Chapter Twenty-Nine

The Dream

When dinosaurs fight, it is the grass that suffers.

—Bellerophon proverb

The children were angrier than Sejal thought possible. They howled and shrieked and swirled around Sejal and Katsu. A shadow grabbed Sejal’s arm in an icy grip, and he gave a hard, instinctive shove with his mind. The child released him with a screech that almost split Sejal’s skull. Another swiped at Katsu’s head, but she ducked away. Sejal spun around, trying to look in all directions at once. Angry red gashes swirled through the blackness like blood in a whirlpool.

“They’re angry because Father and Mother are taking them out of the Dream!” Katsu shouted at him. “My dancing does nothing now. They will devour the people on Ru—”

Another swipe. Katsu flung herself sideways just as something cold and hungry landed on Sejal’s back. He yelled and clawed at his back. It felt as if someone had thrown a bucket of icy slime on him.

“Get off me!” he snarled, and thrust backward hard. A slashing pain tore at the side of his neck. Then the icy slime vanished. Sejal whirled, neck throbbing, but the child had skittered back into the darkness. Another hand grabbed at him, and another and another. The children gibbered and laughed at him, clawing at him like a dozen grabby jobbers. Pressure built up in his head and he put his hands over his ears to shut out their noise.

“Get out of here!” he screamed.

The darkness shattered like glass. Over two dozen shadows raced howling away, leaving Sejal and Katsu alone on the Dream’s empty plain. Katsu stared at him, wild-eyed and panting. In the new silence he could hear her heart beating.

“What happened?” Sejal croaked.

“Look!” she replied, pointing upward.

Sejal obeyed and saw the darkness hadn’t vanished after all. From horizon to horizon, the entire sky had gone black. Thunder rumbled hungrily. The sky began to descend and he resisted the urge to fling himself flat.

“They’ve begun,” Katsu said. “They’re going to devour every mind in the Dream.”

“Mom will—” Sejal began.

“Not quickly enough,” Katsu interrupted. “There are thirty—no, twenty-nine—of them left, and look how easily they cover the sky. They will devour Rust, and our parents will lose interest in the cryo-units.”

Not far away, a thick pillar of black dropped down from the sky like a finger as big as a city. The ground shifted and bucked where it landed. Uncountable minds cried out in despair.

“They’ve taken a planet,” Katsu said.

Another pillar dropped near the first, and the ground shifted again. More cries like an ocean wave. Tears ran Sejal’s face in sympathy.

“We have to stop them!” he cried. “All those people—”

“We aren’t strong enough,” Katsu said dispiritedly. “I can’t force them, only persuade them. You are able to push them, but only a little.”

Thunder rumbled, a demon clearing its throat. Another pillar crashed down. There was a feeling of horrible exultation in the gesture.

Sejal grabbed Katsu’s arm. “We need help.”

“Who? There aren’t many Silent in the Dream right now, and we’d probably need—”

“—all of them?” Sejal said in an odd voice.

Katsu looked at him. “Can you do that?”

“We’ll find out.”

 oOo

“There must be a faster way,” Vidya puffed. Sweat plastered hair and clothes to her body and her muscles felt shaky. There were still twenty-eight more children to go.

Prasad stabbed the controls and the lid on the cryo-unit slid shut over the squirming child. The viewplate fogged over. Without speaking, he moved to the next bed.

“Sedatives?” Vidya said, moving next to him and disconnecting tubes.

“I don’t know where they would be,” Prasad told her, “and I wouldn’t know the dosage. I’d be just as likely to kill them.”

Vidya swiftly removed the last tube. “Perhaps, my husband, that would be the best choice.”

“No.” There was iron in Prasad’s voice as he slid the cryo-unit from under the bed and undid the child’s restrains. “They are my sons and daughters. They cannot help who they are and what they are doing.”

