The slime could denature it, dissolve it, and in the end it would seep through holes, pool around her bed, and inexorably ooze up to engulf her the way it had Tobi and Bryan. She could picture how the viscous blue-green mass would creep across the floor, deeper and deeper as it rose up the walls in tendrils. When it finally topped her bed, fingers of it would flow across the sheets to her skin. Cold, thick, like runny jelly it would trickle around her, soaking through her clothes, the chill of it slipping across her skin, sucking away her warmth.

Heavy, it would roll over her thighs, permeate the folds of her vulva and spill over her pubis onto her abdomen. At the same time the slippery mass would engulf her arms, ease along her biceps and into her armpits, chilling, and inevitable. As it rose around her head, she’d feel the cold running into her ears, around her chin and across her lips. In those final moments, as the slime pressed down around her, it would creep over her eyes and into her nostrils.

Sucking for breath, Michaela would draw it into her mouth, into her throat. Choking and coughing, panic would make her insane as she sucked more and more into her lungs.

I pray I am dead before it begins to eat me.

What did that feel like?

Did it hurt to be digested? Maybe burn like acid? Or was it nothing more than a gradual dissolution of proteins? Something numbing as the body disappeared molecule by molecule?

In the hallway beyond her door, someone shouted in anger, ranting.

A child’s voice sang in a mocking tone, “Now the Pod is falling down, falling down . . .”

Michaela rolled over in her bed, used her good arm to jam her pillow down around her ears. Anything to shut out the sounds of her abject failure. She couldn’t think, couldn’t conceive. In the chaos, she’d staggered away, leaving Yosh and Mikoru face-to-face, each shouting and clawing at the other.

Kevina had been standing protectively in front of Felix, the boy’s eyes having turned into weird black orbs, the swelling on the side of his neck pulsing with each breath.

Michaela had no idea where Casey Stoner was. The last she’d seen, the woman had infant Saleen in her arms, was hurrying down the hall. Jym Odinga had been following, gesturing frantically, demanding to know where Tomaya had vanished to.

Kel and Vik had locked themselves in the lab and barricaded the door. Supposedly, while Vik worked desperately to find some sort of poison or repellent that would force the slime back and let them take control of the Pod again.