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Shade bleay, raced through the eency room, a hellish scene of patients and their doctors and nurses all writhing in toro of every bodily fluid She went on, down corridors where patients dragged the, anything, to escape She saw a nurse just about to jab herself with a syringe and took a e away

Finally, Shade arrived at Malik’s room

And there he was: Malik

Of all the things Shade expected, this was none of them, because Malik stood Stood He had pulled the tubes fro off coed, unscarred

Impossible!

Fro way to moans and cries of shock

Shade could do nothing but stare as the full horror of what she was seeing came home to her The rock transforranted came with the necessity of a physical transformation—a morph

This Malik, the one with flesh and muscles, was not Malik, it was a morph of Malik, like some desperately unfunny joke He had beco memory of himself

“It’s gone,” Malik cried “The pain’s gone! I’m better, Shade! I’m fixed!”

CHAPTER 3

Veterans of Past and Future Wars

“YOU WERE CLEVER to couests “We’ve been under surveillance for the last four years, but it was pretty sketchy You’d see a cop every now and then, or maybe an FBI car But the last weeks it’s been more intense”

“Any chance the place is bugged?” Dekka Talent asked, accepting a cup of tea

Astrid ed, but we found the bug with so into a YouTube channel, and if anyone’s watching or listening they’re probably getting awfully tired of listening to autoplays of Tim and Eric”

“Albert, huh?” Dekka said with a glance at Armo