“You keep saying that,” Victoria said. “Say it again and we’re going to have problems.”

“Each time we do it we get better results. How well does she hold together? What are the stress limits? What can this ‘skin’ take?”

“Building her up over and over again, only to repeatedly destroy her isn’t getting her anywhere. Get to the damn finish line, then refine from there.”

“Can you trust what I’m doing? I—”

The blister expanded, then unfurled, unzipped. A hundred pounds of flesh became a hundred pounds of pencil-thin tendril. Tendrils reached out and seized Mr. Bough.

“He’s panicking,” Effervescent reported, an almost ludicrous comment, given the scene. Already, Sveta was screaming, in warning and alarm, her every instinct failing her. Victoria kicked in the glass door to the lab, her backup following her in.

⊙

Sveta hung back, staring at the sea of reaching hands and arms, of faces.

She thought of Victoria. There were too many similarities, as if she could take Victoria’s silhouette, hold it up against this scene, and find a perfect match somewhere. It helped that this was so vast.

Weld had been torn apart, as far as she could tell. Her fucked up body had been burned. Now it glistened with the blood of the woman who had been responsible for…

For all of this.

The man with golden hair, beard, and skin was here, the end of the world.

Egg had painted a picture where the Irregulars were ready for revenge. He’d led her to believe it wasn’t as bloodthirsty a desire as it had been. Or she’d wanted to believe that.

She, in turn, had heard what Egg said and convinced herself it wasn’t that bad. That it would hurt more than it helped. That, with a looming deadline, at the very least, Weld would question Doctor Mother, and there would be a thousand answers to get. By the end of that, when it was time for the revenge, for blood, she and Weld could temper it. Ensure it was humane. She had been genuinely shocked to find out that it was as bad as it was.

Now Weld might be dead or dying, most of the others were dead, and all was lost. They didn’t have names or know where they came from, so they might visit home.

She saw a garden of flesh that seemed to reach as far in either direction as she could see, in the largest part of a large complex. She saw reaching hands, legs, overlapping parts, heads, and hair both short and long, and she kind of understood what they were up against, how rooted it was in what they were and what they’d been dealing with.

A part of her fleetingly wondered if answers like she and Weld had sought and needed were even possible. If it would have been better to be on the other side.