1

“Insalla.”

He spoke the name without inflection, his voice an ax grinding along the stone wheel of Death...and so too did Death spark from it...

2

When morning slid into afternoon, a fierce storm cloaked the southern horizon. Lightning cracked that dark wall, and thunder swept the world with a sound like stampeding horses in a vast and bloodthirsty army.

On a shallow prairie hill, surrounded by miles of wilted sagebrush and weeds, William Norris gave the tempest little mind. He’d packed sweaters and hats should they encounter inclement weather. Besides, he had spent enough time in these lands to know that the storm would be spent when it reached them. A few raindrops, maybe some brisk winds.

His companions—Anna, Marta, and Derek—were not so casual. Upon seeing the saturated veil, they kept chatting about tornadoes and fretting over the chance of being caught in a deadly squall. They were from big cities, and did not yet comprehend that this northwestern land was an asylum from extreme weather: tornadoes, hurricanes, and earthquakes were as rare as seeing escaped zoo elephants crossing a highway.

They had been hiking since daybreak, and had travelled about four miles. Their vehicles, safely locked and parked off the road, were long out of view. The heat-smeared prairie was the only sight.

“Come on,” Will said. “Don’t worry about the storm.”

His friends didn’t argue—but didn’t seem reassured, either.

He had known Derek since first grade. Marta and Anna he’d met in college two years ago, and the four had formed a close friendship not built on sexual desires. The girls were

attractive, of course—Marta had the toned body of a swimsuit model, and Anna’s eyes were a luminous shade of green—but aside from mere observations, they had never muddied their relationships by hopping into bed.

In this world, where children were indoctrinated with sex and dating at birth, these four friends were a welcome antithesis.

They were hunting arrowheads and looking for snakes to shoot. Will had his .22 Remington revolver, which was strapped in a waist holster. Each person carried a backpack with food, water, and extra clothes, and Derek was also packing the tent, because they intended to spend the night in the wilderness.

Chugging thunder rode the air. A breeze began whistling through the sagebrush.

“I think we should get ready for rain,” Marta said. She was wearing a long-sleeve plaid shirt over a white tank top, and dubiously looked down at herself. “I’m not dressed for rain.”

“There won’t be any rain,” Will assured her, “and even if there is, it won’t be as much as you think. Really, I could use some rain about now.”

Walking beside him, Derek said, “I’m with you, buddy. It’s hot as hell out here.”

Although the girls were red-faced and sweating, they kept glancing at the southern horizon and seemed ready to argue again.

Will said, “Girls, I’m serious. Don’t worry.”

“I stink,” Anna announced after a while, a ploy to distract herself from anxiety.

“We all do,” Marta said. “But I wonder what Arthur would think of you now, Anna, all sweaty and stinky.”

Arthur was Anna’s most recent ex-boyfriend.

“Arthur,” Anna replied, “is a pig, and I couldn’t care less what he would think of me.”

“A few weeks ago, you couldn’t stop talking about him.”

“A few weeks ago, I was an idiot.”

“And now?”

“Now I’m an idiot who doesn’t have to put up with Arthur’s shit.”

Glancing back, Will asked, “Why haven’t I heard much about this Arthur?”

“Because he’s a pig,” Anna said.

“He called her ‘Daffodil’ and had chapped lips,” Marta explained.

Will said, “He sounds charming.”

“When we kissed, his lips would shed. You

kiss someone like that.”

“Your lips aren’t the model of moist right now, I have to say.”

“That’s because we’re hiking through the first desert of Hell,” Anna said, retrieving a bottle of lip balm from her pocket.

“And he would drool during sex,” Marta said.

“Marta

!” Anna exclaimed. “Can we not? I told you that in private.”

“And I’m telling Will in private.”

“Drooling, huh?” Will said.

Anna scowled. “Yes.”

“Sounds charming.”

“Oh, yes, extremely.”

“So...why were you dating him?”

“I really don’t know. He had a nice ass.”

“Very high standards.”

“He’s old news,” Anna said, “and I don’t want to ruin our trip by thinking of him. Marta

should never have brought it up.”

“You got it, Daffodil.”

“Yeah, fuck you, Will.”

Will laughed and walked backward so he could wink at the girls. Anna gave him the finger.

Derek, who had been predictably silent during this exchange, stopped. He pointed to something up ahead. “What is that?”

Will looked and his humor withered. About two hundred yards away, silhouetted by spiny sagebrush, was a mound of pale dirt, about eight or ten feet high, crudely shaped in the form of a pyramid. Its edges had been painted with haphazard strokes of vibrant colors: red, green, purple, yellow, blue, and white. Standing around it, like the cardinal points of a compass, were four men with long black hair.

Will and his friends gaped at it. They blinked, looked again.

It was not a mirage.

“What the hell?” Marta whispered.

Will didn’t answer. He was certain the anomaly hadn’t been here minutes before. Without cover of hill or valley, the landscape provided no spaces in which to hide. Even a distracted hiker with poor vision would have spotted this sharp protrusion.

Which meant that it had formed in seconds.

But that was impossible. It made no sense.

The men were bronze from the sun. They appeared to be naked except for dark jewelry around their necks and arms.

The day suddenly felt hotter. The hairs on his arms and neck became rigid as needles, and Will’s breath caught in his throat. When he brought a hand to his brow to shade the sun, it was shaking.

The wind no longer blew. No thunder echoed. A supernatural blanket seemed to have settled over the prairie, pressing upon it, smothering every living creature within ten miles.

Heart thundering, he was about to call out when something stung his chest.

He looked down. There was a small dart plunged through his shirt, a three-inch black shaft with a tuft of red fuzz on its end.

The girls gasped in unison. Will turned to see identical darts in their bodies: Marta had been pricked in her right thigh, and Anna had a dart sticking from the side of her neck. Derek, though he had not cried out, glared at one in his stomach.

Before he could see who had fired the darts, as he thought about pulling his out, Will became dizzy. The world blurred and jittered; thick smoke seemed to fill his vision. A strange sound, like the harried chatter of crickets, arose somewhere nearby. Then he was falling, and had time to hope that he didn’t land in a cactus plant before everything faded to black.

3

With none of the often-portrayed grace of movie heroes, Will Norris woke in a fit of coughing. Unlike rising from sleep, he was alert instantly, and groaned as he remembered the dart in his chest and the alacrity with which he’d gone out. For a moment, he kept his eyes shut, trying to understand what had happened.

Something was wrong. It was too cold. The sun should be shining, or maybe a few raindrops falling...He tried to wipe his face, and that was when he realized he couldn’t move his arms.

Now

Will opened his eyes, and he looked upon a nightmare.

He sat with his feet outstretched, and his ankles were joined with some kind of white rope. His back was against a rough stone wall, his arms pinned above him, wrists tied together and affixed to the wall itself, rendering him helpless. He could wiggle his hands and elbows, but the strange bonds could not be broken.

He was in a rectangular chamber about twenty feet in diameter and ten feet high. The walls and ceiling were dull stone, pitted and jagged as if carved by hand chisels and hammers. The floor upon which he sat was a flat layer of dirt that was neither marked by footprints nor heaped and disheveled by the elements. In the middle of the room, a foot-wide hole had been bored through the dirt and into the earth. That hole tossed pale yellow light into the chamber, as though it tunneled so far down that it reflected the magma of the earth’s core.

