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  “But to what end?” the barely visible male asked, sounding skeptical and a bit defensive. “He has impressive claws and musculature, but does he have any powers? The kind of powers we can use effectively and control?”

  “We shall see,” DiMarco said, sounding smug to Armo, though he was rather distracted by the changes in his body, the claws, the muscles, perhaps a slight increase in height, and a definite increase in weight.

  They’re doing this to me!

  It was no longer cold in his cell. He glanced at the toilet on the wall: there was a thin coat of ice on the water in the bowl, and steam came with each exhalation, and yet he did not feel cold.

  DiMarco’s distorted voice came through the speaker. “Now we’re going to see what you can do.”

  He rumbled an answer. The rumble surprised him, like a dangerous purr down deep in his throat.

  “Armo: you will raise your left hand.”

  A pause. A long pause.

  And up went his right hand, claws and fur and all. Then he lowered it.

  “No, your left hand. The other one.”

  Armo slowly raised his right hand.

  “No,” DiMarco snapped. “The other hand. Your left hand! Jesus, is he dyslexic?”

  Armo lowered his hand and stuck out one foot. Balance was hard, but he had extraordinarily strong muscles in his legs and maintained the pose for several seconds.

  “There appears to be a problem with his conditioning,” the male voice said nervously.

  “Just . . . it’s his first morphing, he’ll get it. Armo! Listen to me!”

  Armo’s lips were somewhat hampered by teeth that were far larger than he was used to, so he could not press his lips into a line. And his eyesight was blurrier than usual. But he could still flare his nostrils and begin the minute adjustments that prepared his body—well, this body—for action.

  “You will sit on the cot. That is an order and you must obey me!” She held up her hand, pressed the red-stoned ring close to the glass, and he felt a strange yearning to listen, to do what she wanted him to do, because if he did he’d be a hero, and he’d have many women, and be loved and admired and . . .

  . . . and no longer be Aristotle Adamo who calls himself Armo.

  “Do it!”

  That yearning to obey, to get his reward, was strong, but it was nothing next to his instinctive, compulsive, irrational need to say . . .

  “NO!”

  It came out as a strangled, half-coherent roar, and Armo the defiant was suddenly filled with more blind rage than he had ever known before.

  He hurled himself at the glass.

  Wham!

  Again.

  Wham!

  Again.

  Wham!

  And then whatever slight self-control Armo had was swept away on a torrent of madness. Rage filled him. He could feel it, he could feel the adrenaline, he could feel an animal fury that took control of him. Armo became almost a bystander, as if watching from a distance as the body that was not quite his went completely, utterly, berserk.

  For a full three minutes Armo ripped and tore and pummeled everything around him. He shredded the cot. He beat the toilet and sink away from the wall, water spraying in a jet. He lifted the twisted steel toilet and bashed it against the glass again and again and again with a violence unlike anything he’d ever imagined, wilder than anything from the DiMarco-induced dreams.

  DiMarco backed away from the glass, her face a snarl to match his own, but she was small and weak and he . . . he was power and violence made flesh. He was insanity! He was all the manic fury in the world distilled down into one white-furred, two-legged, canine teeth–baring, roaring, mindless engine of destruction.

  The control device, still in his neck, stabbed him deep, like needles in his brain, but the pain was just gasoline sprayed on an open flame. He reached clumsy paws around, dug one great claw into his own flesh, and with a beastly roar ripped the module out and threw the bloody thing at the glass.

  “Gas! Gas!” DiMarco’s voice cried.

  Armo heard the hiss of the gas and even in some distant way knew what it was. But the beast he’d become was all out of damns to give. He raged and hammered and roared, but slowly, slowly he weakened, limbs growing heavy, already-dim eyesight dimming further. But by then his fur was no longer white but red with his own blood. His blood smeared the walls and the glass, which was cracked and starred though unbroken.

  “I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you! I’ll . . . kill . . .”

  He weakened . . . settled onto his rear end . . . felt a very different gaze on him, watchers without eyes, laughers without mouths, many and one, and somehow both far away and right here.

  His last roar was for them, for those silent voices. “And I’ll . . . I’ll . . . kill you, too.”

  ASO-5

  THE OKEANOS EXPLORER had begun its life as a US Navy surveillance ship by the name of Capable. It was now a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research vessel, 224 feet long, 43 feet wide, with a complement of forty-six crew, officers, and scientists.

  It was overly full at the moment because in addition to the crew and the scientists, a detail of six contractors had been added for security. These were ex-Delta and ex-Marines whose job was to keep an eye on the crew and the scientists as they retrieved ASO-5: the Mother Rock.

