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  “Yeah,” Funky agreed. “But to where?”

  It was a simple question—but the way Funky posed it added a touch of superstition. And why not? There was as much superstition as there was science when it came to Lyssa, which made his premise a more than valid place to start. There was also no need to speculate. Lyssa had already told Cray who she was trying to reach.

  The Other.

  At the time, Cray had every reason to believe it was just a manifestation of her paranoia—another symptom of whatever instability had started her killing spree. He had never even considered the possibility that it might be the cause.

  “The Other.”

  Funky was taken aback.

  “You talking rubbish, Vortex?”

  “Just riding the logic, Funky,” Cray said. “Tell me something: If you woke up one day, and found out you were all alone in the universe, what’s the first thing you would do?”

  “I’d give up whatever I was smoking the night before.”

  “Then what would you do?”

  Funky considered it.

  “I’d start looking for other people.”

  Cray smiled at him.

  “Precisely,” he said. “Why would Lyssa be any different?”

  “Maybe because she’s the only one of her kind.”

  Cray leaned in toward him slightly.

  “What if she’s not?”

  Funky turned those crazy yellow eyes back on Cray. He started to laugh, but then saw that his friend was absolutely serious.

  “Something is out there,” Cray pressed further. “I’m not saying we understand what it is, but it exists. Call it the Other, call it what you want—but Lyssa has seen it. And she’s made it clear she wants to see it again.”

  Cray reached over and killed the construct. As it went dark, so did the intensity of his emotions; but as with all dark magic, an impression of itself remained. If he were insane, Cray thought it would be easier—but he believed just the opposite.

  The intercom interrupted before that notion could go any further.

  “Funky,” Lea said over the speaker. “Is Alden there with you?”

  Funky gave him an apprehensive glance before answering.

  “Yeah,” he responded.

  “The sequencing model taken from his blood sample is complete. Tell him we can begin the flash extraction whenever he’s ready.”

  “I’m sure he’ll be happy to hear that.” He clicked the intercom off, regarding Cray with some concern. “You gonna be okay with this thing?”

  Cray was pragmatic.

  “Does it really matter?”

  “I’m just saying—nobody could blame you for checking out.”

  Cray patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry,” he said as he walked toward the exit. Funky got up and followed him, and together they headed for the lab. “I’m not ready for that just yet. Give me a little time. I can keep it together.”

  “Yeah, sure. But how much longer you think you got?”

  “Time ran out on me years ago,” Cray said tiredly, resigning himself to this fate. “The way I see it, I’m just now picking up the check.”

  “Cashing in those points for the next life, eh?”

  “If there is a next life.”

  “Maybe there is,” Funky suggested. “Or maybe you’re just living it now.”

  The hospital floor was quiet.

  A duty nurse sat at the main station, staring into the monitors that tracked the vitals of her one and only patient. She watched for variance in the fixed series of blips and lines. The patterns were hypnotic in their consistency, but had yet to show anything but the most elementary signs of life. Patient Zero the staff had taken to calling her. Zero because they knew next to nothing about her, and zero because her status never changed. Even at subsistence levels, her body functions worked like a perfectly tuned machine—though the lack of cognizant brain wave activity and rapid eye movements suggested that only the autonomous regions of the patient’s mind had escaped catastrophic damage.

  The attending physician suddenly appeared at her side, startling the nurse out of her trance.

  “Didn’t mean to scare you,” he apologized. “Any change?”

  “Take a look for yourself,” the nurse said. “Tell me what you think.”

  The doctor studied the vitals for a while, making notations on the electronic chart. “In my professional opinion?” he pronounced. “Subject has exhibited no response to external stimuli and displayed only minimal EEG activity for the last six hours. I believe the term you’re looking for is brain-dead.”

  “I know,” the nurse said nervously, lowering her voice to a whisper as a Special Services officer went past the station. She leaned in close to the doctor and continued, “So what’s with all the security? They act like they expect her to get up and walk out of here.”

  “You’ve seen her physiology,” the doctor observed. “Maybe that isn’t such a stretch.”

  “I just don’t like it. They can’t just come in here and dump some freak on us without telling us anything.”

  “They can do whatever they want,” the doctor said. “They’re CSS. It’ll be out of our hands by tomorrow, in any case. Their physicians will be coming in to assume responsibility. In the meanwhile,” he added, scribbling down a new prescription, “we continue to administer meds. Push an additional five ccs of betaflex in the next series. We’ll see if she responds to that.”

  “Yes, Doctor.”

  The doctor then left to finish his rounds. The nurse released an anxious breath, not enjoying the idea of going in there to pump drugs into Patient Zero. It wasn’t the additional security that bothered her as much as the idea it was even necessary. CSS was afraid of the woman in that hospital bed—and the Mons virus had nothing to do with it.

  She tried to put the thought out of her head, busying herself by uploading the new prescription to her PDA. She then took it to the dispensary and logged it into the pharmaceutical conveyor system. The machine obliged, filling three ampoules with the specified amount of drugs, which the nurse loaded into hyposprays and arranged neatly on a tray.

