"Shut up, Papa! Shut up!" Sasha shouted as she finally activated the gate and locked in a new password. It rolled out of the wall, sealing the train station as the red letters on the door emerged: SEKTOP 7.

2:56 A.M.

Maxim called up another screen, this one showing the front of the train station across the river. Its large steel door was now sealed.

"Thank God, Maxim," Dimitri breathed.

Maxim punched keys with his fingers. The gate control now asked for his password. They must have hijacked his own user ID and changed the door codes. Who could do that? "Sasha!" he shouted. He typed in his password again and it was rejected.

"Thank God, Maxim," Dimitri said again.

Maxim swung at Dimitri, knocking him onto the bed behind him. He tried passwords now that she might have used: IVAN, SASHA, ALEXANDRA, ALEXEI, ILOVEIVAN.... Finally, the security system locked him out and he smashed his fist onto the keys.

Dimitri almost fainted in relief as he watched the hulking back of the madman, who threw the laptop on the floor and sobbed, seizing his head in his giant hands.

The other two men, Maxim's elite bodyguards, glanced at Dimitri from across the room and one of them ran to Maxim now. "What you need, Chief?"

Maxim was unresponsive as the other guard approached and picked the laptop up off the floor. "We'll need this, Chief," he said softly.

"The room is secure," said the first guard. "We have plenty of food and water to last awhile here, and even a lavatory."

The second guard looked harshly at Dimitri. "What happens if we lose power?"

"An emergency generator downstairs will kick in," Dimitri said. "After that, we're down to batteries and that bicycle generator in the corner." He pointed.

"How long do we have air?"

"Each room has separate air ducts, and the filters should hold them back," Dimitri said.

"All right." The guard patted Maxim's shoulder. "Get some sleep, Chief. You've been up too long. We need you to be sharp. OK?"

Maxim fell sideways on the bed and curled into a fetal position.

Outside the boarded windows, they heard what sounded like a haunted house of shrieks, cackles, and whining hums.

"Let's turn off some of these lights," Dimitri said."They're attracted to light and sound."

2:57 A.M.

Sasha's ice-blue eyes melted tears as she looked at her father crumpled on the bed. "Papa," Sasha cried. "Why don't you know the password?"

The room around her father darkened by degrees as the men turned off the lights.

"He's OK, Sasha," Nell reassured her. "Can you shut the gates to Sector Three and Four?"

"No! He changed the codes for them before I could get there," Sasha cried.

"He should be safe till we can help him," Geoffrey said.

A stream of howling creatures poured out of Sector Four and flooded past the hospital into the garrison sector, gushing into downtown Pobedograd. Nell hugged the little girl, hiding her eyes from the screens arrayed on the wall as, one by one, they turned into a horror show.

A night-shift construction crew in the center of the city was besieged and chased down the street by cat-sized animals that sprang in thirty-foot leaps. In the center of the city, thirty-five stories up, workers installing windows and lights on the Star Tower were welding, showering comet tails of sparks down the face of the building. Then squadrons of flying creatures, attracted by the light, arrived and attacked, and the workers' bodies fell from the scaffolding.

Feeding frenzies clumped, like ants around sugar cubes, in the streets as a new kind of traffic began coursing through the streets and people ran in terror on screen after screen.

"Geoffrey," Nell whispered. She looked at him hopelessly.

He shook his head.

They saw a view from a camera on a lamppost looking east along the riverfront. Groups of people stampeded down the steps in front of the restaurant where they had eaten on their first night in Pobedograd. Some of the patrons fell down, while others ran ahead toward the screen. Three young spigers the size of mastiffs launched behind them off their catapult tails, raising their spiked arms.

"God!" Geoffrey whispered.

Sasha recognized Dennis Appleton, who made it closest to the camera before a horse-sized spiger bit him in half with vertical jaws.

Sasha tried to look, but Nell blocked her view. "No, sweetie!" Sasha pushed her head against Nell's stomach, sobbing.

They watched helplessly as the city was inundated by a carnivorous tsunami. The mayhem spread, a premonition of what would engulf the globe if any of these species reached the surface.

"What about the farm? Can anyone get to the farm in Sector Five?"

Geoffrey touched the screen that displayed the steel door marked SEKTOP 5. There was no motion on the street outside the gate.

"Can we warn the people in the city, Sasha, so they can try to get to the farm?" Nell asked.

Then a glowing green speck streaked by the farm's door on the screen.

"Damn!" Geoffrey said as a dozen more shapes like large dragonflies passed the door from the right. A few stopped, hovering, their bodies hanging straight down like glow sticks. "They've already made it to the other side of the city...."

Fear pressed down on them like the mountain above as they realized their predicament. Geoffrey gripped Nell's hand. "We're safe here, for now," he insisted.

"There's food and water downstairs," Nell said, nodding and hiding her tears from Sasha. "Is there any way to communicate with the outside world, Sasha?"

"No!" she yelled angrily.

"Come on, let's fix your foot, Geoffrey. It looks like there's morphine, antibiotics, and even a sewing kit in here. Sasha, can you help me? Geoffrey needs our help. OK?"

Sasha pulled away from Nell and wiped her eyes. "OK, OK!"

Nell noticed a large lavender envelope on Maxim's desk. "To Sasha from Uncle Galia, with love," she read. "Have you seen this, Sasha?"

"Huh?" Sasha said, reading it. "I hate Galia!"

