What the fuck? He pushed aside the chaotic, angry thoughts, tried to focus. What had he come here for? Oh yeah. He continued down the hall and stepped into a room where doctors were frantically working on a man in a doctor’s white coat who was lying on a gurney. A scalpel was embedded in his left eye, his face a mask of gore. A pair of nurses were hugging each other and sobbing. There was a babble of conversation in a language he didn’t understand as several security guards seemed to be trying to interview the bystanders.

Several IV stands surrounded the bed, and tubes snaked down to—Franny recoiled. He had thought his years in Jokertown had prepared him for anything, but the figure in the bed was beyond grotesque. The arms and legs were twisted and skeletal, but the belly bulged like a woman on the verge of delivering. It was so bloated and distended that the gown couldn’t hide it. It was also pulsing, shivers running across the skin, and there was the slow roil of deep purple and violent red beneath the surface as if something were swimming in the blood and viscera.

The thing had a mouth, but the lips were elongated, resembling the proboscis of a mosquito or anteater. Those rubbery lips were working like a blind baby seeking a tit. Grey stony growths shot through with gleaming red veins protruded from his cheeks and neck. The grating humming, like foil on gold filings, was emerging from that deformed mouth. There was a faint glint from beneath the wrinkled eyelids as if he was trying to wake.

The smell of blood, vomit, and fear-induced sweat overlaid the tang of disinfectants and bedpans. Franny memorized the scene as best he could, and then stumbled backward out of the room. He staggered down the hall. He passed an orderly leaning against the wall, his pants unzipped, dick in hand. He was energetically beating off while staring at a young nurse who was crying in the corner.

With each step away from the room the band around Franny’s head loosened, and that maddening humming began to ease. He punched at the elevator button with increasing desperation. Finally he went to the stairwell. No matter how much it might hurt he had to get away. All the anger was gone. Only fear remained.

Mollie Steunenberg, still woozy from getting zapped with eight jillion volts right in her tits, slumped in the back of a squad car while the driver jabbered on his radio in French. She didn’t understand what he was saying, and she sure as hell didn’t understand why the cops had tased her—they fucking tased her—just for swiping a few shitty earrings. Was that even legal? They could have given her a goddamned heart attack. Plus, the electrodes had pierced two little holes in her blouse. Right over her boobs, of all places, which now ached like they’d been set on fire. Fucking frog cops.