With a grateful nod, Crowley lurches to his feet and - narrowly avoiding a spectacular trip over the legs of the coffee-table - heads straight to the hub that Regan, not ten minutes previously, had been using to argue with another faceless Alliance bureaucrat.

(His hands are shaking badly enough that he enters the wrong sequence twice.)



Crowley, unsurprisingly, isn't given to praying. But whilst it's not an invocation to the God of Abraham and Isaac, there is more than a little of a plea about it, to anyone else who might be listening: please be back. Please, please, let him be back.

The soft, dulcet chimes continue. Nobody answers.