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Paulson looked away

That night, checking in for his shift, Grey asked Davis, "You know that guy Paulson?"

Davis wasn’t his usual cheerful self these days Gone were the jokes and the dirtyht at the desk; though it was also true that Grey didn’t knohat he hiht, either

"What about hiht there; he couldn’t think what else to ask

"Nothing Just wondering if you knew him was all"

"Do yourself a favor Stay away froot to work It wasn’t until later, running a scrub brush around a toilet bowl on L4, that he thought of the question he’d meant to ask

What is he so afraid of?

What is everyone so afraid of?

They were calling hih he was so sick now, lying alone in the dark, that those names and the person they referred to seemed like so only this sick, writhing form in his place

The sickness felt like forever That’s the word it made him think of Not that it would last forever; more that he was sick with time itself Like the idea of time was inside him, in each cell of his body, and time wasn’t an ocean, like somebody had told him once, but a uished The worst feeling in the world So better soon, much better He’d held on to those words for a while But now he knew they were a lie

He are, dis, the pokings and prickings of the men in the space suits He wanted water, just a sip of water, to slake his thirst, but when he asked for this, he heard no sound fro in his ears They’d taken a lot of his blood It felt like whole gallons of it The man named Anthony had sold his blood fro fill up with it, amazed at its density, its rich red color, how alive it looked Never ave him the cookies and the folded bills and sent hi after bag, and the blood was different, though he couldn’t say just how The blood in his body was alive but he didn’t think it was only his own any, else

It would have been good to die about now

Mrs Wood, she’d known that And not just about herself but about Anthony too, and when he thought this, for a second he was Anthony again It was good to die There was a lightness in it, a letting go, like love

He tried to hold on to this thought, the thought that made him still Anthony, but bit by bit it slipped away, a rope pulled slowly through his hands Howwas happening to hih for theabout it, poking and prodding and takingelse now, too: a softfrom the men in the suits The sounds seemed to come from far away and from inside him all at once Not words he knew but words nonetheless; it was a language he was hearing, it had order and sense and a mind, and not just one mind: twelve Yet one was more than the others, not louder but more The one voice and then behind it the others, twelve in su to him; they kneas there They were in his blood and they were forever, too

He wanted to say soate!" a voice cried out "He’s flipping!"

The restraints were nothing, like paper The rivets popped from the table and shot across the roos The roo from his eyes, because the darkness was part of hier uncoiled itself To eat the very world To take it all inside him and be filled by it, made whole Tofor the door

Anthony fell on him swiftly, from above A scream and then the man was silent in wet pieces on the floor The beautiful warmth of blood! He drank and drank

The one who’d told hi, after all

Anthony Carter had never felt better in his life

Pujol, that du it had taken Carter to flip, the longest since they’d begun But Carter was supposed to be the e before the virus reached its final forotten

Richards personally didn’t care one way or another about the girl She would survive or she wouldn’t She would live forever or die in the next five irl had become beside the point, as far as Special Weapons was concerned They had Wolgast in there with her now, talking to her, trying to bring her around So far he was fine, but if the girl died, this wouldn’t make a lick of difference

What the hell had Pujol been thinking? They should have dropped the gate days ago But at least now they knehat these things could do The report fro to see it with your own eyes, to watch the video feed of Carter, this little twig of a ood day and scared of his own shadow, launch hih the air, so fast it was as if he were h space but around it, and rip a man from crotch to jowls like a letter he couldn’t wait to open By the time it was all over-about two seconds-they’d had to blast Carter with the lights, to push hiate

They had the twelve now, thirteen counting Fanning Richards’s job was done, or nearly The order had just co to Operation Ju the sticks to White Sands After that, it would be out of Richards’s hands