"Pitr! Pitr, where are you?"

The courtyard was heaving with bodies. The New Revolutionaries, as they had started to call themselves, dressed in denim jackets and work boots, had stormed through the barricades. Earlier that day, General Epanchin had issued an order for the army to stand down. Many of the troops, seeing the way the tide was turning, had quietly defected days ago, but now it was official. The army was no longer and impediment to the revolution. Flushed with this knowledge, the New Revolutionaries had stormed the Parliament Building, with every intention of bringing the nascent coup to fruition.

"Nikolay! Over here!"

Pitr and Nikolay fought through the crowds towards each other. They had been together as the mob stormed through the doors, but then had been separated by the crush of bodies as they had entered the wide courtyard.

"Where is Lyov?" Lyov was the leader of the New Revolutionaries, an ugly, ungainly man with a thick accent. Despite these setbacks, he was an unassailable charisma, and nobody would even think to challenge his position. Right now, he was climbing onto the pedestal of the statue in the center of the courtyard, a modern bronze of some figure from Bravikstahni history on a horse. Pitr pointed him out to his friend.

"Brothers!" shouted Lyov, silencing the crowd. "We are on the cusp of victory. Within hours, Bravikstahn will be ours again. We will remove the self-serving fat that has grown up and is suffocating our nation. We are at the start of a new era."

A cheer went up. On the roof behind him, one of the few loyal policemen sighted his high-powered rifle at Lyov's head, and pulled the trigger.

Jupiter head office sent out an e-mail that offered deepest condolences to the staff of the U.K. office, and in passing mentioned that they should take the next few days off, at full pay, while a new premises was found and an office set up. Very few people had been planning to go to work that day anyway.

Beth and Isabelle had stayed at Sol's house, Beth in the spare room, Isabelle on the futon in the lounge. The day after the accident, they had spent most of the day moping around the house, listlessly watching daytime television, and not saying much of consequence. After lunch, Sol decided to check his mail; this was when he received the message from head office. As well as it's photo-fit sympathy, the message mentioned that the WorldPulse front end was down for the site. "Shit." Sol stated flatly.

"What's wrong?" asked Beth, coming over to the corner of his lounge that housed his computer.

He pointed at the message. "WorldPulse is down. We can't get to it."

"How about Crystal?" she asked.

"I guess that went down as well."

"Didn't..." she paused, "Isn't it run on a separate server? I thought," pause again, "I though Ted mentioned that he'd moved it."

Sol looked at her as though she'd said something strange. That wasn't it; it was a perfectly reasonable thing to say, and something Sol might have said himself. He just hadn't expected Beth to say it.

"You're right. He moved it to another box when the load got too big, so that we wouldn't attract too much attention. I think it was in the server room, which means it's probably still working."

He turned back to the keyboard and started to type furiously. Beth watched over his shoulder. After a half a minute, he sat back and breathed a sigh of relief.

"It's still there." he announced, "Crystal's still up and running."

"Great" replied Beth.

Sol turned to look at her. "Is it?"

After Lyov had fallen, the courtyard had descended from everyday disorder into utter pandemonium. A small proportion of the New Revolutionaries had had the foresight, the resources and the hostility to acquire firearms before storming in, and they returned fire. The police on the roof responded in kind, and soon both sides were shooting indiscriminately. More humanitarian souls had rushed to the fallen Lyov, but anyone who got a chance to see him lost any hope they had; his face had been reduced to a bloody smear by the bullet.

Said bullet had, after eliminating the people's choice from the unscheduled presidential race, buried itself in Nikolay's shoulder, spinning him around like, well, like a man who's been shot in the shoulder by a sniper. He was almost crushed under the rush of feet where he fell, but his friend picked him up and half supported, half dragged him to the partial shelter of the cloister that encircled the courtyard. It was from here that Pitr and Nikolay watched the history of their country unfold.

New Revolutionaries - mostly unarmed - were falling left, right and centre. There was a little cover in the cloister and near the statue, but the vast majority of the crowd were standing in the open courtyard, exposed, and easy targets for the well-concealed snipers on the roof. As Pitr and Nikolay looked on, a group of New Revolutionaries, waving revolvers and shouting slogans, broke down one of the sets of heavy double doors leading into the building proper, and the crowd streamed through.

They heard shots from inside; there were evidently more police inside. Pitr turned his attention to Nikolay's wound, which could have been a lot worse. The bullet had stopped inside his shoulder, so there was no messy exit wound, and relatively little bleeding. It hurt like hell, and there would be complications latter, but that was something for medical professionals to worry about when the time came. Right now, what Nikolay needed was first aid, and half a lifetime working on cost-cutting construction sites and badly managed warehouses had given Pitr plenty of experience in that.

After a couple of minutes, he felt well enough to move again. Pitr suggested that they get out of the Parliament Building and find somewhere safer, but Nikolay, in his makeshift sling, insisted that they at least try and join the others.

"What would you say when your grandchildren ask what you did during the Glorious Revolution? Do you want to tell them that you hid in a coal cellar?"

"You've heard the shots. If we go in there, we may not live to tell our grandchildren anything."

