

Angelique popped her mobile and the Dubh Ardrain leaflet into a waterproof pouch at her waist, before clipping the torch to her belt, strapping on her oxygen tank and pulling her mask up over her eyes. She gave Ray a quick refresher briefing on the first principles of using scuba gear - breathe in, breathe out, repeat - then slung one of the spearguns around her shoulder and handed him the other. 'Don't forget the crowbar,' she said, before biting on the mouthpiece and flipping backwards out of the boat.

Ray watched the splash and the ripples, feeling his stomach tighten and his heart begin to accelerate. The talk, the hypothesising was over, and it was now time to literally take his life's biggest (and possibly final) plunge.

Stop it, he told himself. You're running this on the Real Life(tm) engine, and it's incompatible with your system spec.

He looked down, his view slightly refracted through the 449.

glass of a mask. On his chest he had undamaged armour. On his skin he had an environment suit supplemented by a full tank of O2. And he already had two weapons in his inventory: a speargun and a crowbar.

Game on.LOADING MAP: DUBH ARDRAIN POWER STATION [dubhl.bsp]

LOADING GAME MEDIA: INDUSTRIAL DRILLING RIGS.

LOADING GAME MEDIA: EXPLOSIVES.

LOADING POWER-UP: BULLETPROOF VEST.

LOADING POWER-UP: WETSUIT.

Angel_X[LGG] ENTERED THE GAME Lobey_Dosser[LGG] ENTERED THE GAME AWAITING SNAPSHOT ...It was the classic in-game infiltration technique: blast a hole in the grate guarding a submerged tunnel, then make your way into the enemy base silently and undetected, ready to take the bad guys by surprise. In this case, the grate was actually only a mesh to prevent salmon swimming into the tailrace, so the quieter appliance of a crowbar replaced blasting; and unlike most game scenarios, they were able to pull this off without having to evade the molestations of mutant sharks, or even mutant salmon.

The daylight ran out quickly as they swam up into the tunnel. While they could still see each other, Angelique gestured to Ray to follow her upwards to the ceiling, which they each kept a hand on as they proceeded blindly into the darkness. All Ray could hear was his own breathing, and all he could feel was the motion of the water in Angelique's wake, the only way of knowing she was still there in front.

450.

Suddenly, Ray's hand was in air rather than liquid as it brushed the concrete, and another few yards brought his head above too. The gentle slope had reached Loch Fada's surface level, and would take them above the waterline from here on in. A light appeared up ahead, Angelique switching on her torch now that its beam wouldn't be completely swallowed.

Once the water was only waist-deep, they stopped to ditch the crowbar, masks and tanks, submerging them so as not to leave an obvious trace of their entry. Theoretically, they could find them again if they waded back down to the same depth, but to Ray it seemed to underline the oneway aspect of their mission. If they got out of here at all, it wasn't likely to be the same way they came in, and combat lay in the way of all other exits.

The tailrace extended ultimately to the turbines beneath the main cavern, and beyond those were the aqueducts leading to the dam. All of those areas would be guarded, so they were pinning their hopes on the cable vent shaft, which, according to the leaflet, they would reach after the surge chamber but crucially before the machine hall. The shaft led vertically all the way up to the summit, emerging a few hundred metres in front of the dam. That was the upside. The downside was that it was a ladder-climb all the way, imposing a sitting-duck vulnerability that Q2 had taught him to appreciate. In the game, they rarely extended beyond ten metres. The vent shaft topped three hundred. The tunnel was unsettlingly quiet, the splashes of their footfalls amplified and echoing. Fortunately there was dense stone all around them, so they were unlikely to be heard by anyone unless they were actually in the tunnel. Angelique's torch danced about the walls, mainly to their right, the side of the entrance road and therefore the side 451.

broached by access doors and punctuated by observation platforms. Ray kept wanting to look behind each time they passed one, expecting attack to come by surprise from the rear. In FPS games, gantries like that were usually occupied by baddies, and if they weren't it was because your passing by was designed to trigger their sudden appearance.

Angelique stopped in her tracks, holding up a hand.

'What?' Ray whispered.

