In fact, I spent much of my time following the trail of broken bodies, explosions, and general mayhem that BASHFUL INCENDIARY left in her wake – and praying that I wouldn't be too late.

(Praying? Well, yes – metaphorically speaking. As you doubtless know if you're reading this memoir, there is One True Religion; but I wouldn't want you to get the idea that I was a follower of N'Yar lath-Hotep, or The Sleeper, or any of their nightmarish ilk. My prayers are secular, humanist, and probably futile. It's one of my character flaws; I was a lot happier when I was an atheist.)

Anyway, I'm going to use a simple convention in this memoir.

If it happened to me, I'll describe it in the first person, from my own point of view. If it happened to someone else, I'll describe it in the third person, from the outside. And if there's something you really, really need to understand if you're to avoid having your brain eaten by gibbering monsters from beyond spacetime, I'll take time out to harangue you directly.

Finally, if it happened to one of us but it has the potential to be damaging if disclosed, you'll have to come back with a higher security clearance in order to check out the version with the spicy bits.

And so, to business.

A Month Later.

Dear diary . . .

No, scratch that. Two months ago I went back to work.

The first month was light duty, pottering around the office, catching up on a backlog of training courses and paperwork, filling in time.

And of course I let myself be suckered into a false sense of security, into thinking that everything was,