“What the hell was that?” Kel demanded, leaping to his feet.

Michaela’s headache was forgotten as chairs emptied and people rushed for the hallway. Cradling her broken arm, she hurried after them. The reaction by the parents was instinctive; they went pounding up the stairs to the second level, calling the children’s names as they went.

Not that Michaela blamed them.

Kel, however, rounded the landing, staring at the open hatch to the tube. Walked forward and froze. From his posture, every muscle had gone tense.

“In the name of God, no!” he cried. “What have you done?”

Michaela crowded up behind him, stared over his shoulder. Through the hatch she could see down the stairs. Not more than a meter down, the tube was plugged with a blue-green mass. More to the point, it was already sending tendrils up the risers and treads where Felix and Sheena stood, eerie, beaming smiles on their faces. A hatchet hung from Felix’s right hand.

At Kel’s cry, the kids turned. Through her smile, Sheena said, “It’s all right, Daddy. Our friends are coming now.”

Michaela gaped, trying to understand. “How did this happen?”

“Sheena?” Kel cried. “Do you have any idea what this . . . ?” Kel couldn’t finish, mouth working in stunned silence.

The little girl, her skin a sickly green in the light, stared up at her father. “It’s the Song. Don’t you hear it? Now it’s free.”

Free? What the hell did that mean. Michaela’s brain seemed to stagger, unable to synthesize what she was seeing. Slime? How did it get past the hatch? It just . . . it couldn’t be here!

A scream from up the stairs caused her to wheel around. Stumble back, her heart hammering.

“Michaela!” Casey’s cry was filled with panic. “Get up here! Anna’s murdered!”

Turning away from the senseless sight of Felix with his hatchet and Sheena and the slime, Michaela reeled on her feet, raced for the stairs. She took them two at a time, so charged that she barely noticed.

Murdered? Anna? God, don’t let this be true.

At the head of the stairs, she turned toward the knot of people at the clinic door, pushed past Mikoru and Kevina to stare in horror at Anna Gabarron’s body. The woman lay sprawled between the cabinets as if she’d been tossed face-first onto the floor. A tray full of beakers had been pulled down as she fell, broken glass everywhere. The blood that had pooled from Anna’s severed throat remained wet enough to reflect the cabinet drawers beside the woman’s head. Another bloody wound—a slit—marred the small of the woman’s back.

“Where’s my boy?” Mikoru demanded. “Where’s Toni? Who has taken my son?”