Spaced around the room at ninety-degree intervals were his friends, Anna and Marta and Derek. Their wrists had been tied together and secured to thick metal chain links in the stone above their heads, and everyone’s ankles were bound with the same white rope.

No one else was awake. Their heads lolled. Every few seconds someone would moan or grunt.

Will and Derek had been stripped to their boxers; the girls had on bras and panties, nothing else.

He felt something odd now, a pricking sensation in his stomach. He looked down and cried out.

On either side of his belly button, thin black wires pierced his flesh like IV lines. The one on his left led away from his body and across the ground, where the other end plunged into Anna’s stomach. Likewise, the wire on his right fed into Derek’s body. From their

flesh came two more strands that connected them to Marta, on the opposite wall from Will. The wires were too thin to be tubes of medicine, and besides, no medicine was ever administered like this. Worse, his skin seemed to have grafted around the wires, as though they had been there since birth.

The bloodless wounds did not hurt. Crazy as it was, though, he could feel

the thin cables. His entire chest felt tight and each breath was constricted, and he had the illogical impression that somehow they were wound around his internal organs, perhaps surfaced with barbs that gouged the tender flesh every time he moved.

A surge of panic raced through his veins. He tugged on the bonds that held his hands, tugged and tugged, but the sturdy metal link never even creaked.

The walls, though lumpy, were seamless. He could see no door or crawlspace. There was no way out.

Just the hole, which spouted light that never flickered or wavered, crafting its own sulfurous firmament across the ceiling: a fake atmosphere.

That led to the ultimate question: how had they gotten here if no exit existed?

“Derek!” Will whispered. Then, louder: “Derek!”

His friend did not move.

“Come on, man, wake up. Someone, wake up, please!”

No one moved.

He could not even stand up, because his arms were pinned above him. The most he could do was roll his legs side-to-side and rise to a semi-crouch, although he did none of these things. He was too worried about moving and pulling the wire from his body as it sheared his innards.

Then Marta jerked her head up, smacked the wall, and was awake at once. Whatever sedative the darts used, it provided no cushion of disorientation. She looked at her feet, noticed her arms over her head, and began to squirm.

“Marta!”

She froze, eyes wide.

“Marta, it’s me!”

“Will?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s happening? Where are we?”

“I don’t know.”

Marta’s stomach heaved. She had not yet noticed the wires in her skin.

In rapid succession, Derek and Anna woke and gasped, fought against their bonds, and cried out in fear. When they saw their friends, fear became confusion. They chattered and wept and yelled.

Then they fell silent just as quick, and their echoes clapped throughout the chamber much too long, as if the walls were aware of their plight and saw fit to play back their hysteria.

For long moments, no one spoke. The girls were crying. So was Derek.

“Okay, guys, we have to get out of here,” Will said.

“How?” Marta asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Where are

we, even?” Derek wondered. “Look at this place. There aren’t any doors or anything.”

Anna, who was weeping so hard that she could barely form words, said, “Forget about that

and look at these fucking wires sticking in our bodies! It’s like we’re one big circuit. Where...do they go? How are they so precise?”

“She’s right,” Marta said. “I can...I can feel them inside me. The wires. It’s like they’re balled up in my chest or something.”

Derek blew out his breath. “Yes, I can feel it too. Oh shit, oh Jesus, you guys, what are we supposed to do?”

“We have to stay calm,” Will said, although his heart felt ready to leap out of his mouth.

Anna screamed, “Calm? Calm

? We’re in a goddamn cave

, with wires

sticking out of our bodies, our hands tied up, and you want me to be fucking calm

?”

“Yes, damn it!” Will screamed back. When Anna was in a mood, only equally vehement words would get to her. “Because if we aren’t calm, we’re going to stay like this until we either die or someone comes for us, and I sure as hell don’t want to be around when anyone shows up!”

“But—”

“But nothing! Now stop screaming and start thinking of a way out of this!”

She glared at Will, her body quivering, but then collapsed into mostly-silent sobs.

Derek said, “Was it those guys? The ones we saw by that dirt-thing?”

“I don’t know,” Will said. “I never got a look. Those darts put me out in seconds.”

“Same here.”

Marta said, “These bonds are strong as hell. It’s some kind of rope, but it’s like...sticky. I can’t budge it.”

When their voices’ shifting echoes faded, the chamber fell into silence that rivaled the vacuum of space.

Without warning, the yellow light from the hole darkened into a deep gold, but the ambience was not so much gilded as it was diseased. The chamber, previously without shadows, suddenly erupted in them: they jumped around as the light faded in and out, in and out, and Will could barely see his friends.

One instant, the light disappeared and everything was black. Then the original, steady glow returned.

There was a man standing in the middle of the room. He was tall, well over six feet, and his bronze skin flared with oversized muscles. Black hair to his waist, ornamental jewelry around his arms and neck, nude body: this was one of the men who had been in the prairie. He held a machete, a menacing shape about three feet long, with painted white stripes on its blade.

The girls screamed. Derek cursed, but Will bit his tongue to stay composed. The man was staring at him. A strange pride born of mortal terror made Will meet the man’s gaze.

His face was wide, his lips thick, and his eyes abnormally far apart. His skin had a sheen to it, as if he had been oiled for effect—though no effect could rival his immediate appearance in a room without a visible exit. Looking at his scowl was like looking at a rabid animal.

The man turned, shuffling his bare feet over the dirt, straddling the hole, and faced Anna, who was crying so hard that she probably couldn’t see him at all.

“Insalla

,” the man said. It was almost a whisper, yet it carried across the chamber as would a deep-throated yell.

The tribesman turned again and faced Marta, who at least tried to meet his gaze.

“Insalla

.”

He shifted to Derek, who raised his chin and spat on the man’s feet.

Without reacting, the man said, “Insalla, sai

.”

While the man was occupied with Derek, Will glanced at the band that stretched across a massive bicep. It was brown, perhaps leather, and small objects dangled from it. At first he couldn’t make out what they were—they looked a little like guitar picks—but when the guy turned to face him, one twirled and caught the light.

They were fingernails. They varied in size, but all were grey and rimmed in brown, as if they had been on his body for years and were moldering. They hung from his neck, rattled on his wrists, and one even swayed from a leather string that pierced his ear.

“What the hell are you?” he asked. “What have you done to us?”

As soon as he said it, Will knew he’d made a mistake. This man was not going to sit down and have a nice talk—if he even spoke their language.

“What’s he doing?” Marta called. “Will, what’s he doing?”

“He’s just...staring at me. Glaring.”

“Guys, do you see those fingernails?” Derek asked.

“Yeah, I see them,” Will replied.

Anna, through sobs, said, “Just make him go away. Make all this go away, please, oh God, it can’t be real, can’t be, just make him go away...”

Marta said, “Anna, we’re here. We’re with you. I know it’s hard, but you have to try and pull it together.”

The man whirled and faced Anna.

The machete was in his right hand. The tribesman stepped forward, swung it, and sliced Anna’s jugular.

At the same time, the light went out.

The blackness was so thick it almost had weight; Will felt squeezed by the air around him, although he knew it was only his terror.

Derek and Marta were screaming, yelling, crying. If he’d had anything in his stomach, Will would have vomited.