They wrestled the child into the unit. An arm cracked Vidya in the face. Pain exploded and for a moment she saw stars. She forced her hands to keep moving, however, until the cryo-unit slid shut and condensation gathered on the viewplate. Then they moved to the next bed, and the next. Vidya moved in a sort of fog, losing all track of time. Twenty-six left. Twenty-five. Twenty-four. Twenty. Her exhausted muscles were shaking so badly she fumbled at the tubes. Her aching body was covered in bruises from the hard hands and heels that struggled against her. Nineteen left. Eighteen. Now they were in the final Nursery. Sixteen left. Fifteen.

“Freeze!”

The command startled Vidya out of her trance. A stab of terror went through her chest as she spun to face the door. Prasad straightened from the child they were working on, then took a step forward, placing himself between Vidya and the four armed guard standing at the door to the glassed-in area. The door to the main laboratory stood open behind them. Vidya thought Prasad was being stupidly romantic until he gestured sharply behind his back at the cattle prod dangling from Vidya’s belt. Hiding her motions behind Prasad’s body, she eased it off the loop and slid it into her waistband under her shirt.

“Who are you?” Prasad demanded, though the black-and-scarlet guard uniforms made that obvious. Dr. Say’s emergency alert had done its work. “What do you want?”

“You’re under arrest,” the lead guard snapped.

“What for?” Prasad snapped back.

In answer, the guard fired. Prasad collapsed to the floor.

 oOo

Sejal closed his eyes. Katsu’s hand was cold in his. All around him, pillars of darkness dropped from the sky in an avalanche of pain and misery. Fully a third of the Dream was gone. Every so often a bit of the darkness would vanish—his parents at work—but that didn’t seem to decrease the children’s power. In the Dream, the Silent were limited only by willpower and self-concept. The twisted children, raised apart from humanity, did not know they were supposed to have limits. Sejal had the sinking feeling that he was dealing with an infinite set, and that one child was just as powerful as a hundred of them.

“Go, Sejal,” Katsu said.

Sejal stretched out his mind. The Dream fabric stretched in all directions around him. Where the pillars touched the ground were great gaping holes. Normal people felt like threads, and here and there were the bright, sharp minds of the Silent. Only a very few were actually in the Dream.

A pillar crashed to the ground.

Swiftly, Sejal sifted through the fabric around him. It felt easy, it felt right. Wherever he found a Silent mind, he touched it and pulled. A crowd of Silent from dozens of races, hundreds of species, appeared around Sejal, all bound to him by the gleaming Dream fabric. Their bodies milled and overlapped like ghosts and their thoughts crowded his mind with questions, demands, terror, fear.

~Who are you?~ ~What are you doing to me?~ ~How dare you!~ ~Help me!~ ~Leave me alone!~ ~What’s happening to me?~

Their voices rose and fell around him, threatening to engulf him. Katsu squeezed his hand, and he drew serenity from her.

Serene must you ever remain, he thought.

He found more Silent, and more and more. Padric Sufur’s mind abruptly joined the pack, as did Chin Fen and Dr. Say. And then he felt another mind, a younger one that he didn’t know but who felt a tiny bit familiar, but he couldn’t say why. It was on a planet named Klimkinnar. Then he felt two more, both on a planet called Drim. All three were slaves. Their voices joined in with the rest, rising into a fever pitch.

~No!~ ~Let go of me!~ ~What the hell?~ ~Sejal, you work for me! I order you to—~

Another pillar crashed to the ground. Sejal yanked the Dream fabric with a sharp jerk. The multitude fell silent, and Sejal continued gathering. He felt Ben and Kendi’s minds and ruthlessly added them to the pool.

~Sejal, what—?~ Kendi yelped, but Sejal ignored him. Silent after Silent fell into his pool. He felt swollen with them. Lights sparked around his body. He felt like he was drinking electric water until it threatened to burst out of him. Only a few minds were left, a tiny handful. He reached for them.

“Sejal, look out!” Katsu cried.

