She disappeared into the substation. Max and I followed, but paused at the hatch as noises came from further down the tunnel. From the other exit, to the accountancy.

"There must be another squad, holding there, waiting for the sanctuary team to flush us toward them."

"Then our exit's blown. What about in here?" I motioned to the substation.

"This door's the only way in or out."

"Fuck!" So there it was. Cut off from both ends. Nothing to do but make a stand and take as many of the bastards with us as we could. We went through the hatch.

Time slowed as I saw it.

I wanted to turn my head, but for some reason it wouldn't cooperate.

Maggie had thrown herself across his lap, weeping. He sat at his cherry law desk, the unlit pipe still in his mouth, a half-smile on his face.

There was mayo on his tie.

Something wanted to tear free from me then. I beat it back, wouldn't let it loose. I needed the pain to get me through. I closed the hatch and Max ripped some metal bracketing from the wall. He wedged it through the handle, a pathetic finger in the dike, but something, at least. I crossed to Maggie and held her shoulders while she shook.

"Who?" she sobbed. "Who?"

I kicked over Armitage's desk. His chess board toppled and the little marble pieces scattered, the pawns running for the dark corners of the room. Good for you. Let the kings fight their own fucking war. I toppled the file cabinet as well and shoved it next to the desk, trying to create some kind of barricade.

"Donner," said Max quietly.

I pulled the Beretta and my spare clips from the jacket. "You're a better shot than me," I said, "so I'll take the plasma rifle. This is a Beretta 9 x 19 Parabellum caliber. Fifteen rounds." I popped the mag and showed him the action of the Brigadier slide.

"Donner," he said again.

"It's not over," I said.

He looked at our pathetic bulwark, but nodded.

I motioned again to the gun. "The rounds are Teflon-coated. They penetrate the body armor, so forget the head. Put them right into the chest."

"You sprayed your bullets with Teflon?"

"Modern gear is designed for energy weapons. It's not effective against lead."

"You were expecting a gunfight with soldiers?"

"It's a hard-knock life." I handed him the gun and turned to Maggie. "Time to go, Mag."

"Can't." She looked at Armitage's fried smartscreen. "My exit's blown, too."

I surveyed the room. "We'll hide your heart under the rubble. Once they're gone, you can rematerialize and get the hell out of here."

"No." Armitage's desk lamp made her tears shine like diamonds.

"Catch a plasma burst when you're fully formed, and it'll be over for good, Maggie," said Max. "Real death."

"I don't care."

"There's no other way!"

"I don't care."

"How admirable," came a sudden voice from behind us. It issued from the shadows of the relay junction, behind the frozen displays. We whirled, weapons raised.

Jakob stepped into the light. Maggie extended a shaking finger, beyond shock.

"What the fuck?" barked Max.

Maggie threw herself into Jakob's arms, before I could tell her to wait. Before I could I tell her it wasn't possible that this man could be here, now.

"How did you-?"

"There's another way out of this room," he said to us. He gestured to a steel pipe that ran from the wall to the junction box. It was maybe a meter in diameter, painted and galvanized.

"That's no good," said Max. "It's full of wiring."

"There's no time," said Jakob. He pointed to the walls, and for the first time we noticed small rectangles stuck to them at regular intervals. Rectangles with glowing red lights.

It didn't take a rocket scientist.

Max hissed. "FOX-7. The whole place is wired."

"That's why they haven't come in yet. They're just going to fall back outside and bring the whole place down on our heads."

"As I said, no time," said Jakob. He went to the conduit where it joined the box. He wrapped his frail academic's arms around the pipe. What the hell was he thinking?

"It's welded," I said. "You'll never-"

There was an agonized groan of metal as the weld tore. The pipe came away from the juncture in a shower of sparks, exposing the end, full of torn cables and wiring. Maggie was staring at Jakob like he'd sprouted an extra head.

"Old weld," muttered Max.

Jakob reached his gnarled hands within, wrapping his fingers around the wiring. I couldn't see past his blue cardigan. There was no way his tiny hands could get a grip on all that conduit, and besides, it would take a metric ton of force- Then his back was rippling and he was pulling and there was a tremendous wrenching sound, and impossibly, long lengths of wiring and cables came free in his hands. He passed the bundle ends off to us, bucket-brigade style, and we dragged a good twenty feet's worth clear of the trunk line before we finally came to their jagged ends.

"Should be enough to get us through to the next juncture," said Jakob.

"Who are you?" I said. "You're sure as hell not Jakob."