A sudden awareness of danger drew the strength from him, and he bit his lip. In the pitch-black void of the chamber, they were helpless against attacks. The tribesman could be six inches from his face and he wouldn’t perceive that presence until the killing stroke pierced him. Even the quietude, which should have allowed him to hear movement, was drowned out by an ocean-like roar in his ears.

The previous black had lasted but a minute. This darkness remained, and Will feared that the light might never return.

No one could speak to the horror they’d witnessed.

“Guys?” he told the darkness. No one answered, but he dared not say anything else. It was irrational, insane

, but he worried that by opening his mouth he would invite this cloying black into his body, as though they no longer breathed air but the purposeful breath of some alien entity that infested living hosts.

Derek, his voice pinched, said, “Uh...I think something’s happening. I...I feel weird...”

“Me too,” Marta said. “Will?”

He didn’t answer.

Louder, more desperate: “Will!”

But Derek was right: something was

happening. The wires in his stomach, previously docile, began to feel hot. He could feel the exact insertion points as the heat grew, and he looked down, expecting to see the wires aglow. They were not.

It felt like red-hot needles were impaled within him, because now the hotness was not just on the surface but inside as well. From stomach to throat, his muscles twitched and seized. His abdominals flexed of their own accord. His heart, previously hammering, fell into a frightening kind of slow thump-thump

. Every breath burned.

“No!” Derek yelled. “No, no, no, stop!”

Will didn’t know if his cries stemmed from a similar burning sensation or because the tribesman was attacking.

The wires at his belly button suddenly pulsed. The feeling was so disturbing that for the first time, Will lost his composure and screamed.

They pulsed again. It felt like something was moving inside

them, into him, something that was too large and expanded the circumference, just as a snake’s tubular form swells to digest uneaten animals. Gobbets of terrible design were being fed into him, bit-by-bit, and he was powerless to fight. He rattled his arms, kicked his legs, but all he could do was grit his teeth and endure it.

Pulse.

He screamed and screamed. Vaguely, he heard the others shrieking as well.

Pulse

.

This one was larger, and it felt like his skin tore.

Pulse. Pulse. Pulse

.

Faster now, the energy or chemicals or...or whatever the hell they were. But, for God’s sake, what could travel through wires so small?

Pulsepulsepulsepulsepulse

.

And as the wires fed into him, the pain began to fade. In its place was vertigo, relief—and an alarming amount of physical strength. He felt stronger, knew

he was stronger.

He didn’t know how it could be or what it meant, but just as the pulses stopped, Will fisted his hands and tugged on the bonds. He expected nothing more than the clink

of metal like before, but this time the ropes tore, went flying, and the momentum slammed his arms down onto his groin. He yelped.

Without support, his body fell sideways.

The pain was gone. The pulsing, at least, had ceased.

His hands trembled as he touched the thin outline of the wires. They felt like rubber, perfectly embedded in the skin, warm to the touch. When he wiggled one, something under his flesh moved as well, and he jerked his hand back in revulsion.

Something warm and slimy crawled down his chin. He brought his hands up and knew it was blood.

Derek and Marta were quiet.

Will drew deep breaths, trying to slow his thoughts. Don’t focus on the wires

, he told himself. Think about something else, anything else...

Before he could do that, light showered up from the hole.

4

Although he had half-anticipated the lights’ return, Will was not prepared for such an abrupt ascension from darkness. He winced but sat up.

Marta and Derek, though they must have tried, had not been able to break their bonds. Both were semi-conscious and moaned under their breath. Like him, blood was trickling—but thankfully not gushing—from their noses, from the corners of their mouths, and from the wires’ insertion points. They were otherwise unharmed.

The tribesman had vanished as inexplicably as he appeared. It would be easy to think that he had never really been there at all—except that he had left footprints in the pale dirt. His presence had all the qualities of a hallucination, but the tracks raised more questions than answers: if he was not an apparition, was in fact flesh and bone, then how had he gotten in

?

He drew in his feet and untied the rope, tossed it aside. He noticed that the wire on his left side, which had led into Anna’s body, was severed halfway between them.

Anna. He dared not look yet.

His mind was in tatters. He wanted nothing more than to curl up on the floor and let panic-fueled memories fade this place away. Memories of college, of friends, of carefree nights driving on the highway, screaming song lyrics out the window. He would remember kissing a girl for the first time. Yes, he could recall it even now. Her name was Allison, and at the end of their second date, standing on her porch, hands linked, they had kissed; she had just applied lipstick, and the rich texture of her skin was amazing. Everything had been perfect until the door opened and her little brother giggled at them. Her cheeks had flushed, she had laughed, but she did not unwrap her hands from his neck. That was what he remembered most, all these years later: even with the embarrassing interruption, Allison refused to let go. In a way, that moment was more profound than the kiss itself.

For a few minutes, Will recalled those times. He closed his eyes, forgot about his half-naked friends chained to the wall, and fell into satisfying peace.

Then he squinted, and saw Anna.

Her skin had badly wrinkled. Mottled brown and grey, her body curled in upon itself; her arms and legs and chest were half their normal size, as thin as twigs in winter. Her eye sockets were empty. A few strands of hair still clung to a bare scalp, but most had fallen to the ground. Will was reminded of a documentary he’d seen of Egyptian mummies, how the corpses had looked when unwrapped. It was similar to Anna’s decay here: the same withered body, the same dryness, as if everything liquid had been squeezed from her.

There were dark swatches of blood on the wall and on the ground from the tribesman’s fatal swing. But that didn’t explain the rapid decay of her tissues.

He stared at the remains too long. This time, he couldn’t stop the vomit, although all that came up was acid laced with blood.

Marta groaned, and it was a welcome distraction. With considerable effort, he tore his gaze from Anna and looked at his friend. She was working her mouth, trying and failing to form words.

He crawled on his hands and knees through the dirt, over the hole without looking in it, and knelt beside her. The wires scooted along with him, and he tried to ignore the way they squirmed with every movement, how it felt like fingers rammed inside him.

He took Marta’s face in his hands. Forced her chin up. Looked in her eyes.

“Will?”

“Yeah. It’s me. You’re all right.”

“How—”

“I broke my ropes. I don’t know how.”

The blood from her mouth and nose had stopped flowing and was already dry. When she spoke, the rivulets cracked. “What...happened?”

“I don’t know.”

She stiffened. “That man...!”

“He’s gone. The lights went out, and he was gone. Okay, I’ve got to get you free.”

He fumbled with her bonds and found that a simple knot was all that held them. He untied it and then did the same with her ankles.

Like Will, her first instinct was to grab at the wires, but he took her wrists and stopped her.

“Don’t,” he said. “They’re deep. We can’t pull them out.”

“This one’s broken,” she said, pointing to the one on her right, the one that had led to Anna. It was severed, as Will’s had been, because there was nothing left to which it could connect. Anna was gone.

He tried to stop Marta from looking, but he was too slow.

Marta stared. Gasped. Pinched her eyebrows. Choked back a sob.

Will knelt in front of her, blocking her line of sight, and wrapped her in a hug. It was not a full hug, because he was careful not to crush the wires, but her head was on his chest and her arms were around his back and they were sobbing together. He felt her tears trail along his skin, felt her mouth as it opened and closed. He stroked her hair and told her that they would find a way out. She held onto him so fiercely that her fingernails dug into his skin.

