Bear jumped up and shot the ghost octopus on the mule's back twice in the head with a pistol. It drooped and slid off the side of the robot as Bear followed Dima down the stairs after Kuzu, who was already gone, the front door wide open to the street.

Dima saw Kuzu on the front steps throwing a lit flare into the road in front of them, and Bear emptied his Glock pistol at the sel; but Kuzu became a shadow in the same instant as he darted up the street to the right, weaving against the flow of creatures.

The flare burned in front of the building and drew emerald swarms down from the tall buildings as Dima and Bear jumped back inside and slammed the door.

"Crazy mother!" Bear said.

Dima groaned as they both ran upstairs. "What in the hell is he doing?"

Nastia watched through the front window with Russian LOMO night-vision binoculars. She barely caught Kuzu galloping on four legs along the side of a building up the street, before she lost him.

"Ferrell tried to kill Kuzu," Hender told Nell. "And he killed Andy, too!"

"What?" Abrams said.

Galia bowed his head. "No," he sighed.

"I can't believe that," said Bear.

"Hender!" Nell said. "Why didn't you tell us before?"

"Kuzu just told me," Hender said.

Nell took one of Hender's shaking hands. "I'm sorry."

"How do we know this one's telling the truth?" Bear asked.

"Hender never lies," Nell said.

"The other one lied!" Bear said.

"Because he thought we were trying to kill him!" Nell said. "Because one of us lied to him!"

"Someone must have gotten to Ferrell," Abrams said. "With a bribe, or blackmail, or something. Jesus!"

"And a threat, too, probably," Galia said.

"I guess you never know who it's going to be," Bear said.

"Sure you can." Dima spit. "The American!"

"I'm surprised it wasn't one of you bloody Russians," Galia said.

"Hey, this isn't the time or place," Abrams said. "We're in this together, right? And you're all assholes."

"Kuzu said you're going to kill us," Hender said. "Kuzu said that's why you brought us here. Are you going to kill me?"

They turned to the sel as the colors on his coat muted to blue and black, fading almost invisibly into the couch as they looked at him.

"No, dude, we're not gonna kill you," Abrams said, reaching out to shake his hand.

Hender reached out and took it uncertainly.

"Never, Hender!" Nastia said, extending her hand, too.

"Please help us, Hender," Nell said with a reassuring squeeze of his other hand.

"Da! We all need each other now." Dima took his fourth hand as he became visible again.

Hender shook the four humans' hands. "Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you," he said to each.

"So what can we do, then, Nell?" Bear asked. "How do we get out of here?"

Nell pointed back to the map. "If we can get through this part of the city to the farm-less than two hundred yards away-we should be able to make it to the palace from there unharmed."

"Oh, man," Bear said, shaking his head.

"Through that shit?" Abrams asked. "I don't know."

"And from the palace we can send an ROV down the passageway I took to the train tunnel and detonate the explosives to seal it off. We have to try!" Nell said.

"That's crazy," Bear said.

"Do you have a better suggestion?" Dima asked.

"Is that possible?" Nastia asked. "Can you send a robot that far through solid rock by remote control?"

"Yeah," Abrams said. "The Dalek can drop signal boosters along the way. If it can get through the ghosts, it can definitely go the distance."

"But what then?" asked Nastia.

"Well," Nell said. "If we can get to the palace ... there might be a way we can escape from there."

"How?" Abrams asked.

"By gondola. Through Pandemonium."

Abrams laughed at her dark humor.

"She's not joking," Galia said.

"Pandemonium?" Abrams frowned.

"It's another vast chamber that adjoins the palace," Nell said, motioning with her hand off the edge of the table. "That way. It's not on this map, but it's where the ghosts come from. Stalin built a gondola that crosses the giant lake there. It may be our only way out."

"Shit," Bear said. "That's crazy!"

"We tried to fix it," Galia said. He shook his head. "But it would be very, very risky."

"Then it's true," Nastia muttered.

Nell looked at her. "What?"

"There were some cryptic lines I came across by Trofim Lysenko in a letter to my grandmother. They referred to 'monsters marvelous and fearful to behold in the depths of the Earth.'"

"He was right," Nell said. "We found his journal, I think, in a drawer of Stalin's desk. He may have been sent here to help set up the farm. I'll show you, when we get there."

"You say you fixed the gondola, Mr. Sokolof?" asked Abrams.

