TEN

They were moving quickly now, Wolgast at the wheel, Doyle beside him, thumbing away furiously on his handheld. Calling in to let Sykes know who was in charge.

“No goddamn signal.” Doyle tossed his handheld onto the dash. They were fifteen miles outside of Homer, headed due west; the open fields slid endlessly away under a sky thick with stars.

“I could have told you that,” Wolgast said. “It’s the back side of the moon out here. And why don’t you watch your language?”

Doyle ignored him. Wolgast lifted his eyes quickly to the rearview to find Amy looking back at him. He knew she felt it too: they were joined together now. From the moment they’d stepped off the carousel, he’d cast his lot with her.

“How much do you know?” Wolgast asked. “I don’t suppose it matters now if you tell me.”

“As much as you do.” Doyle shrugged. “Maybe more. Richards thought you might have problems with this.”

When had they spoken? Wolgast wondered. While he and Amy were on the rides? That night in Huntsville, when Wolgast had gone back to the motel to call Lila? Or was it before?

“You should be careful. I mean it, Phil. A guy like that. Private security contractor. He’s little more than a mercenary.”

Doyle sighed irritably. “You know what your problem is, Brad? You don’t know who’s on your side here. I gave you the benefit of the doubt back there. All you had to do was bring her back to the car when you said you would. You’re not seeing the whole picture.”

“I’ve seen enough.”

A filling station appeared ahead of them, a glowing oasis in the gloom. As they approached, Wolgast eased off the gas.

“Christ. Don’t stop,” Doyle said. “Just drive.”

“We’re not going to get very far without gas. We’re down to a quarter tank. This could be the last station for a while.”

If Doyle wanted to be in charge, Wolgast thought, at least he would have to act like it.

“Fine. But just the gas. And both of you stay in the car.”

They pulled up to the pump. After Wolgast shut off the engine, Doyle reached across and withdrew the keys from the ignition. Then he opened the glove box and removed Wolgast’s weapon. He released the clip, buried it in the pocket of his jacket, and returned the empty gun to the glove box.

“Stay put.”

“You might want to check the oil too.”

Doyle exhaled sharply. “Jesus, anything else, Brad?”

“I’m just saying. We don’t want to break down.”

“Fine. I’ll check it. Just stay in the car.”

Doyle stepped around the back of the Tahoe and began to fill the tank. With Doyle out of the car, Wolgast had a moment to think, but unarmed and without the keys, there wasn’t much he could do. Part of him had decided not to take Doyle completely seriously, but for the moment, the situation was what it was. He pulled the lever under the dash; Doyle moved to the front of the Tahoe and lifted the hood, momentarily shielding the cabin from view.

Wolgast twisted around to face Amy.

“Are you okay?”

The girl nodded. She was holding her knapsack in her lap; the well-stroked ear of her stuffed rabbit was peeking through the opening. In the light of the filling area, Wolgast could see a bit of powdered sugar still on her cheeks, like flecks of snow.

“Are we still going to the doctor?”

“I don’t know. We’ll see.”

“He has a gun.”

“I know, honey. It’s all right.”

“My mother had a gun.”

Before Wolgast could assemble a response, the hood of the Tahoe slammed closed. Startled, he turned sharply in time to see three state police cruisers, lights on, tearing past the filling station in the opposite direction.

The passenger door of the Tahoe opened to a gust of damp air. “Shit.” Doyle handed Wolgast the keys and swiveled in his seat to look at the cruisers as they passed. “You think that’s about us?”

Wolgast angled his head to watch the cruisers through the side-view mirror. They were doing at least eighty, maybe more. It could have been something ordinary, a wreck or a fire. But his gut told him it wasn’t. He counted off the seconds, watching the lights recede into the distance. He had reached twenty by the time he was certain they were turning around.

He turned the key, felt the engine roar to life.

“That’s us all right.”

Ten o’clock, and Sister Arnette couldn’t sleep. She couldn’t even close her eyes.

