Down the hall, past Mother’s slashed and hacked corpse, Felicity lay on her stomach, a gaping hole in her back. At the broken door to level one, Breez was bleeding. She lay slumped over Michaela’s crumpled corpse, a string of intestines blown out of her side by the bullet. Michaela’s throat looked weird where the windpipe had been torn out.

Even as Felix watched, a thick tendril of algae that had emerged from behind the shattered door wrapped itself around Michaela’s body, was pulling it and the bleeding Breez toward the stairs. Not a second later, Michaela’s head and shoulders dropped over the top stair with a thump. Breez, limp and dead, toppled loosely off of her and slipped part way down the stairs.

That left one.

Vik had locked herself in the lab. None of the other big kids were left, except maybe Tomaya. Felix wasn’t sure where she was. He could have walked over, stuck his hand into the algae, listened to the Song, and maybe it would have told him. The algae knew everything.

Instead, he fought tears, picked up his bloody ax, and let go of Sheena’s hand; the Voice assured him that no matter what, she wasn’t coming back. He could hear the change in the Song, melodious in victory, saddened in loss. So many things communicated at once. Things Felix couldn’t quite understand yet. But that he would when he and the Voice finally became one.

He didn’t look down as he passed Mother’s corpse. He had the memory of how his ax had felt when he split her head open. How the disbelief had filled her gray eyes, and how the blood had contrasted with her golden-blond hair. Her last words kept repeating, gone almost silent now, drifting off to some distant place in his memory. Didn’t matter that down inside he hurt. He didn’t have to. Could just tell it to go away, and it would. Hurting was just a curiosity, and a strange one at that. How peculiar that anyone should have to feel that way.

Not like Sheena. That hurt lay closer.

At the lab door, he reached up. Turned the latch. Locked.

Raising the ax, he took a swing. Then another. He had learned with Iso’s room. This was a bigger, stronger door. Might take him a while.

“Go back!” Vik called from inside. “You break that open, I’ll shoot! Just like I shot Breez.”

“Got to,” Felix told her. “You’re the last.”

“Why are you doing this?” Vik’s voice sounded shrill.

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

“Once Vik’s dead we’ll go around, go around.

“My fair lady.”

“Felix? Don’t you get it? The Pod’s compromised. The slime is eating away at the pilings. It’s going to collapse, and we’re all going to drown.”