Richards was sitting in his office, watching the security monitors. The time stamp read 22:26. The sweeps were in and out of Containment with the rabbit carts, but nobody was having any of it. The fast had started with Zero but had spread to the others since Carter had shown up, maybe a couple of days after. This was a puzzler, but in any event, if Special Weapons had its way, the sticks would all be eating soon enough. By which time Richards hoped he’d be ice-fishing on Hudson Bay or digging out snow for an igloo.

He looked at the monitor for Amy’s chamber. There was Wolgast, sitting at her bedside. They’d brought in a little portable toilet with a nylon curtain, and a cot where he could sleep. But he hadn’t slept at all, just sat in the chair by her bed day after day, touching her hand, talking to her. What he was saying, Richards didn’t care to know. And yet he’d find himself watching them for hours, almost as much as he watched Babcock.

He turned his attention to Babcock’s chamber. Giles Babcock, Number One. Babcock was hanging upside down from the bars, his eyes, that weird orange color, shooting straight at the camera, his jaws quietly working, chewing the air. I am yours and you are mine, Richards. We are all meant for someone, and I am meant for you.

Yeah, Richards thought. Fuck you, too.

Richards’s com buzzed against his waist.

“This is the front gate,” the voice on the other end said. “We’ve got a woman out here.”

Richards examined the monitor that showed the guardhouse. Two sentries, one holding the com to his ear, the other with his weapon unslung. The woman was standing just outside the circle of light around the hut.

“So?” he said. “Get rid of her.”

“That’s the thing, sir,” the sentry said. “She won’t go. She doesn’t look like she has a car, either. I think she actually walked.”

Richards was looking hard at the monitor. He saw the sentry drop the com to the ground and unsling his weapon.

“Hey!” Richards heard him say. “Get back here! Stop or I’ll fire!”

Richards heard the pop of his weapon. The second soldier took off running into the dark. Two more shots, the sound muffled through the com where it lay in the mud. Ten seconds passed, twenty. Then they stepped back into the light. Richards could tell from their body language that they’d lost her.

The first sentry retrieved his com and looked up into the camera.

“Sorry. She got away somehow. You want us to go look for her?”

Jesus. This was all Richards needed. “Who was she?”

“Black woman, some kind of accent,” the sentry explained. “Said she was looking for someone named Wolgast.”