People are always asking me if I knew about Martin Enjolras.

Of course I knew about him. It is part of my profession to know everything about everyone. Or was. I cannot say much about what I do for a living right now.

With a gun between your teeth you speak only in vowels.

We're on the top floor of a wine shop in the rue de la chanvrerrie, name: "Corinth" founded by M. Hucheloup whenever. His wife, Mme. Hucheloup is the proprietress. It was closed on 6 Juin, 1832; at nine thirty-two am. in a very short time, we're going to be dead.

The wine shop is closed because the Progerssive Destruction comittee of Project ABC, (or, Abassé) have barricaded the Rue de Chanvrerrie, and the Rue de la Montedour. Similar barricades constructed by other members of this selfsame committe have been erected at St Mery, Aubry le-Boucher, and other key places with the aim of the overthrow and destruction of- not reform mind you; destruction- of the French government. The idea is that a regime that has enforced itself violently must be removed with violence. I know this, because Enjolras knows this.

It is representative of that violence, both the enforcement and the revolution, that Enjolras is holding the barrel of his shotgun between my teeth. Enjolras says that this isn't a real death. Like in the Tarot deck. Death is the first step to eternal life. Anarchy is the first step to human evolution. "We're not martyrs," he says, "We're sacrificial wolves."

He says, "Here day embraces night, and says: I will die with you and you will be born again with me."

What I do for a living, why the oily barrel of Enjolras' shotgun is printing a cylyndrical dent into the back of my throat, is I am a police officer.

I am a Police officer. Enjolras is an Revolutionary. I am order. He is Anarchy.

You do the math.

Which isn't to say it wasn't beautiful, for a while. But I am getting ahead of us. In ten minutes, five units of national gaurdsmen will swarm all over this barricade. eight units will fall upon st mery, seven at Fauborg st. Antoine, at Notre Dame. At this time; between five and ten barrels of black powder, per barricade, will be detonated by memebers of the arson committe of project ABC. In nine minutes, all that will be left of this monument to anarchy, of more than half of the army, and of myself and Enjolras, will be smouldering rubble. The palace will be ashes and marble, ashes and silk, ashes and gold and splinters of wood.

La Force will be gone.

The concierge will be gone.

I know this, because Enjolras knows this. Or maybe it's the other way around.

More likely, it doesn't matter. I'm a traitor, but Enjolras will be a legend.

Somewhere, from outside, we can hear the breaking of wine bottles on the pavement, over the barricade. And for a moment I realise that all of this- the barricade, the gun, the revolution- have something to do with a man named Jean Valjean.

Seven minutes.

The wine bottles are just irritating. That would be Grantaire. Enjolras grits his teeth, you can see the veins sticking out of his neck, carved out of marble. If that drunkard's got anything to do with this, we don't know. We don't even know why he's here. But how /we/ got here... That I know.

I know everything. For the last forty years, it's been my fucking job to know fucking everything.

five minutes.

there's going to be a flashback, isn't there?

tell me quickly what's the story...