Brick had been the first to wake, stirring prior to dawn due to a tickle in his throat and the casual acceptance (which happened every morning) that an explosion of lung butter would be duly imminent. Moments later he coughed up his lungs into a surprisingly dainty handkerchief and stood and stretched out his back, tip-toeing in the process.

The Mapper was curled up on the chaise longue, the Nelly-Doose resting on his feet, snoring through its long trunk. The Don had laid back on the ancient and threadbare recliner offering a bizarre snore-like whistling through his tiny nostrils. Both men looked at peace, as if the task ahead was commonplace. Like it was every other day they faced an assassin who used dream as a weapon or confronted eldritch terrors as if it was akin to a quick grocery shop at the market.

The magnitude of the day ahead made the Krazzi slightly woozy and his head spun. He needed air, and a shower. But first he had something else to do! By the end of the day he would be dead or locked up in a cell in his own precinct, the Commodore secretly enjoying the Inspector's captivity as if it was a secret longing.

He reached for Brenda by his side, making sure his trusty companion hadn't gone wandering in the twilight hours and grabbed his coat, leaving the two academics to a couple more hours until the good fight claimed them.

Brick pulled the door open quietly and made his way to the courtyard where he had left ol'war horse, which seemed, to him, an age ago.

The subdued light of dawn crept over the metal blinds, the small draft of air from the window making the wafer thin metal heave and clang. The aftermath of the tempest gathering to it a refreshing breeze which it wanted to share with Testament by way of apology.

Brick opened the door and pulled himself in as quietly as possible. Walking around to the right of the bed he pulled the iron chair to the head of the bed and watched the old lady sleep. Everyone seemed so peaceful in their collective slumbers this morning. It was as if the storm had bestowed a relaxing sedative to the trouble minded and terminally ill.

She stirred, prying her eyes open with what little strength she had left.

'Easy,' remarked the Inspector, quietly, 'it's still early. Get some rest.'

She could see him through the slits in her eyes and smiled. 'I've had enough rest. I want to party.'

'Yeah? Where we goin?'

'Highpoint Sands, due west of Kannashique. We can get drunk on the beach and dance all night.'

'You did, remember?'

The old woman smiled. 'I did. And in the morning I found you. An angry bundle of rage and tears sitting in a bush.'

'Best day of my life.'

She returned the compliment. 'Best day of mine.'

He nodded and swallowed hard.

She reached out with her wrinkled hand, shaking with the sheer effort of lifting her arm. Brick took it and held it gently.

'The squaddies on the beach wanted to call you Brick, because you looked like one. I preferred James, after my dad.'

The Krazzi smiled. 'Well, I guess Brick kinda' stuck, Ma.'

'Well, you are always James to me, James.'

He kissed his Ma's hand. 'Just don't tell the lads at the precinct,' he replied, smiling.

She pinched his nose with two of her fingers and gave him a weak wink. 'You bet.'

Brick smiled like the little boy she had always known him as, not the rough, tough, no nonsense mercenary and law man the Krazzi had forged for himself. This was her little boy. Found abandoned on a beach in the light of dawn. Raised through a family of squaddies and ultimately destined to become one himself. The family business.

His Ma, Jan Kevac, had been a lieutenant in the Frugalmeyer Cavaliers. Stationed out in Kannashique, south of Salt, their job to stop any Cooz intrusion against the Frugalmeyan colonies. It had taken a hundred years for Frugalmeyer to claim this land, they were not going to give it up with their pants down.

Brick had been raised in the tropics, from baby to toddler and eventually to adolescent. The army was all he knew and so on his eighteenth birthday enrolled himself. But those eighteen years had been harsh to the Cavaliers. Some had perished from Cooz incursions, some had retired back to Frugalmeyer or the colonies in Salt: the up and coming place to be. Even Ma was feeling it, the loss, the years marking her soul and skin - clockwork flesh.

