He says it to Charlie as much as to her. Livia injects the liquid into the tin, hears him inhale. The eyeglasses ink over, darkness in the mask. A spasm, followed by the wheeze of respiration. Then Thomas pushes her aside and charges, all his weight thrown against the door. Again and again he batters the wood, heedless of injury, until his left arm hangs like a flipper broken at his side. The noise brings Julius running; when the lock finally breaks, he has to jump aside not to be showered in splinters. Livia only sees him indistinctly: there is too much Smoke. In the room, but also in her blood, infected as it is by Thomas’s rage. An emaciated figure, ash-grey, the whites of his eyes dyed and curdled, purple-black. His hands are up, boxing style. The voice surprisingly light. Taunting.

“There,” Julius says. “The gloves are off. And you found a mask. Second face. It grows into you. After a while, you can’t tell if it’s on or off.”

Then he and Thomas disappear in an explosion of Smoke.

ф

It is ugly, and also happens at a distance, inscrutable, hidden from view. It’s like a hole has opened up in the centre of the hallway, a window to another place, far away. The darkness of a well, in winter. You can throw the bucket down into the dark. You will hear it hit, but what it finds down there is beyond the realm of the senses. The water you draw is black.

Livia would like to go and help Thomas. But even at a distance the Smoke that reaches out to them in thin dense tendrils frightens her blood. Infects it, yes, but also chases her away, to the front door where she cowers, consumed by baseness, hate, and fear. Not far from her, she can see Charlie in his own battle against the Smoke, leaning into it as though into a storm. Beyond, there is the wild flailing of limbs, accompanied by sounds, dull, spongy thuds, meat beaten soft by a butcher. Shouts in between, yelps, something like laughter. After what seems like an age, a hand reaches for her, Charlie’s. They lace fingers, so hard she can feel his bones pressing on hers. His hair and face is black with muck.

Together, she and Charlie finally work their way closer, aware that the fighting has slowed, that it is just one figure beating the other now; that the Smoke is dying down. The Soot that coats the floor is slick like axle grease and they find themselves skidding, then falling gracelessly alongside the prone figures. Thomas is on top. What is on the bottom is motionless and running red with blood.