Oh, it was awful, just awful, everything that had happened—first the men coming for Amy, how they had deceived her, deceived everyone, though Sister Arnette still didn’t understand how they could be both FBI and also kidnappers; and then that terrible thing at the zoo, the shouts and screams and everyone running, and Lacey holding on to Amy the way she had, refusing to let go; and the hours they’d spent at the police station, the whole rest of the day, not treated like criminals exactly but certainly not spoken to in a way that Sister Arnette was accustomed to, all of it vaguely accusing, the detective asking them the same questions over and over again; and then the reporters and camera trucks lined up on the street outside the house, huge spotlights filling the front windows as the evening wore on, the phone ringing nonstop until finally Sister Claire had thought to unplug it.

The girl’s mother had killed someone, a boy. That’s what the detective had told her. The detective’s name was Dupree, a young fellow with a prickly little beard, and he spoke to her courteously, a bit of old New Orleans in his voice, which meant he was probably Catholic, calling her dawlin’ and cher; but wasn’t that what Sister Arnette had thought of the other two when they’d appeared at the door? Wolgast and the younger, good-looking one? Whose faces she had seen again on the grainy video Dupree showed her, from someplace in Mississippi, taken when—she guessed—they thought no one was looking? That they were nice men because they looked nice? And the mother, Detective Dupree told her, the mother was a prostitute. “A prostitute is a deep pit; she hides and waits like a robber, looking for another victim who will be unfaithful to his wife.” Proverbs, chapter 23. “For the lips of an immoral woman drip honey, and her mouth is smoother than oil; but in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death, her steps lay hold of hell.”

Hold of hell. The very words made Sister Arnette shudder in her bed. Because hell was real, that was a fact; it was a real place, where souls in torment writhed in agony forever and ever. That’s the kind of woman Lacey had let into their kitchen, who had stood in their very house not more than thirty-six hours ago: a woman who had hold of hell. The woman had ensnared this boy somehow—Arnette didn’t want to imagine that part—and then shot him, shot him with a gun in the head, and then given her girl to Lacey while she made her escape, a girl who had who-knew-what inside her. For it was true: there had been something … unearthly about her. It wasn’t nice to think it, but there it was. How else to explain what had happened at the zoo, all the animals running and making a ruckus?

The whole situation was awful. Awful awful awful.

Arnette tried to make herself sleep, but this accomplished nothing. She could still hear the thrum of the vans’ generators, could see, through the veil of her closed eyes, the ravenous glow of their spotlights. If she turned on the TV she knew what she’d find: reporters with their microphones, speaking in earnest tones and gesturing behind them toward the house where Arnette and the other sisters now attempted to sleep. The scene of the crime, they’d call it, of the latest development in this breaking story of murder and kidnapping, and federal agents somehow involved—though Dupree had forbidden, absolutely forbidden the sisters from talking about this part to anyone. When the sisters had returned home in the police van that had carried them back from the station, all of them wordless with exhaustion, to find the TV trucks, at least a dozen, lined up at the curb in front of the house like a circus train, it was Sister Claire who’d noticed that they weren’t just the local Memphis network affiliates but came from as far away as Nashville and Paducah and Little Rock, even St. Louis. As soon as they’d turned into the driveway the reporters had swarmed the van, pointing their lights and cameras and microphones and barking their furious, incomprehensible questions. These people had no decency. Sister Arnette was so frightened she began to shake. It had taken two police officers to move the reporters off the property—Can’t you see they’re nuns? Whaddaya wanna go bothering a buncha nuns for? All of you just back it up, right now—so the sisters could walk safely into the house.

Yes, hell was real, and Arnette knew where it was. She was in it, right now.

After that they’d sat together in the kitchen, none of them hungry but still needing to be somewhere—everyone except Lacey, whom Claire had taken straight upstairs to her room to rest. It was odd: of all of them, Lacey seemed the least shaken by the events of the afternoon. She’d barely uttered a word for hours, not to the sisters and not to Dupree, either, just sat with her hands in her lap, tears rolling down her cheeks. But then a funny thing had happened; the officers showed them the videotape from Mississippi, and when Dupree froze the image on the two men, Lacey stepped forward and looked, hard, at the monitor. Arnette had already told Dupree that that was them, she’d had a good look and there wasn’t a single doubt in her mind that the men on the screen were the same two who had come to the house and taken the girl; but the expression on Lacey’s face, which was something like surprise but not exactly—the word Arnette thought of was astonishment—made them all wait.

