39

She was going over the figures, looking at the other machines, trying to make sense of all the data and how it related, when she heard something. A kind of flapping. At first she ignored it, then something struck her door and she thought of the guard who had beaten his own head apart. Maybe he was not dead yet after all. Maybe he was trying to get up.

She stood slowly and made her way to the slot, even though it was not cut in such a way as to allow her to see the bottom of the door. But something was happening there; she could hear something, a crackling sound, like the sounds that logs make when they pop and crack in the fire. Not that she had ever seen them—wood was too valuable to waste on a fire—but she had watched the vids when she was a kid.

But that didn’t make sense. Who would start a fire here? And if there was one she’d smell it and see the smoke. And if not that, what could it be?

She knelt down and pressed her ear to the door. She could still hear sounds, but not much more clearly. It didn’t help any. She stood up again, tried again to look out, still saw nothing.

The noises continued for a while, and then stopped. She still waited, wondering what to do. And then a different noise started, the sound of movement, something sliding up the door. Yes, it must be the guard, she thought. He must be still alive after all. He must be standing up now.

She backed up a little, just to be careful. Would he be violent like he’d been before? Had the signal faded enough that he might have escaped whatever was troubling him?

His head rose to where she could see it in the slot and she caught her breath. His face was streaked with blood but something else had changed about it, too: the jaw was loose in a way it shouldn’t have been. It was hanging wrong. The head was oddly lumpy, perhaps where the skull had been broken, and the eyes had slipped farther in than they had been before.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

He didn’t say anything, just stood where he was, staring at her through the slot.

“You should get immediate medical attention,” she said. “You’re very hurt. Perhaps in shock, too.”

She moved a little closer and suddenly he thrust his arm through the slot and tried to grab her with it. Only it wasn’t his arm exactly, she realized, but a long scythe. Where had he gotten a scythe?

And then she realized that it was made of bone. It was not a scythe at all, but a part of him.

*   *   *

It scrabbled at the door, trying to get out. It was dragging the sheet behind it, parts of the sheet still adhering to it. It kept scratching, butting against the door.

Down the hall were the guards, still gathered outside the door to the next ring, the inner ring, milling about, getting more and more irritated and anxious as their leader spoke to Wandrei over vid. One of them, a young blond man named Millar, was more nervous than most. For days now, he’d been itching for a fight, something to sink his teeth into. And now was his chance to have one. But Wandrei was refusing to open the door.

“Calm down,” said Ramirez, the guard standing nearest to him.

“I can’t calm down,” said Millar. “I have to be out there.”

“You can’t be out there yet,” said Ramirez. “We can’t go until we’ve been given approval. It may not even come at all.”

“Like last time,” said Millar.

“Like last time,” Ramirez agreed.

Millar continued quivering: shaking, stretching, nearly bouncing off the walls.

“You’re driving me crazy,” Ramirez finally said. “You’re getting everybody wound up. Look, if you need to get some energy off then take a walk. We won’t leave without you.”

Millar was off like a shot, rushing down the hall. It felt good to move a little, maybe it’d help. He moved as quickly as he could, following the slow curve of the hall. It didn’t help much, but it helped a little.

He went to the end of the hall and the locked door there, and stopped. He was just turning around and starting back again when he heard a strange scrabbling sound inside the door.

“Anyone there?” he asked.

The scrabbling grew louder. A kind of hissing, strangling noise joined it.

He unhooked his truncheon from his belt, hefted it in his hand. Someone or something was in there, and he was going to find out what it was.

He reached for the door, and then stopped. Whatever it was, was it dangerous? Should he be doing this on his own?

But no, he told himself, he was wearing full riot gear. What could possibly happen to him?

*   *   *

At first glance, it seemed to Henry like he was watching a man’s back, the spine clear and pronounced, but there was no head. No, it couldn’t be a man, he told himself, he was experiencing some odd sort of perspectival shift, was seeing things wrong. And there were no arms, either, but rather strange flaps of skin, wings almost. And then he saw that yes, they were wings, and the creature took off. He followed it from monitor to monitor as it flew short distances and alighted, searching for something. What was it searching for?

And then another one came out of the hole, too, half fluttering its way to the top and then alighting there on the rim of the hole, waiting for a moment. It was still enough that Henry could see it clearly and see now something that at first he couldn’t believe. He understood now why he had first thought it was a human’s back: it was because whatever the creature was now, it had once been human. It was formed out of one of the corpses in the hole.

How was that possible? Henry wondered. He shook his head. He must be hallucinating, he thought. But no, when he opened his eyes, the creature was still there.

And then there was further movement in the hole and he saw a strange swordlike object slide out and anchor itself against the floor. More like a scimitar really, though not that exactly, either. And attached to something that was strangely banded but still evidently flesh.

A face and body followed. He could recognize it as the face and body of the man who had leaned over the hole and fallen in, could even see bits and scraps of his prison clothing. He knew it was him, but still couldn’t believe it, couldn’t believe how the man had bent and changed, had been taken apart and then put back together in an incomprehensible way. It was a face and body unlike anything he had ever seen.