  The Okeanos also had one supernumerary with no assigned duties: the chief engineer’s fifteen-year-old son, Vincent Vu.

  Vincent was third-generation Vietnamese-American, born in San Jose, California, raised by both parents in a stable, kind, pleasant home. Vincent was a good student. Vincent was a good big brother to his two little sisters. But Vincent had been trouble since he hit puberty, and his teachers and, later, his family recognized that something had gone wrong with him.

  The doctors said it was bipolar disorder. They were correct, but their diagnosis had been incomplete because Vincent had not told them everything. He had not told them, for instance, about the voices. The voices had warned him not to divulge their presence, because then the doctors would say that Vincent was schizophrenic.

  Vincent had access to Wikipedia and WebMD and all the rest, so he knew what schizophrenia meant. Bipolar was a serious stuff, a major mood disorder. Schizophrenia, well, that was to bipolar disorder what pancreatic cancer was to high blood pressure: orders of magnitude worse.

  Or better, the voices suggested. Without us, the voices whispered, you’d never even know that your mother was only a hologram. And you might not know that you are destined for greatness, that you are not a normal human, that you are born of the pit.

  That your true name is Abaddon.

  He had Googled that name, Abaddon. It seemed he was one of Satan’s angels, said to sit upon a throne of maggots.

  The doctors had meds for his bipolar disorder, which Vincent hated taking because they left him feeling logey, droopy, fuzzy. And frankly, he enjoyed the manic periods and had no desire to give them up. It was during the manias that he set out with a camera bag over his shoulder and obsessively photographed shapes and juxtapositions, unfinished high-rise construction, crushed vehicles at a junkyard, abandoned factories, outdated computers—anything that was hard angles and devoid of humans.

  Unfortunately, Vincent didn’t always avoid human subjects. A camera traced back to Vincent had been found in the girls’ locker room at school, and Vincent had been expelled.

  As was so often the case, Vincent’s timing was bad. His father was a career diplomat on a mission to Hanoi. His mother was chief engineer on the Okeanos and had been told the ship would be setting out immediately on a secret mission. No one thought Vincent’s only surviving grandmother could handle him.

  The Okeanos had been in such a hurry that its chief engineer, Vincent’s mother, had to join the ship by helicopter when it was already twenty miles out to sea. Janet Vu, having no other choice, had brought Vincent along, thinking that maybe a sea voyage would do him good, clear his mind. It wasn’t exactly normal to br
ing family members, but still, the unexpected arrival of the slight young man with the overly focused gaze and the odd habit of laughing at jokes no one else heard would have excited no great concern had this been an ordinary scientific mission. But Vincent—and only Vincent—had not been screened by security.

  Still, what could be done? The ship needed Janet Vu and she came with Vincent. Anyway, in his more normal periods Vincent was a smart, curious, pleasant kid. He was a little guy, so thin you could hardly see him in profile. And within a couple of days at sea no one really noticed him rushing around with his cameras, clicking away at coils of rope and masts and the big radar “golf ball” above and behind the bridge. He was especially fascinated by the deep-sea submersibles, and the mantis-like crane and the very large lead-lined shipping container, the mysterious box, that had been chained to the deck just behind the mainmast. The box was interesting to Vincent only in that no one aboard was supposed to know its purpose.

  Naturally within hours of sailing, everyone knew the box’s purpose, or at least its purported purpose. Vincent knew from the schizophrenic voices in his head that it was all a lie and that the box was there to contain mermaids who were to be captured and taken to SeaWorld.

  ASO-5 came down in the Pacific hundreds miles from shore. It created a terrific splash and rocked the Okeanos on the ripples. The ROVs—Remotely Operated Vehicles—aided by powerful underwater search radars on a Navy antisubmarine ship, tracked its long, long tumble to the ocean floor. And even as the dust cloud was settling, they located the Mother Rock.

  Getting it aboard was a whole different problem involving both of the ROVs, a steel mesh net, and, as it rose to tolerable depths, divers with underwater drills and cables.

  The rock was carefully, slowly, painstakingly brought aboard, straining the crane, smashing one man’s foot, and finally shut into the box. The hinged top was locked down with six high-strength padlocks, and the access door was secured by a combination lock known to no one but the captain and the chief of the security detail.

  And Vincent Vu, who had unobtrusively shot video of the captain tapping in the combination.

  Meanwhile, in Scotland

  SEAN MACBETH, FOUR years old, was hungry, and he was teething.

  Sean had a method of dealing with the teething—he sucked on a chip of ASO-2. It was not soft and gummy like his binky—which in any event he’d dropped behind the sofa—or his favorite board book, which he chewed more often than he read—but it was still strangely satisfying. When your gums ached and itched, it was nice to have something hard to bite down on.

