A wooden pop from the chair. The floorboards resumed creaking beneath the monstrous patterns, white for feminine skin, indigo for cloth and shadow, the whole shot with filaments of refracted light.

'Watch,' Thomas heard Sam say, a concentrated whisper. 'I'm going… to shoot him… Shoot him when he comes… I'm going to ride him… Ride him to the other side…'

Thomas had fallen still. It seemed a light blanket of snow covered him, a soundless accumulation. So clear.

Sam, he thought. Frankie.

His fingers numb behind his back, he began kneading his blazer.

'So it was all a sham,' he said dully. 'All of it.'

'Watch,' Sam moaned. 'Hot steel… What a fucking trip… Here I… Here I… ungh!'

The blood had stopped flowing, had become a tacky rind about his still-burning eyes. And at last Thomas could see, see her arch her back, see the soundless spasms, see her slump forward, drag the barrel of her Glock across Neil's cheek.

'Sweet Christ,' she gasped. Her chest heaved. Hooks and lines of white light gilded her sweaty skin. 'I mean, what is it? The power?' She swung her head back in a long, swaying laugh. 'I mean, you guys are going to die, to bleed, and all I want is to fuck-fuck-fuck!'

'I told you, Jess,' Neil said, his voice out-of-breath thin. 'Once you do this, there's no turn—'

Another gunshot, this time into Gerard's grey face. It buckled like wax about the point of entry, but did not bleed. 'What is it?' Sam cried. 'What makes this so… so…'

Thomas stared at the pasty, languorous horror before him. Skin he loved. Limbs he loved. A body he had worshipped, grinding against the pulse of another man.

'So it was all bullshit,' he repeated, still cold. 'A way to dupe me into finding Neil for you.'

Control had regained possession. There was only one question now.

'Of course it was,' Sam said, leaning against Neil's chest in post-coital exhaustion. 'What? Were you still hoping that I might love you? That you could reach some small spark of passion within me?' She laughed, glanced down at herself as though making a point about income brackets. 'Are you for real?'

'I was talking about Frankie.'

Her look became appreciative. She used Neil's shirt to wipe her fingers—knuckle to nail, like a dinner napkin. 'Oh, that. Pretty sharp, huh? Had to motivate you somehow, professor. You were fucking dead weight. Had to give you a swift kick—what can I say? I'd like to take credit, but doc's protégé at the plant, Mackenzie, was the prime mover there. The old horn-dog sized you up pretty good, didn't he? Christ, the kid's screams even made my skin crawl.'