“I was wrong,” Lacey said finally. “It isn’t … him. He is not the one.”

“Which him, Sister?” Dupree asked gently.

She lifted a finger to the older of the two agents, the one who’d done all the talking—though it was the younger one, Arnette recalled, who’d actually taken Amy and put her in the car. In the image, he was looking straight up at the camera, holding a disposable cup in his hand. The time signature on the bottom right corner of the screen said that it was 06:01 on the same morning the two of them had come to the convent.

“Him,” Lacey said, and touched the glass.

“He didn’t take the girl?”

“He most assuredly did, Detective,” Arnette declared. She turned and looked at Sister Louise and Sister Claire, who nodded their assent. “We’re all agreed to that. Sister is just upset.”

But Dupree was not deterred. “Sister Lacey? What do you mean he’s not the one?”

Her face was shining with conviction. “That man,” she said. “Do you see?” She turned and looked at all of them. She actually smiled. “Do you see? He loves her.”

He loves her. What to make of that? But these were the only words Lacey had offered on the matter, as far as Arnette was aware. Did she mean to imply that Wolgast actually knew the girl? Could he have been Amy’s father? Was that what all this was about? But it didn’t explain what had occurred at the zoo, a terrible thing—a child had actually been trampled in the chaos and was in the hospital; two of the animals, a cat of some kind and one of the apes, had been shot—or the dead boy at the college, or any of the rest of it. And yet for the remainder of the afternoon at the station, in and out of various offices, telling their story, Lacey had sat quietly, smiling that strange smile, as if she knew something no one else did.

It all went back, Arnette believed, to what had happened to Lacey so long ago, as a little girl in Africa. Arnette had confessed the whole thing to the sisters, as they sat in the kitchen waiting for the hour when they could go to bed. She probably shouldn’t have, but she’d had to tell Dupree; once they were back at the house, it had all just kind of come out. An experience like that didn’t ever leave a person, the sisters agreed; it went inside them and stayed forever. Sister Claire—of course it was Sister Claire, who had gone to college and kept a nice dress and good shoes in her closet as if at any moment she’d get an invitation to a fancy party—knew a name for it: post-traumatic stress disorder. It made sense, Sister Claire said; it added up. It explained Lacey’s protective feelings for the girl, and why she never went out of the house, and the way she seemed separate from all of them, living among them but also not, as if a part of her were always elsewhere. Poor Lacey, to carry such a memory inside her.

Arnette checked the clock: 12:05. Outside, the roar of the generators had ceased at last; the camera crews had all gone home. She drew back the covers and breathed a worried sigh. There was no denying it. All of this was Lacey’s fault. Arnette would never have given the girl to those men if Lacey hadn’t lied to them all in the first place, and yet now it was Lacey who was fast asleep, while she, Arnette, was lying in bed awake. The other sisters, couldn’t they see that? But probably they were all sleeping, too. It was only she, Arnette, who was sentenced to a night of pacing the halls of her mind.

Because she was worried. Deeply worried. Something didn’t add up, no matter what Sister Claire said. He’s not the one. He loves her. That strange, knowing smile on Lacey’s lips. Dupree had questioned Lacey closely, asking her what this meant, but all Lacey had done was smile and say these words again, as if they explained everything. And it flew straight in the face of the facts. Wolgast was the one: everyone was agreed on that point. Wolgast and the other man, the one who had taken the girl, whose name Arnette remembered now was Doyle, Phil Doyle. Where they had taken the girl and why—well, no one had told Arnette anything. She sensed Dupree was puzzled too, the way he kept posing the same questions over and over, clicking his pen, frowning incredulously and shaking his head, making phone calls, drinking cup after cup of coffee.

