From the wound on her arm, a silver tendril reached into the air. It was thin and flexible, gleaming with a metallic shine beneath the glistening red blood. It looked like a wire, but it moved like a living thing, a reaching, searching thing, twisting and bending as it slithered from the bloody scrape on Panya’s upper arm.

Another one joined it, sliding from the mess of blood and skin, slowly, as though it was nosing its way into unknown territory. They could have been threads or hairs, they were so fine, so uniform, but they moved with purpose. Surrounded by so much blood, by so much death, they seemed so tiny, so slender. Their silver bodies caught the light as they bent and turned.

Another thread rippled beneath Panya’s skin, racing along her neck and jaw, over her fine cheekbones and toward her eyes. Her screams cut off with a strangled gasp. Her eyes widened—something silver and bright flicked across the blue—then her entire face went slack.

I moved without thinking, kicking toward the door—I had to close it, had to stop them from escaping that room—but Malachi was closer than me, and faster. He spun himself through the door, caught the frame to turn and grab the inside panel. He punched in a command. Panya and Ariana watched him expressionlessly, with no indication they comprehended what he was doing.

“Are you going to stop making a fuss now,” Panya said, and Ariana echoed her a second later, their words just offset from being in unison. “Are you going to stop making a fuss now.”

Panya launched herself at Malachi, surprising him with a solid blow to the back. There was a loud thump as his head struck the glass wall, but he recovered quickly to shove her away.

“You have to contact SPEC,” he said, dodging Panya’s grasping hands. “Zahra!”

“Are you going to stop making a fuss now,” Panya said, raking her fingers along Malachi’s arm and shoulders, clawing and grasping. There was no expression on her face. The silver worms that had crawled from her arm were wriggling back in, the ends of their tails whipping as they burrowed into her veins. “Are you going to stop making a fuss now. Are you going to—”

Malachi pulled Panya’s head back by the hair and slammed it into the wall. Then he did it again, and again, hitting Panya’s head into the glass until she stopped fighting. Her face—her beautiful face, her fine cheekbones, her sky-blue eyes—it was all a mess of blood from her split lip and gushing nose. Malachi shoved her away and kicked over to the door again, dodging Ariana’s attempt to grab him, and jabbed hurriedly at the panel.