Fanning's face soured. "Well, your choice. I was only trying to make a little small talk." He gave a backhanded wave. "Let's have a look at you."

More hands upon her: a large, smooth male and a slightly smaller female, with a wispy diadem of white hair on her otherwise featureless skull. They seized her by the upper arms and whisked her forward, her feet skimming the tile, and dumped her unceremoniously to the floor.

"I said gently, for fucksake!"

Looming like a thundercloud, Fanning stood above her, his aura of merry confidence replaced by jaw-clenched rage.

"You." He pointed the sword at the large male. "Get over here."

A spark of hesitation in the creature's eyes-or did she imagine this? The viral scuttled forward. It dropped to its knees at Fanning's feet and bowed its head submissively, like a subdued dog.

Fanning raised the voice to the room. "Everyone, are you listening? Are you hearing my words, goddamnit? This woman is our guest! She is not a piece of luggage for you to toss around as you please! I expect you to treat her with respect!"

As he raised the sword, Amy covered her head. A crack, followed by a grinding sound and then the thump of something heavy hitting the floor. A wet stickiness splashed the side of her face and, with it, a rotten smell, as if a door had blown open onto a room of corpses.

"Oh, for the love of God."

The viral was still on its knees, its headless torso folded forward to the floor. Dark, rhythmic spurts were convulsing from its severed neck, forming a glossy pool on the floor. Fanning was staring at the front of his pants with revulsion. His suit, Amy realized, was rotten and threadbare. It hung on his body with the unstructured looseness of rags.

"Look at this," he moaned. "This is never going to come out. They're like pets, the mess they make. And the stink. Just god-awful."

It was absurd, all of it. What had she expected? Not this. Not this whirlwind of instantly changeable moods and thoughts. This man before her: there was something almost pathetic about him.

"Well, now," he said, and smiled nonsensically. "Let's get you to your feet, shall we?"

She was hauled upright. Fanning stepped forward; from his pocket he produced a handkerchief, flapped it open with a flourish, and dabbed the blood from her face. His eyes seemed both close and far away, peculiarly magnified, as if she were observing them through a telescope. On his cheeks and chin was a dusting of whitish beard; his teeth were gray, dead-looking. He hummed tunelessly as he went about this chore, then took a step back, lips pursed, brow furrowed, examining his handiwork with a slow nod.

"Much better." He regarded her at uncomfortable length, then declared, "I have to say, there's something very appealing about you. A certain innocence. Though I'm guessing there's more there than meets the eye."

"Where's Peter?"

His eyes widened. "She speaks! I was beginning to wonder." Then, dismissively: "Not to worry about your friend. Delayed in traffic, I expect. As for me, I'm glad the two of us can have this chance to talk amongst ourselves. I hope this doesn't seem too forward, but I feel a certain kinship with you, Amy. Our journeys are not so very different when you think about it. But first: where, pray tell, is my friend Alicia? This specimen of overgrown table cutlery tells me she's around here someplace."

Amy didn't answer.

"Nothing to share on the subject? Have it your way. Do you know what you are, Amy? I've given it a lot of thought."

Let him talk, she told herself. Time was what she needed. Let him use the minutes.

"You're ... an apology."

Fanning said nothing further. The virals held her fast. He stepped away toward the train tunnels, where he resumed his original position, gazing forlornly into the blackness.

"For a long time, I wanted to kill you. Well, perhaps not 'wanted.' You can't help being what you are, any more than I can. It wasn't anything personal. You were merely a symbol, a stand-in for the thing I hated most." He turned the sword in his hand, studying the blade. "Imagine it, Amy. Imagine the folly of the man. He actually believed he could make everything all right, that he could atone for his crimes. But he couldn't. Not after what he did to Liz. To me, to you." He looked up. "She was nothing to me, the other one. Just some woman in a bar, looking for a night of fun, a bit of company in her lonely little life. I regret that intensely."

Amy waited.

"I thought I could forget about it. But that was the night. I see that now. It was the night the truth of the world opened to me. It wasn't the woman that did it. No, it was the child. The little girl in the crib. Do you know that I can still smell her, Amy? That sweet soft odor that all babies have. It's practically holy. Her little fingers and toes, the smoothness of her skin. Her whole life was in her eyes. All of us begin that way. You, me, everyone. Full of love, full of hope. I could see it: she trusted me. Her mother lay dead on the kitchen floor, but here was this man, come to answer her cries. Would I give her a bottle? Change her diaper? Perhaps I would pick her up, take her on my lap and read her a story. She had no idea what I'd done, what I was. I felt so sorry for her. But that wasn't the reason. I felt sorry because she'd had to be born in the first place. I should have killed her right then. It would have been a mercy."