They stayed that way for a long time. When at last Marta was calm enough to sit on her own, Will wiped away as much of the dried blood from her face as possible. There were still stains along her cheeks, but she looked better.

As one, they turned to Derek. He had fallen unconscious, and the blood from his mouth still dribbled.

They scooted-crawled-shuffled the short distance, mindful of the wires, and set to work untying him. Will lightly slapped his face, but nothing happened.

“Will,” Marta whispered, “how did you break your ropes? I tried, but I couldn’t.”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “It happened so fast. The wires were...were burning...”

“...like all your organs were being scorched...”

“...and there were these...these pulses of something being fed into my body...”

“...like energy pulses, right! They came faster and faster...”

“...and that was when I broke the ropes. I felt strong, almost superhuman strong, and I just pulled.”

Marta exhaled slowly. “The same thing happened to me. I guess I still wasn’t strong enough, though. God, Will, what are these wires? Where are we?”

“I don’t know.”

“And Anna...!”

“Don’t think about it. Don’t look over there. Just focus on me, all right? On Derek. Right now we have to find a way out of here.”

“There isn’t a way!”

“There has to be. That man came and went. He was real, look—footprints.”

But Marta wouldn’t face the center of the room, probably because doing so would have certainly led to another glance at Anna’s remains.

“Why won’t Derek wake up?” she asked.

As if on cue, their friend fluttered his eyes and jerked awake; as before, there was no drowsiness. He was alert in seconds.

“Guys? Is that you? How...?”

“Will broke his bonds. He freed me.”

Derek looked down at his freed hands, at his bleeding puncture wounds, and groaned. “Where’s Anna? Is she okay?”

Marta was ready with an excuse, but Will silenced her with a touch. They could not keep Derek from seeing her body in such a confined space, and if they prolonged his hope, it would only make the moment worse when at last he saw. So they parted, and Marta pointed across the room where Anna curled up as if made from dried corn husks.

They said nothing during his cries and curses. All they could do was pat his back, hug him, and try to remain steady themselves.

As Derek finally calmed, Will glanced up and was struck by a delayed sense of embarrassment. They were all in their underwear, exposed, and Marta’s bra was so thin and soaked with sweat that her breasts might as well have been nude. Her bare legs, while streaked with blood and dirt, were still firm and toned, and when she turned to prop herself against the wall, her panties shifted and exposed the top of her ass.

He felt like gagging, and turned away. One of them was dead, they had wires inside them, no way of escape, and he was thinking about sex? It was impossible. He had always known of Marta’s beauty, but those feelings were akin to acknowledging the beauty of a close sibling. Never had he considered acting on the strong physical attraction because, in all important aspects, they were

like siblings. But now his body revolted. At the sight of such horror, perhaps he was responding with primal urges that were always present but dormant. Confronted with unimaginable pain and the prospect of death, maybe anyone’s mind would crack. Nevertheless, he felt less than a man. A scoundrel.

At some point, Derek sniffed and was quiet. The chamber once more had the preternatural silence of an airless void.

“Is this real?” Marta asked. “I mean, look at us. Is this possible?”

Derek said, “Oh, it’s real. It’s real and we can’t waste time thinking about how it’s possible, because right now it just is

. Right? They say that if you can touch something, smell it, feel it, then it’s real. What we need to focus on is how to get out of here.”

“But Anna! Look at her! How is that possible?”

Will shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Derek, however, seemed to have an answer. “The wires. It’s these fucking tubes that made her like that.”

“How do you mean?” Marta asked.

“Didn’t you guys feel it? When everything was burning, and things were pushing through the wires...I felt something. It was weird, like being more than I am. It sounds stupid now, but I felt like I was stronger and smarter than I’d ever been.”

Will shivered.

“Since reality as we know it is fucked anyway, it makes sense. Anna was dead. The wires connected us. Something was being fed through those wires...” he shrugged.

Marta’s mouth fell open. “Are you saying that we

did that to Anna? That somehow we took her...her what, her life?”

“No, she was already dead. But maybe the wires sucked out her...her energy or something. Look at that corpse, will you? It’s decayed, eaten away, like her energy was stripped from her body

. It was the wires.”

“No,” Marta said. “No way. No.”

Derek turned to Will. “You said you broke your ropes, right? Because you were stronger than normal. Because you took some of Anna’s strength.”

“No, stop saying that! Stop it, just don’t!” Marta looked stricken.

Will understood her denial. Losing Anna was bad enough, but now Derek was proposing that they were responsible for her degradation. Even though the tribesman had killed her, and even though she was gone in seconds, it was nauseating to think that somehow they had benefited from her death. And if the wires were indeed a conduit through which energy flowed, they had not just sailed into the unknown but had rocketed toward the flimsy edges of sanity.

What made it worse was that Derek’s answer seemed logical, or, at least, logical in this

hell.

“Okay, we can’t prove anything,” he said. “Right now, let’s just think about getting out of here before that tribesman comes back.”

Derek frowned. “ ‘Tribesman?’ ”

“Yeah. Did you see how he was dressed? Those fingernails were like ornaments, and his black hair, tanned skin...it was like an Indian.”

“Craziest fucking Indian I’ve ever seen,” Derek said, and managed a halfhearted smile.

“So. We have to work together. If there’s a way out, we’ll find it.”

“Okay. Marta, you with us?”

They turned to look. She was facing away and hunched over. Will heard sounds that were at once disturbing. A sticky slurping. Throttled moans of pain.

He rushed forward, knowing what he would find, but was still aghast when he saw Marta leaning over herself, pulling at the severed wire. She gripped it with both hands, white-knuckle tight, but instead of yanking, eased it inch-by-inch, pausing every few seconds to take a deep breath and grit her teeth.

She had managed to pull out five or so inches by the time Will saw her. Where it had been inside her, the wire was no longer black but covered in glistening brown and red mucus. Blood trickled from the wound and down into her panties, soaking through and even staining her thigh. Every time she pulled, there was a sound like the sucking of an empty straw.

“What the hell are you doing?” Derek asked, but he, like Will, could not find the strength to stop her. They were afraid that any touch might make her jerk the wire and cause irreparable damage.

“I...I won’t let it use Anna like that,” she said, pulling out another two inches. The skin puckered along the entry wound. “No. I won’t. I won’t be responsible for that. No way.”

Will said, “It’s already done, Marta, and we don’t know where these wires go. They could be in your heart, for God’s sake!”

“This one is...is cut, see? It’s not...connected...to anything. It...oh, shit, it hurts.”

They watched, helpless, as Marta pulled a foot of wire from her body. A foot and half. Where it fell to the ground, the colored mucus soaked into the dirt. Marta’s stomach heaved every time she pulled, and that slush-slush

sound made Will grimace.

Then, with one more tug, the wire ended. She threw it aside and looked at the resultant hole, which was little bigger than the width of a match; still, blood flowed through her fingers as she tried covering it.

“See?” she said. “It’s fine. The wire was useless. It’s out.”

Quickly, she grabbed the second wire, fortified by the apparent ease with which the first had left. But when she tugged, instead of sliding, the wire remained immobile and she screamed. She jumped back and fell onto Derek.

She was breathing so hard that Will thought she might pass out.