And then, despite all these concerns, Arnette felt her mind begin to loosen, the images of the day unwinding inside her like a spool of thread, pulling her down into sleep. Tell us again about the parking lot, Sister. Arnette in the little room with the mirror that wasn’t a mirror—she knew that. Tell us about the men. Tell us about Lacey. Arnette was facing the glass; over Dupree’s shoulder she could see her face reflected there, an old face, lined by time and exhaustion, its edges wrapped by the gray cloth of her veil so that it seemed disembodied somehow, floating in space; and behind it, on the other side of the glass, above and around her, she detected the presence of a dark form, watching her. Who was behind her face? She could hear Lacey’s voice now, too, Lacey in the parking lot, crazy Lacey who seemed apart from all of them, sitting on the ground and clutching the girl fiercely; Arnette was standing above her, and Lacey and the girl were crying. Don’t take her. Her mind followed the sound of Lacey’s voice, down into a dark place.

Don’t take me, don’t take me, don’t take me …

A bolt of anxiety hit her chest; she sat upright, too fast. The air of the room seemed lighter, as if all the oxygen had leaked away. Her heart was hammering. Had she fallen asleep? Was she dreaming? What in the world?

And then she knew, knew it for a fact. They were in danger, terrible danger. Something was coming. She didn’t know what. Some dark force had come loose in the world, and it was sweeping toward them, coming for them all.

But Lacey knew. Lacey, who’d lain in the field for hours, knew what evil was.

Arnette tore from the room, into the hall. To be sixty-eight, and consumed by such terror! To give your life to God, to His loving peace, and come to such a moment! To lie with it in the dark all alone! A dozen steps to Lacey’s door: Arnette tried the handle but the door refused her; it was locked from the inside. She pounded the door with her fists.

“Sister Lacey! Sister Lacey, open this door!”

Then Claire was at her side. She was wearing a T-shirt that seemed to glow in the dark hall; her face was smeared with a penumbra of bluish cream. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Sister Lacey, open this door this instant!” Silence, still, from the far side. Arnette seized the handle and shook it like a dog with a rag in his teeth. She pounded and pounded. “Do as I say right now!”

Lights coming on, the sounds of doors and voices, a great commotion all around her. The other sisters were in the hallway now too, their eyes wide with alarm, everyone talking at once.

“What’s going on?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know—”

“Is Lacey all right?”

“Somebody call 911!”

“Lacey,” Arnette was yelling, “open this door!”

A huge force gripped her, pulling her away. Sister Claire: it was Sister Claire who had grabbed Arnette from behind, seizing her by her arms. She felt her diminishment, how her strength, against Sister Claire’s, was nothing.

“Look—Sister’s hurt herself—”

“Dear Lord in heaven!”

“Look at her hands!”

“Please,” Arnette sobbed. “Help me.”

Sister Claire released her. A reverent hush had fallen over them all. Crimson ribbons were running down Arnette’s wrists. Claire took one of Arnette’s fists and gently unclenched it. The palm was filled with blood.

“Look, it’s just her fingernails,” Claire said, and showed them. “She dug into her palms with her fingernails.”

“Please,” Arnette begged, tears rolling down her cheeks. “Just open the door and see.”

No one knew where the key was. It was Sister Tracy who thought to get the screwdriver from the toolbox under the kitchen sink and wedge it into the lock. But by the time this happened, Sister Arnette had already figured out what they’d find.

The bed that had never been slept in. The curtains of the open window shifting in the evening air.

The door swung open on an empty room. Sister Lacey Antoinette Kudoto was gone.

Two A.M. The night was moving at a crawl.

Not that it had begun well for Grey. After his run-in with Paulson in the commissary, Grey had returned to his room in the barracks. He still had two hours to kill until his shift, more than enough time to think about what Paulson had said about Jack and Sam. The only upside was that it sort of took his mind off the other thing, that funny echo in his head, but still it was no good, just sitting around feeling worried, and at a quarter to ten, just about ready to jump out of his skin, he put on his parka and crossed the compound to the Chalet. Under the lights of the parking area he treated himself to one last Parliament, gulping down the smoke, while a couple of doctors and lab techs, wearing heavy winter coats over their scrubs, exited the building and got into their cars and drove away. Nobody so much as waved at him.

