“Mark, let me make a little adjustment, that’s all that’s needed. Then these demons you’re fighting—your brothers and sisters—they’ll turn out to be angels, Mark.”

He was an old man, easily dealt with. He didn’t even have a weapon, not that it would have mattered.

But then he saw something else, something odd. Along the neckline, the skin rippled. Reaching out fast, he pulled at it, and the entire face went askew.

This was not a man, it was the stolen surface of a man.

“Keep your distance.”

The creature stepped closer yet. “Mark, you have nobody but us.”

“My unit. I have my unit.”

“You led them to their deaths, remember? Sometimes your programming works, and it worked then. Why do you think Washington’s trying to kill you? They know what you are.”

In place of the strange, longing nostalgia he had been feeling, he now felt a hatred more raw than he had known was in him.

“You’re a liar.”

“I know you’re thinking about killing me. Mark, I know you better than you know yourself. Far better. You’re just like us. You were created in a laboratory. But the government ordered us destroyed.”

Mark’s mind was reeling. He looked again at the disk.

“Ah, you’re thinking about it at last. Considering it. Mark, what’s happening isn’t bad. It’s beautiful. You’re a work of art, Mark, of art married to science. The most deeply fertile marriage there can be.”

The man took another step closer. Still, Mark made no move. Memories flooded him, of the few happy days of his life, of the little triumphs in the dojo, of walking down Collins Avenue with Sarge, with his misty gray eyes and his warrior’s wisdom: “A good soldier knows how to wait, Mark. Wait sharp, that’s the way. Soldiering is about concentration. That’s the why of drill and inspection. Teaches concentration.”

With a speed beyond the incredible, the creature lunged at Mark, thrusting the disk at his face. Mark slashed, but it threw itself to one side.

Roaring, furious, Mark leaped after it—but stopped as he reached the fatal edge of a vast pit that had been hidden by the darkness.

The creature dropped over the edge, but Mark did not see him fall. And when Mark looked down, he saw why—the man was being helped down the steep side by three hybrids.

Mark saw that the entire far wall of the cavern was lined with what some sort of huge structure, and there was movement on it, and sound—cries, buzzing noises, clanging, and the bubbling of thick liquid.

He stared at it, for the moment unable to understand what he was seeing. It was constructed like a wasps’ nest, but gigantic, with row on row of cells, each of them containing a form.