“Okay,” she gasped, “not...not that one.”

They helped her up. From the tiny hole beside her belly button, blood still dribbled, but it was

slowing. She kept a finger over it, applying pressure, and she was smiling.

“Go ahead,” she said, “Do it. It doesn’t hurt that much, and it’ll be out of you. Go on, go on!”

“No,” Will said. “I’m not going to. We still don’t know what it did to you, pulling it out like that.”

Derek, an arm around Marta, said, “I can’t anyway. I’m connected to the two of you, see? My wires are all in use.”

He was right. Will and Marta had been attached to Anna, but Derek was sandwiched between them.

“Will, don’t tell me you want that thing inside you.”

“Of course not, Marta. But not right now, okay?”

“Then what?”

“Let’s find a way out of this damn cave,” he said.

5

They searched the cave. They searched it again. Then they did it a third time.

They found nothing

It took a long time because they had to stay close together so the wires didn’t pull taut. First, intuiting that such knowledge might prove useful, they took turns standing as far apart as possible, and saw that the wires were about ten feet long. Then they started at one wall and felt for any imperfections, hidden buttons, fake stones, or secret windows. Every wall was perfect in its roughness.

They stared down the hole in the room’s center. It was larger than they’d thought, perhaps a foot and a half in diameter, but nothing else could be seen: just inches inside, the light became blinding. Marta reached in and said it felt like regular, warm stone.

When they finished, everyone was sweating. Dirt streaked across their bodies, and their dried blood had turned black. Their hair was tangled. Their combined breathing had turned the air muggy. The chamber stank of body odor and a vague coppery undertone of blood.

Exhausted, they slumped against one of the walls, inches from one another, the wire looped in and around their feet.

Will had thought about pulling the severed one from his body, as had Marta, but he was not strong enough. He hated even getting shots. No way could he yank it out.

“We’re going to die,” Marta said. She was absently feeling along the remaining wire, prodding her skin as if thinking about pulling it again.

As a declaration of their shared grief, no one refuted her statement.

Soon, they found themselves staring at Anna’s corpse. They had managed to avoid touching it while they searched, but it had fallen over sometime; those hollow eye sockets seemed to look upon them with anger. Will couldn’t even see his friend anymore. Her face was contorted, bruised, and whatever muscle tone or contours she’d once had were gone.

The light went out.

The previous darkness had been terrifying, and although Will knew they should be readying themselves for whatever might come, he could not summon the strength. His body was simply incapable of quick action, and so he sat with his friends against the wall as darkness reigned. Marta found his hand and he gripped it, and on his left, he grabbed Derek’s as well.

When the lights came on not ten seconds later, the tribesman was back.

He stood facing them, that same deep-lined scowl on his face, but this time his hands were empty.

Will noticed that, despite being nude, the man retained a sense of pride, as if he were more animal than man, as comfortable without clothes as a bear or wolf.

If he was surprised at all by their escape from their bonds, he did not show it. Probably to him there was no such thing as surprise.

“Insalla

,” he said, repeating the word he’d used before.

“Fuck you,” Derek said.

“Insalla, sai

.”

Derek gave him the finger.

The tribesman pointed at Marta. “Sai

.”

“Leave her alone,” Will said, knowing his words meant nothing. “You leave her alone.”

The man whirled and knelt, picked up Anna’s body. He cradled the mummy-like shape in his arms and turned around.

“Sai

,” he said, and then lowered his head and kissed the corpse.

No, Will realized a moment later, he wasn’t kissing Anna but sucking

on her. His lips were parted wide, and he moved back and forth along the leathery skin of her face, forehead, down her chest, inhaling all the while, as if the body had been laced with some kind of drug which he now ingested.

This continued for perhaps a minute, and then he hurled the body against the left wall. So hard was the throw, and so dry were the remains, that upon contact Anna shattered. A silent explosion showered dry, pale flecks through the air, and there was nothing left of their friend but the haze settling to the ground.

Quickly, the tribesman walked over and knelt in front of Will, not three feet away. His jewelry rattled.

No longer did he scowl. Now his eyes were wide, his lips parted. He extended a hand, made a sweeping gesture, and nodded.

“What’s he doing?” Marta asked.

“Who cares?” Derek said. “I know we said we’re gonna die, but guys, I don’t want to die because of him

.”

“Quiet!” Will ordered.

The tribesman had locked eyes with him, but in no way were those black spheres human eyes. This may have been a human body, a convincing guise, but his gaze betrayed him. The man was not a man at all.

“I think...I think he wants us to do something,” Will said.

The tribesman pointed to himself and said, “Onon

.”

“Onon? Is that...your name?”

“His name

?” Derek said. “Are you out of your mind? He has no goddamn name, this is all a trick, and we have to get away!”

Will slapped his friend’s arm. “Shut up!” He pointed at the man and said, “Onon?”

The man nodded. “Onon. Insalla, Onon, insalla sai

.” He reached down and grasped the wire between Will and Derek, gave it a squeeze, and then pointed at each of them in succession.

“You’re right,” Marta said. “He wants us to do something. What, though?”

Will shook his head. “I have no idea.”

The tribesman—Onon—stood, spread his arms, and looked to the cave’s ceiling. Will couldn’t stop a sliver of excitement as he imagined the stone falling apart and daylight streaming in.

Onon rushed forward, bent down, grabbed Derek by the neck and groin, and hurled him headfirst into the wall. There was a sickening thunk

. Blood sprayed everywhere. It happened so fast that no one reacted.

Then the light went out again.

Marta was immediately atop Will, hugging him, screaming into his ear about not wanting it to happen again, how she would rather die, and he had no idea what she was talking about—

—and then the wires heated up. And he understood. It was happening again.

Though he knew what to expect, the pulses still shocked him. It was worse this time. Derek’s theory seemed to be correct, and with every throbbing ball of something

that streamed into him, Will saw in his mind’s eye the corpse of his friend, his skin wrinkling and everything still living being transformed and shuttled into him and Marta, who had let go and was writhing on the ground beside him.

He couldn’t do anything. It was useless to fight, and thankfully this episode was quicker.

Soon the hole emitted light. Yellow, sad light.

Derek was dried and dead. Marta was on the floor beside Will, curled into the fetal position, not unconscious but moaning the same word over and over: “No, no, no, no, no, no...”

Will sat up. He didn’t feel dizzy or sick, as before. No, he felt strong. Fantastic, even. His mind was alight with new thoughts, new decisions, and a strange amount of pride. He felt as if he could punch through a wall with ease.

Yes, because you stole your friend’s energy. His life. You took it, and now you benefit while he’s dead.

He rose and turned Marta onto her back. She was bleeding again from her mouth and nose, and now her ears had also begun leaking.

A drop of blood fell onto her chest, and Will was shocked to reach up and find that he, too, was bleeding.

They were alone now. And strung between them was a single wire, somehow formed while the lights were out.

6

Marta wouldn’t leave.

Will was at the wall, hitting it in frustration.

When the lights returned, they had discovered an opening in the stone, about four feet high and five feet wide. There was a tunnel beyond, but they couldn’t see where it led because there was no light inside. Like the teleporting tribesman, this opening appeared to have been there all along; its edges were smooth.

