The moment I step through the door into the cell block, I hear Aramovsky shouting for help.

I see him at the end of the hall, his face pressed between the bars, one arm waving madly.

“Em, stop Spingate! The God of Blood has her!”

I slide to a halt in front of Bello’s cell, the soles of my boots skidding across the stone floor.

A naked Korrynn Bello hangs from the ceiling support beam by a rope tied tight around her wrists. Her toes dangle just above the stone floor.

Theresa Spingate stands in front of her. Flecks of blood dot Spingate’s face. In her hand is a thin cane—the rod from the Grand Hall throne. It’s smeared with thick blood, a red identical to that of the cane itself.

Bello’s head hangs down, thin blond hair half-hiding a left eye that is already swollen shut. She spins slightly from left to right, the rope creaking in time. Her lower lip is split and ragged. Blood trails from the lip, from a gash on her forehead, from her horribly broken nose, down her cheeks, under her chin and down her too-white body, a path of crimson that drips from her toes into a puddle on the stone floor.

…plop…plop…plop…

I press my hand to the palm-plate—the cell door won’t open.

Spingate reprogrammed it.

“Theresa, open this door!”

She looks at me, but I’m not sure it’s me that she sees. Her eyes are wide, her teeth are bared. Her hand is a white-knuckled talon gripping the red rod. I remember Matilda using that device on me, the searing agony it caused every time she touched it to my body.

Spingate is my best friend, the person I know better than anyone—with her face twisted up like that, she is almost unrecognizable.

The God of Blood has her….

“Bello must talk,” she says. “She hasn’t yet, but she will.”

There’s cold-blooded anger in Spingate’s words, but also a trembling of doubt. Maybe she thought torture would be easy.

“Spin, open this godsdamned cell, right now!”

Her voice holds doubt; mine does not. My words are roaring muskets firing at close range.

She glances at Bello.

“Bello will break. She’ll tell us what she knows. She has to. Why don’t you understand?”

My best friend is talking, but it’s not really her. Theresa is a puppet, controlled by an invisible entity, by pure evil.

“Something is affecting us all,” I say. “Something is changing us. Listen to me—we don’t torture people. We’re not like the Grownups!”

Spingate didn’t just use the rod to shock, she beat Bello with it. Severely. And still Bello wouldn’t talk. How can a woman who is so weak she cries from loneliness resist this kind of physical punishment?

I realize Bello isn’t spinning anymore.

She isn’t moving at all.

The drip-drip of blood falling from her toes is slowing.

…plop…

…plop…

I have to get in there.

“Spin, if she hasn’t talked yet, she’s not going to. Her will is too strong. Please open the door. Please!”

Spingate’s face furrows in confusion.

“My children, Em.” Her voice is thin, distant. “I need to protect them. Bello knows why the aliens are here. While she stays silent, our people die. Don’t you see? My son could be next.”

I point to Bello. “Spin, look at her.”

Spingate does.

“You’re doing this for your children,” I say. “What if it works? What if torture becomes accepted in our culture, part of who we are. Imagine our world ten years from now—then imagine that it’s Kevin hanging by his wrists, that someone is hitting him with the rod, over and over and over again.”

Spingate stares. She blinks. That blankness washes over her, the same one I saw on Bishop’s face after he attacked Victor.

“Imagine it’s your son,” I say. “Bleeding. Screaming.”

Spingate looks at the red rod in her hand like she doesn’t know how it got there. A drop of blood falls from the end, splats against the cell floor.

She looks at me. Horror twists her face—horror brought on by realization.

“Em…what did I just do?”

She drops the rod. It clatters against the stone. She shuffles to the cell bars, reaches through and presses her hand to the palm-plate. When she takes her hand away, it leaves smeared fingerprints of blood.

The door lock clicks.

I yank it open and rush inside. I draw my knife from the sheath on my thigh and slash the rope. Bello drops like a bag of meat, like she has no bones.