"If we leave now, we may still not live to see our grandchildren. For pity's sake, Pitr, show some backbone. Do you not want to be there at the start of Lyov's 'new era'?"

"Lyov is dead! I do not want to follow him!"

"Nor do I, but I believe in that we are doing the right thing here." He got to his feet. "And I'm going to see it through."

Nikolay cautiously towards the doors, and Pitr followed him grumbling. They entered the building with the intention of following the noise to wherever the action was, but they soon abandoned that plan; they could hear shots from all over the building. The action, it seemed, was everywhere. They wandered around, but for a long time failed to find anyone. The gunshots bounced off walls and echoed along corridors, which meant that it always sounded like there was a gun battle around the next corner. There never was.

They were on the point of giving up, when Pitr turned to Nikolay and raised a finger to his lips. Both fell silent, and Nikolay realized what his friend had been indicating; there was movement behind the door they were next to. Slowly and cautiously he opened the door, then peered around the corner. He was greeted by the sight of the President, pointing a dark automatic handgun at him.

Nikolay raised his good arm above his head and edged gingerly into the room. The President kept the gun trained on him. Pitr watched from outside the room; he could only see Nikolay, and decided that the best plan for the moment was to stay quiet and hidden.

The President began to speak. "So, you're here. Of course, if I had done a better job, you wouldn't even exist - as revolutionaries, I mean. Well, if this is the way things must be. I wish you luck, and hope that you are favoured with more success than I have been."

With that, he put the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

"Sol," shouted Isabelle from the sofa, "Do you know where Bravikstahn is?"

"Why?" Sol shouted back from the kitchen.

"It's on the news. There's been a coup or something."

Sol came through. "Has there? When?" He sat down and started to listen to the report.

"So, where is it, then?" Isabelle persisted.

Sol was still trying to listen to the news, so he answered her halfheartedly.

"It's a little ex-Soviet state somewhere in Eastern Europe." Sol reeled off. His particular occupation primed him as a source of facts and figures about all manner of things. "It had a bit of a steel industry, and quite a few international companies have factories there - textiles, big electronics, that sort of thing. I think it had some sort of strategic importance during the cold war - a sub base or something. Oh, hang on."

Isabelle turned to look at him, "What?"

"Isn't that the one that still has those nuclear weapons that nobody's sure what to do with?"

A few days latter, they got another message from Jupiter headquarters. An new office had been found and fitted out, and they were all to report to the new address tomorrow to finish setting it up, and start catching up on work. The new address was slightly obscure; it seemed to be in the middle of nowhere.

Isabelle offered to give the others a lift; that way, if they got lost, at least they'd have some company. Beth sat in the passenger seat, reading the map. They wound down country roads, Beth squinting at signs and barking directions, and Isabelle barking back when the directions came too late. Sol watched all of this placidly from the back seat.

When they got there, they looked at the sign uncomprehendingly. Beth checked the map; this was the right place. It looked deserted though. It was a business park, a crowd of two- and three- storey buildings, all in the same two shades of brown brick, winding roads between them, much like the one on which the old office had been in. A couple of things marked it apart though. On was the location; while the other one had been abutted to a fair sized village, with a few shops and even a pub (though it didn't do food), this one was literally in the middle of nowhere. A short access road lead straight on to a minor A road, and there was nothing else for miles around.

More prominently, it seemed to be deserted. The tall sign with places for a stack of a dozen company names held nothing but blank brass plates, and the windows were all empty. There were no cars in the car park, and nobody could be seen.

"Well, maybe we're the first here."

"Then how do we get in?"

There was a pause.

"Well, we should at least find the front door before turning round and going home."

"O.K." Isabelle sighed, putting the car into gear and pulling into the park, "Which number was it?"

They drove around for a little while, going down a couple of dead ends, before they found the correct building. When they did, they finally found signs of life. A few cars were parked in the car park, and there was a light on in the doorway. Neither the doorway or the car park could be seen from the road, which is why nobody had seemed to be around. They parked and walked to the door.

It was locked. Sol turned around. "I don't suppose either of you were sent a key in the post or anything?"

"It's a card lock." pointed out Beth, "And no, before you ask, I didn't get one of those in the mail."

"Would the old ones work?" suggested Isabelle, stepping past Sol and swiping her I.D. card through the reader. The light above the lock changed from red to green, and they heard the bolts slide back. Isabelle beamed at the other two, and walked into the new office; Beth and Sol followed.

For a new office, on what was probably a new business park, it was remarkably well finished. Desks, filling cabinets, computers, even pot plants and water coolers, had all been moved in. Isabelle looked at it for a moment, then stopped and put her hand to her mouth. They had reconstructed the old office exactly. They even had Ted's desk.

"What's wrong?" asked Sol, as he almost bumped into her.

"It's exactly the same." she replied shakily.

"As what?"

"As the old office!"

Sol looked around again. "No it's not. Look, there was a row of filing cabinets against that wall in the old place. You had two aisles down the middle instead of three. And this place doesn't have that whole area separated off at the front, where admin used to be."

Isabelle stared at him, then turned back around and re-examined the room. Sol was right; it was no more like the old office than any other office. She must be going mad.