"Open it."

She tore open the envelope and pulled out a card. She read aloud, "I will come back for you, Uncle Galia."

Sasha threw it down on the floor.

Geoffrey and Nell looked at each other. Nell took the card and saw the date written on the card: it was today's date. "That's good news, honey," Nell said.

"He left without us!" Sasha cried. "And he's not even my uncle!"

MARCH 26.

2:37 P.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME.

Kuzu had not left his computer for hours. After venturing again into the World Wide Web, he was even more traumatized as he peeled back layer after layer of the humans' boundless inhumanity. He scrolled through an endless catalog of images of murder, massacres, jihads, wars, and genocides down through ages of human history that left him dazed with pity, fear, rage, and disgust. They even killed their gods, Kuzu thought.

Indeed, in their short time on Earth, humans had discarded the vast majority of their gods. Kuzu came to realize that humans were like everything on Henders Island-except for the sels. They survived the violence and carnage they unleashed only because their rapid birthrate continuously replaced them.

Kuzu reviewed the video of Hender fighting the human who attacked him, reading the latest comments left by humans, many of whom called Hender dangerous for simply defending himself.

Kuzu brooded as long-still depths stirred in his mind. The other sels were probably playing online video games with humans now. Two of them had become World of Warcraft celebrities. His fellow sels did not seem to mind the death in human games: they thought they were funny. They had not seen what he had seen. They had been corrupted by their gifts of games and toys.

Meanwhile, the other sels convened a secret meeting in Hender's house to discuss their concerns about Kuzu, who had increasingly shut himself in, appearing more erratic each time he emerged. Normally, they would never have paid any heed to what another sel chose to do. This time, they had no choice.

6:30 P.M.

Kuzu arrived and noticed the others were already there at Hender's home, which roused his suspicions.

Andy waved him over. "They should be here any minute, Kuzu."

Hender observed Andy's tension and the paleness of his skin. Andy had lost weight and had rarely spoken for the last week. When Hender tried to console him, Andy only smiled weakly and tried to console Hender instead. "What's the matter, Andy?" Hender asked him now.

"Well." Andy bowed his head. "We still haven't gotten any news about Nell and Geoffrey. And nobody knows where they are."

"Oh!" Hender said, clasping four hands together. "Are they OK?"

"We don't really know," Andy said. "They called us here to give us some news."

The sels gasped, clicked, whistled, and growled.

Hender's birdsong doorbell rang, and they all swiveled heads toward the door. Joe and Bo opened the door a crack. Hender waved them in with two outstretched arms. Special agents Jane Wright and Mike Kalajian entered the room. Both of them waved jovially as they came in.

"It is a great honor to see all of you again," Jane Wright said.

"Just tell us," Hender said.

"Where are Nell and Geoffrey?" Nid asked.

Agent Kalajian cleared his throat. "I hope that you will all listen to me closely because what I am about to tell you could not be more important to both humans and hendros. We have received information from a reliable source that Nell and Geoffrey were abducted and taken to what is apparently a salt mine located in a mountainous region of Kaziristan. Everything I am about to tell you from this point forward must never leave the people in this room."

"We need a solemn vow from all of you to never divulge what I am about to say," Agent Wright said.

There was silence.

"Yeah, that's not going to happen," Andy informed them. "Hendros never leap before they look. They won't promise anything in advance. Just cut to the chase. They'll decide afterwards if they agree with you or not. OK?"

"Um, OK." Jane looked at Mike and nodded. "If you understand after we've told you why it is important not to talk about it, will you promise to keep it secret?"

"You're confusing them now," Bo said, shaking his head.

Joe nodded. "Me, too."

"OK."

Andy noted how readily she had conceded, and it made him even more anxious. "What's going on?"

Mike Kalajian went first. "We know now that the Russian oligarch, Maxim Dragolovich, is trapped inside an underground installation in Kaziristan, where he has been manufacturing weapons of mass destruction. The WMDs he has been manufacturing are species from Henders Island."

"What?" Andy asked, his mouth falling open.

"They are contained within the facility, but the species have apparently gotten loose, and Nell and Geoffrey are trapped inside, as well," Jane Wright said.

Kuzu sat forward, both eyes extended. The hendros had understood varying degrees of what had just been said, but what they did understand put them on full alert, their fur bristling and flushing colors.

Wright sat on the edge of a chair and looked at Hender. "There was practically no way to trace where your friends were for quite some time," she said. "We were about to rule their disappearance a homicide, since no ransom demands had surfaced."

"What is homicide?" Hender said.

"When humans kill humans," Kuzu said.

"Yes," said Kalajian.

The sels all gasped in horror.

"A few days ago, a man named Galia Sokolof walked through the front door of CIA Headquarters in Virginia," said Kalajian.

"Galia Sokolof is Maxim Dragolovich's right-hand man," Wright said. "He is the only man who managed to escape from the underground facility before it was sealed off and overrun by specimens from Henders Island."

"Wait ... what?" Andy shook his head in confusion.

"You may have seen the news about a fire in the Kremlin," Wright said. "That fire was deliberately set by the government of Russia because Maxim Dragolovich managed to deliver a box of cigars to one of its offices. One cigar tube contained disk-ants."

"The only way to contain them was to burn the entire building to the ground," said Kalajian.

"Holy shit!" Andy said.

"Yeah," Kalajian agreed.