She pointed her torch by way of explanation, picking out the outlet of a smaller tunnel on the wall of the tail- race. They had seen another below the previous gantry, so he was wondering what was special about this one. When he drew level with Angelique, he found his answer written in blood. The concrete below the outlet was darkly streaked where it had drained into the tailrace and been washed away. Angelique reached down and put her hand inside the outlet, her fingertips red and sticky when she withdrew.

'Just a residue,' she whispered. 'It's drained away, but it's still pretty fresh. A few hours. I'm checkin' it out.'

'Rather you than me,' Ray whispered, before remembering that the passive role wouldn't be much fun either: Angelique was crawling off into the drainage tunnel with the only light source.

Ray squatted next to the opening, once again blind, clutching the speargun as his only defence against invisible enemies. After a while he heard shuffling and panting, heralding Angelique's slow return. With a wince, he realised that she was dragging something, and was instantly less grateful to her for that bacon roll. She emerged backwards, feet first, shuddering once she was upright.

452.

'I don't think you're gaunny want to see this, but I couldnae get a decent look back there.'

Angelique reached into the drain with both hands and put her foot against the wall, pulling a body out arms-first and laying it gently down on the damp floor of the tail- race. There was a light clatter on the concrete as she did so, and Ray caught sight of a gun-butt strapped around the corpse's shoulder.

'Oh Christ,' he gasped, as Angelique played her torch up and down the body's gory length. There was a large gap in the lower chest, ribs visible through the ragged flesh, the area ringed in a black scorchmark. Above that, a join- the-dots trail of bullet holes led from below the left shoulder in a diagonal to what was left of his face; half of his jaw and most of his right cheek having been blown away.

Angelique bent down and pulled the machine gun away from him, revealing the weapon to have enjoyed as good a day as its owner.

'His gun exploded,' she said. 'Looks like he tried to bag somebody then got a big surprise when he pulled the trigger. After that, whoever he was aiming for was a jolly bad sport and finished him off.'

One point deducted for fragging yourself or a teammate, Ray thought.

[LGG] 0 [TL] -1.

'How?' he asked.

'Sabotage. Only explanation. Which makes the picture here suddenly a lot more interesting. You'd need to be pretty close to the action to manage a trick like that. It would have to be an inside job.'

'An infiltrator? Somebody undercover?'

'No. If there was somebody undercover who'd managed 453.

to infiltrate this outfit, then we wouldnae have needed you to suss out what the plan was, and there'd have been a zillion cops waitin' for them here last night. Maybe all isnae sweetness and harmony among the naughty boys.'

'A double cross?'

Troubled times. If you cannae trust a mass-murdering terrorist mercenary these days, who can you trust?'

Angelique unclipped a walkie-talkie from the corpse's belt, transferring it to her own and switching it on.

'We're now tuned to Radio Wanker. All this stone won't help, but we might hear the odd titbit.'

Ray looked again at the face. Now that his attention wasn't monopolised by what was missing from it, he realised he recognised what was left.

'This is one of the guys from the bridge.'

'The budgie-murderers. That's one case closed today, anyway.'

'What?'

'Never mind. Help me get him back into the drain. Somebody went to the bother of hidin' him, presumably so his mates don't realise they've got an enemy in their midst. That goes for us too.'The radio began showing signs of life, their increasing proximity to the machine hall measurable in bursts of static and semi-audible snippets of communication until they were soon receiving complete transmissions. Whoever said eavesdroppers seldom learn anything to their own advantage was probably eavesdropping on the wrong conversations, and definitely didn't work at GCHQ. It might have been more accurate to say that eavesdroppers seldom learn anything to put their minds at ease.

'Mercury, this is Matlock. I'm at Turbine Five, base level.

454.

There's a whole lot of blood down here, but no bodies.'

'I don't fucking believe this. Where the fuck is Jones?'

'He's topside.'

'No, the other one.'

'I thought you sent him topside too.'

'I just spoke to May. He hasn't seen Jones topside. He wasn't on the drilling detail.'

'Which one?'

'The one I'm fucking looking for. Mick. And not one of you fucking half-wits said a fucking thing because everybody just assumed he was with somebody else. Strummer, I thought you were with him at the time.'

'Strummer, receiving. I found them in a drainage tunnel, but I couldn't keep up. When I heard Jones had cornered them, I went back out via the tailrace.'

'So please, one of you, tell me that Jones did not somehow fail to take out two schoolboys from point-blank range.'