The floor by the front door was slick with melted snow. Grey banged his boots clean and stepped to the desk, where the sentry took his badge and ran it through the scanner and waved him to the elevator. Inside, he pushed the button for Level 3.

“Hold the elevator.”

Grey’s insides jumped: Richards. An instant later he stepped briskly into the car, a cloud of cold air from outside still clinging to his nylon jacket.

“Grey.” He pushed the button for L2 and quickly checked his watch. “Where the fuck were you this morning?”

“I overslept.”

The doors slid closed and the car began its slow descent.

“You think this is a vacation? You think you can just show up when you feel like it?”

Grey shook his head, his eyes cast down at the floor. Just the sound of the man’s voice could make his backside clench like a fist. No way Grey was going to look at him.

“Uh-uh.”

“That’s all you have to say?”

Grey could smell the nervous sweat coming off himself, a rancid stink, like onions left too long in a crisper drawer. Probably Richards could smell it too.

“I guess.”

Richards sniffed and said nothing. Grey knew he was deciding what to do.

“I’m docking you for two shifts,” Richards said finally, keeping his eyes forward. “Twelve hundred bucks.”

The doors slid open on L2.

“Don’t let it happen again,” Richards warned.

He exited the elevator and strode away. As the doors closed behind him, Grey released the breath he realized he’d been holding in his chest. Twelve hundred bucks—that hurt. But Richards. He made Grey more than a little jumpy. Especially now, after the little speech Paulson had given in the mess. Grey had begun to think maybe something had happened to Jack and Sam, that they hadn’t just flown the coop. Grey remembered that dancing red light in the field. It had to be true: something had happened, and Richards had put that light on Jack and Sam.

The doors opened on L3, giving a view of the security detail, two soldiers wearing the orange armband of the watch. He was well below ground now, which always made him feel a little claustrophobic at first. Above the desk was a big sign: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. BIOLOGICAL AND NUCLEAR HAZARDS PRESENT. NO EATING, DRINKING, SMOKING. REPORT ANY OF THE FOLLOWING SYMPTOMS TO THE OD. This was followed by a list of what sounded like a bad case of stomach flu, only worse: fever, vomiting, disorientation, seizures.

He gave his badge to the one he knew as Davis.

“Hey, Grey.” Davis took his badge and ran it under the scanner without even looking at the screen. “I got a joke for you. How many kids with ADD does it take to screw in a lightbulb?”

“I don’t know.”

“Hey, you wanna go ride bikes?” Davis laughed and slapped his knee. The other soldier frowned; Grey didn’t think he understood the joke, either. “Don’t you get it?”

“’Cause he likes to ride bikes?”

“Yeah, ’cause he likes to ride bikes. He’s got ADD. It means he can’t pay attention.”

“Oh. I get it now.”

“It’s a joke, Grey. You’re supposed to laugh.”

“It’s funny,” Grey managed. “But I gotta get to work.”

Davis sighed heavily. “Okay, hold your horses.”

Grey stepped back into the elevator with Davis. From around his neck Davis took a long, silver key and placed it in a slot beside the button for L4.

“Have fun down there,” Davis said.

“I just clean,” Grey said nervously.

Davis frowned and shook his head. “I don’t want to know anything about it.”

In the locker room on L4, Grey switched out his jumpsuit for scrubs. Two other men were there, sweeps like him, one named Jude and one named Ignacio. On the wall, a large whiteboard listed the duties of each worker for the shift. They dressed together without speaking and exited the room.

Grey had drawn the lucky straw: all he had to do was mop the halls and empty the trash, then babysit Zero for the rest of the shift, to see if he ate anything. From the storage closet he fetched his mop and supplies and got to work; by midnight he was done. Then he went to the door at the end of the first corridor, ran his card through the scanner, and stepped inside.

The room, about twenty feet square, was empty. On the left side, a two-stage air lock led into the containment chamber. Going through took at least ten minutes, more on the return trip, when you had to shower. To the right of the air lock was the control panel. It was all a bunch of lights and buttons and switches, most of which Grey didn’t understand and wasn’t supposed to touch. Above it was a wall of reinforced glass, dark, which looked out on the chamber.

