He decided to believe that the man he was staring at had endured getting his pe’a and had gone on to be a force in his tribe. Heathen though he might have been, he was brave, a good warrior (even if not clever enough to avoid having his head end up on a steel shelf in the New World).

Billy held the jar in one hand and leaned forward until he was only a few inches from the severed head, separated by thick glass and thin liquid.

He thought about one of his favorite books. The Island of Doctor Moreau. The H. G. Wells novel was about an Englishman shipwrecked on an island, on which the doctor of the title surgically combined humans and animals. Hyena-men, Leopard-men … Billy had read and reread the book the way other kids would read Harry Potter or Twilight.

Vivisection and recombination were the ultimate modding, of course. And Doctor Moreau was the perfect example of the application of the Rule of Skin.

All right. Time to get back to reality, he chided himself.

Billy now stepped to the door and looked up and down the corridor. Still deserted. He continued his way to the hospital and knew when he’d crossed into the building. The neutral scent of cleanser and mold from the office building was overrun by a mélange of smells. Sweet disinfectants, alcohol, Lysol, Betadine.

And the others, repulsive to some, but not to Billy: the aromas of skin in decay, skin melting under infection and bacteria, skin burning to ash … perhaps from lasers in operating rooms.

Or maybe hospital workers were disposing of discarded tissue and organs in an oven somewhere. He couldn’t think of this without recalling the Nazis, who had used the skin of Holocaust victims for practical purposes, like lamp shades and books. And who had devised a system of tattooing that was the simplest – and most significant – in history.

The Rule of Skin …

Billy inhaled deeply.

He sensed some other aroma: extremely offensive. What, what?

Oh, he understood. With so many foreign workers in the medical fields, the foods the hospital prepared included those aromatic with curry and garlic.

Disgusting.

Billy finally entered the heart of the hospital, the third sub-basement. It was completely deserted here. A perfect place to bring a victim for some deadly modding, he reflected.

The elevator would have surveillance cameras so he found the stairwell, entered it and started to climb. At the next sub-basement, number two, he paused and peeked out. It was the morgue, presently unstaffed. Apparently the medicos had not managed to kill anyone yet today.

Up another flight to the basement level, a floor with patient rooms. Peering out through the fire door’s greasy glass, crosshatched with fine metal mesh, he could see a flash of color, then motion: a woman walking down the corridor, her back to him.