He pulled idly at his beard. "I'm your only way out."

"You're the Lifetaker."

He merely looked at me.

Maggie, her voice thick as syrup, said, "What?"

"You killed Jakob. Impersonated him," I said.

"My price," he said.

"Price?"

"For saving your worthless lives. Now come with me, or die. I don't care which."

Maggie threw herself at him before we could even react. He caught her clawed hands and held them while she twisted and spat. I watched his resolution shimmer, watched him go shiny and transparent for a moment. Then he was Jakob again. Maggie seemed to run out of steam, sagging. He released her and she collapsed sobbing into my arms.

"Let's go," I said. "First we survive. The rest later."

"I can't do this," said Maggie.

"Maggie," said Max. "Your memory-of the lab, Crandall's interrogation, this raid. You have to survive so that you can upload it to the Conch. It's all we have left to fight them with." Max put a hand against her cheek. "Too many of my friends have died today," he said.

She blinked back the moisture in her eyes and turned them with pure hate to the Lifetaker.

"Alright," she said. "Lead on, you miserable piece of shit."

47.

DONNER.

The next few hours were a jumble of cement tunnels, dank air, stumbling and heavy breathing. The Lifetaker led us through the pipe into an empty chamber beyond. From there it was deeper into the bowels of the city and away from the battle.

We heard the church go. Down here, it sounded like the world ending. Maybe it was.

When the explosions faded, Max pulled me aside. "This thing killed the Surazal doctors! And Hector Alvarez! And Jakob!" he whispered. "Why the hell are we trusting it?"

"We don't trust it, Max," I replied. "We follow it."

"We should destroy it now!"

"You know how to get out of here, do you?"

The others walked back to us. "Is there a problem?" it asked.

"Where the fuck are you taking us?" said Max.

"Beyond the Blister."

"That's impossible. We're infectious!"

"You pose no risk to the world."

"You kill people for fun," barked Max. "We're supposed to take your word for it?"

The Lifetaker shimmered. "I shall scout the tunnel ahead. You have two minutes."

"Like hell," I said. "I want some answers. Now."

"Your questions will be answered, but not by me," it replied. "For now, your choice is to hold your miserable tongues and do what I say or I will kill you right here."

I had the feeling that this thing could do exactly what it said.

Maggie reddened. "Stop manifesting as Jakob."

Its face contorted into the rictus of a grin. "No. It causes you pain."

I wanted to knock that smirk off its synthetic mug. "We don't move until you drop the charade."

It sighed. And like the snap of a finger, Jakob was gone and the Lifetaker appeared in its true form. It undulated in the air like a floating oil slick, its shape vaguely human. Rough amalgams of eyes, nose and mouth flowed incompletely across its "head," but they were constantly changing, constantly in motion. Its "feet" brushed the surface of the ground without touching it. The thing moved with an obscene ripple that raised my hackles and churned a wave of nausea in my gut. I had never seen anything so completely wrong. In the dim tunnel, it was truly monstrous.

"Two minutes," it said, its voice no longer close to human. It moved off down the tunnel.

Maggie whirled to me, her eyes wild. "Kill him, Donner! We'll take our chances!"

For some reason, in a day filled with horrors, her sudden bloodthirstiness hurt the worst. I'd come to rely on Maggie's pacifism to balance my ever-present desire to lash out in rage. What an ironic symbol of this counterclockwise world-that an artificial person should become the anchor for my humanity.

"Armitage, Jonathan... they're gone," I said. "We won't last ten minutes out there with Nicole's patrols and biometric wasps. This thing is our only chance right now. Besides, we need to get some questions answered. The thing has as much as admitted that it's only helping us because it's under orders. I very much want to find out whose orders those are."

"You really think we can leave Necropolis?" asked Max. "Safely?"

I rubbed sweat from my eyes. "Crandall said we could leave Necropolis too, remember?"

Max cracked his walnut-sized knuckles. They sounded like gunshots in the tunnel. "Big risk to take with the whole world," he said. "You wanna carry that freight?"

"Screw the world," I said.

"Donner!" Maggie gasped.

"The Shift virus isn't a weapon of mass destruction. It doesn't kill anything. Worst case scenario, more dead people come back. The world's precious status quo gets upset again. You know what? Maybe it's time the world learned to live with it."

They were silent. The Lifetaker flowed back, solidifying into a six-foot amoeba. I could barely keep my eyes on it. It offended every animal instinct I had.

"Have we a verdict?"

"Yeah," I said. "Go fuck yourself. In the meantime, we'll keep following."