When three of the Doctor's largest "orderlies" finally dragged me down to the Waiting Room, they had to break two fingers just to get me through the door. I lurched, tripped, came down face-down and felt my bottom lip split open on impact against the floor, left eyetooth cracking right in half like a piece of candy-corn.

Mouth full, head tolling, I spat, swallowed, screamed back at them-and him, for all I couldn't see him through the two-way's glare-every invective phrase I could form in their wonderfully poetic native language: "May goats rut on your grave! May nuns use your bones for dildos! May God fill your heart with shit and drown your grandchildren in blood!"

And then, reverting under the stress of the moment to pure all-American: "Fuck you! Motherfuckers! Fuck, fuck, FUCK ALL Y'ALL!"

Unlike the rest of my former unit, you see, I knew exactly what to expect-because I'd already been there behind the mirror myself, helping the Doctor record what happened to each and every one.

I felt like I'd broken the rest of my fingers on that fucking door, before the pain calmed me far enough down to get me thinking straight again.

So: Slowly, I turned. Made myself look back.

And there it was, in the Waiting Room's far corner-almost close enough to touch.

The thing.

They found it at the bottom of the sea somewhere, in relatively shallow water. Took it out real deep to test it, just in case-a fairly good idea, in my personal opinion. Given what I've seen it do.

White coil of unknown-metal? Bone?

Silence. Compressed dust.

Whatever, Doctor.

A funnelled, calcified glass shell, an empty tube-worm knot, utterly alien. Shedding icy light the way we shed blood, and looking somehow slick while doing it. Somehow . . . unclean.

But that might just have been the fear talking.

Blink-flash fast, I conjured a mental image of the Doctor comfortably ensconced behind that mirror, taking his notes, making his calculations, running his useless experiments; the same fucking data, over and over: You go in. And it sits there. And you sit with it.

And then-the glow begins to change. To grow.

And then- -you die.

Five times out of five. Granted, I'm a traitor, not a scientist-but to me, those odds do suggest a certain pattern.

I felt myself freeze, then, settling instinctively into much the same position I hold now, except with my back up against the door instead of the corner. Freeze and listen, straining for a hidden warning, some cold whisper beating up through the rush and gasp of my own hot blood-a hum beneath the hum.

Beneath the human.

The flutter of my pulse, quick and light with morbid anticipation. The- (Phobo) -inescapable fear- (phobia) -of my own fear.

. . . and why do I keep forgetting that fucking word?

Oh yeah, right; brain melting. Memory-drowning.

Terror-struck, I held my breath, tried to slow it down. Closed my eyes and prayed to simply disappear, before the sheer, dull, palpable horror of it all ate me alive.

But I didn't piss my actual pants until the first time I heard that noise in my blood begin to talk.

Two weeks, ten days and five other men ago . . . five men I knew well-my trusting comrades, my trusted co-operatives . . . five men plus dear, dead Captain Kiley, that old Cold War-horse, who once let slip (in strictest confidence) how he considered me his second son . . .

The call came straight from the top, wherever that is: A need-to-know mission with an unstated goal, just a set of coordinates and a schedule on a sheet of flammable fax-paper.

Search and destroy, no questions asked. So we smuggled ourselves into the area, clinging barnacle-fast to the hull of a rented ship-dropped blind, docked ourselves at the base of volcano 037, got equalized with the pressure, and spent the rest of the day marking off time. And when the sub's shadow fell over us, we swum to meet it in perfect formation, convinced-like the brave little hardbodied boy scouts our training had made us-that the computerized codes we'd been issued with would be enough to trick our way inside. Which they were, of course; when you're working for folks who routinely drop $50 million or so on new toilet paper dispensers, a string of numbers probably comes comparatively cheap.

No, it wasn't the codes that betrayed us, or got us captured within an insulting half-hour. The codes didn't give us up to the Doctor, to serve as cannon-fodder in his continuing quest to find out what that thing in the Waiting Room was-aside from almost-instant death for anybody he threw in with it.

'Cause codes, you see, don't really come equipped for treason-hold no political opinions, weigh no options, covet no raise in monetary reward. Risk nothing and nobody on the simple hope of getting pee-ay-ei-dee-paid.

So who?

Well . . .

Like participants in any arranged marriage, The Doctor and I agreed to consummate our vows only after an exhaustively negotiated ritual of long-distance courtship. Acting under Kiley's orders, I used my satellite access as the unit's translator and intelligence liaison to track the sub's location and eavesdrop on its internal mutterings-and when his back was turned, I used the same good ol' U.S. technology to slip inside the Doctor's laptop, read his notes. Send him e-mail. Tell him he could protect his precious project, and gain a core group of experimental subjects, for the one-time-only price of a hefty Swiss bank-account deposit, a trip back to the surface and an artfully-faked sole survivor scenario: Me cast momentarily adrift in the unit's life-pod, beacon on, with an enemy bullet lodged in some suitably fleshy body-part (exact location to be determined later on, at both our conveniences).

