"Is there a camera in the foyer?" Nell said.

"I'm looking." Sasha scrolled through galleries of security camera views, looking for the limo.

"God, he's got more cameras than London," Nell muttered. "He must be more paranoid than Stalin!"

"You might be right," Sasha said pensively.

"There-that looks like the riverfront, Sasha." Nell tapped the screen. "And that over there looks like the bridge to Sector Seven. Maybe go back in the other direction?"

"OK..."

"Maybe the closer to us the camera is, the closer to the top of the list?" Nell said.

"That makes sense!"

2:50 A.M.

Five minutes passed as Geoffrey and Otto peered out of the limo in all directions through its blackened windows at the domed foyer under the glittering chandelier. Neither of them could see or hear anyone.

"OK," Geoffrey said finally. "Let's try to get to the conservatory."

Otto turned sideways on the seat and strapped the repellent-sprayer on his back. Geoffrey lugged one of the 2.5-gallon jugs of repellent onto his left thigh and slung the shoulder strap of the machine gun over his neck. Holding the gun's grip with his right hand, he kicked open the door. "You're sure the safety's off?"

"I think so."

"All right, let's go."

They both stepped out of the limousine into the foyer. Geoffrey carried the jug and pointed the gun erratically with his right hand as they ventured up the red carpet of the curving staircase on the left.

When they reached the upper level, they saw no one. They ran between a row of doors, and one of them suddenly opened.

2:50 A.M.

"There they are!" Sasha jumped up and down and put the view on the big screen. "They're right outside!" she yelled.

"Let's open the door!"

"Wait- Oh, no!"

2:50 A.M.

A guard buttoning his jeans emerged from a door on the other side of the hall. He noticed them, and one of his hands fumbled for a pistol strapped under his shoulder.

"Wait!" Geoffrey said. "It's OK! Don't shoot!"

The guard unsnapped his holster and pulled out his gun.

"Wait!" Geoffrey said.

"Shoot him!" Otto yelled.

The guard fired first, the first shot striking Otto in the neck, the second shot striking Geoffrey in the foot as he jumped to the side and fired a barrage of wild bullets that wounded the guard's hand. Geoffrey dropped the jug of water and lunged at the guard, who picked up the gun with his other hand. Geoffrey aimed his machine gun and shouted, "No!" But a mere touch of the trigger blasted three bullets into the guard's face.

Geoffrey retched as the guard fell forward, his head splattering on the stone floor. Geoffrey turned away, limping on his bloody foot, and saw that Otto was lying still. Using the gun as a crutch, he hobbled closer. He could see that Otto was dead from the vacant look in his staring eyes. Geoffrey grabbed the water jug from where he had dropped it and ran to the end of the hall, turning left up the short flight of stairs to Maxim's office, leaving a red trail of footprints.

He pounded on the door. The hatch opened.

"Come on!" Nell said.

He clambered through the hatch and dropped the gun and heavy jug before falling to his knees.

Nell shut the hatch and cranked the wheel, locking it.

Sasha approached Geoffrey, staring at his foot. "You're bleeding!"

Nell embraced him from behind. "Come on! We have to look at that!"

He turned and kissed her as though she could absolve him, knowing she could not. He had watched ten people die in the last few days, some, certainly, because of him.

She stroked his head and saw the blood spatter on his shoulder. "I would never have forgiven you if you had gotten yourself killed," she said. "You did what you had to do." She squeezed his hand in hers.

After they got him to the chair behind Maxim's desk, Nell pulled off his shoe. He noticed the screens on the wall. She pulled the bloody sock off and saw that the bullet had gone through the bone in his foot leading to his small toe. She pulled the lace out of his shoe and tied it around his ankle, cinching it tight.

Geoffrey pointed to one of the screens in which a burning SUV had crashed into the wall across the street from the hospital. Green cyclones swirled over the bodies of two men in the street. They watched a man get out of a limo parked in front of the hospital only to be immediately smothered by wasps and drill-worms gushing out of the door.

Sasha hid her eyes, turning away.

"They're from Henders Island," Geoffrey murmured.

"I know!" Nell said.

"We've got to warn people," he said.

"Sasha, do you know where a first aid kit is?"

"Yes."

"Where?"

"In the bottom drawer of Papa's desk."

Nell pulled it out and saw an antique leather-bound book on top of the first aid kit. She set the book on top of the desk and opened the kit.

Geoffrey saw on the next screen over that the two men still stood guard outside the gate of the hospital sector. He sighed in relief. "Thank God," he said, feeling woozy as he gripped the arms of the chair. "The gate closed in time. We can't open the gate to Sector Three." The screen to the other side showed the dormitory where they had stayed next to the lab. Maxim, Dimitri, and two of his bodyguards were now trapped inside.

Geoffrey saw Maxim pointing at him through the TV screen and realized that Maxim must be able to see them. Then he noticed a webcam over the screens extending toward them. "He sees us!" Geoffrey whispered.

"Papa!" Sasha ran to the computer. "I think he can hear us, too." She boosted the volume as her father moved closer to the camera, climbing on a bed as his face filled the monitor.

Maxim shouted: "The whole world will pay for what you did!"

"Papa!" Sasha cried.

"Sasha!" Maxim's face recoiled.

"You be nice to Geoffrey!"

"We can still make it out of here alive, Maxim," Nell said. "Help us!"