Sejal’s eyes snapped open. A black pillar was dropping straight for them. Reflexively, Sejal yanked on the Silent around them, took them into himself, possessed them fully. As one mind, they all reached up with arms suddenly grown god-like in size. The pillar landed on their shoulders. It was cold as winter, heavy as snow. But Sejal had the strength of nearly every Silent in the universe behind him, and he pushed back. His shoulders rose like Atlas, pushing the pillar back to the sky. The children stormed angrily above him, but Sejal held them back. Then he reached out with one giant hand and grabbed one of the pillars that had already reached the ground. With easy strength, he lifted it back to the sky and added it to his burden. A billion minds cleared and a thousand Silent pulled themselves out of the despair of separation. Sejal added them to his strength and reached for another pillar.

His brothers and sisters fought back, pressing down with their full weight. Sejal lifted despite their power. A small part of him marveled at what he was doing, relished in the strength. He lifted another pillar clear of the Dream, and another, and another, adding more and more Silent as they were freed. Every mind added to his own made the burden easier and easier to lift. The children howled mindlessly above him, clawed at his back, tore at his face and hair. But they did no damage. Sejal lifted the final pillar and stood with the black sky on his shoulders. Katsu was small and far below.

And then Sejal noticed that no more children had left the Dream. There were still fifteen left, had been for quite some time. Had something happened to Prasad and his mother? A bit of uncertainty wiggled through him and his knees buckled for a moment before he could firm them again.

“Katsu,” he boomed. Below, Katsu flung herself to the ground, her hands over her ears. Wincing, Sejal modulated his voice to a whisper.

“Katsu,” he murmured. “Leave the Dream and go see what—”

A shudder wracked his body and Sejal’s grip on the Dream weakened. A jolt of pain ripped through him. His eyes popped open and he found himself staring into the face of a Unity guard.

 oOo

Ben snapped awake. He was lying on the bed in Kendi’s quarters aboard the Post Script. Actually, he was lying on top of Kendi. He must have fallen sideways when Sejal had taken him into the Dream. Kendi shuddered once beneath him, and Ben sat up. A pounding noise thudded through the cabin. What had happened? One minute he and Kendi had been sitting together in the Dream, and the next he had been dragged into...what? It was like some kind of drug-induced hallucination.

The pounding noise came again. It was the door. Ben called, “Come in,” and the door slid open.

“What is wrong?” Harenn strode into the room. “You would not answer the chime.”

“I’m not sure,” Ben said. He looked down at Kendi, who was still unconscious. Ben put a hand to Kendi’s neck. His pulse was thready, and his skin was clammy. Harenn took one look and her eyes widened above her veil.

“He is going into shock.” She hurried back toward the door. “Elevate his legs with the pillow and put the blanket over him. I’ll get a medical kit.”

Mystified, Ben did as he was ordered. Had the fight done this? But why was it affecting Kendi and not Ben? Ben was on the verge of working himself into a panic when Harenn returned. She slapped a monitor strip on Kendi’s forehead and checked the readout on the medical kit’s display. Her firm, decisive movements calmed Ben down.

“Is he going to be all right?” he asked.

“He is still in shock,” Harenn reported. She racked an ampule into a dermospray and pressed it to Kendi’s arm with a thump.. “This should take care of it.”

A few anxious moments later, Kendi’s eyes opened. “What’s going on?” he asked in a blurry voice.

“What do you remember?” Ben asked.

Kendi shook his head on the mattress. “It’s all fuzzy. I can’t focus.”

“Do you remember the fight?”

“What fight?” Harenn said.

“Sort of,” Kendi slurred. “I feel like ‘m...half outside my body. Help me sit up.” They did, though Kendi had to lean heavily on Ben.

“What fight?” Harenn said again. “What happened?”

Ben explained while Kendi took several deep breaths. His head apparently cleared a little, for he sat up straighter, though he left an arm around Ben’s back. Without even realizing he was doing it, Ben pulled Kendi closer while he spoke, as if he were afraid Kendi would disappear. It felt good to hold him.

“So why did you leave the Dream?” Harenn asked when Ben finished. “Did your drugs wear off?”

Ben shook his head. “I didn’t need any. None of us did as long as Sejal held us there.”

Harenn put the dermospray away and reached up to remove the monitor strip from Kendi’s forehead. “What about these children you spoke of?”