But it just wasn't the arduous stretch of time and broken hearts that placed her here, but the ever turning roulette of chance! Five years ago Jan had been diagnosed with Undertow, a somewhat lazy disease that attacked the marrow in your bones. At times lucid and fit and full of vigor the Undertow attacked like some deep-sea predator, feasting every so often when it desired on the marrow in the bone, turning it into an almost liquid like density where the afflicted would keel to the floor; their structure and physique diminished, bones turned to soup, resolve flushed from the anus. It was a hollow demise, not one fitting for a decorated officer.

'So what brings you up to my neck of the woods, sugar?'

The Krazzi leaned on his massive knees. 'Does a man need an excuse now?'

'Most men do. My son doesn't.'

Brick didn't hesitate. There was no need to. This was what he had come here for. A pep talk. Assuredness that he was committing himself to the greater good than some foolhardy mission.

'Shit is gonna hit the fan. And I'm at the centre of the shit.'

'Who you pissed off now, James?'

'Oh no one in particular . . . just the next Prime Minsiter Testament has to offer.'

Jan listened with her eyes shut but Brick could see the eyeballs roll beneath the lids.

'You don't do nothing by halves, boy.'

The bed immediately began to rise bringing her upper torso up by twenty degrees. 'I can hear it now, that damn Krazzi putting his nose in where it don't belong.'

'It wasn't me that rocked the boat.'

'Oh yeah? What were you doin sugar? Pissin' off the edge?'

'This stuff is out of my league.'

'Why?'

'This is Mapper stuff. I'm just along for the ride.'

'Got too rich for your blood? It wouldn't have scared you twenty years ago.'

'I'm not scared.'

'Don't you lie to me boy. Don't even try.'

Brick looked down to his boots.

'I could die tonight . . . or disappear. Maybe both.'

Jan took a deep breath. 'This . . . Prime Minister, Gwendolyn, right? She guilty? You definitely not pissing up the wrong wall?'

'She's guilty alright.'

'So bring her in.'

'It's not that simple, ma.'

'Yes it is. What are you scared off?'

'This isn't just a woman. Her influence spreads beyond the confines of government. She has the Guild in her bed and more besides.'

Jan shook her head. 'Shadows with a boner for power. Sometimes you got to do what's right. You always have, James. Even if it wasn't the Done thing to do.'

'So that's it. The dawn rests on the efforts of a stone man, a fox and a Mapper with a drug addiction.'

'I'd drink to that.'

'Sounds nuts.'

Jan smiled. 'When everyone came to Testament no one said leave crazy at the door.' She touched her son's hand and he took it ever so delicately. 'Be crazy, James. Just follow ya gut.'

'Follow ya gut? This coming from the woman who decked her staff sergeant because he had a wonky eye?'

A glorious hint of a smile shone across her face, a blink and miss it event that carried a ray of sunshine and the reassuring belief that everything would work out.

'Hey,' she declared, waving an authoritative finger, 'got me posted to Highpoint Sands . . . And got to meet a kid who tamed my heart. That wasn't such a bad move.'

'Yeah, that was a hell of a punch.'

Jan gave her son a wink. 'You bet, sugar. And I would throw it again a hundred times over. That punch. That instance made me meet the man in front of me. Sometimes out of all the wrong things we do something good eventually swims to the surface and gasps for air. A chance, a life . . .'

Brick took a deep breath, her words filling his innards with a calming fervor instead of the sticky lung butter which usually clung effortlessly to the hard membrane of his cavernous lungs.

Brick took his Ma's hand and kissed it. 'You really are a charm Ma.'

She chuckled and coughed. 'Ha, don't tell everyone. For you it's free, them others can cross my palm with a raeq or two.'

Brick stood up and smoothed down his coat.

Jan looked up at her son, the lids of her eyes finally giving way to blood-shot pupils. 'You good, son?'

'You bet.'

'Good, now get back on the beat and give that bitch hell . . . and bring some flowers in next time, this damn room could do with some colour.'

'Sure thing, Ma.'

'James?'

Brick turned about. 'Ma?'

'Wonky eye. Don't be afraid to have a punch.'

'Wonky eye.' He smiled and made for the door, looking at his surrogate mum and feeling a chemical emptiness rise in the hollow of his throat; a restriction that brought with it a pang of uselessness and uncertainty. He swallowed and quelled the unwelcome negativity. He had work to do.

Wonky eye.