"Why?" Maxim bellowed. "Then they will kill me, and there will never be justice for what they've done!" Maxim gestured behind him to one of his men, who opened a laptop on the bed and kneeled in front of it.

"Maxim!" Geoffrey yelled. "You can't!"

"Let hell rise...."

"Where's Alexei, Papa?" Sasha said.

"Alexei is dead!" Maxim roared in a cruel eruption.

"For God's sake!" Nell said as Sasha fell to the floor, sobbing.

"There is no God!" Maxim laughed hideously. "There is only the Devil! They killed my son! They killed my grandfather, my father, my brother, and millions more! And there was no justice! There were no charges, no trials, no convictions. As if there were no crimes! And they call me a criminal?"

"You condemn the whole human race?" Geoffrey asked. "You would slaughter all the innocents, all the ones you love, to get back at the guilty? You sound like Koba, Maxim."

"They began it! I will end it."

"What about your daughter?" Nell said.

"They will kill her, also. They will hunt her down like the rest! And they will go on and on and on, forever!" Maxim looked down at the laptop his guard now held for him. He typed with one hand. "But not this time!"

"Hey!" Sasha jumped up now and pointed at two screens on the wall. "He's opening the gates!"

2:55 A.M.

Dimitri watched the tycoon, who was hunched intently over the laptop at the edge of a bed in the dormitory. Maxim's face contorted with fury as he tapped the keys, scanning security-camera views of his city. One screen showed luminous creatures flying through the opening gate from Sector Four and spigers with fiery coats leaping into the hospital sector. On another, the gate to Sector Three opened and hordes of rats and swarms of Henders insects poured into the garrison sector, overwhelming the two guards there. Another view showed the door to the main city in Sector Six opening. Then Dimitri saw the gate to Sector Seven opening at the train station across the river.

"Maxim, what are you doing?" Dimitri screamed.

Maxim accessed the password screen for each gate and bashed his right hand on the keyboard to set a new password-hihu9-g7890-copying it, confirming it, and closing the window as he moved to the next.

2:55 A.M.

"Stop, Maxim!" Geoffrey implored. "Don't do this!"

"I had hoped to save some souls here, Geoffrey. But that's impossible now. Find a way out if you can. You'll have some years left if you do."

Geoffrey noticed Maxim's daughter beside him, jabbing the keyboard furiously with two fingers. Trying to delay him, he shouted, "You will be worse than everything you hate, worse than Stalin ever was!"

Maxim lashed out at the camera, pointing at him. "You made this happen!"

"You're delusional!" Geoffrey answered as Sasha probed his security system. "Where were you going to take that bottle of Henders specimens?"

Maxim was quiet, shrinking on the screen.

"You were planning to use these species as weapons all along. You were taking that sample to Sector Seven to release them, weren't you? You knew they would migrate through the train tunnel. All the way to Moscow, isn't that right? That is what you were going to do, Maxim! Admit it!"

"The deaths of millions made this place and a thousand others like it," the billionaire muttered.

Nell pointed at a screen that showed the gate to downtown Pobedograd opening as the letters of SEKTOP 6 disappeared into the rock wall. "Oh, my God. Sasha, you have to close that door!"

"I can't close it," Sasha said. "He locked it!"

"The city!" Nell said. "Close the door to Sector Seven, then, Sasha!" she hissed.

"Are you going to sit back and watch everyone inside your city die? What kind of devil are you? God damn it, shut the gates, Maxim! Now!" Geoffrey shouted.

Tears streamed down Sasha's face as she called up window after window of security clearances until she finally got in to the password authority prompt for Maxim's user ID. Nell watched her type in a new ten-letter password painfully with two fingers, confirming it twice: ILOVESASHA. Then the young girl confirmed it once more before clicking open the gate control interface and closing the gate to Sector Six.

On two screens, Nell, Geoffrey, and Maxim could see the gate to the main city at the northeast corner stop and reverse its motion, as it rolled closed.

"What?" Maxim growled.

"Awesome, girl!" Geoffrey whispered to Sasha.

Dimitri sighed gratefully behind Maxim.

But as the gate narrowed, a truck tried to squeeze through from the city, and halfway through the door, the truck's trailer was caught and pinched like a tube of toothpaste. The truck tires burned on the road as they spun. Two men jumped out of the cab and surveyed the totaled trailer wedged inside the door. In the next instant, both were struck by a glowing wave and they sprawled on the ground, writhing as the attacking creatures swarmed around the truck trailer, flying and slipping through the gaping gate into the city.

2:56 A.M.

Dimitri wept as he saw the door to the city jammed open. A spiger the size of a hippo vaulted onto the truck cab and wriggled through the crack on top of the squeezed trailer.

Maxim switched to another view that showed the spiger pulling itself with spiked arms on top of the truck trailer as flying and leaping creatures burst into Sector Six.

Dimitri bowed his head into his hands, unable to watch.

2:56 A.M.

Geoffrey saw that the large door in the train station's facade was now wide open. "Sasha, you've got to seal Sector Seven!"

"Close that door, honey," Nell urged her softly.

"There's still time," Geoffrey said. "But hurry!"

"I'm trying!" Sasha sobbed as she navigated the door's controls.

"What are you doing?" Maxim roared through the speakers, glaring at them through the screen on the wall.