A silence caught and held. Then: "I see from your expression that I appall you. Believe me, I appall myself sometimes. But the truth is the truth. There's no one watching over us. That's the cold heart of it, the grand delusion. Or if there is, he's the cruelest kind of bastard, letting us believe he cares. I'm nothing, compared to him. What kind of God would allow her mother to die like that? What God would let Liz be all alone at the end, not the touch of a hand or a single word of kindness to help her leave her life? I'll tell you what kind, Amy. The same one who made me." He turned toward her again. "Your friends on the boat will be back, you know. Don't be surprised-I know all about it. I practically watched them sail away from the pier. Oh, maybe not soon. But eventually. Their curiosity will get the better of them. It's simple human nature. All of this will be dust by then, but here I'll be, waiting."

Do it, Alicia, she thought. Do it, Michael. Do it now.

"What do I want, Amy? The answer is quite simple: I want to save you. More than that. I want to teach you. To make you see the truth." His expression darkened. "Hold her tightly, please."

The clock had run down. Michael glanced at Alicia. "Ready?"

She nodded.

"You might want to cover your ears."

He shoved down the plunger.

"What the hell, Circuit?"

He drew up the bar and tried again. Nothing. He pulled the positive wire, touched it lightly to the contact, and pressed the plunger a third time. A spark leapt.

He had current; the problem was at the other end.

"Stay here."

He unscrewed the second wire, grabbed the plunger box and lantern, and tore down the stairs.

The strength of the virals' grip increased with a hot jab. The pain was eye-watering; bits of confettied light danced in her vision.

"Bring him in, please."

Peter.

Two virals dragged him from the direction of the tunnels. His body hung floppily, facedown, the tips of his boots skimming the floor.

"It's the only way, Amy. I wish there were another, but there simply isn't."

Amy could barely think. The slightest movement ignited shrieks of agony. It felt as if the bones of her upper arms were about to shatter under the pressure of the virals' hands, to crumble into dust.

"Ah, here we are."

The virals halted, still holding Peter by the shoulders. Blood was dripping from his hair, flowing down the creases of his face. Fanning stepped toward him, sword extended. Amy's breath stopped in her throat. He positioned the flat of the blade beneath Peter's chin and, with cruel slowness, tilted his face upward.

"You care about this man, do you not?"

Peter found Amy with his eyes but seemed unable to focus. His mouth was moving soundlessly, with what might have been a sigh or groan.

"Answer the question."

"Yes," she said.

"So much that you would do anything to save him, in fact."

Her vision swam. To be undone so easily; that was the cruelest thing.

"Say it, Amy. Let me hear the words."

Her answer came out with a choking sound: "Yes, I'd do anything to save him." Her head rolled forward in defeat; she had nothing left. "Please, just let him go."

One flick of the wrist and his throat would open like paper. Peter's eyes were closed, preparing for death. That or he had slipped back into a merciful unconsciousness.

"Let me show you something," Fanning said. "It's a little talent I've discovered. Jonas would get a real kick out of this."

He did something strange: he began to undress. First the suit coat, which he folded in half and lay neatly on the floor with the sword, then his shirt, unbuttoning it to reveal a fan of downy white chest hair and a smooth, leanly muscled trunk.

"I have to say, it's good to finally get out of these clothes." He had knelt to untie his shoes. "To put aside these trappings."

Shoes, socks, pants. The air around him had begun to change. It fluttered like waves of heat above a desert road. He rocked his head toward the ceiling; a sheen of oily sweat appeared on his skin. He licked his lips with a slow tongue and began to roll his shoulders and neck, his eyes half-lidded, lost in sensation.

"God, that's good," he said.

With a bony pop, Fanning arced his back and moaned with pleasure. His hair was ejecting in clumps; fat, throbbing veins pulsed beneath the skin of his face and chest, tatting a bluish web. He rocked his jaw, showing his fangs. His fingers, from which long, yellowish nails now protruded, flexed restlessly.

"Isn't it ... wonderful?"

Michael hit the tunnel, Alicia shouting his name behind him. Rats were suddenly everywhere, an undulating wave of them, flowing toward the bulkhead.

The screw had torn loose; the pack lay in the water. The fuses were soaked and useless.

"Fuck!"

His eyes fell on a small electrical panel, at eye level, just to the right of the bulkhead. The ground was boiling with rats. They were swarming around his ankles, brushing against his legs with their soft, nauseating weight. With the tip of a screwdriver, he popped the door and waved the lantern over the interior.

"Get back!"

Alicia was standing a few yards behind him. Thirty feet away, a viral was crouched on the floor of the tunnel; a second clung to the ceiling, its inverted head rocking side to side. The long, bald tail of a rat was whipping from its mouth.

"Go on, beat it!" The virals merely looked at her. "Get out of here!"

The inside of the panel was a tangled mess of wires connected to a breaker board. Give me an hour, Michael thought, and I can do somethign with this, no problem.

"These guys look hungry, Circuit. Tell me you've figured this out."

God, how he hated that name. He was pulling wires free, attempting to separate them into some kind of coherence, to trace them back to their source.

"More coming!"

