Dying. Not dead yet, but soon. Last time, on Lighthouse, the danger had not been equivalent. This time his masters could not afford to let him be captured and questioned. This time.Gabriel brushed past the narration for the moment. It would wait. He concentrated on the small fleeting images, burning bright up out of the darkness and fading again. One of them was central.A slide.He had been one of six. One had died when they were "young"—if that was the word you used when all of you were cloned to become conscious for the first time when the body they had grown was already the equivalent of twenty-five standard years old.Their childhood had lasted about three years. The people who took care of them made sure it was a good one, not for any concern about the individual "children" involved, but because the psychologists among them knew that this was the best way to produce a stable and reliable product. This one had various vague happy memories of that time, including a slide that he was particularly fond of. He would climb up its ladder and hurtle down it again and again, while behind the glass wall of their playroom he could hear, clearly enough, the amused laughter. The watchers had liked it, too. That made Jake happy.They all had longer names—Jake's was DW003 43FER—but they didn't use those with each other. He was simply Jake Three, or Threefer for short. Those, the psyches told them, were their grown-up names, the names they would bear proudly when they went out to work for the Company, but meantime they had to earn them. Right now they had to do that by studying hard. Later, there would be other ways.Their adolescence—what they were allowed to have of one—lasted about three years. They were only allowed to leave the growth facility under carefully controlled conditions, which meant with about ten staff members around them. There was sex, but only with other clones, and that was also carefully supervised. The figures behind the glass walls might have been absolutely silent and the far side soundproofed, but you knew they were there, because after all, it was sex, wasn't it?There was a certain amount of rebellion, but it was carefully channeled into their training. Their training was the most important thing in their lives: the game that kept them together, that made them something important, the purpose for which they had been bred (as they were constantly reminded).They were trained in weapons first, which delighted them. They became expert with everything from chainswords to laser rifles, and they continued that training right through until their time in the facility was over and they were adjudged to be adult. They were trained in hand to hand combat, various kinds of small-craft flight, and checked out on various "positions" on bigger craft.They were taught all kinds of ways to conceal information, both physically and virtually. They were taught bare-brain encryption and every known non-machine cipher. They learned quick recognition, "fast memory," brain printing, and many of the other techniques that turn a human brain into a recording device for audio or visual input without needing any kind of hardwiring. There had been several sessions—none of them knew how many—of deep sleep work and hypnotherapy to help them cope. All of them suspected that they were having deep triggers implanted, including the one which would make sure that if they fell into the hands of a sufficiently competent enemy, they would never reveal the secrets of the force that had trained them. They even joked about it."Now that we're ready to die," Jacob One said one night, "they'll let us out to live."They knew that they had been bred and trained for the really dangerous work, missions too perilous to send less talented or committed Employees on. They were eager to get on with it.At last had come the time when they all graduated. The clones were split up. They had all gone through counseling to help them handle that, the usual conditioning to help them see it as a graduation exercise rather than a tragedy, but it was still a wrench, and it took some months before any of them were really able to do anything without looking over their shoulders to see what the others thought. Nonetheless, proud to be Employees at last of the greatest force in the known worlds, they went out to do their jobs and repay the kindness of the Company that had raised them.They had all been put "where they would do the most good," some of them working for VoidCorp Intel, some of them slipped into other Intelligence services among the stellar nations. In the case of Jacob Three and one of his brothers, they had entered Concord Intel, the heart of the Company's deadliest enemy.It was exciting work, dangerous, uplifting—for Jacob at least—that sense of winning the Game, putting one over on everybody. That sense of "gotcha" overcame the staggering boredom. In some cases he might stay in one place, one job, doing nothing for months, a year, two years. Then the word would come through: cause this person to vanish. Steal this document. Pass on this message. He would do it and then quietly settle up his affairs to leave. It was the Game to do everything so that no one ever noticed, so that no trail was left, no betrayal. It was very important for Jacob and his brothers not to be noticed, for their work was increasingly becoming the removal of other Intel assets, sometimes the Company's own, who had become too dangerous to leave running.But there came a time when someone did notice. After that, everything changed.Jake Three had been given an assignment on a Star Force vessel. "Stay there," they told him. "Hold down this job. You're going to pretend to be from Star Force Intel. Someone there will approach you, or we'll identify him for you to contact. Either way, jolly him along. Once or twice you'll be asked to have him get you some minor piece of information. The third time, it will be less minor. You will use him to carry out an intervention, and he will take the fall afterward. He's getting too close to one of our assets aboard, and we want him away from her. After he goes down, you'll be withdrawn, so just sit tight."It was just one more job, and Jake had carried it out exactly as instructed, but when he was withdrawn, it hadn't been VoidCorp that did it. The Company's protection failed him or was somehow subverted. He refused to believe that they might have abandoned him. He woke up to find himself not in a safe house or protected facility but strapped on a floater with a man's thoughtful face looking down on him.That face belonged to a bald man, small and quiet, who simply said, "I have some questions for you. You will answer them for me now."That had been a little more than a year ago. Jake Three had not believed in hell until then. He believed in it now and knew for a fact that it was run by Lorand Kharls.He had finally escaped it only by offering the single thing Kharls wanted: that he should change sides. His body itself rebelled against the idea. No surprise there. His conditioning had been arranged that way, but there were drugs and more conditioning and much "sleep work," after which Jacob would wake up hardly knowing his own name. The final solution triggers had been subverted or removed—he didn't know which. Kharls finally offered him the choice to do what Jacob had been ordered to do next anyway, but to do it for Kharls's side. Jacob had resisted this as long as he could, but when it finally became plain that Kharls would simply have him put to sleep like some kind of damaged animal if he didn't cooperate, Jacob agreed.He went out to space again, feeling damaged inside. but alive. He always hoped against hope that his own people would find him, rescue him, and put him back the way he had been.But it never happened. He was alone, a "tainted asset." He knew the phrase all too well and knew what it meant. His own people would be far more likely to kill him than help him. His own clone-brothers, if they met him, would be bound to do the same.