He had time to say two words: “Mr. Blue,” he said and fell to the floor, smashing his skull completely open on the floor.

I stared down at the brains.

I looked at Mo’Lock. “Shit,” I said.

The ghoul nodded slowly. “Shit indeed.”

I shook my head, then walked over to the doorway and helped Mo’ drag the body inside so we could shut the door. I knew what was coming and I didn’t like it a bit.

Mo’Lock beat me to the punch. “We better get over there.”

This time I did the nodding.

We got to the warehouse a little after one in the morning. The front door was ajar as we walked up to it. All was quiet. I had my gun drawn. We made our way inside. The corridor was dark. The walls and floor were smeared and spattered with blood. We moved along, taking quiet steps and avoiding the blood.

At the end of the hall we peeked around the corner. There was light coming from where the double steel doors had been. They had been ripped out of the wall.

I listened. Nothing. Then suddenly a noise like shifting feet. I edged around the corner, my gun out in front. Then I stopped. Inside someone spoke.

“I hear you out there.” It was a woman’s voice. “You can’t hide. Get in here,” she said.

I looked at Mo’Lock. He shrugged. I bobbed my head and we turned the corner.

The lab was painted red with blood. Everything in the place was destroyed. There was a woman there, bright blue and naked. She was changing even as we stepped through the door, changing into something else, a man, a child. I couldn’t tell. It was as if it was trying to figure out what it was.

Then finally it settled on the form I’d seen in the tank and it stood there looking at us. At its feet was a corpse I could only guess had been Ponytail. The blue man had ripped his flesh completely from his body. All that was left was a skeleton covered with glistening fat and muscle tissue.

His skin was lying in a pile nearby like a wad of dirty laundry.

The soul took a step toward us. “You were part of this. You took me away,” it said angrily, and then just as fast, slumped sadly. “Now I’ll never know where I was going.”

I pointed at the pile of skin on the floor. “I’d say after this the answer’s pretty clear.”

I immediately regretted saying anything.

The soul came right at me. It was mad. It shape-shifted as it took strides toward me, each step triggering a new form. Man, woman, child, big, small, short. All blue, all mad, and all coming right at me. I fired the gun but it had no effect. The bullets didn’t bounce. The soul just absorbed them.