"You tellin' me all this's about money?" Kiley demanded. And I just shrugged, snapping back: "What else?"

Thinking, all the while: Disappointed? Well, fuck you, dead man. You can yap all you want about honor, and duty, and the idiot joy of the holy patriotic Cause-but from where I stand, you're nothing but worm-food with an attitude. So go ahead, strike that pose. When you're being buried with full military honors, I'll be cutting myself a slice of apple pie and negotiating a thousand-dollar blow-job.

"You know when the Old Ma'am and the rest of those REMFs back at HQ find out, they're gonna cancel your sorry ass."

I smirked. "Find out from who?"

"Ain't you got no pride at all, boy?"

"Well. I guess not."

Behind me, somebody spit on the floor. All of them glaring through me, turned back first: If looks could eviscerate. Even fey little Ed LoCaso, the training camp's token cocksucker, suddenly pumped full of indifferent hauteur and undying contempt-if the situation hadn't been just a little too butch to bear it, he looked like he might have given me the finger-snap, or maybe just the finger.

"You just better be ready to live with yourself, Book," Kiley told me, finally, right before they hauled his kneecapped ass onto that medical stretcher and took him down the hall to meet our mystery guest. Last words, and he knew it, so he thought he had to make them count-make his point before it was too late for me to repent, and come to an impressive eleventh-hour understanding of the error of my ways.

"Is that meant to be some kind of challenge?"

A frown-a wince, almost. Like: Jesus, Regis!

"History-"

"Yeah, right. Now, let's see: Who is it writes history, again, exactly?"

We both knew the answer, and so did everybody else-it'd been one of Kiley's favorite saws, back up top. So no one bothered to reply.

Not even him.

Distant echoes, as the dim lights fade further: Roils and rumblings, metal gamelan trills. The odd hollow clang, barely audible, as the Waiting Room floor's dip slowly steepens. Behind the two-way, I hear the Doctor's autopsy equipment start to skitter down the counter, catch and clatter on the fixtures-all those poor lonely clamps and scalpels, laid out in eager anticipation of my corpse.

And cheated instead: Cheated, cheated.

For now.

The voice seems to smile, seems to agree. And tells me: Soon.

Oh, Book, Book-shape up, soldier. You think you really got all the time in the world? You believe everything some fossil full of prehistoric bacteria tells you?

. . . can't believe I even just thought that sentence . . .

So talk it out straight, for once, you crooked motherfucker-before your brain turns irretrievably to mush.

Regis Aaron Book: Me. 28 years old. Specialist rank 4, Lang-Intel. Cheat and smart-ass. Traitor.

Coward.

Born in Louisiana, raised in Pittsburgh; deaf grandma, absent Mom-gone so long, all the photos burned, I barely remember if she had a face. But I suspect she was probably pretty; I sure am.

After she ran off, Dad re-enlisted, went to Germany. Got all ripped on LSD one night and drove his tank into the Rhine. The government sent us a letter. I got to it before Nanny Book could see, read it, and flushed it down the toilet.

No great conversationalist, my Nan, and that wasn't all because of her pronunciation problems. She did teach me ASL before I was five, though.

Ever see the sign for drowning? It's kind of cute.

I played football in high school, got a university scholarship. Fucked my left foot (deliberately, I must confess)-hairline fracture, long-healed now. Transferred streams. Did languages: French, German, Hungarian, Romanian, five different Slavic variants-the USSR grand tour, they used to call it. Which is how I caught certain people's eye.

When I went ROTC, I told people it was because the recruiting officers said they'd kick me $40,000 toward the rest of my fees. But that was a lie. I joined the army so I could kill people-after which I joined the CIA, so I could do it for no good reason and be virtually assured of getting away with it.

I'm an American, born and bred. I like money. I like power. I like sex, as long as it doesn't lead to anything too permanent. I- . . . blood in my . . .

-what else? Anything relevant?

(there's a concept) Oh, fuck: Shut up. Will you just shut the hell up, already?

. . . noise. In my . . .

My name is Book, Regis-Regis Book-and yes, I am a coward. And you know why? Because the proper synonym for coward, in this messed-up post-Berlin Wall world of ours, is "smart person." Cowards always come out on top. We try harder, and when we screw up it hurts worse, so we make damn sure it never happens again. We're the ones who live to fight another day-or just to live.

