Tunnels 04, Closer

explain himself to this man. "Anyway, what's it to you? I don't get it."
    "Because of Elliott. You said she's somewhere down in the Pore. I need your help to get her back and make sure she's safe. In return, I'll help you. And right now I think you could do with some help."
    Drake scanned the man's hollow-cheeked face, meeting his piercingly black pupils. It was the face of the enemy against which he'd fought tooth and nail for so many years, and at this very moment he was standing a few meters away from one of them, sipping his freshly-squeezed orange juice. What's more, the man was asking for his help. That was one for the books.
    Drake laughed drily. "And why the hell should I trust you? For all I know this is another of your clever-clever Styx double crosses. I'll end up being used, then chewed up once you and your scheming people have got all you want from me." Drake shook his head. "Been there, done that."
    "No, I told you, I'm not part of what they're doing any more. I faked my death to extricate myself from it," the Limiter replied.
    "Well, bully for you. May you rest in peace," Drake replied sarcastically. "So you went AWOL from a pack of homicidal megalomaniacs. I'm sorry but even if you're telling me the truth, what does that prove? That you're a traitor and not to be trusted?"
    "Elliott proves everything," the Limiter answered, a coldness to his voice which meant Drake had angered him. "The moment I had a child with a Colonist, I was marked. I was a dead man in the eyes of my people."
    "How so?"
    "As far back as the history books go, we have been a race apart. Even before the time of the Roman Empire, we were insinuating ourselves into the ruling classes and influencing events in our favor," the Limiter said, slipping his hands into his jacket pockets. He may once have been a member of the Styx killer elite, but there was something vaguely professorial about him -- he had the air of an academic discussing his latest research.
    "You might not be aware of it, but we haven't always hidden ourselves away in places like the Colony. At various times, we've been spread across the continents, never coming together in numbers that would have made us obvious -- never in ghettoes -- because then we might have been singled out and persecuted. But while we've hidden in plain sight, the law is that we never interbreed -- we never have children with outsiders. As the Book of Catastrophes decrees, "Purity is sanctity"."
    "Your point being?" Drake interjected.
    "Interbreeding results in what we call Dilution -- it means that the edges become blurred. And that's precisely what I did. I broke one of our most sacred laws. If Molly -- that's Elliott's mother -- and I had been found out, we'd have just as likely been killed by a Colonist lynch mob as by the Styx. And, naturally, the same goes for Elliott too, because she's a half-breed. Molly had to feign illness to cover up her pregnancy, and her family took Elliott in after she was born. But as she grew older, it was becoming too obvious that she was different."
    Drake nodded, and the Limiter went on. "The reality is, if Elliott hadn't fled to the Deeps, it was only a matter of time before she'd have been spotted for what she was. Styx blood flows in her veins."
    The Limiter's eyes were on the window, watching a jet creep above the city skyline. "She had to get out. Down the years there've been a number of cases of children between my people and Colonists. They call them Drain Babies , you know."
    "Why Drain Babies?" Drake asked. "I've never heard that one before."
    "Because all too often they're abandoned in the sluice pipes below the South Cavern. So what do you say?" The Limiter was now looking at Drake, waiting for an answer. "Are we going to cooperate... work together?"
    "I have to tell you, Mr. Limiter, I'm out of all this now," Drake replied in a strained voice. His shoulders sagged, and all of a sudden he appeared exhausted. "Everything I've attempted has been shot down in flames by your lot. And you're wasting your breath if you're trying to hook me into one of your elaborate White-Neck games."
    "That all depends on which game you're talking about," the Styx said. "Ask yourself what you might be able to accomplish with a Limiter beside you. Someone who knows all the Styx's secrets, someone from the inside."
    A small smile played on Drake's face, as if he was taking none of this seriously. "So you're telling me that you'd join the fight against your own race?" he