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The blast of sound that folloas completely out of proportion with the size of the body that produced it It was a howl of purest rage It was a roar that could have felled a forest, flattened a mountain, knocked a planet off its axis Peter literally felt himself pushed back by it; his eardruht Ah As she rose to her feet, the others shot forward

Chaos

Suddenly it was i or where to shoot, the ies of battle too quick for human eyes to compute Peter realized he had expended the last of his rounds, but the gun was useless anyway He gli fro her pistol

Where were Tifty and Nina?

He looked downfield Nina was racing toward the platform, the bomb clutched to her chest Tifty was behind her She waved her free ars: "You bastards! Look over here! Hey!"

The one that took note-did it grasp her intentions? Did it know theof what she held? It did not soin a four-limbed spread like a spider on silk Tifty saw it first As he raised his weapon he tried to push Nina aside, but the effort ca, the leisureliness of the viral’s plunge was an illusion It crashed into the two of theo off, but that didn’t happen The viral seized Nina by the ar over the dirt; then it turned toward Tifty As Tifty raised his weapon, the creature engulfed hiunshot

It wasn’t a decision There were no pros and cons Peter dropped his gun andfor all he orth

The only two people who saw it all were Lore and Greer And even then, it was Greer alone, the man of faith, whose prayers had afforded him a deeper comprehension of the scene, as able to make sense of it

Viewed from the control room, the battle on the field played out with a flattened quality, rendered more decipherable by distance At one end lay Eustace, unconscious or dead, and between hione, hurled into the darkness; Alicia, on the opposite side, was the only one still firing At the center stood the platfor wrenched herself free from the melee, had vaulted to the top of the armature Her tunic was in shreds, stained with the dark wetness of blood; one clawed hand clutched her side, as if to stanch a wound Even at this distance, Greer could discern the harsh labor of her breathing Her transfore remained: her hair Black and wild, it tumbled freely around her face In anotherforce, yet her posture did not co invincible about her, al downfield Where was he going? The semi?

No

Greer blasted from the room and down the stairs He would part the croith his body, his fists, his blade if he had to A

Alicia would not be denied She had consecrated her existence to this holy fact She had felt it since the cave: a singular longing drawing her forward, as if she were being pulled down the length of a tunnel As sheher weapon-her bullets, she kneould do no actual da of only one thought, one vision, one desire

Louise, I will avenge you You have not been forgotten Louise, you, too, are my sister in blood

"Show yourself, you son of a bitch!"

Her bullets skiazine, raritted teeth she advanced,her dark prayer He would know her, feel her; it could not be otherwise It was a thing of destiny, that she should be the one to kill him, to wipe him from the face of the earth He was Julio Martinez, Esq, Tenth of Twelve He was Sod of the bench and the grunting exhalations He was all the men in all the years of history who had violated a woman in this manner, and she would drive her blade deep into the dark heart of him and feel him die

One of the virals swiveled toward her Of course, Alicia thought; she would have recognized him anywhere His physique was identical to the others’, and yet there was sohtiness that only she would be able to detect He regarded her through soulless eyes lidded with bored languor; he appeared, almost, to smile Alicia had never seen an expression on a viral’s face before; now she did I know you, his bland, arrogant face seeuess I’ht you know ht, and drew the bayonet from her belt

They launched toward each other simultaneously-Alicia with the blade raised above her head, Martinez with his great taloned hands reaching forward like a prow of knives An unstoppable forcean i, grappling collision, Martinez’s vastly greaterher pinwheeling over his head In her ed but did not yet feel the lacerations on her arms and face where his claws had torn into her flesh She hit the dirt and rolled once, twice, three ti to her feet again She inded, stu with the irip on the bayonet; to lose it was to accept defeat, unthinkable

Martinez, twenty feet away, had dropped to a froglike squat, his hands splayed like paddles on the dirt The s else, h Godda her bayonet oncetoward them

The bo just a few yards from Tifty’s body He skidded in the dirt and scooped it to his chest The plunger was intact, the wires still connected Hoould it feel? Like nothing, he thought It would feel like nothing

So blasted hi left hi away The ground unfurling beneath him and a flash of mental blackness; then Peter found himself face-up in the mud

The viral looht seemed to cross the wires of Peter’s senses, as if he were tasting nightfall, or listening to lightning As the creature tipped its head, Peter did the one, last thing he could think of, believing it would be the final gesture of his life: he cocked his head in concert, willed his mind into absolute focus, and looked the viral dead in the eye