Grey took a seat at the panel and examined the infrared. Zero was kind of huddled in the corner, away from the gates, which had been left open when the last shift had brought in the rabbits. The galvanized cart was still there, sitting in the middle of the room, with its ten open cages. Three of the rabbits were still inside. Grey looked around the room. The others were all scattered about, untouched.

At a little after one A.M. the door to the corridor opened, and one of the techs stepped in, a large Hispanic man named Pujol. He nodded at Grey and looked at the monitor.

“Still not eating?”

“Uh-uh.”

Pujol made a mark on the screen of his handheld. He had one of those complexions that made it look as if he hadn’t shaved even when he had.

“I was wondering something,” Grey said. “How come they don’t eat the tenth one?”

Pujol shrugged. “How should I know? Maybe they’re just saving it for later.”

“I had a dog who did that,” Grey volunteered.

Pujol made more marks on his handheld. “Yeah, well.” He lifted one broad shoulder in a shrug; the information meant nothing to him. “Call the lab if he decides to eat.”

After Pujol left, Grey wished he’d thought to ask him some of the other questions on his mind. Like, why rabbits at all, or how Zero stuck to the ceiling like he sometimes did, or why just sitting there had begun to make Grey’s skin crawl. Because that was the thing with Zero, more even than with the rest of them; being with Zero felt like being with an actual person in the room. Zero had a mind, and you could feel that mind working. Five more hours: Zero hadn’t moved an inch since Grey had gotten there. But the readout below the infrared still gave his heartrate at 102 bpm, same as when he was moving about. Grey wished he’d thought to bring a magazine to read or maybe a crossword book, to help him stay alert, but Paulson had rattled him so bad he’d forgotten. He also wanted a smoke. A lot of guys snuck them in the john, not just the sweeps but also the techs and even a doctor or two. It was generally understood that you could smoke there if you had to and weren’t gone more than five minutes, but Grey didn’t want to push his luck with Richards, not after their run-in in the elevator.

He leaned back in the chair. Five more hours. He closed his eyes.

Grey.

Grey’s eyes flew open; he sat upright.

Grey. Look at me.

It wasn’t a voice he was hearing, not exactly. The words were in his head, almost like something he was reading; the words were someone else’s, but the voice was his own.

“Who’s that?”

On the monitor, the glowing shape of Zero.

I was called Fanning.

Grey saw it then, like somebody had opened a door in his head. A city. A great city thrumming with light, so many lights it was as if the night sky had fallen to earth and wrapped itself around all the buildings and bridges and streets. Then he was stepping through the door and he felt and smelled where he was, the hardness of cold pavement under his feet, the dirt of exhaust and the smell of stone, the way the winter air moved in channels around the buildings so there was always a breeze on your face. But it wasn’t Dallas, or any other city he’d ever been to; it was someplace old, and it was winter. Part of him was sitting at the panel on L4 and another part was in this other place. He knew his eyes had closed.

I want to go home. Take me home, Grey.

A college, he knew, though why would he think such a thing, that this was a college he was seeing? And how would he know this was New York City, where he’d never been in his life, had seen only in pictures, and that the buildings around him were the buildings of a campus: offices and lecture halls and dormitories and labs. He was walking along a path, not really walking but somehow moving down it, and people were flowing past him.

See them.

They were women. Young women, bundled in heavy woolen coats and scarves tucked up tight to their throats, some with hats pulled down over their heads, rich handfuls of young hair flowing like shawls of silk from under these compressive domes onto their smoothly rounded shoulders, into the cold air of New York City in winter. Their eyes were bright with life. They were laughing, books tucked under their arms or pressed to their slender chests, talking in animated voices to one another, though the words were nothing he could hear.

They’re beautiful. Aren’t they beautiful, Grey?

And they were. They were beautiful. Why had Grey never known this?

Can’t you feel them, walking past, can’t you smell them? I never get tired of smelling them. How the air behind them sweetens as they pass. I used to just stand and breathe it in. You smell them too, don’t you, Grey? Like the boys.

—The boys.

You remember the boys, don’t you, Grey?

