Lucien McBain blinked at the insistent chime of the comm unit. RomaCorp’s engineers had programmed the thing with a sound that combined superciliously polite and infuriatingly un-ignorable in the most annoying possible way. It set his teeth on edge. Always had.

He didn’t bother to check the ident of the call. Only work would be calling him after midnight on Sunday. He’d technically gone off shift at 21:00 but he was still on deck till the day desk shuffled into work on Monday morning.

From the bedroom the cybernetically-enhanced bed-pod complained that his non-compliance with the mandated 6 hours of sleep per diem would negatively impact his mental health and well-being. The automated voice, a soothing gender-nonspecific alto, reminded him that that sleeping outside the pod robbed him of the optimized benefits he could be enjoying from his regular use of the patented CHIRON system.

McBain directed his eyes at the sensor unit on ceiling. The A.I., CHIRON (or the ‘Centralized Health Information Reporting Online Network’ as some extremely clever person at RomaCorp had probably spent hours working out), was installed throughout his government-provided flat.

“CHIRON, close bedroom door.” The door swished shut. The bed-pod would continue to complain until McBain reset it but the sound proofing was good on the door.

He didn’t like the bed-pod. It was state-of-the-art A.I. tech, comfortable and self-contained and when the ergonomic lid slid shut it made him feel like he was being sealed inside a coffin. It was clearly designed for people that didn’t mind that sort of thing.

McBain let his head thump back again the neck rest of the chair and rubbed his eyes. They were grainy. He could never tell whether his eyes were open during these… spells, episodes…whatever they were, or closed. He suspected open. He didn’t know because it never happened around other people. He had asked CHIRON to do a continuous visual monitor once but had deleted the record without playing it back. The thought of watching himself slip into…whatever the hell this was… for exactly 26 minutes every few weeks or so was deeply creepy. Honestly, it was easier to ignore it all if he didn’t know.

The comm unit stilled. He had an eighty second respite before it started up again. McBain didn’t bother trying to remember what the…spell…vision…thing… had been about. It was pointless. When he came to after these episodes all he could recall was an overwhelming emptiness, a painful yearning for…something. And never anything more. He let his head roll on the neck rest towards the clear plasti-glass windows that made up the outside wall of his 41st floor flat.

It was raining. The grey press of water sheeted against the plasti-glass, the occasional gust spattering a spate of fat drops against the windows with a sound like gunfire. The tall towers of the downtown core and the coast beyond were hazy in the distance, grey and indistinct against the backdrop of the soft purple glow of Sabara’s shield. The energy dome over the city kept the light out but let atmosphere and moisture in. He could dimly make out the ships moored beyond the outside curve of the shield, hoping for a transit invitation and a place to berth under the safety of the dome.

The comm unit started up again. He slapped at it without turning his head away from the rain. In tandem, the mobile comm he’d taken off before collapsing into the chair last night skittered across the table on vibrate.

“McBain,” he croaked.

“Jesus, McBain, you sound like hell. As usual. Sleep is important, you know? The ministry says efficiency ratings are improved by 18% for each additional hour of REM sleep per…”

McBain glanced at the chron. It was 3am. “Good morning, Sergeant Ramasamy,” he said, “sorry to interrupt. Is this speech your attempt to help me improve my efficiency ratings by putting me back to sleep?”

Ramasamy sucked his teeth. Sadly, Sabara’s excellent communication tech reproduced the sound over the comm in perfect fidelity. “You’re hilarious, McBain, you know that? I don’t care what anyone else says.”

“I live for your approval, Sergeant. I assume you’re calling for a reason? Not just to practice your stand-up?”

“Yeah, you’re still on-shift, wise-ass. You and your partner…” McBain could hear Ramasamy’s sneer on the word ‘partner’ quite clearly. “Who I called, by the way, three times, and there’s no answer, no surprise there—”

“Thank you, I’ll take care of contacting Costas.” McBain pinched the bridge of his nose. “If you could just tell me why you’re calling—?”

“Yeah, yeah. There’s a body up at Keppel Harbour. And some…parts. So it might be more than one body. Probably more than one. There are a lot of parts.”