NARRATOR: Late evening, in a very secure home office...
SIR (on screen): Timmons, are our ghost's friends still completely contained?
TIMMONS: They are, sir.
TIMMONS: Well... all but the amorph are incarcerated. Schlock lacks resources, and I own their commo. They did try to put Shafter on retainer but he took their money and fled the system two days ago.
TIMMONS: Face it, sir. These people are not getting Lunesby out.
SIR (on screen): Darn right they're not. She's already gone. Somebody slurped twenty-four teraqytes off the 'sphere at Marineris Skyport last night.
TIMMONS: That's... not possible. She was cut off.
SIR (on screen): That's what you assured us, yes.
SIR (on screen): And yet somehow Lunesby and all her anti-establishment evidence are now loose in meatspace somewhere.
SIR (on screen): All that money and gear we gave you... including those top-shelf, top-secret elephant nanites! You know what all that was, Timmons?
SIR (on screen): It was all just rope. And like fools we gave you enough to hang not just yourself, but every last one of us, too.
TIMMONS: But... who got her out? And how?
NARRATOR: At that moment, far, far away on a fast, fast ship...
SHAFTER: I'm Jud Shafter, ma'am. And these are Shafter's Shifters.
MUCK: And this is Schlock-in-a-cup.