“I don’t know,” Ben admitted. “Sejal disappeared. I think that broke the rest of us up.”

“It hurt like hell when he did that,” Kendi put in. “At least, it did me.”

“Can you feel the Dream?” Harenn asked.

Kendi closed his eyes. “Sort of. It’s there, but not there. I’m having a hard time concentrating, though.”

“The question is,” Ben said, “what the hell happened to Sejal?”

 oOo

Vidya’s terrified mind raced through a dozen options and discarded all of them. She was standing with her hands laced over her head in the Nursery. Prasad lay at her feet. He was breathing, which meant he was merely unconscious, not dead. The four guard had spread into the room, pistols trained on her. They had not searched her yet. They seemed to be waiting for something. The cattle prod pressed against her stomach beneath her shirt. She could probably whip it out and get off a shot, but that would leave three other guard to react.

Life support monitors beeped softly, and over that Vidya heard shouted orders and crashing sounds from the lab itself. Vidya’s nostrils were dilated with fear. There had to be a way out of this. If she didn’t find a way, life as she knew it would end everywhere. It was no use trying to explain this to the guard. It would sound like the babblings of a lunatic.

A new guard appeared at the door. “We found two more,” he said. “A boy and a girl. They were obviously in the Dream, but we hit them with the pistols until they came out of it.”

Vidya’s legs went weak. The fifth guard shoved Sejal and Katsu into the glassed-in portion of the Nursery. Katsu looked dazed and Sejal was barely conscious. As one they stumbled and went to their knees. Vidya started to rush toward them, but two guard leveled their pistols at her, and she stopped.

“Are you all right?” she asked them.

Katsu looked up. “We’re fine, but the children will soon go back to devouring—”

“No talking,” the guard said, and fired his pistol at the ceiling. Katsu clamped her mouth shut. Sejal slumped down beside Prasad just as another guard entered the room, a sharp-faced man with a whipcord build and thinning blond hair. The bars on his sleeve indicated his rank.

“I’m Lieutenant Arsula,” he said. “How many are on this station?”

Vidya considered remaining mute. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Sejal stir slightly and changed her mind. She needed to keep the Lieutenant talking until Sejal recovered.

“We are nineteen,” Vidya replied. Something else, some important oddity, nagged at her, but she couldn’t place it. “That includes the twelve slaves.”

Arsula whispered something over his shoulder to someone in the hallway. The oddity continued to poke at Vidya. What was it? What was wrong besides the obvious? Her teeth tried to chatter and she kept her jaw firmly clamped to prevent them. Visions of a Unity prison swam through her mind, and she almost snorted. If they couldn’t do something soon about the children, prison would be the least—

It hit her. The children. That was the oddity. The children no longer squirmed in their beds. The room no longer whispered with the rustle of flesh against linen. Vidya stole at glance toward the fifteen Nursery beds and a chill trickled down her spine. Every child wore a beatific smile on its wizened face.

 oOo

Kendi turned the dermospray over and over in his hand. “I need to go back in.”

“Out of the question,” Harenn said, sounding a lot like Ara. “It might be even more dangerous now than before. Besides, you are still weak.”

“I feel fine now,” Kendi objected. “And we need to know what’s going on.”

Ben tightened his arm around Kendi’s body hard enough to make Kendi wince. He’d forgotten how strong Ben was, though it was wonderful to be reminded. It had been so long since Ben had held him.

“You aren’t going in there without me,” Ben told him firmly.

“We don’t even know what drug dose you need,” Kendi said. “And you haven’t had any training.”

“I did all right before,” Ben replied gruffly.

“But you were only working with me,” Kendi said. “You’ve never had to move around the Dream when it was dangerous.

They argued further, but Kendi ultimately won out, though he promised to exit the Dream if anything looked even vaguely dangerous. He also had to concede it would be better if he lay on the bed instead of standing propped up in the corner.