He glanced over his shoulder. The walls of the tunnel had begun to glow green. There was a skittering sound, like dry leaves rolling on pavement. "I thought these guys were your friends!"

Alicia fired at the viral on the ceiling. Her aim was unsteady; sparks flew up. The viral skittered backward, dropped, and came up on all fours. "I don't think it's me they're interested in!"

He sliced off a length of cable, stripped the ends, and screwed them to the plunger. Holding the wire, he gave a final look into the panel. He would have to take a wild guess. This one? No, that.

A barrage of fire behind him. "I'm not kidding, Michael, we've got about ten seconds!"

With four quick turns, he spliced the ends of the wires together. Alicia was backing toward him, firing in short bursts. The sound reverberated off the walls of the tunnel, hammering his eardrums. Good God, he was tired of this sort of thing. Tired of guesswork and laboring in the dark, tired of leaking valves and bad circuits and busted relays-tired of things not working, things that refused to bend to his will.

"Need some help here!" Alicia yelled.

Her rifle drained, Alicia tossed it aside and drew a pair of blades from her belt, one for each fist. Michael grabbed her around the waist and pulled her into him.

The tunnel was a squirming mass.

They fell backward as the first viral careened forward. Michael drew his sidearm and fired two shots, the first sparking off its shoulder, the second catching it in the left eye. A splash of blood and with a shriek it skidded to the floor. They were scooting backward toward the bulkhead, Michael firing his pistol, shoving his heels against the concrete, one arm encircling Alicia's waist to drag her with him through the fetid water. He had fifteen rounds in the gun, another two magazines stashed in a pocket, useless and out of reach.

The slide locked back.

"Oh, shit, Michael."

So: the end of the line. How slow its approach, how sudden its arrival. We never truly believe it's coming, he thought, and then before we know it, it's here. All the things we've done in our lives, and the undone things as well, extinguished in an instant. He dropped the gun and pulled Alicia tight against him. His hand was on the plunger.

"Close your eyes," he said.

The change was complete.

Fanning's face was still tipped upward, lips parted, eyes shut. A sigh of satisfaction heaved from deep in his chest. The being before her was not one Amy had ever seen or imagined-still recognizable as himself but neither wholly man nor wholly viral. An amalgam, half one and half the other, as if a new version of the species had been born into the world. There was something of the rodent about him, the nose snoutlike and full-nostrilled, the ears triangulated at the top and swept back from the curve of his skull. His hair was gone, replaced by pinkish natal fuzz. His teeth were the same, though the mouth itself had enlarged into a kind of windblown grin, giving a full view of his fangs, which dripped from the corners. His limbs possessed a thin-boned delicacy; the index fingers of both hands had elongated to curve-tipped points.

Amy thought of a giant wingless bat.

He stepped toward her. His eyes locked on hers; she dared not look away, no matter how much she wanted to. Fear had paralyzed her limbs. They felt far away and useless, loose as liquid. As Fanning neared, his right hand rose. The digits were webbed with a translucent membrane. The daggered index finger, jointed in the middle, unfurled toward her face. Her eyes clamped shut instinctively. A prick of pressure on her cheek, not quite hard enough to break the skin: every molecule in her body shuddered. With lascivious slowness the nail traced downward, following the curve of her face. As if he were tasting her flesh through his finger.

"How good it is to let the truth come out."

His voice, too, had altered, possessing a high, hidden note with a squeaking sound. The air around him smelled of animals. The small, burrowing things of the world.

"Open your eyes, Amy."

Fanning was standing beside Peter. The virals had hauled him upright.

"This man, he is your curse, as Liz was mine. It's love that enslaves us, Amy. It is the play within the play, the stage on which the tragic drama of our human lives unfolds. That is the lesson I have to teach you."

And with these words, Fanning opened his jaws wide, tipped Peter's face upward on the end of one long, webbed digit-tenderly, like a mother with her child-and clamped his jaws around Peter's neck.

The squeak of current from the plunger was not enough to open the bulkhead all the way; but it was enough to get things started. As the door's counterweights jolted downward, creating a gap between the door and the floor of the tunnel, Michael and Alicia were blasted by a jet of water. In less than a second, the tunnel became a roaring river. Michael attempted to rise, but the force was too great, he could find no traction, and then they were tumbling, hurtled downstream in the roiling water.

They plunged into the station, going like a shot. There was no real light, only a vague glow from the stairway, glimpsed fleetingly as they passed. Water filled his nose and mouth, foul-tasting-he imagined this to be the taste of rats-and threatening to choke him. They were riding just beneath the platform. Gripping Alicia by the wrist, Michael reached out with his free hand and made a desperate lunge for the edge. His fingers touched but tore away.

They passed through the station. The water was rising fast; soon it would be over their heads. The next station would come at Fourteenth Street-much too far. Ahead, a faint glow appeared. As they neared, the light congealed into a discrete shaft-an opening in the roof of the tunnel.

"There's a ladder!" Alicia cried. Her head went under again.

"What?"