"The motor runs. But the pylons ... one of them has partially collapsed over the lake." He shook his silver-haired head grimly. "And the creatures there pose an even greater danger. We decided it was too risky to give it a trial run." Galia eyed the others now with large, sunken eyes. "What about Maxim, then?"

"I hate to break it to you, friend, but there's no way Maxim Dragolovich is getting out of here," said Abrams. "I mean, I'm sure you'd love to have his head on a flaming pike, but we can't risk it and we don't have time."

"He wants to rescue Maxim Dragolovich," Dima said. "I want his head on a flaming pike."

"Oh, sorry," Abrams said. "Either way."

"Hender." Nell turned to the sel. "What do you think? Is there any way we can get to this gate? It leads to the farm, where we should be safe. We just need to go two hundred yards up the street outside. The others have armor. I have this jersey. Can we make it?"

Hender frowned, looking at Nell, and he shook his head. "No. The others will make it, maybe. But you won't make it, Nell."

"We have less than six hours before they seal the way we came in," Abrams said. "And then flood this place with mustard gas, or whatever they're planning to do."

"We can't go back anyway," Bear scoffed.

"I agree," Nastia said, pushing her bobbed black hair back from her tense brow. "I don't trust them, either. They might not even open that door for us, anyway. They let me know secrets I've been trying to find out for twenty-five years. That alone makes me nervous. They may have lured us all here just to seal the city and exterminate the hendros. And us along with them."

"That's crazy talk," Abrams said. "Someone must have bribed Ferrell. Unless he just went nuts."

"We have to make it to the farm, Hender," Nell said.

Hender bowed his head and closed his large eyes. "Let me think."

The others looked at one another as the sel rose from the couch and sat on the carpet before the fireplace, holding four hands up at them as he folded his three-jointed limbs against himself like an Egyptian scarab. His coat began pulsing pink in slowing waves until his fur turned black that pulsed yellow about once a minute.

Bear whispered: "What's he doing?"

Nell shrugged, having never witnessed this behavior. "I don't know."

05:15:40.

Kuzu sprang on four legs, leaping like a Hindu Sagittarius clutching a three-handed bow. He blended into the facades of the buildings as he crossed the city, throwing flares down side streets to create diversions and downing two young spigers with his bow to draw off predators.

The nants on the sel's body now counterattacked insect predators, provoking them to spray warning pheromones that further protected him. Kuzu felt his energy increasing with each stride as oxygen enriched his copper-based blood. The memories and reflexes of his entire life's experience returned to him as he ran and leaped and bounced off walls, swinging from lampposts, flipping, skidding, rolling, cutting, spinning, and sprinting with a practiced, inspired physicality that would seem mystical to all but the most skilled human athletes. Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson practiced moving for twenty years to reach their astonishing level of prowess. Kuzu had practiced for ninety thousand years. What he could do was magic to human beings.

He chose the most direct route to the hospital and followed the city's map imprinted in his mind's eye. Memorizing terrain was an essential skill on his native land. As he passed each cross street, Kuzu noted the star-shaped tower in the center of the dark city. Its glowing statues of humans peered over the streets like blind sentinels. The sides of the Star Tower were illuminated by masses of wasps and drill-worms in colorful nurseries whose steady, humming drone filled the air. The skyscraper had been turned into a giant hive, and it pleased Kuzu.

When Kuzu approached the door to Sector Two, he found a crushed truck stuck in the half-closed gate. He jumped onto the vehicle's roof and crawled through the gate, noting that the truck's windshield had been gouged open by spigers. The cab's doors were open, and there was no trace of humans except for their guns and some clothing scattered on the street ahead. He picked up a Kalashnikov and slung it over one of his shoulders.

Then he padded up the street on three legs in the dark, his eyes attuned to the meager light emanating from a side street up ahead on the right. He turned the corner to the open gate of Sector Three just as a horde of brown rats stampeded in the other direction. The large sel stretched and blended against the wall as the squeaking mammals passed him, chased by a wave of glowing Henders rats that launched over their mammalian counterparts, tackling them to the ground.

As the massacre of the mammals ensued, a cloud of bugs arrived, spraying an attack pheromone that signaled a feeding frenzy, and carnage rained from the sky over the screaming rodents.

Kuzu glided on four feet along the south wall and through the gate, sneaking down the street until he jumped onto the roof of a crashed limo and leapfrogged to another, as if between stones in a river.