“Besides, you didn’t bring my spear,” he groused, then tousled Ben’s hair to show it was a joke. Ben gave a small smile, and Kendi’s heart sang. They were together again. He lay back and let Harenn administer the dose. It would be harder for him to enter the Dream without using the proper ritual pose of the Real People, but he could do it. He breathed deeply. After a long moment, the familiar colors swirled. Kendi reached for the Dream, and opened his eyes.

Everything looked wrong. Instead of being in his cave, he was far above the ground. The world spun crazily before he realized he was a falcon flying high in the air, though at the moment he was actually plummeting to his death. He regained control with frantic beats of his wings and leveled out. Below, the Outback looked thin and wavery, like a spirit version of the land. Above, the sky was pitch black, and it was laughing.

Why was he a falcon? This had never happened before. Though Kendi knew Silent who changed shape in the Dream, Kendi himself couldn’t do it. The falcon was a manifestation of part of himself, but never the main part. What was going on?

A black tentacle shot down from sky to earth, followed by another and another. One of them skimmed past Kendi’s right wing and he banked in panic. Wherever the tentacles touched the ground, a black pool oozed outward. Screams of pain erupted from the earth. Suddenly Kendi was so tired of a Dream filled with pain and screams. He longed for the time when he could go there for peace and serenity.

Kendi clacked his beak in annoyance with himself. There were real problems to concentrate on now. It was obvious the thing in the Dream was swallowing minds again. Sejal’s attack may have pushed it back, but Sejal had been yanked out of the Dream. Kendi cast his mind outward, and felt a few Silent, but only weakly, as tenuous as the Outback below.

Feeling frightened and alone, Kendi continued to fly until a tentacle flashed downward and slammed him into the ground.

 oOo

“We have found nineteen people,” Arsula told Vidya from the doorway. “One of them, a woman with dark hair, is unconscious. Do you know why?”

Vidya shook her head. “That is Dr. Say, and I do not know.”

“Did you signal the alert?” Arsula said.

“What alert?” Vidya replied, deciding to play stupid.

Arsula leaned casually against a wall, though his body was tightly coiled. His expression remained calm and relaxed. Vidya found herself admiring his poise.

“The guard received a recorded emergency alert that gave us the location of this base,” he said. “We had to divert a ocean battleship to investigate. No one at any level of government claims to have any idea that this place existed, and we had a hell of a time finding an airlock through all that camouflage. Who’s in charge here?”

Sejal’s eyes were open and he looked like he was trying to speak. Vidya willed him to remain quiet.

“Dr. Say is in charge,” Vidya replied. “The woman who is unconscious.”

“What is this installation doing?” Arsula demanded. “Who are these...children? Why are all those people out there taped up? I want answers, dammit!”

Sejal turned his head very slightly, bringing the guard and their pistols into his line of sight. Vidya flung up her hands to ensure the guards were watching her instead of him. “I know very little. I am a mere slave who only does as she is told.”

“Bullshit,” Arsula growled. “Someone had to tape those people up and someone had to sound the alert. That someone had to be you. You can start by telling me your—”

He stopped in mid-sentence. His feature froze, as did the other five guard. Sejal stared at them with glassy eyes. Vidya all but leaped across the room and snatched the pistols out of their unresisting hands. Then she slammed the outer Nursery door shut and locked it. Katsu got dizzily to her feet. Vidya shoved aside the concern she felt and turned to her son.

“Sejal,” she said, “can you make these men help us put the children into the cryo-units?”

Shouts rose from outside the Nursery door and something banged against it as Sejal nodded. The five guard and Lieutenant Arsula stiffened, then moved swiftly toward the beds. Vidya checked Prasad. His breathing and heartbeat were steady.

“Hurry, Sejal,” Katsu said. “The children have re-taken several planets, and they will soon devour Rust.”

“I’ll try,” Sejal said.

“I’ll try,” all the guard echoed, and the sound made Vidya’s skin crawl. Something slammed against the door again.

“I don’t know how to do this,” Sejal said.