He did. He remembered the boys. The ones walking home from school, sweating in the heat, bookbags sagging from their shoulders, their damp shirts clinging to them; he remembered the smell of sweat and soap of their hair and skin, and the damp crescent on their backs where their bookbags had pressed against their shirts. And the one boy, the boy trailing behind, now taking the shortcut down the alley, the quickest way home from school: that boy, his skin bronzed from the sun, his black hair pressed to the back of his neck, his eyes cast down at the sidewalk, playing some game with the cracks so that he didn’t notice Grey at first, the pickup moving slowly behind him, then stopping. How alone he seemed—

You wanted to love him, didn’t you, Grey. To make him feel that love?

He felt a great, sleeping thing lumbering to life inside him. The old Grey. Panic swelled his throat.

—I don’t remember.

Yes you do. But they’ve done something to you, Grey. They’ve taken that part of you away, the part that felt love.

—I don’t … I can’t …

It’s still there, Grey. It’s just hidden from you. I know, because that part was hidden in me, too. Before I became what I am.

—What you are.

—You and I, we’re the same. We know what we want, Grey. To give love, to feel love. Girls, boys, it’s all the same. We want to love them, as they need to be loved. Do you want it, Grey? Do you want to feel that again?

He did. He knew it then.

—Yes. That’s what I want.

I need to go home, Grey. I want to take you with me, to show you.

Grey saw it again, in his mind’s eye, rising up around him: the great city, New York. All around him, humming, buzzing, its energies passing through each stone and brick, following unseen lines of connectedness into the soles of his feet. It was dark, and he felt the darkness as something wonderful, something he belonged to. It flowed into him, down his throat and into his lungs, a great, easeful drowning. He was everywhere and nowhere all at once, moving not over the landscape but through it, into and out of it, breathing the dark city that was also breathing him.

Then he saw her. There she was. A girl. She was alone, walking the path between the school buildings—a dormitory of laughing students; a library of quiet hallways, its wide windows fogged by frost; an empty office where a lone cleaning woman, listening to Motown on headphones, bent to rinse her mop in a wheeled bucket. He knew it all, he could hear the laughter and the sounds of quiet studying and count the books on the shelves, he could hear the words of the song as the woman with the bucket hummed along, whenever you’re near … uh-uh … I hear a symphony—and the girl, ahead on the pathway, her solitary figure shimmering, pulsing with life. She was walking straight toward him, her head tipped against the wind, her shoulders lifted in a delicate hunch beneath her heavy coat to tell him she was holding something in her arms. The girl, hurrying home. So alone. She had stayed out late, studying the words of the book she held to her chest, and now she was afraid. Grey knew he had something to tell her, before she slipped away. You like this, is that what you like, I’ll show you. He was lifting, he was rising up, he was falling down upon her—

Love her, Grey. Take her.

Then he was ill. He rocked forward in his chair and in a single spasm released the contents of his stomach onto the floor: the soup and salad, the pickled beets, the mashies and the ham. His head was between his knees; a long string of spittle was swinging from his lips.

What the hell. What the goddamn.

He eased himself upright. His mind began to clear. L4. He was on L4. Something had happened. He couldn’t remember what. An awful dream of flying. He’d been eating something in the dream; the taste was still in his mouth. A taste like blood. And then he’d puked just like that.

Puking, he thought, and he felt his stomach drop—that was bad. Very very bad. He knew what he was supposed to watch for. Vomiting, fever, seizures. Even a hard sneeze out of nowhere. The signs were everywhere, not just in the Chalet but the barracks, the dining hall, even in the johns: “Any of the following symptoms, report immediately to the duty officer … ”

He thought of Richards. Richards, with his little dancing light, and the ones named Jack and Sam.

Oh crap. Oh crap oh crap oh crap.

He had to move fast. No one could find it, the big puddle of puke on the floor. He told himself to calm down. Steady, Grey, steady. He checked his watch: 02:31. No way he was waiting another three and a half hours. He got to his feet, stepping around the mess, and quietly opened the door. A quick peek down the hall: not a soul in sight. Speed, that was the thing; get it done fast and then get the hell out. Never mind the cameras; Paulson probably had that right—how could somebody be watching every minute of the day and night? In the supply closet he got a mop and began to fill a bucket in the sink and poured in a cup of bleach. If anybody saw him he could say he’d spilled something, a Dr Pepper or a cup of coffee, which he wasn’t supposed to have, though people did. He’d spilled a Dr Pepper. Couldn’t be sorrier. That was what he’d say.

