40

The creature that had once been a guard roared, clawing at her through the slot in the door. It either did not remember it had the key to the door or, in this state, did not know how to work it. In any case, it did not open the door.

At first she crouched against the back wall, afraid, eyes squinched shut. But slowly her scientific curiosity got the better of her and she began watching it, even coming a little closer. Whatever the thing was now, it had once been human, but she could see little human response left in it, little to suggest it still had a connection to its human side. Even its movement seemed almost programmed, a repetition of certain patterns along a search for living bodies. She could move to one side of the cell or the other and it would turn to follow her, like a flower following the sun.

After a while she was convinced that it wasn’t human any longer. Not only that, she wasn’t certain that it was a thinking creature at all: it was more like something constrained to draw from a limited set of responses. Was it really alive? It was moving, yes, but it didn’t seem to be breathing. If it was alive, it was not alive in the way that it had been before, back when it had been human.

But the important question was first how to get out of the cell and second how to get past it. She had lots of electronic equipment here; maybe she could construct something to broadcast out with, make some kind of distress signal.

She was just starting to sort through her equipment to see what she had when from down the hall she heard a shout and the creature turned. Several shots rang out, and she even saw one of the bullets tear through the creature’s chest before it started down the hall. The bullet didn’t seem to affect it much at all. It didn’t seem to experience any pain. Interesting, she thought, as it lumbered down the hall and out of her vision. A moment later, she heard a series of additional shots, and then a series of screams, the latter cut suddenly short.

*   *   *

Millar hit it hard with the truncheon, gave it a blow that should have paralyzed it, but the creature hardly seemed to notice. Abruptly it had leapt and was upon him, its batlike wings wrapping him in an obscene embrace. And then the creature leaned in, but its proboscis knocked against the front of his faceplate. Ha, Millar thought, I’m safe, it can’t hurt me, and he tried to work his arm free so that he could hit the creature again. It knocked up against the faceplate again, and hissed, and then the proboscis darted forward hard and cracked the plastic. Oh, shit, he thought. Another blow and the creature was almost through. He tried to shake it off, tried to break free, but it wouldn’t let go of him. He screamed. It struck again and this time it went not only through the faceplate, but deep into his brain.

*   *   *

Henry watched as one of the batlike creatures apparently found what it was looking for and swooped rapidly forward, wrapping itself around a convict’s head and shoulders. The man, screaming, tried to push it away, but the creature held tight and then pulled him tighter, and then a proboscis shot out of its body and through the center of the man’s forehead. The man collapsed, dead, but the creature was still on him, the proboscis obscenely pumping something into the man’s head. Then the batlike creature pulled free and waddled off, awkward now on the floor.

But as bad as that was, what followed was much worse. The body itself, already shivering by the time the creature left it, started to transform. Bones and muscles twisted and broke and inverted. Bones pushed out through flesh and changed, thinning, becoming something else. The whole body became something else, something other—became just like the creature with scimitarlike arms that he had just seen crawl its way up out of the hole.

Oh my God, thought Henry and realized that before long all the men in the room would become those things. Panicked, he opened the security door and then watched on the monitor the men trying to push their way in while the guards rushed out, striking all around them with their truncheons.

“No,” he said on his headset to the guard leader. “Don’t hit them! Get them in here! Save them!”

“What?” asked the leader.

“Drag them in,” he said, “and get your men back in as well, but keep those creatures out.”

“What creatures?” asked the leader and then he saw one of the shambling beings with bladelike arms. He ran toward it, truncheon lifted over his head, and a few moments later his head had been severed from his shoulders.

Henry turned on the loudspeaker. “Fall back, fall back!” he yelled. Some of the guards did, but a few didn’t, and many of the prisoners, too, were still out there. But he saw the batlike creatures and humanoid ones coming closer and felt he had no choice but to close the door.

It slid slowly shut. A body was in the way so he had to use the override to get it closed, and when it did close it slowly tore the body in half. There were men still outside, many of them, and one of them lost his arm in the door. He quickly tried to count the creatures, his eyes flicking from screen to screen, and was pretty sure that they were all there outside. They were safe.

Or so he thought until he heard the sound of screaming from down near the door.

*   *   *

As the alarms went off, Istvan remained calm. He watched people come and go, rushing in and out, and after a while everybody was gone, except for him and Briden.

“Not all of them will come back,” said Istvan. “Very few will.”

“What?” said Briden.

“It will keep us safe,” said Istvan, gesturing to the Marker.

“Safe from what?” asked Briden.

But Istvan did not answer. He closed his eyes and bowed his head and waited.