Huge volumes of blood, almost black in the dim light, flowed in sheets down the face of the structure. There was scuttling movement, and he saw figures running up and down it, using instruments like large brushes to spread the blood evenly over the forms in the cells.

How far down did it go? Hundreds of feet? Thousands?

Then he heard a voice faintly calling his name. It seemed to drift up from below. Was it the creature? No, it was female, and it was familiar. It was Linda’s voice.

Down there?

No, impossible. A trick.

“Mark!”

His soldier’s mind told him this: When you can’t go forward or back, but you’ve got to go somewhere, the only logical move is to take any chance that offers itself to you.

Carefully, he swung down off the catwalk, then leaped across the gloomy depths, to the top level of cells. As best he could, he climbed down, but it was impossible not to slip in the muck, and he soon grasped the head and shoulders of what proved to be a body. As he slid, it came out of its cell with a wet, sucking sound.

Its features were serpentine, its skin white-scaled porcelain. But it was vivid with life, its facial expression that of somebody lost in dream.

As he tried to control the heavy body, bracing against the walls of the cell that had held it, the eyes snapped awake and it began to shriek, a high, unsure sound. It was an adult with the voice of a newborn.

Mark pushed at the creature, pushed hard, and it went bouncing downward, finally cartwheeling into the dark.

Looking up, down, all across the dim space, he could see thousands and thousands of these cells.

Rage exploded, and he ripped another body from its sucking mooring. This was a child, whose eyes came open, and as he threw it down into the pit, its toothless shrieking was as soft as the cry of a night bird, a sound that cut you to the center of your soul. And he thought, My brothers and my sisters, and he shouted, “No no no,” and one after another hauled creatures out, males, females, children—there seemed to be a mix of sexes and ages, from about ten to about thirty—and threw them down into the pit.

Above him there stretched a long, bleeding scar that he was leaving as he descended. Around him were older parts of the nest, and the creatures in them were dry and fully formed.

A female sprang out and added to his problems by latching onto his shoulder with her teeth. Others began to awaken and started coming out of the cells, dozens of them, all with blank, nightmare faces, shrieking and throwing themselves into a battle that he was clearly about to lose.

“Mark!”

“Linda, where are you?”