“Mycroft Canner!” One recognizes me, the least winded of these fallen partners of my exercise. Good Humanist. He will not answer questions, not without pain, and pain takes time, but he might answer with his eyes. I throw him to the floor, loom over him. His teeth are chattering. I loom left: no greater terror. Right, then, the hallway toward the northern wing. No change in his face. What is he staring at? Not me. Over my shoulder. Huxley? I press Huxley back. Not Huxley. The lion? Yes, the black lion, which shows itself now, sitting on another prisoner, its soft weight removing the painful duty to attempt escape. He fears the sight of a U-beast? Of course. I whisper: “Room 600, Ráðsviðr’s cell.” My foe’s eyes tell me I have hit the mark. Never let me think myself clever, reader, when it took me so long to realize. This is Klamath Marsh. This place will have the right to call itself a Prince of Prisons to the world’s end, for here, in our hour of horror, mankind confined Ráðsviðr, “Plan-wise,” the first and only A.I. U-beast that used the intelligence we gifted it to plan murder. Utopia stopped it in time, and delivered the beast at once to Romanova’s Minors’ Law, which had been prepared for this in theory for half a century, and had precedents among high primates. The judge’s call was easy. It was a separate challenge designing a cell that could humanely confine an amphibious arctic shapeshifter which could disassemble into hundreds of swimming shards. Since parts of Ráðsviðr were biological enough for age to claim it, its cell has been repurposed since its death: storage, sauna, swimming pool; but the design remains, armored still against technology and genius. Where better to imprison Cato Weeksbooth, a fake mad scientist but a true murder adept, who must know as well as I do how to exploit door locks, ventilation grilles, and slivers of sharp toenail?

“Mycroft, look at this.” Martin pointed to a dark spot on the carpet near the wall. Poor, panting Martin, slowed by his vocation which left less time for exercise than we have who train each day for MASON’s safety, or, in my case, for my coming battle with Apollo rouser-of-armies. I crouched. A tremor through my fingers told me that I smelled blood before I registered the salt scent. I crouched over it, a spatter on the floor, no more than a broken nose might dribble in a fist fight. Then Martin shot me in the back.