“It’s because their brains are infected,” Vik snapped. “Listen, I don’t have all the answers, not even close. What I’m seeing? I don’t know how this stuff thinks, let alone what it thinks it’s doing, or why, but it is remaking these children. It’s like nothing I’ve ever heard of, conceived of. That biopsy I got from the growth in the side of Toni’s throat? It’s gill tissue. The green tint to the skin? It allows the kids to photosynthesize.”

“Why are they killing us?” Casey cried. “What’s it doing to their brains?”

“I don’t know!” Vik bellowed, desperation in her voice. “Making them crazy. Screwing with their neocortex, the limbic system. Maybe even rewiring their neural structure. It’s sure as sin making them stronger. Adding muscle and agility. Hell, the stuff is remaking the rest of their bodies, why not their brains, too? And not only that, it’s communicating with them. Mostly on a frequency we can’t hear. My microphones are picking up a weird harmony that’s all over the scales.”

“The Song,” Michaela whispered. “Felix’s Voice.”

Vik had her bags ready, pointing. “I need help with that one.”

“Casey!” Michaela barked. “Grab a handle. I’ll get the other.”

It’s just the ulna. The weight of the gun won’t break it.

Suspending the rifle in her left hand brought tears to Michaela’s eyes. Shit, that hurt. Nevertheless, she got a grip with her right on one of the crate’s handles. With Casey’s help, they lifted it. Followed Vik to the door, and out into the mercifully empty hallway.

Come on, God. Just let us get this to the landing pad.

As they passed opposite to the stairway down to the first level, Michaela heard the old “London Bridge” nursery rhyme from below:

“Now the Pod is falling down, falling down, falling down.

“Now the Pod is broken down, my fair lady.

“Namby Pamby is no clown, is no clown, is no clown.

“All the algae’s coming ’round,

“Zambo! Zambo!”

88

The rope ladder that would let them climb down to the seatruck dock had been rolled up and stuffed into a storage locker at the edge of the landing pad. It was meant for maintenance on the curving side of the Pod, to check window seals, fill cracks, that sort of thing.

Michaela set the rifle to the side and winced at the pain in her left arm as she fastened the hooks into the recesses on the landing pad. A gust of wind from the east almost toppled her off the side. She glanced at Casey, who stood wide-legged, hair wind-tossed, coveralls flapping. Windblown as she was, the rifle held across her chest made her look like a war hero on a recruitment poster.

Yeah? Not hardly.