He launched through the air and landed on the hospital steps, which were illuminated by a dimly burning light in the foyer. He slipped invisibly up them and through the wide-open front door.

Kuzu crept through the lobby and charged up the stairs, using two feet while pulling on the wide stair rails. As he slung himself to the top, wasps whizzed down over his ducking head and under his belly.

The small room at the top got to a hatch, also open, which led to a room filled with counters, a large broken window on one side. According to the map, Maxim was inside the far door on the left.

Kuzu streaked to the door and cranked the hatch wheel, camouflaging his fur as his symbiants stirred up repellent to fend off the flying predators pouring through the broken window behind him. He sensed someone trying to stop him from opening the wheel on the other side and heard a shout through the steel. He gripped four hands and cranked with all his strength, pushing the door open and throwing two men backwards at the same time.

He fired the Kalashnikov at the two men as he entered, killing them instantly while slamming the hatch closed with his leg. As Kuzu moved into the dark room, a thin man with glasses and a goatee came running toward him. Kuzu flung two of his throwing stars at him, the disks striking him on each side of his neck, dropping him to the floor.

In the far corner, a large man sat on the bed, not moving. He turned his head to stare in Kuzu's direction, his eyes and mouth widening at the sight of him.

05:31:07.

As he rose, Maxim saw the dead bodies of Dimitri and his two loyal bodyguards behind the creature that reared over him now with a body blazing purple and red. "Are you the devil?" he murmured in horror.

"You're Maxim?" Kuzu asked.

The large man crumpled to the ground before him, and Kuzu reached out with three hands, gripping Maxim around the ribs and hoisting him off the floor. Rising to his full nine feet, the sel slammed the tycoon against the corner of the room and looked into his small eyes with eyes that were twenty times larger, with six pupils focused on his soul. Like a volcano, Kuzu's voice erupted: "POWER! NOW!"

The man looked up at him and fainted in his grasp.

Kuzu looked at him, perplexed. He threw Maxim on a bed and leaned over his face. "Wake up!" the sel wheezed like a steam whistle, stirring the human to consciousness. The man opened his eyes and looked up at Kuzu, blinking.

Maxim beheld the apparition, remote and delirious, convinced that he was dreaming or even dead as the demon sat down on one of the beds across from him. Like a Satanic chimera, a pagan monster, the being folded all its limbs intricately against its body, and its fur blushed a deep maroon that darkened to black. Mesmerized, Maxim watched Kuzu's body shine a pale silvery light that popped with effervescing colors for an entire hour that seemed outside of time.

Hypnotized by the transforming light effulging from the nightmare sitting before him, Maxim was startled when Kuzu finally moved again. The devil incarnate unfolded his limbs and rose.

"Down!" Kuzu's deep voice tolled, tearing open the air with its violence, and Maxim submitted, bowing down; and the great man wept before the terrible demon, accepting its sentence in a delirium of shame and terror.

With four hands, Kuzu rubbed fingers into the human's hair, face, neck, and shoulders. Maxim shuddered as he smelled a strong scent exuding from the monster's hands. He sobbed as he felt a flush spread like fire under his clothes and across his skin.

Kuzu stepped away from the human and watched. The sel knew that millions of nants were now colonizing the man's body. They poured over him, gripping his skin like microscopic cat's claws, each a shield that would link to another like chain mail to protect the human's soft flesh. The nants continued to spread a thin mesh that would stop only at the moist edge of his eyelids and orifices, where chemical signals would compel them to stop.

Maxim knew then that his soul had been condemned as his body was utterly possessed. He had never believed in hell, or the devil, until now. Now that he was doomed he believed in them with all his soul.

"Safe now, Maxim," Kuzu said perversely. He touched Maxim's head, and the microscopic nants continued to flow from Kuzu's four hands into the human's hair. Maxim was paralyzed with awe at his own damnation as his entire body seemed to burn. "I make nants protect you or kill you. Understand?"

Maxim saw the hendro's grin reveal wide yellow teeth, and he whispered, almost involuntarily: "Yes!"

Kuzu picked up an empty orange-juice bottle and examined it. Then he reached out and touched the screen that showed video feeds from different parts of the city. "Ah. Good!"

Then Kuzu lifted Maxim to his feet, leering inches from his face with his giant eyes. "Power. NOW!"