“...to do this,” echoed the guard. They and Sejal were staring at her. Vidya would have expected them to have glassy eyes and glazed faces. They didn’t, but they did look odd somehow. It was their expressions. Every one of them had the same facial expression, and it looked vaguely like Sejal’s face.

“Hurry, Mom,” Sejal said. “Come on.”

“...come on.”

Vidya went to the nearest bed. The Child lay motionless. Only its breathing and the sickening smile on its face said it wasn’t dead. She disconnected the first lead.

The thudding at the door was becoming rhythmic. Vidya disconnected the rest of the tubes and slid the cryo-unit out from under the bed. Two of the guard lifted the the child into the unit. It slid shut and hissed into activation. The door was beginning to buckle under the repeated buffeting.

Fourteen left. The guard spread out, two to a bed, and went to work. Sejal stood to one side, watching. Eleven left. The door shuddered hard and Vidya could see light leaking through from the other side. Katsu, still looking dazed, fumbled for one of the pistols Vidya had gathered from the guard and put on a table. Vidya dashed across to the door and pulled the cattle prod from her waistband. Eight left.

Vidya set the prod at its highest level and placed the business end against the door. When the next thud came, she thumbed the trigger. Electricity snapped and there were howls of pain from the other side. Vidya nodded in satisfaction. The door was a poor conductor, but the prod put out enough power to cause some damage.

The possessed guard finished another set of children. Five left. The thudding resumed on the door, and Vidya assumed they had found another, non-conductive battering ram. The prod was drained in any case. She hung it from her belt and, like Katsu, took up a pistol. On the floor, Prasad stirred and sat up. Two left.

The door smashed open. A stone-topped table—the new battering ram—wedged itself into the doorway. Vidya crouched behind one of the beds and fired blindly in the direction of the door. Katsu did the same, and the guard outside returned fire.

“Sejal!” Vidya barked. “Take cover!”

But one of the bright beams caught Sejal’s shoulder. He screamed once and dropped. Every guard in the room cried out in unison and collapsed in an eerie parody of Sejal. The last two children continued smiling on the beds.

 oOo

Kendi flopped and writhed on the ground. Blackness surrounded him, thick and impenetrable. His talons curled with cold. He could feel the heat being leached from him like water being sucked from a glass. How many voices were in the blackness? He couldn’t tell. Twice he had tried to leave the Dream, but the pain was too great for the necessary concentration.

“Why are you doing this?” he choked.

Concepts flooded Kendi’s mind. ~anger HUNGER reach expand ANGER lonely~

Kendi tried to rise, but the energy simply wasn’t there. “You’re lonely?”

~lonely HUNGER ANGER lonely~

“Come join the rest of us,” Kendi replied. The response seemed to puzzle the darkness. Kendi rallied. “I meant we’re all lonely.”

~MOTHER~

The single concept knocked Kendi flat in its despair. A small part of Kendi’s mind wondered what a trained psychologist would think of it. He shivered in the biting, horrible cold.

“I miss my mother,” Kendi called out. His voice sounded thin and weak. “And I miss Ara. So does Ben. I—we—know what it’s like.”

The darkness hovered about him as if considering the idea. The icy heaviness lifted just slightly, as if it were pulling back from the Dream. A flicker of hope flared. Perhaps—

~HUNGRY~

There was no sympathy or empathy in the voice. Kendi, lying crushed beneath its icy weight, gave himself up to the ancestors and took his final breath.

 oOo

“We surrender!” Vidya shouted, and threw her pistol toward the ruined door. It clattered on the tiles. Katsu did the same. Vidya shot a glance at Sejal, who had only been slightly stunned and was already recovering.

The result of Vidya’s words was predictable. The table was shoved out of the way and a dozen more guard boiled into the room, crowding the room with warm bodies and flushed faces that sweated with fear and stress. Vidya and Katsu were swiftly handcuffed and the cattle prod was torn from her belt. The polymer bands bit deeply into Vidya’s wrists, but she didn’t cry out. Prasad, still dazed, was yanked to his feet and cuffed as well. Vidya watched placidly as three guard converged on Sejal, who bore a small burn on one shoulder. His strange pale eyes bore into them. At once, every guard in the room went rigid.

