Kevina nodded, swallowed hard, lifted the rifle, and used her thumb to click the safety off. Step by step, she started down the stairs, heart hammering, blood rushing in her ears. At the bottom, she took a deep breath and stepped out onto the floor. Pivoting, she looked up and down the hall. “No one here.”

Michaela and Vik eased down after her. Both cocking their heads, listening.

Michaela hurried across the hall, slammed the door to the stairs leading down to level one. Fearfully, she glanced through the window at the staircase down. “Shit! Slime’s already climbing this way.”

“Think that door will hold?” Kevina asked, her mouth dry as she pointed the rifle this way and that, expecting some child-shaped monster to leap on her at any instant.

“Only until someone turns the latch on the other side. How do we seal it so no one can open it?”

“Got screws in the lab,” Vik said. “We can screw the door into the jamb.” She hurried off.

Kevina wrinkled her nose. “What’s that . . . ?” But she knew. Gabarron. Shifting her eyes to the clinic, she saw the door open. Remembered that the woman’s sprawled body was blocking it. Shit on a shoe, could this get any worse?

Michaela was still staring down the staircase, eyes fixed on the advancing slime.

Kevina heard the patter of bare feet on sialon. Turned, saw Sheena coming from the end of the hall, a weird smile on her oddly green face. “Sheena?”

The little girl had a vibraknife in her right hand, her face rapturous as she hurtled down the hall calling “Got you! Got you!”

Kevina cried, “Sheena! No!”

When Michaela shot, the muzzle blast liked to have burst Kevina’s ears. The pain and surprise of came as a jolt.

Sheena’s face exploded into bits. Bone, muscle, tissue, and the girl’s right eyeball popped loose. Sheena hit the floor face-first, momentum sliding her on the sialon. In stunned disbelief, Kevina gaped as blood and bits of brain leaked out of the girl’s shattered head.

At the same moment, the door to the stairway crashed open. Michaela was thrown back, recovered, lifted her rifle, and shot. Something green, muscular, and small launched itself on top of her. A reeling part of Kevina’s mind identified the attacker as an emerald caricature of Breez. But one impossibly agile, strong, and vicious as it clawed at Michaela’s face and squealed in an inhuman voice. Then it ripped the rifle away, sent it clattering across the sialon. Breez batted Michaela’s flailing arms aside, grabbed her by the throat, crying, “Neck: Blood vessels, windpipe, spinal cord.” Her small hands dug deep into Michaela’s throat.