Will hadn’t believed it at first. He kept staring at it, convinced that if he tried to crawl through it would seal shut, locking him in eternal blackness. Then, when he got the courage to enter, Marta refused to go.

She wouldn’t explain herself or even look at him. She sat cross-legged, staring at her hands, silent.

Had there not been a ten-foot length of wire between them, he would have left. He couldn’t understand why she didn’t jump at the chance to leave this hellhole. For a moment he considered leaving anyway, dragging her along like a disobedient dog, but was discouraged from that because he didn’t know if the wires were strong enough to pull a human being.

Will had just about run out of patience when she whispered her first words in a long while: “You scare me.”

He frowned. “What do you mean?”

“You’re not you anymore.”

“What?”

“Look at you, Will. You’re standing there punching a wall like it’s going to break if you hit it long enough. And you’re not even bleeding. Sweet Jesus, you really can’t see that we’re changing, can you?”

But he could. Ever since Derek’s energy had been fed into them, Will began to feel more alert, stronger, more confident. And Marta was right: he had

been punching the wall, hard enough that there should have been cuts on his knuckles from the stone. Instead, his hand was slightly red, nothing more.

They were

changing. And it scared him more than words could describe.

He sank to the floor next to Marta and said as much.

She still wouldn’t look at him. “We shouldn’t use that tunnel.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Because he put it there. Onon. He did this, and why do you think so? He wants us to go in there.”

“But I don’t want to be in this room anymore. I don’t want to sit on this ground anymore. I don’t want Derek’s body laying right there

, looking at me.”

“How do we know that Onon didn’t make that hole just so we could go through it and into something even worse?”

“Worse than this? Are you kidding me? Look around you, Marta. We’ve lost them. Do you want to be here when Onon comes back?”

“I...”

“Do you?”

She shoved him hard, and he caught himself on his hands. “Screw you, Will! You’re just falling for more tricks. This entire place is one big trick. There’s no escape, none at all. Whatever we got from Derek and Anna...it’s tainted. It’s making us weird.”

A rush of anger stripped Will’s composure. He lunged forward and grabbed Marta by her shoulders. She struggled, but his greater weight carried them down, and he pinned her wrists and legs with his own weight.

“Listen to me. Listen!”

But she wasn’t listening. She was thrashing and twisting her head, as if she didn’t recognize him and thought Onon was holding her down.

“Marta, stop it! What’s wrong with you? It’s me, Will. I’m not going to hurt you!”

She stopped, met his gaze, and went limp. A pitiful sob escaped her; he could feel her body shaking.

“Fine,” she whispered. “I’ll go down the fucking tunnel and when we’re trapped inside I’ll tell you ‘I fucking told you so’ and then you’ll feel like a royal fucking asshole.”

Marta had never used such strong language before. She was always the calm one, finding a way out of a conflict by low tones and a few well-pointed stares. That she had cursed three times in one outburst spoke volumes to how frightened she was, and Will couldn’t think of anything to say. He stared at her in surprise.

At the same time, he was gripped with a desire so profound he cried out. Suddenly all he could think about was the feel of Marta’s skin beneath his, the way her small limbs and torso shook with her sobs, how her underwear was almost worn in two. He saw her tears and he wanted to lick them off her face. He wanted to bite her lip, draw blood, bite her breasts as well, and he wanted her to bite him in return. He took his right hand, which held her wrist, and brought it to his mouth. Opening wide, sucking in a breath, he trailed his lips along the dirty length of her forearm, quivering with pleasure at the tangy sensation of sweat he sucked from her skin.

He had just jerked her other arm up and had his mouth over her palm when the feelings passed. The taste of Marta’s sweat and blood was overwhelming.

Will tumbled off her, jarring the wire inside him.

He scratched at his lips and spat, trying to be rid of the sourness. What was worse than the actual taste was the vague stirring of desire deep within, not fully perceived but strong enough to get his attention. It was a duality: he knew it was wrong, horrible

, but a small part of him wanted to continue sucking and biting her skin.

He turned to her. She was still on her back, eyes wide, staring at him.

“I’m...I’m sorry,” he said, spitting again. “I don’t know...oh my God...”

She said nothing, but got to her knees and started crawling away.

“Where are you going?” he called.

But it was obvious: she was entering the tunnel. He was forced to follow when the wire slid across the dirt, in danger of being pulled tight. Shambling on all fours, still trying to be rid of the repugnant, sweet taste, he passed through the opening and onto a floor that was not smooth like the chamber, but rough and hard.

She stopped not ten feet inside and let her head fall back against the wall. Will came up beside her, but remained a short distance away. He was afraid that if he touched her at all, those unwanted urges would return, and this time he wouldn’t be able to control them.

“Why did you go?” he asked. “You didn’t want to before.”

“I had to get you out of there,” she said. “You were...changing, and I...I didn’t want to be sitting with you anymore. I wanted to be moving.”

“I don’t know what happened back there. I just snapped for some reason.”

“That’s not the worst of it. When you were on top of me, doing those things...I liked it

.”

“What?”

“I felt this wave of pleasure, not quite sexual, but something just as strong. I wanted you to do it. Oh, Christ, Will, what’s happening to us?”

“I don’t know.”

She didn’t reply, just continued on through the tunnel.

Soon the light from the chamber fell behind, and familiar-yet-awful darkness surrounded them. Will couldn’t even see his hand in front of his face, and the only reason he knew Marta was still ahead was the sound of her knees and hands scooting across the stone.

The tunnel curved left, then right, and soon Will was lost. For all he knew, the passage snaked around the chamber they had just left, winding them up only to deposit them back at their starting point.

Marta would not speak to him, so he tried to occupy his mind with thoughts of happier times. But now, everything seemed tainted by incongruous danger. No memory he relived was as it had happened.

He became so lost in his polluted thoughts that he ran into Marta, who had stopped crawling.

“What’s wrong? Why are we stopping?”

Instead of replying, she groped at his arms and chest, found his shoulders, and shoved him against the wall.

“What...?” he asked, but then she was atop him.

Her hand slipped down his stomach and into his boxers; she squeezed. At the same time, her mouth was over his, but they were not kissing. Their open lips remained apart by a feather’s width, and they both inhaled. Will’s entire body went rigid as he took in the supple length of this woman on him, her needy hands.

Marta growled, a sound of intense need, and they both realized at once what they were doing. Her breath was very unpleasant, and the hand in his boxers felt nothing like sex; rather, it was a primal response to something less than human. It was as if, by engaging in these bizarre acts, they were slowly degrading from man into a lower form of existence, driven by powerful physical urges.

She slid to the ground beside him, breathing hard, and the wire in Will’s stomach was warmer than normal as he, too, was breathless.

“We should keep going,” Marta said when they calmed.

He could hear the embarrassment in her voice, the shame.

“Let’s go,” he said.

7

After what seemed like hours in the tunnel, crawling to an end that didn’t yet feel real, Will saw light. He dismissed it, at first, as just more variations on the winding, crawling shapes that he saw all the time in the blackness. But it didn’t disappear. In fact, it grew larger. He urged Marta faster.

The tunnel was so long that it was like travelling miles and miles underground, from one city to the next, but there was comfort in the fact that Onon hadn’t materialized during their time here, nor had the wires done anything but grow warm on occasion.

