When he finally had the door cleared, he stood panting, staring at it. The structure really did seem intact, but he realized it might have just become a prison of trapped madness. As quickly as he thought that, the idea curdled. Even if they hadn’t been discovered, anything might have happened locked inside a sealed chamber. The madness didn’t honor walls and concrete and steal. They wouldn’t have been themselves. It wouldn’t even be their fault if they’d attacked each other. He might find as great a slaughter inside as there was all around him. He tried to shake off the thought. It was no use speculating. He just had to find out. He gripped the handle, turned it, and stepped inside.

Coming from the bright of day into the dimness, Marcus couldn’t see anything at first. The few lights that had worked last night were all out. Olena? He tried, but he barely produced a mumble. He tried other names. Jyrgal. Bulat. Timur. Nobody answered. The silence of the dark chamber seemed full of menace. Marcus slithered forward cautiously, his arms extended before him. He wove through the clutter of long unused planes, bits and pieces of discarded machinery. Gradually, his eyes adjusted and made the best of the dim light seeping through cracks in the ceiling and walls. Hulking things took shape, all of them motionless. In the silence, the scraping of his scales across the moist concrete seemed absurdly loud.

Coming from around a stack of crates, he saw them and thought, No, God, don’t do this …

But he had. The proof was right there in front of him, the soft curves of people, all lying together. Their joker bodies were entwined, leaning against each other, arms interlocking, woven in an intimate tapestry. Completely still. As still as … death. He knew that’s what he was seeing. The truth of it twisted his heart, squeezed it so that he felt it physically, something dying in the center of him. Of course they’d turned on each other, driven mad, trapped in here in the dark. He should never have left them. Maybe, if he’d stayed, he could’ve … But what he could’ve done he couldn’t say.