. . . blood.

Stay alive: My sole, my only legitimate consideration. The only one that matters.

Five more minutes, five more hours. Five more days, more years. Fifty. Five hundred-I don't discriminate. But I am selfish: Oh, yes. You damn betcha.

Because I'm not going to die, not here-never here, never like this. Watching image and word meaning shuffle off into disintegration as my mental deck of cards deals me a dead man's hand, and the air runs out. Watching the Doctor cough his life away. Watching the lights dim, and hearing this thing inside me hold its figurative breath, waiting for me to get so loopy I don't care whether or not I'm part of it, or it's part of me. Or if there's any me still left for it to be a part of.

No. I'm not going to die like this-or any other way, if I can help it. I'm coming out of this sub just the same way I came in, the same way the Doctor and company found me when they opened the Waiting Room's mag-locked door, after the mandatory five hours had finally elapsed: Alive alive-oh, just like sweet Molly Malone . . .

. . . before the fever, that is. Before the last verse.

Yeah, well, whatEVER; folk music was never my strong suit.

Alive, spelled ay-ell-ei-vee-ee.

Anything else is gravy.

The Doctor has lapsed into some kind of half-sleep. In the two-way, I catch a glimpse of my fine new self, post-thing: My bone-blonde hair, my bleached-out skin. My eyes like bruises, cilia purple with broken blood-vessels. I sniff the air, and decide that my skin has begun to smell like hash packed in sulfur.

And this glow, this glow, around and inside me. This inmost light.

The whispers tell me: You are a chrysalis. And I counter by forcing myself to think hard about the shrivelled husks I saw left behind in Nanny Book's back yard, after the butterflies had gone on their merry way. I imagine my mouth splitting slowly open, ripping. Bending like vinyl under the eruptive strain, as a hitherto-hidden larva sloughs me off like so much deluded dead skin.

I feel the fear rise up in me again like wine, like flame-the salt and spices of it distributing themselves through my body while I struggle in its slow-cooking flame, rendering me ever more tender, more juicy. More appetizing.

'Cause fear is what this thing goes for, see? It loves it. Eats it. Got it in little tiny jolts from Kiley and the boy scouts, one by one by one; suck 'em dry and move along, bub. Skin packets, lit and hollowed from within, irradiated with detritus radiance. One big bruise, left to rot: An empty, man-sized wrapper, stuffed full of crumbly bones.

And why was I the only one, apparently, to ever figure this particular connection out?

Just my luck, I guess.

Dribs and drabs, after the long drought on the sea-bottom-aside from stealing the occasional muffled howl from a passing, boneless thing or two, in between geological epochs. From me, though, a veritable stream of terror, so constant as to skirt actual satiety. Fear-engine Book, running on empty: C'mon in and make yourself at home.

The Doctor turns his head again, heavier. Barely able to open his eyes. And tries to ask: "What . . . happened . . . to-the-?"

"The shell?" I shrug. "Dust in the wind, Doc." Adding, as though in explanation: "It was old."

"Pre- . . . Pleistocene."

"Yeah, that sounds about right."

A wheeze; a cough. "And-what was . . . inside . . . ?"

To which I smile, curling back my bruised lower lip. Showing the tips of all my remaining upper teeth-my ill-set front caps, my jagged, half-missing left incisor. And reply: " . . . went-inside me."

And hey, there's even evidence: The Doctor taped it all, obsessively anal to the last, with a camcorder installed (as per tradition) behind the two-way-images skipping and fading between intermittent washes of static. I wound it back, watched it, in those first dim eons after I knew for sure that no matter what, the sub would just keep right on drifting further down and faster. Talk about post-modern: My cruel apotheosis, shot by shot, in all its real-time glory.

Hour one: Me pounding, pleading. Slumping. Turning.

Hour two: Me and the shell.

Hour three: The glow, beginning. Spreading.

Hour four: My hypnotized attention. Our conversation, me and it-that thing; not something which really seems to register, actually, on the purely visual scale.

Cajoling, flattering. Saying: My love. Saying: You know I will honor my promises.

The glow increasing steadily throughout, meanwhile; a slimy glitter. A blazing smokeless cloud, pillar of salt-white fire. A certain sense of boiling. Of moving outward, then-inward. Saying: Soon.

Soon, soon.

And in hour five . . .

The Waiting Room door clicks open, admits four-Doctor and goons, the original three-pack, already braced for action. They see me on the floor, face-down; the declining line of my limp back, head clutched in hands, shadow-rapt. No more light, bright or otherwise. No more shell.