Even Vila had sensed something amiss, why else was the regrettably predictable banter and snide remark missing from his rediscovery of the man he had so often claimed to like?

"Stand still."

He was not letting Blake come closer, not until he was sure what was going on here. Blake behaved as if this was all expected, but if that was the case then what had the woman he had just shot been thinking about. No, there was something to be wary of in this situation and he wasn't quite sure that Blake was at the bottom of it, the man had always been a fool though a lucky one.

"Avon, it's me, Blake?

'But is it though,' Avon wondered. Was this the man he had known or just another illusion? It looked as if his luck might have run out if it was him; this was most certainly not the man he had been. He was not surprised, Orac had warned him about Blake and it had been clear that the man had become more careless that ever, if that were possible. If he hadn't then it wouldn't have been quite so easy to identify the pattern of his captures, to make out the criteria for those he took alive and those he was forced to kill.

"He sold us Avon, even you."

And if Tarrant thought Avon was taking his word on that then he was a bigger fool than Blake, nothing he had seen recently persuaded him that Tarrant understood much at all, certainly not about other people. No, selling them wasn't Blake's style. Or was it? His bounty alone would buy a lot of rebellion, add up the others and Orac too and that might come close to buying a dream of victory. Was it possible that Blake was that far sunk in obsession?

"Tarrant doesn't understand!"

'Well now, that would not be a first now would it?' Avon thought. But nor would Blake finding his ruthless streak. Why hadn't he just denied it? Blake thought himself clever with words of course but was it really possible that he thought this the time for that? A little clarification was needed here. He let the gun slide away from its fix on Blake for a moment, though not too far.

"Nor do I Blake."

Avon heard the desperation in his own voice and smothered a smile, he'd done it rather well, 'If he can't read the danger now then he isn't the man I knew,' he thought. Blake had got that pig headed self righteous look he did so well when caught in an error, and that looked more like the man he had known but even so there was something he couldn't quite put his finger on that warned to him not to drop his guard.

"I set this up."

Well that could mean anything and he'd seen too much of Blake manipulations in the past to let him get away with that one now. Time to apply a little heat if he was to get to the truth of this business.

"Yes!"

The gun came up and he stared at the man in front of him with all the intensity he was capable of.

"Avon, I was waiting for you!"

And that did not have a nice sound to it, maybe Blake really had lost himself, and that was not a nice thought. The gun was primed and all it needed was a target; Blake was asking to be killed.

Out of the corner of his eye he caught that slight movement that answered all his questions. The gun spat Blake stared at him in horror then looked down to the body on the floor, Avon took a step forward,

"Blake you are a fool, so was she."