She hits the floor. She doesn’t move.

I rush to her. I slice the ropes from her wrists, then sheathe my knife. I feel her face: it’s cool to the touch.

I press my ear to her chest: no heartbeat.

I lay her flat on her back, put my hands on her sternum and drive them down, once, twice, three times, just like Smith showed us to do. I press my mouth to Bello’s and breathe out hard.

She doesn’t respond.

I do chest compressions again, again push air into her lungs.

She doesn’t respond.

Over and over I do this, feeling the rage building inside me, sensing my soul eroding, flaking away—how could my best friend beat a woman to death?

Hands on my shoulders. A man’s hands.

“Let me try,” Aramovsky says.

Spingate let him out.

I fall to my butt, get out of his way.

Aramovsky’s chest compressions are stronger, his larger lungs force in more air than mine ever could. He is methodical, pumping away, desperate to save Bello.

Still she doesn’t respond.

A sheen of sweat breaks out on Aramovsky’s dark skin. Of course it does—it’s hot in this cell, and he’s working so hard.

She’s not moving.

I start to crawl backward, wanting to get away from the body….

My hand comes down on something round—the rod.

“Come on,” Aramovsky hisses as he keeps pumping. “Come on, Bello, fight!”

I hear crying, and for a moment my heart surges with hope, because that’s what Bello does, cry, until I realize it’s not her—it’s Spingate.

She’s standing in the open cell doorway. Tears streak her blood-flecked face. Her lower lip quivers.

Really? Now she feels bad?

I pick up the rod.

Aramovsky sits back, wipes sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand.

“It’s no use,” he says. “Bello is dead.”

I feel myself nodding as I stand.

“Of course she is,” I say. “Because this godsdamned gear killed her.”

I step toward Spingate. She stares at me, shakes her head.

“Em, I…I didn’t mean…”

“Yes, you did, you bitch,” I say, then I jam the rod tip into her neck.

Spingate’s body convulses. She makes a strange gurgling sound.

“Yes, you did,” I say, and I pull the rod away.

She collapses backward into the space between the rows of cells, her arms wrapped protectively around her round belly.

“Yes, you did.” I step out of the cell, touch the rod to her cheek. She convulses anew, that strange sound coming from deep in her throat. Her face wrinkles tight in agony. Her splayed fingers stretch out, half-curled, grabbing at nothing.

I’m going to kill this bitch. Her and her unborn baby, which will probably turn out just as evil as she is. Spingate tortures circles? She murders my kind? I’ll show her. I press the rod harder against her face, use it to pin her head against the stone floor.

A blur of motion: the rod is ripped from my grasp.

I turn to face Aramovsky. Sheened in sweat, he holds the rod in his right hand.

“The God of Blood has you,” he says. “Fight it.”

I draw my knife. The images on the Observatory walls, of double-rings torturing people, burning them, skinning them. Aramovsky, who started a war, who sent me out to die. He should have killed me when he had the chance.

“Fight it, Em,” he says, snarling out the words. “You are the strongest of us, don’t let it control you.”

I drop into a fighting stance, looking for a way past the rod he holds.

Aramovsky tosses the rod into the cell.

He puts his hands to his sides. He closes his eyes.

“Kill me if you must,” he says. “But if you do, the God of Blood will own you forever.”

I see the veins in his neck pulsing beneath his skin.

One slash of my blade will open up those veins. Aramovsky’s blood will spray everywhere.

Just like the pig’s did.

It will flow and puddle.

Just like Yong’s did.

The God of Blood has you….

I blink. I hear nothing. All I see is a defenseless man standing before me.

My knife clatters against the stone floor.

I glance at Spingate. She’s curled up on the floor, shaking, drooling blood.

I glance at Bello. Naked. Lifeless. Dead.

Aramovsky opens his eyes.

“Now you know, Em” he says. “Now you know what it’s like.”