  She carried the tray over to the patient’s room, presenting the materials to the pair of guards posted outside. The hyposprays could have contained fruit juice for all they knew, but still they inspected everything, including the doctor’s notes. Satisfied she posed no danger, the guards unlocked the doors and allowed the nurse to pass. She briefly considered asking one of them to accompany her, but their backs were turned before she could open her mouth.

  The nurse turned on the light as she entered, pausing when the door clicked shut behind her. For some reason, she felt trapped—as if she had been locked in a cage with some unseen animal. But there was only her and the living corpse on the other side of the room.

  Patient Zero was pallid, motionless—even peaceful. Dark eyelashes fell across ashen cheeks like soot, her lips pale and slightly parted. Hands lay at her sides, fingertips slightly curled. The nurse would have thought her dead if not for the rise and fall of her chest. Oxygen still flowed into her lungs, blood still pumped through her veins. Even so, her state was not life. Nor was it death, as the perfection of her responses indicated. She simply was, and that made the draw of her very powerful.

  The nurse watched her from a distance, awaiting any changes or signs of movement. None were forthcoming. She entertained the idea of leaving, of sending someone else in to do the job; but she was also fascinated, finding it impossible to take her gaze away from the woman.

  Placing one foot in front of the other, the nurse walked over to the bed. It was only when she put the tray down that she realized her hands were trembling. Gingerly, she removed the cap from the first hypospray, eyes darting back and forth between it and the patient’s face. From under those lids, the nurse could feel her staring.

  Patient Zero exhaled, her breath heavy and forced. Her mouth fell open a little more, as if to speak.

  The nurse brandished the hypospray like a tal
isman. Jabbing it into the side of the patient’s neck, she pressed the trigger. Fluid forced its way through the skin, dissipating with a faint hiss. The patient’s head bobbed slightly, but there was no action, no reaction.

  The sensation of being watched disappeared. When the nurse looked down at her patient, she felt only pity. That, and shame at having deluded herself. “God,” she muttered, closing her eyes and shaking her head. “Tell me I’m not losing it.”

  She picked up another hypospray, holding it up to check the dosage. She looked down at the patient and smiled, conveying a silent apology.

  Then terror.

  Milky white eyes gazed back up at her, shifting red, then black. In that moment, the world dissolved. Piece by piece, it fell down like rain, draining light and color and substance into nothingness. Through that stabbed a single flash of pain, then the hardness of the hypospray against her own throat.

  She didn’t even have time to scream.

  The intercom next to the door rang softly.

  The two guards standing post outside the room exchanged a brief look. They had expected the nurse to knock when she was finished—that had always been the drill. Turning around, one of them hit the button to respond.

  “What is it?”

  “I think one of you should have a look at this,” a voice replied, sounding hollow and canned in the tiny speaker. “I found something.”

  “Okay. Hang on a second.” The guard killed the connection, unlocking the door with his code key and turning back toward his partner. “Stay here while I check it out.”

  The other man nodded.

  The guard went inside. The room was mostly dark, with a small amount of light spilling off the vital monitors and a reading lamp next to the bed. Poking his head around the privacy curtain, the guard could see the nurse hovering over her patient, moving gracefully from side to side. Her back was turned to him, her white uniform molding nicely to the curves of her body. The guard checked out the scenery before he spoke up.

  “Hey,” he said. “What’s up?”

  The nurse bowed her head a tiny bit, glancing at him sideways. Coarse shadows obscured what little of her face was visible. Most of her attention was still focused on the patient.

  “Quiet,” she whispered. “I think she’s trying to say something.”

  To emphasize the point, the nurse leaned in closely.

  The guard took a few more steps in. He was absolutely silent, even holding his breath as he tried to listen.

  “Yes,” the nurse said, nodding her head slowly. “Yes, I can hear you.”

  Another step. More seconds passed, more words were exchanged. The guard heard next to nothing and started getting anxious about what he was missing.

  “Hello?”

  “I think she’s starting to come out of it,” the nurse said, picking up a hypospray and injecting the patient. “If you want to talk to her, you better do it now. I don’t know how long this is going to last.”

  The guard moved in quickly. Brushing the nurse aside, he approached the bed and found the patient on her side, arms flopped over and dangling loosely, her face turned away from him. It was difficult to tell if she was even conscious. The guard reached out, tentatively at first, touching her shoulder to see if there was any response.

  “Are you awake?” he tried. “Can you hear me?”

  The nurse stepped off, positioning herself behind the guard.

  “Say something if you can hear me.”

  The patient said nothing. She lolled in his hands, her body limp and cooling to the touch. Then she rolled over, flopping onto her back like a dead fish. The guard recognized her face. He had seen it only minutes earlier, when the nurse walked into this room.

  Avalon waited for the guard to turn, listening to his movements to estimate where the lethal blow should fall. She caught him in the neck with a single chop, one hand crushing his windpipe while the other swiped his head and sent him tumbling.

