The fog thinned, and Michelle saw people in large dog crates. Naked people. They drew closer, and from out of the gloom came a woman. She wore an antebellum gown with a bloody apron over it.

“Welcome,” she said with a smile. “I’ve been waiting for you. See what I’ve done. It’s so educational.”

She walked to the first cage and opened the wire door. Part of a body flopped out. It had stitches on its wrist where a hand from a different body had been attached.

They stared, fascinated as if they were in thrall by the scene before them. “This was my first attempt,” she said. There was pride in her voice. Pride and amusement. “The hand transplant didn’t work as well as I wanted it to. And the screaming. So much screaming. It didn’t bother me, but I was concerned about the neighbors.”

She moved on to the next cage. The person in this cage was alive, but his bones had been broken and had healed at unnatural angles.

“Kill me,” he said in a pleading voice. “Kill me. For the love of all that’s holy.”

Then he began to change, his body morphing into a slithering mass of grey tentacles. One baleful eye glared at them. He began to ooze through the mesh of the cage.

The woman smiled, and then she began to change as well. Her face melted into a pulpy mass. Only black eyes remained of what had once been human. A gaping maw opened. Some kind of sound erupted. Something inhuman and agonizing to hear.

Michelle clamped her hands over her ears and felt a hot wetness. She pulled her hands away and saw her own blood there. Earth Witch and Recycler did the same.

The creature slithered to another cage and pulled out a young girl.

The creature opened an orifice ringed in razor-sharp teeth. Then another mouth sprang from the gullet of the creature. That mouth was festooned with sharklike teeth. It neatly bit the girl’s head off even as the girl shrieked for her mother.

No, no, no!

Somewhere deep inside, Michelle recognized herself—her real self. Adesina. That girl could have been Adesina! But now she was almost entirely disconnected from her feelings for her daughter. It didn’t matter anyway. She wanted the blood. She wanted to see the blood. It was right. The blood was everything.

A trench opened, expanding until it consumed the cages, the fountain, and the obscenity that had once been a woman. Ana at work.

I swear I’m going to kill that bitch.

“I wanted to see the other cages!” Tiago yelled. “Didn’t you want to see? Didn’t you want to help? We could have helped. We’re supposed to help.” He began coming closer to Ana. “You aren’t helping.”

A crater opened up and swallowed him, too. Ana smiled beatifically.

A black rage swept over Michelle. Fuck the mission. The mission didn’t matter anyway. Bugsy deserved to die. His death was inevitable.