It was the part of their lives that scared her the most. Even after the greatest of her trials and experiments over the decades, the true nature of their disease still eluded her. How can one make a final judgment on a thing that is always changing, always evolving, always unpredictable? Even so, she’d been committed to the impossible since the day of the Evolution. Now, striding through the city with her Evolutionary Guard on all sides, marching, watching, alert for all enemies, she felt no regret. Not even a drop.

In her mind, everything had a purpose and a plan. All of it, leading to her own vision of the future. But not like Mikhail. When he mentioned visions, he sounded like a crazy person.

And that was the crux. The root of all her fears.

Madness.

Dawn had broken, the clouds above the city glowing from the faint light of the rising sun. That worried her, too, the timing of this. Fanatics of old often used the precise moment of the sun cresting the horizon as a centerpiece for their rituals and ceremonies. She wouldn’t be surprised at all if Mikhail was doing just that. The idea of the Godhead had gone straight to the man’s head, in all too literal a fashion. His lack of control threatened everything she’d worked for.

And now, this.

He’d gone to the Glade. At sunrise. A place where the sun had never shone.

The thought chilled her more than the cool air of Alaska ever could.

As usual, a crowd of pilgrims had gathered at the fortified entrance to the caverns below. An ominous crowd, to be sure. Some were naked, with slashes upon their backs, wounds they’d received of their own choosing. Others were dressed in the robes of their religion, its coarse wool the color of old mustard. A few even dressed in the false furs of the Grieving, their foreheads surgically adorned with two spikes on either side, slanted toward the sky like the horns of a beast.

A shudder ran through Alexandra’s body. These people disgusted her, made her feel an illness that her very own disease could never match. And yet, by all accounts, they were free of lower virus strains that took away all rationality. Many, many tests had proven so. They followed their order with mostly normal brain functions, strived to walk the pathway of the Maze by their own free will and choice. She felt that the definition of insanity needed to be updated. Quite literally. She made a mental note to pursue the matter with whomever and wherever dictionaries were maintained. But one thing Alexandra knew for certain:

She was not insane.