  In the void, Avalon could only hear the results of her attack. There were scrapes against the floor as the guard dragged himself away, but the bubbling sounds that came from his ruined larynx told her his struggles were weakening. The guard could not speak, nor could he breathe; and when he collapsed to the floor a few seconds later, all Avalon had to do was wait.

  Kneeling, she felt out the dimensions of the guard’s uniform. It was not a perfect fit, but it would do.

  She went to work.

  Outside, the other guard had just decided to check on his partner when the door opened.

  “It’s about time—” he began to say, before the shaft of cartilage that was his nose buried itself in his brain. The hemorrhage was fatal and instantaneous, the result of a single, violent thrust from the base of Avalon’s palm. The guard fell into her arms without protest. She dragged him into the room and left him with the others.

  She then returned to the half-open doorway, unable to see but keenly aware of everything. This had been part of her practice regimen after she was blinded, to orient herself in strange surroundings based only on her working senses. First she listened, then she waited. She drew in a deep breath, rooting for disturbances in the antiseptic balance of the air that might indicate someone was close by. Confident she was clear, she stepped out into the corridor. To the security cameras, it appeared as if a uniformed guard had just returned to his post.

  Avalon’s mind formed a chart based on what Phao Yin had told her: Five meters forward, turn left. Three more meters, turn right. There you will find a supply closet. It was the place he had promised to hide what she needed.

  In no hurry, Avalon walked the path that Yin prescribed. Coming up on the closet door, she felt for the knob and found it unlocked. So far, Yin was as good as his word. She slipped inside and closed the door behind her.

  On the top shelf, in the corner closest to the door. Concealed beneath a stack of blankets, you will find a box.

  Avalon took off her uniform boots, and carefully pushed aside anything on the shelves that could make noise. She then used the shelves like a ladder and climbed all the way to the top. Hands plunged into the soft cloth she found there, fanning out until they came across a square, rigid surface up against the wall. Carefully, Avalon tucked the package beneath her arm and climbed back down.

  Open the box. Everything you requested is inside.

  Avalon peeled back the lid. An electric tingle invaded her fingers as they brushed against the sensuit, which even now was responding to her biorhythmic input. A sudden rush of perception filled her head when she held it to her cheek, like flashbulbs going off in a dark room. The effect was narcotic.

  She stripped out of the uniform, stretching the luxurious fabric of the new sensuit across her bare skin. The world assembled itself from pieces around her, then reached outward as she tested the full range of her sensors. Moments later, Avalon had a full schematic of the hospital in memory. She mapped out every heat signature, including the blooms coming off the weapons the CSS troops carried. They were clumsy and scattered—exactly as she expected.

  Getting back into uniform, Avalon gathered what remained in the box. Yin had left her some hard currency, along with a transport pass for LaGuardia. No weapons, because none were necessary. What Avalon had to do she could do with her hands.

  It was over an hour before CSS realized she was gone.

  Cray was suspended, unconscious, the outline of his form blurred and luminous in the viscosity of the accelerating solution. Pale light engulfed him in a halo, blemished by the occasional electrochemical discharge that spidered down the length of his extremities like tiny blue tendrils of St. Elmo’s fire. They jumped over the vital electrodes plastered to his skin, congregating around the dozens of open fiber receptors awaiting connection. The extraction process had yet to begin, and already his body was urging it on.

  Lea circled the transparent tank, inspecting the setup and reserving even greater care for its occupant. Cray seemed especially vulnerable to her now, surrendering himself to the merc
y of her skills. Although his face was hidden beneath an oxygen sleeve, the familiar shape of his features protruded through the porous fabric, forming a tight white mask that expanded and contracted with each breath. Lea watched as the rhythm became less frequent, slowing to the steady, measured pace of a light coma.

  She looked up at Funky, who watched all of the monitors.

  “How is he?” she asked.

  “Down in it,” Funky replied, reducing the flow of sedatives that had put Cray under. “Metabolic rates leveling out at ten minus standard, holding just above stasis. Picked up a few autonomic spikes on the EEG, though.” He turned to her and smiled. “I do believe our boy is dreaming.”

  Lea wasn’t at all surprised. Zoe had talked about coming out of the tank, of the vague recollections and disembodied sensations that followed her out of that surreal experience. It was always the same. A warm surge, then smothering and drowning—but no panic. Only the most liberating kind of acceptance, like the sleep that comes before a freezing death.

  Or maybe it’s something else.

  Lea couldn’t help but wonder. There existed in flash a potential far greater than her ability to comprehend, even if the initial design was her own. How it might have interacted with Zoe’s mind—how it could be interacting with Cray—was anybody’s guess. Nothing was too remote a possibility.

  Even the Other.

  Funky had told her about Cray’s theory. Even though Cray hadn’t spoken of it, Lea suspected that his experience with Lyssa had altered his way of thinking, leaving him open to extreme suggestion. But perhaps the real change occurred when Cray had been with Zoe, as she had passed that part of herself over to him. Perhaps when he saw Lyssa, what he actually saw was a reflection of himself.

  “Don’t worry,” she assured him. “We’ll bring you back.”

  The fingers on Cray’s left hand twitched a little in response.