Clones were thrashing in the water, Nerve Runners covering them, but here and there dead Runners could be seen on the brine’s surface. And where the plasteel cutter had shorted out, a milky gray gas clouded the thin space over the water. Wherever the gas touched, Runners died.

Lewis felt his mind leaping from item to item. Item: brine. Item: electrical short.

“Chlorine,” he whispered. Then louder: “Chlorine!”

“What ?” Illuyank was clearly puzzled.

Lewis pointed at the screen. “Chlorine kills Nerve Runners!”

“What’s chlorine?”

“A gas created when you throw an electrical charge through sodium chloride brine.”

“But . . .”

“Chlorine kills Runners!” Lewis looked across the Facilities Room where the plaz-glass barrier showed a corner of clone area and the ocean beyond. “Are the sea pumps still working?”

The man at the pump console checked his keyboard, then: “Most of them.”

“Sea water wherever we can put it,” Lewis said. “We need a large container where we can dump it from here and throw an electrical charge through it.”

“Water purification,” Illuyank said. “The purification plant. We can pump almost everywhere from there.”

“Wait a bit,” Lewis said. “We want to attract as many Runners as we can; make them easier to wipe out.”

He watched the screens, dragging it out, then: “All right, let’s hit them.”

Once more, Illuyank scanned his schematics, throwing orders over his shoulder while the survivors in the Facilities Room obeyed.

Lewis fixed his attention on the sensor screens. The outer passage was quiet now—a few dead E-clones floating on the surface of the brine, many dead Runners among them. He timed the mess-room screen to another sensor eye, found the exercise bay outside the clone labs. It was filled with a thrashing crowd of E-clones in absolute panic and, here and there among them, some of his own people caught outside when he had given the order to seal off. There were not many recognizable faces, but the colors of the uniforms could be identified. One by one, they died, their mouths frothing pink and their last stares turned upward toward the sensor.

Even as the last of them were dying, a milky cloud of gas had begun to sweep out of an open passage, drifting across the scene, blurring it.

“Watch their eyes,” Illuyank said. “If we don’t get all the Runners, they’ll go for the eyes first.”

All was quiet in the Facilities Room then as the survivors listened to their own precious breath, felt the comfort of their own live sweat and watched the eyes of the dead outside for some reflection of their own mortality.

Lewis leaned against the lip of the console, feeling cold metal under his fingers. Other screens showed more of the milky gas billowing through the Redoubt. There were even sensor eyes still alive to show the area outside their perimeter, the gas drifting across the open ground there. Illuyank scanned from sensor to sensor.

Someone behind Lewis heaved a shuddering sigh and Lewis echoed it.