The light came from a small doorway, a rectangular slab of steel perfectly fitted into the stone. Even the tiny crack around its perimeter was blinding, after having spent so long without any brightness at all.

Marta couldn’t find a handle or knob, and she moved back to let Will have a turn. The steel was warm to his touch.

They had come so far that his arms could barely hold up his body. But when he sat on his haunches and instructed Marta to do the same, they kicked the door twice and it swung open with a creak of rusty hinges.

There was a room beyond, but it was too bright; they had to lay on the ground, facing away, and slowly acclimate their eyes to the new ambience.

They stepped out of the tunnel into a square room that was both welcoming and disturbing. Perhaps fifteen feet wide, less than eight tall, it was lit by three large candles in golden sconces on the right wall. There was a rickety wooden table in the center and a blackboard—could that be right? A blackboard?—on the opposite wall, upon which were affixed several photographs.

After escaping a room of terrible power, this new place was so comparatively ordinary that Will thought he must be missing some hidden terror lurking in the corners.

The table held three objects. The first was a black cell phone. The second was a pair of sunglasses with a cracked lens. The third was Will’s gun belt with his .22 revolver.

He ran and snatched the gun from the belt. Clutching it to his chest, he turned to look at Marta.

She stood by the tunnel, arms crossed over her chest. She looked worse than before. Dirtier. Skinnier, as if her body had feasted upon itself during their trek. Her legs were trembling.

She saw Will staring, fidgeted, and moved toward the table, not meeting his gaze. He turned and focused on the blackboard.

She was practically naked, as was he, but that was not the cause of their averted stares. They were both hesitant to interact because their primal urges had increased during their trip. No words were necessary; they could tell by the half-frown-half-excited look on their faces whenever they were close.

The wire slid around the floor as they walked, a tether preventing escape.

It was indeed a blackboard on the wall, a small model about four feet in width. There were a eight pictures taped to it in vertical rows of two. Each depicted a different person, but all had similar dirt-, blood-, and tear-streaked faces. They were all young men, and all had expressions of almost trance-like intensity.

For reasons he could not describe, the photos terrified him.

He glanced back at Marta and said, “I don’t like this place.”

She murmured her agreement as she moved to the far wall, feeling along its length for any hidden passageways.

The gun in his hand felt useless. It was too heavy, too complex. In his current state, it was doubtful that he could hold his arm steady enough to shoot a target.

“Insalla

,” said the tribesman.

Will whirled, ducking instinctively, and saw Onon standing a foot away, between himself and the blackboard.

Marta screamed and ran to the opposite wall.

The gun was there. The tribesman did not move as Will stumbled back, hitting into the table, raising the weapon. He tried to aim, anticipating a moving target—but Onon was motionless.

Finger on the trigger, barrel jittering up and down at the tribesman’s chest, Will held his breath and used his free hand to wipe sweat from his eyes, then used that hand to steady the gun—which, as expected, didn’t work.

“Shoot him!” Marta yelled.

Onon’s body glistened in the candlelight, and those black eyes were mesmerizing.

If the man had attacked, Will would have fired. But when faced with the barrel, Onon lost his scowl and raised his eyebrows. Then he spread his hands and looked to the ceiling, as he had before in the rock chamber. This time, his lips moved: silent, quick words.

“What are you waiting for? Shoot him, now!”

“Quiet!” Will shouted, entranced.

He detected a change in the creature’s behavior. For perhaps ten seconds, he took in the sight—Onon’s enormous arms, his thick lips revealing white teeth, his hairless private parts dangling with an odd sense of pride—and he dropped the gun.

“Will!” Marta screamed. “What the hell? What are you doing

?”

Will wasn’t exactly sure. All he knew was that he didn’t feel the same when he looked at Onon. He wasn’t afraid or furious, or even breathless. Instead, he was curious

.

Curious.

The word lanced through his body, and he tensed.

Onon smiled. The expression was drooped and inscrutable, as though he had never before attempted such a face. A pink tongue traced the contours of his teeth, and his eyes widened into two huge spheres. The resultant effect was more powerful than that borne of any machete or gun; nevertheless, Will could not find it in himself to be fearful. Crazy, but true.

“Sai

,” said the tribesman, and then he whirled. Even as Marta opened her mouth to scream, he crossed the room in three huge strides and leaped into the air. His legs and arms were outstretched but bent in a parody of any football linebacker.

Marta ducked but it was too late. Onon’s massive frame slammed into hers and they went down. A bone-jarring crunch

was followed by a yelp of such pain that Will ran forward even though there was nothing he could do.

In spite of what must have been air-crushing weight, Marta’s body jerked and flailed. Onon was sitting atop her belly, taking hits from her knees and arms and elbows and even her head as she canted herself sideways, beating them both around in a half-circle on the ground. Her hair, damp with sweat, flung moisture across the room, onto Will’s ankles. If she had ever looked less like a human being, this was it.

Then Onon calmly reached a hand down and pinned her neck to the floor. He was so large that his fingers seemed to encircle it entirely. Her hands came up to claw at his bulging forearms, and she managed to rip off one of the fingernail-toting bracelets.

Sensing the futility of resisting, she went limp. Air squeaked through her mouth.

“Stop,” Will said, horrified that he couldn’t feel anything but wonder. This was his friend

, damn it, and she was in danger, and here he was standing like an idiot.

“W-Will,” Marta whispered. She had rolled her eyes to see him. Tears brimmed and traced down her face, washing away the dirt in thin skeins. Her arm stretched and groped for him, although he stood just out of reach.

“Stop,” Will repeated.

Marta whimpered. Will saw that her bra had torn during the attack; it lay uselessly over her left shoulder. Animal lust gurgled as he saw her rigid nipples against grimy flesh.

“Insalla

,” the tribesman said. He spoke it without inflection, as if reading from a script.

At the same time when Will rushed forward, startled from his trance, Onon squeezed. Marta’s eyes hemorrhaged blood-red as he crushed her windpipe, collapsed her veins, perhaps severing the vertebrae in her neck as well.

She was dead within five seconds.

Will fell to the ground. Now

fear came, and he sobbed into his aching, inflamed hands.

8

Marta lay on the ground, arms and legs at impossible angles, her skin as flaky and dried as a hundred-year-old paper doll. Her eyes were gone. Her tongue, little more than a withered corncob, stuffed her lips. She appeared to be reaching out in supplication, taunting Will even from beyond death.

Less than a minute had passed since Onon’s fatal, crushing grip. He had not moved in that time: the creature remained against the wall beside the blackboard, arms crossed, feet apart. He could have been a security guard in another life.

The wire connecting him with Marta—the one which had somehow sutured itself together in the blackness—was gone. As with Anna and Derek, death had severed the energy-giving line after transferring the hot pulses into his body. He now had two wires that led to frayed ends after about two feet. He left them as they were, because although he was no longer afraid, he was still squeamish about tugging anything from his flesh.

He had difficulty remembering anything before the cave. His previous life, from birth to dart, seemed like a recent-but-fading dream, deliquesced by the rains of time.

Then, from the open door that led into the tunnel, came a man. Naked and ringed in ornamental jewelry, he could have been Onon’s twin except for his hair: this man had long blonde locks punctuated by feathered braids. He entered, shut the door, and looked between Will and Onon, nodding slowly.

“Well done,” he said.