“Quickly!” Vidya said. “The last two!”

Four guard moved to the final pair of beds. Other guards released Vidya’s, Katsu’s, and Prasad’s handcuffs. Vidya rubbed her wrists with relief. One more child went into the cryo-unit. The pair working on the final child had disconnected him and were sliding him toward the final cryo-unit when utter despair crashed over Vidya in a sickening tidal wave. Her legs went rubbery and she slid to the floor. Every other person in the room, including Sejal, Prasad, and Katsu, did the same, but Vidya barely noticed. Nothing she did was worth anything. She was alone in the universe. Prasad had abandoned her, stealing away her daughter and leaving her to raise a son who had turned into a prostitute. The neighborhood she had worked body and soul to build and protect had failed, and the people who lived there surely snickered at her and called her names behind her back.

One of the guard started to weep hoarse, dry sobs. So did several of the others. The first one, a handsome, dark-haired man who looked barely eighteen, picked up his pistol, put it in his mouth, and fired. His head vanished in a snapping cloud of electric blood. Vidya couldn’t work up the energy to care. Part of her was aware of the fact that the final child was still active in the Dream, that it was feeding on the minds on Rust. She still didn’t care.

Another guard, this one not sobbing, got up and wandered aimlessly about the room. He was a short, slender man with brown hair and a flat nose. His face was devoid of any emotion, of any sense that other people had feelings. After a moment, he slid a knife from his belt, crouched over one of his sobbing compatriots, and deliberately drew the blade across the other man’s throat. Crimson liquid spouted into the air. The man’s sobs dissolved into gurgling noises. The flat-nosed guard stared at the glittering blade with a flicker of interest before moving purposefully toward Katsu. She looked up at him with dull eyes. Blood dripped from the knife. And still Vidya couldn’t bring herself to care. She had only known Katsu for a few weeks. It wasn’t as if Katsu were much of a daughter to her.

And then the bleak miasma lifted for a moment, as if something had hesitated or drawn back from her mind. For some reason, the image of a falcon holding back darkness popped into her head. A spurt of adrenaline shot through Vidya’s arteries and cut through the fog pressing down on her mind.

Vidya got to her feet. The despairing apathy had lifted enough to let her act, but she still felt as if a weight were pressing her down. She pulled herself upright using a cryo-unit for support. The flat-nosed guard reached down and grabbed the front of Katsu’s shirt. Katsu made a small sound as he raised the knife. Vidya’s fumbling fingers found one of the many pistols dropped by the guard. Katsu’s shirt tore as Vidya raised her heavy hand and fired.

She missed. Energy cracked through the air and made an uneven black spot on the wall. The flat-nosed guard dropped Katsu and twisted around to face Vidya. He lunged across the room. Vidya fired again, and he dropped in his tracks to lay twitching on the floor.

Vidya turned to face the final child lying on his bed next to the open cryo-unit. The smile still lay on his distorted lips. All at once the sense of uncaring smashed back into her. Vidya wondered how she could ever have seen the twisted monstrosity as a person, as a human being worth saving. It was the cause of all the problems around her, and its self-satisfied smirk only made her angrier. It was a thing, an experiment gone wrong. Vidya raised the pistol and squeezed the trigger.

Then she jerked her hand. The shot went wide. A light fixture exploded, sending down a shower of white sparks. No. This thing would not make her a murderer, no matter how angry or uncaring she became.

Vidya bolted forward and grabbed the child by shoulder and hip. She shoved him, rolling him roughly into the cryo-unit. The slid slammed shut and the viewplate fogged over.

Instantly, the weight lifted. The despair and anger she felt melted away into something she could handle. She pushed herself erect against a bed still warm from the child that had occupied it. Around her, the guard stirred. Two were dead, and the room smelled of coppery blood and pungent bowel. Prasad came slowly to his feet and Katsu stood up as well. Sejal sat down on one of the beds. A guard blinked.

“What the hell?” he asked.

And then a shuddering boom shook the lab.