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"Your conscience?"

"I do have one, yes"

"You surprise me, you know that?" Peter said

"Really? How do I surprise you?"

"I never thought Tifty Laet a rise, he saw none Tifty rocked back in his chair, placed the tips of his fingers together, and looked at him coolly over the tops of his spectacles "And you were thinking maybe that if you pissedlike that, yeah"

"Then you mistake me for somebody who cares what others think Nice try, Lieutenant"

"You said one of them was never found I don’t see how you can sit here if she could still be alive"

Tifty sighed indulgently "Perhaps you didn’t get the news, but this isn’t a what-if world, Mr Jaxon Too ht, and there’s not enough decent sleep to go around Don’t get , I adht be too strong a word But I do understand it There was a time when I wasn’t so very different But those days are passed What I have is this picture I look at it every day For now, that’s what I have to content ain The wo sirls, wide-eyed, hopeful like all children, waiting for their lives to unfold He had no doubt that this picture was the center of Tifty’s life Looking at it, Peter sensed the presence of a coiances, promises made This picture: it wasn’t just ahimself Tifty wished he’d died with the sorry for Tifty Lamont

Peter returned the picture to its place on Tifty’s desk "You said the trade was only part of what you do You never told lasses and rose "Fair enough Come with me"

Tiftyopen, revealing a spacious rooainst the walls The air was rank with a distinctly anih-noted arolowed a cool, violety blue-"viral blue," Tifty explained, with a wavelength of four hundred nanoh, he told Peter, to keep them calm The builders of the facility had understood their subjects well

Michael and Lore had joined thees and ascended a short flight of stairs What awaited them was obvious; it was just a question of hoould be revealed

"And this," said Tifty, opening a panel to reveal two buttons, one green, one red, "is the observation deck"

They were standing on a long balcony with a series of catwalks jutting over a reen button With a clatter of gears and chain, the shelf began to withdraw into the far wall, revealing a surface of hardened glass

"Go on," Tifty urged "Look for yourselves"

Peter and the others stepped onto the catwalk Instantly one of the virals hurled itself upward against the glass, crashing into it with a thu back to the corner of its cell

"Fuckasped

Tifty joined them on the catwalk "This facility was built with one purpose inthe virals More accurately, how to kill the at the containers below Peter counted nineteen of the creatures in all; the twentieth container was e to their presence, but the one who had leapt at therily as theythe catwalks, her body tense and her clawed hands flexing

"How do you get them?" Michael asked

"We trap them"

"With what, spinners?"

"Spinners are for ayrations iood, really, unless you want to crisp them on-site To take them alive, we use the sasten alloy, incredibly strong"

Peter tore his gaze away from the drac "So what have you learned?"

"Not as much as I’d like The chest, the roof of the mouth There’s a third soft spot at the base of the skull, though it’s very small They bleed to death if you dish the skin Heat and cold don’t seem to have much effect We’ve tried a variety of poisons, but they’re too smart for that Their sense of s we’ve laced nowe do know is that they’ll drown Their bodies are too dense to keep the The longest any of them lasted was seventy-six seconds"

"What if you starve them?" Michael asked

"We tried that It slows them down, and they enter a kind of sleep state"

"And?"

"As far as we can tell, they can stay that way indefinitely Eventually we stopped trying"

Suddenly Peter understood what he was seeing The work of the trade was really just a cover The ht here, in this room

"Tifty, you are full of shit"

Everybody turned Tifty crossed his arave Peter a hard look

"You have soo back to Iowa You just couldn’t figure out how"

Tifty’s expression didn’t change His face looked suddenly older, worn down by life "That’s an interesting theory"

"Is it?"

For five seconds the twoJust when the silence had gone on too long, Michael broke the tension

"I think she likes you, Peter"

Fifteen feet below, the big drac was looking up at hii and drew back her lips to display her glinting teeth These are for you