He also wasn’t really sick, he could tell, not the way the signs made it sound. He was sweating under his shirt, but that was just the panic. As he watched the bucket fill and then hoisted it, reeking of chlorine, from the deep well of the sink, his body was telling him so in no uncertain terms. Something else had made him toss, something in the dream. The sensation was still in his mouth, not just the taste—a too warm, sticky sweetness that seemed to coat his tongue and throat and teeth—but the feel of soft meat yielding under his jaws, exploding with juice. Like he’d bitten into a rotten piece of fruit.

He yanked a few yards of paper towel off the dispenser, got a hazard bag and gloves from the cabinet, and carted it all back to the room. The mess was too big just to mop it, so he got on his knees and did his best to soak it up with the towels, pushing the bigger pieces into clumps he could pick up with his fingers. He put it all into the bag and cinched it tight, then spread water and bleach over the floor, working in circles. There were some chunks of something on his slippers and he wiped those off, too. The taste in his mouth was different now, like something spoiled, and it made him think of Brownbear, whose breath got like that sometimes; it was the only thing bad about him, how he’d come back to the trailer reeking of week-old roadkill and stick his face right up close to Grey’s, smiling that dog smile he had, his gums pulled back at his molars. Grey couldn’t hold it against him, Brownbear being just a dog, though he didn’t like that smell one bit, and not in his own mouth like it was now.

In the locker room he changed quickly, shoved his scrubs in the laundry bin, and rode the elevator up to L3. Davis was still there, leaning back in his chair with his feet propped up on the desk, reading a magazine, his boots bobbing to some song playing on little earphones tucked in the sides of his head.

“You know, I don’t know why I even look at this stuff anymore,” Davis said loudly over the music. “What’s the point? I’m never getting off this iceball.”

Davis dropped his feet to the floor and held up the cover of the magazine for Grey to see: two naked women in a winding embrace, their mouths open and the tips of their tongues just touching. The magazine was called Hoteez. Their tongues looked to Grey like slabs of muscle, something you’d put on ice in a deli case. The sight sent a fresh current of nausea churning through him.

“Oh, that’s right,” Davis said when he saw Grey’s expression. He plucked the buds from his ears. “You guys don’t like this stuff. Sorry.” Davis sat forward and wrinkled his nose. “Man, you stink. What is that?”

“I think I ate something bad,” Grey said cautiously. “I gotta go lie down for a while.”

Davis flinched with alarm; he pushed away from the desk, widening the gap between them. “Don’t fucking say that.”

“I swear that’s all it is.”

“Jesus Christ, Grey.” The soldier’s eyes were wide with panic. “What are you trying to do to me? You got a fever or anything?”

“I just tossed is all. In the can. I think maybe I ate too much. I just need to get off my feet for a bit.”

Davis took a second to think, eyeing Grey nervously. “Well, I’ve seen you eat, Grey. All you guys. You shouldn’t shovel it in like that. And you don’t look so hot, I’ll say that. No offense, but you look like crap. I really should call this in.”

They’d have to seal the level, Grey knew. That meant Davis would be stuck down here, too. As for what would happen to him, he didn’t know. He didn’t want to think about it. He wasn’t really sick, he knew that much. But there was something wrong with him. He’d had bad dreams before, but nothing that ever made him puke.

“You’re sure?” Davis pressed. “I mean, you’d tell me if there was something really wrong with you?”

Grey nodded. A drop of sweat slithered the length of his torso.

“Man, what a fucking day.” Davis sighed resignedly. “All right, hang on.” He tossed Grey the elevator key and freed his com from his belt. “Don’t say I never did anything for you, okay?” He spoke into the mouthpiece. “This is the sentry on three? We need a relief worker—”

But Grey didn’t stay to listen. He was already in the elevator, gone.