Will wasn’t sure what surprised him more. That the man could speak English, or that he spoke at all.

Onon inclined his head. The night-black eyes remained fixed on Will.

“William Norris,” the newcomer said. His voice was dry, raspy, as if his vocal chords were lined with sand. “Welcome.”

Hugging his knees as close to his chest as possible, Will said, “How do you know...my name?”

“Ah, we know everything about you. We have waited for you for some time.”

“What the hell...What the hell is all this? How is it possible?”

“My name is Alnan,” he said, and sat on the ground in front of Will. Like Onon, he was naked but without embarrassment—and Will was shocked to realize that he no longer cared about the men’s nudity. It seemed normal here.

“Why did you do all this? How

did you do all this?”

Alnan nodded. “The right questions. The answers are actually quite simple. No doubt over your life you have heard legends and rumors of ghosts, of aliens, of werewolves...”

“Of Bigfoot,” Will said, the sarcasm all he had left.

“Right,” Alnan said. “These rumors are, of course, untrue. These things do not exist. There are no more alien abductions than there are sea monster attacks. The course of human history has invented these explanations for that which has been seen but cannot be understood. The truth, William, is that we

are those stories. Us.” He smiled back at Onon. “We are the cause of most every legend and horror story ever invented.”

Will had reached a point where he was inured to surprise—or so he thought, because now his mouth fell open.

“We have existed since before humankind mastered the art of fire. We rule the night, William, and we ride over the world like you would run across a city block. We have the shape of humans but we are so much more.”

“You’re ghosts?” Will asked.

“No. We can appear

as ghosts, as you have already witnessed. But we are not dead any more than you are a bird. We simply are...more. A higher level of energy and existence of which most humans never dream.”

“Insalla

,” Onon said.

“Ah, yes, no doubt you are wondering about Onon. Insalla

is a word that has multiple meanings. Most accurately, it is a reflection of our power and of our existence. Onon says it because he wishes to express our condition—who we are. Sai

is loosely translated as ‘join,’ although that is such a primitive word I hate even using it. In truth, William, I cannot explain our language any more than I can tell you about every minute of my life.

“Throughout your history, we have feasted and explored the world. Because we can take different shapes, we have often been glimpsed as ghosts, or as demons, and sometimes as creatures so far removed from reality that humans call us aliens. And throughout history mankind has execrated us for what we do, even though they know not what we are.”

“Which is?”

“Anything we want. If we desire human flesh, we take it. If we want to feel the satisfaction of terror, we take it. We are not bound by the laws of humankind. And you cannot deny our existence, William, because there are times when you have heard us. Everyone has. A noise that cannot be explained, or an errant scream, or a rumble without cause—that is us. It has always been us.”

Instead of refuting anything, Will asked, “Why am I here? Why did you...did you kill my friends?”

“To prepare you.”

“For what?”

“For your ascension into our ranks.”

“What?”

Alnan nodded. “Very rarely do these times come around. But sometimes we sense the presence of a human who is capable of withstanding the ascension process. Someone who can shed their life. You, William Norris, are such a man.”

He gaped. “What?”

“We are deep underground, although I do not think you can yet comprehend how we travel or how we even arrived here. Suffice it to say that we have the capability—at least in your terms—to appear and disappear at will. Ugh, such a primitive tool, this language. It makes our abilities sound unimportant. But as you have no doubt guessed, those wires have been feeding you the basis of our life, derived from the energy of your deceased friends. But your friends, as you call them, were not important. Have you not noticed that your strength and power increased far more than theirs? That your desire for flesh has been stronger than theirs? Or your instinctive need to communicate and follow Onon through the tunnel? It is because you are meant for this. They were not. Onon killed them slowly, one at a time, to lessen the effects to a bearable level. He did not tell you anything because we had to ensure your mind could endure the agony, at least for a while. And you did.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“I am not. We have been sensing your strength for some time now, William, and we chose today very carefully.”

“Why me?”

“I just told you. You’ve seen the photos. Those are others like you, spread throughout hundreds of years, who inherited the right capabilities. So rarely does it happen that we take special note.”

“You took photos of them?” The comparative ordinariness startled him.

“For your convenience. So you could see.”

“There are...more of you?”

“Oh, yes, many, spread around the globe. You would say that we live, too, just differently than humankind.”

“And if...if I refuse?”

Alnan laughed. Like Onon’s smile, it was skewed, out of practice. “You cannot refuse. You’ve already begun to change. All you need is a transfusion of some of my energy and you will be one of us.”

“But my friends...!”

“In time, you will realize that concepts like love and friendship are still possible, but you will no longer experience them as a human being. You will be one of us—a being who can feel and experience in more grand scope than you can imagine. You will come to understand that your human friends were nothing to what you feel with us. And in a way, you now carry their energy, as it was fed into you. We even have a name for you: Ilian, the One Who Endured.”

The proper thing, the humane thing—indeed, the human

thing—to do would be to fight Alnan and, if necessary, commit suicide before the transformation was complete. There was still the gun, which he had dropped across the room near the blackboard. He doubted if it could hurt these tribesmen, but he was yet made of flesh and bone. He could die. Or, if he acted quickly, perhaps he could escape into the darkness of the tunnel. The creatures would follow, but there remained a chance that he’d find some

way out. Or, damn it, he could yank the wires from his body and hope that he had been right, that they were barbed and capable of gouging through his organs.

In some part of his mind, he knew those ideas could never happen. The creatures were too powerful and strong to let him end his life, certainly not when they had expended so much energy thus far.

He didn’t move.

Will didn’t feel anger or horror, even though he wanted to. He clenched his fists and affected a scowl, but it felt as unpracticed as Onon’s smile.

Alnan’s words had thrummed against his bones, enlivening the hairs on his arms and neck. Try as he might, he was intrigued what was being offered. Already he felt like so much more than when first waking in the room—cold, scared, and clinging to false hopes—that becoming stronger was almost intoxicating. He had, it now appeared, been on this path for some time. And what would he be doing by refusing? Nothing but perhaps prolonging his agony.

He thought of Marta. Her quick wit and toothy smile. Of Derek. His muscular body and wicked-smart brain. Of Anna. Ditzy, comical, yet tempered by ambitious lifelong dreams.

They were his friends. They were the means by which he had ascended this far. And if keeping their spirit alive meant climbing higher, reaching farther than anyone had ever done...well, who was he to fight?

Alnan and Onon waited. They seemed to have interminable patience.

“Okay,” he whispered at last, glancing again at Marta’s bled-out corpse. “Show me what they died for.”

Again, the phony smiles. This time, Will tried joining them.

9

My name is Ilian. I am not one of you.

I used to be normal, like you. I had a human name and a human life, and I was bound by the chains of morality and mortality—like you. Convinced of my superiority over the world: the birthright of humankind that seems synonymous with arrogance. You dream and you plan and you love, but all the accomplishments in the world cannot equal what I have become. What I know. I understand the world in ways no scientist ever will, and I travel to places no explorer will ever visit. I am part of a great brotherhood that has existed for millennia, that will continue to exist no matter what befalls you.

We rule the night.

We ride as one over fields. Houses. Cities. The entire human spectrum is ours to explore.

If you listen closely, and if the wind is turned a certain direction, you can hear us.

Impressum

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 23.12.2012

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