Again.
  '- ephen.'
  '- phen.'
  '- hen.'
  'en.'
  The stain was the world. The world was dark, gone away. Out of sight, out of mind.
  
  Steve fell clumsily amongst the photographs.
  When he woke up he was unaware of his consciousness. There was darkness everywhere, on 
all sides. He lay awake for an hour with his eyes wide before he realized they were open.
  Experimentally, he moved first, his arms and his legs, then his head. He wasn't bound 
as he'd expected, except by his ankle. There was definitely a chain or something similar 
around his left ankle. It chafed his skin when he tried to move too far.
  The floor beneath him was very uncomfortable, and when he investigated it more closely 
with the palm of his hand he realized he was lying on a huge grille or grid of some kind. 
It was metal, and its regular surface spread in every direction as far as his arms would 
reach. When he poked his arm down through the holes in this lattice he touched nothing. 
Just empty air falling away beneath him.
  The first infra-red photographs Quaid took of Stephen's confinement pictured his 
exploration. As Quaid had expected the subject was being quite rational about his 
situation. No hysterics. No curses. No tears. That was the challenge of this particular 
subject. He knew precisely what was going on; and he would respond logically to his 
fears. That would surely make a more difficult mind to break than Cheryl's.
  But how much more rewarding the results would be when he did crack. Would his soul not 
open up then, for Quaid to see and touch? There was so much there, in the man's interior, 
he wanted to study.
  Gradually Steve's eyes became accustomed to the darkness.
  
  He was imprisoned in what appeared to be some kind of shaft. It was, he estimated, 
about twenty feet wide, and completely round. Was it some kind of air-shaft, for a 
tunnel, or an underground factory? Steve's mind mapped the area around Pilgrim Street, 
trying to pinpoint the most likely place for Quaid to have taken him. He could think of 
nowhere.
  Nowhere.
  He was lost in a place he couldn't fix or recognize. The shaft had no corners to focus 
his eyes on; and the walls offered no crack or hole to hide his consciousness
  in.
  Worse, he was lying spread-eagled on a grid that hung over this shaft. His eyes could 
make no impression on the darkness beneath him: it seemed that the shaft might be 
bottomless. And there was only the thin network of the grill, and the fragile chain that 
shackled his ankle to it, between him and falling.
  He pictured himself poised under an empty black sky, and over an infinite darkness. The 
air was warm and stale. It dried up the tears that had suddenly sprung to his eyes, 
leaving them gummy. When he began to shout for help, which he did after the tears had 
passed, the darkness ate his words easily.
  Having yelled himself hoarse, he lay back on the lattice. He couldn't help but imagine 
that beyond his frail bed, the darkness went on forever. It was absurd, of course. 
Nothing goes on forever, he said aloud.
  Nothing goes on forever.
  And yet, he'd never know. If he fell in the absolute blackness beneath him, he'd fall 
and fall and fall and not see the bottom of the shaft coming. Though he tried to think of 
brighter, more positive, images, his mind conjured his body cascading down this horrible 
shaft, with the bottom a foot from his hurtling body and his eyes not seeing it, his 
brain not predicting it.
  Until he hit.
  Would he see light as his head was dashed open on impact? Would he understand, in the 
moment that his body became offal, why he'd lived and died?
  Then he thought: Quaid wouldn't dare. 'Wouldn't dare!' he screeched. 'Wouldn't dare!'
  The dark was a glutton for words. As soon as he'd yelled into it, it was as though he'd 
never made a sound.
  And then another thought: a real baddie. Suppose Quaid had found this circular hell to 
put him in because it would never be found, never be investigated? Maybe he wanted to 
take his experiment to the limits.
  To the limits. Death was at the limits. And wouldn't that be the ultimate experiment 
for Quaid? Watching a man die: watching the fear of death, the mother lode of dread, 
approach. Sartre had written that no man could ever know his own death. But to know the 
deaths of others, intimately to watch the acrobatics that the mind would surely perform 
to avoid the bitter truth - that was a clue to death's nature, wasn't it? That might, in 
some small way, prepare a man for his own death. To live another's dread vicariously was 
the safest, cleverest way to touch the beast.
  Yes, he thought, Quaid might kill me; out of his own tenor.
  Steve took a sour satisfaction in that thought. That Quaid, the impartial experimenter, 
the would-be educator, was obsessed with terrors because his own dread ran deepest.
  That was why he had to watch others deal with their fears. He needed a solution, a way 
out for himself.
  
  Thinking all this through took hours. In the darkness Steve's mind was quick-silver, 
but uncontrollable. He found it difficult to keep one train of argument for very long. 
His thoughts were like fish, small, fast fish, wriggling out of his grasp as soon as he 
took a hold of them.
  But underlying every twist of thought was the knowledge that he must out-play Quaid. 
That was certain. He must be calm; prove himself a useless subject for Quaid's analysis.
  The photographs of these hours showed Stephen lying with his eyes closed on the grid, 
with a slight frown on his face. Occasionally, paradoxically, a smile would flit across 
his lips. Sometimes it was impossible to know if he was sleeping or waking, thinking or 
dreaming.
  Quaid waited.
  Eventually Steve's eyes began to flicker under his lids, the unmistakable sign of 
dreaming. It was time, while the subject slept, to turn the wheel of the rack -Steve woke 
with his hands cuffed together. He could see a bowl of water on a plate beside him; and a 
second bowl, full of luke-warm unsalted porridge, beside it. He ate and drank thankfully.
  As he ate, two things registered. First, that the noise of his eating seemed very loud 
in his head; and second, that he felt a construction, a tightness, around his temples.
  The photographs show Stephen clumsily reaching up to his head. A harness is strapped on 
to him, and locked in place. It clamps plugs deep into his ears, preventing any sound 
from getting in.
  The photographs show puzzlement. Then anger. Then fear.
  Steve was deaf.