There were only dreams. A lot of them did not make any sense, even at the moment Yong dreamt them. But he did not have time for reflection, one blurry vision of colours and sounds (were those his half-lucid periods?) followed by a dream, real events, places he had been, and others he never had, though in the dream he firmly believed he was. Most of his dreams circled around his old crew on the Zedong, Ann Doben, Tomas, Lin and Cidney. He could hear their voices as clear as day, arguing over a job they had pulled a few months back. Or had they? It did not make any difference in the dream whether the memories were real or imagined. They were real enough for Yong to believe them.

They were sitting around the table in Zedong’s common room, which was in its usual mess. Only the table was cleared to make room for a map they were all stooping over.

“Don’t make no kinda sense to me”, Ann said. “Why’d this acquaintance your uncle hire us to do that kind of job he could pull himself easily at no extra cost of hiring us?”

“Well, let’s just say ‘e was doin’ us a fava, Ann”, Cid responded.

“Unlikely.”

“Bloody ‘ell, ya wan’ dis job or no’? A’right, a’right, there’s a warrant on Beaumon’ for Rourke and some of ‘is boys. We’ll be fine. Trust me.”

“Yeah, that’s the tricky part”, Yong heard himself say. It felt like looking over his own shoulder.

“How much is the reward?” Lin interjected matter-of-factly.

“The wha- eh, mates, we’re not turning on Rourke, right”, Cid said, but he sounded doubtful.

“How much?” Lin repeated.

“25 grand. But let’s not go down that.”

“My, we might actually want to reconsider our loyalties here”, Yong said.

“You’d need to ‘ave Rourke first to turn ‘im in, don’t ya. So let’s forget about that and talk about the real business. Doing that casino in New Dunsmuir’ll be a piece o’ cake, b’lieve me.”

Tomas, as usual sitting back mulling things over and not saying a word, lifted his hand.

“This ain’t school, Tomas”, Ann said with a smile.

Tomas put down his hand and