  Sean’s hunger was a consequence of his big sister, Delia, having been caught up in some texting drama involving Mary and Dougal and Iain. (Mary liked Dougal but Dougal liked Fiona, even though everyone knew Fiona was only toying with him. Iain was such a nice boy, but maybe too immature for Mary.)

  Anyway, Delia had forgotten her mother’s careful instructions about feeding Sean, and now Sean was hungry, teething and . . . oops, he had just pooped himself, which was satisfying at first, but began to irritate Sean after a while.

  Sean got angry.

  He got very angry.

  His face turned red. Tears started from his eyes. He drew a deep breath and let loose with a screech that could wake the dead, but that did not distract his sister from her texting.

  Having literally no idea where food came from—except that the kitchen was involved—Sean got angrier and angrier.

  And then, Sean began to change.

  His pudgy pink body grew larger, as large as the family’s retired sheepdog, Gromit, who watched, puzzled, barked once, and ran for the door.

  Sean grew larger and longer, especially longer. Twenty feet long. Twenty feet long and consisting of a series of translucent green segments. Tiny triangular feet sprouted from beneath the segments, half a dozen at first, then more as he needed to bear the weight of the middle of his long, green body.

  And Sean’s face was no longer at all what it had been. His head looked like a misshapen red apple. His eyes were blank green pupils in yellow ovals. And from the top of his head grew two fuzzy purple antennae.

  Sean, four years old, was a very hungry caterpillar.

  A twenty-foot-long, green and red, very hungry caterpillar . . . with no mouth.

  But then a mouth appeared, a terrifying hole rimmed with needle-sharp teeth. Sean tried to move, but his legs were not very useful, so his legs changed, becoming more insect-like, propagating in pairs the length of his brightly colored caterpillar body. Now he could move. Now he could slither into the kitchen.

  It was a homey, pleasant, rustic kitchen with a small stove and ancient refrigerator. Food, Sean had observed, came from the refrigerator, but, lacking hands, he couldn’t open the door.

  So Sean bit into the refrigerator, his needle teeth chewing right through the aluminum to reach the tasty goodies within, though it seemed the aluminum was also perfectly edible, despite making an awful noise as it was chewed.

  As he ate the refrigerator and the cabinets, Sean the caterpillar grew larger still. Twenty-two feet. Twenty-five. He was so long that part of him extended into the hallway, where Delia saw it, tore the earbuds from her ears, and screamed.

  She screamed and, having no other way out, climbed out her first-floor window and went running down the road toward the village of Portnahaven. Portnahaven was a fishing village built around a tiny inlet where fishing boats lay in the mud at low tide. Delia ran screaming past whitewashed stone and stucco homes, past the modest church, and burst through the door of An Tigh Seinnse, a tiny pub where her mother worked the afternoon shift, and to the amusement of a handful of afternoon drinkers shouted, “There’s a monster caterpillar eating our house!”

  Sean, for his part, found that no amount of eating seemed to quell his hunger. In fact, his hunger was now out of control; it filled his entire toddler’s brain. Something dark and far, far away was watching him and, Sean was sure, smiled, though the dark thing had no mouth.

  Eat, the dark thing whispered soundlessly. Eat.

  Sean ate.

  CHAPTER 11

  A Really Bad Commute

  QUICK ACTION BY Erin allowed them to grab a taxi from LaGuardia to JFK and grab two seats on Virgin America to Seattle. The thinking—if that panicky, jittery, shell-shocked state of mind after the annihilation of the plane at LaGuardia could be called thinking—was simply to put miles between themselves and the scene of the crime. Three thousand miles on the first available flight.

  It will take the cops a while to identify us, Justin thought, hopefully long enough.

  They stayed overnight at Erin’s sister’s home in Lynnwood, south of Seattle, a depressingly average family home where Justin had to sleep on the couch. Then they borrowed/took the sister’s car and drove south to San Francisco, muddying the trail for pursuers.

  Justin and Erin were at a roadside scenic pullout in the Marin Headlands, the great hills that anchored the northern end of the Golden Gate Bridge, sitting in that borrowed Volvo SUV, looking through bleary eyes at the bridge and the bay beyond.

  It was autumn and a workday and gloomy besides, so they were nearly alone. A camper van was a half-dozen spaces away; a determined cyclist powered his way up the hill, bearded face earnest and focused; a massive crow perched on the back of a wooden bench, preening and staring at them.

  “Good omen or bad omen?” Justin wondered aloud, eyeing the crow sourly. He was in a foul mood, exhausted, frightened, and depressed. So was Erin, he knew, though the way she looked at him (and sometimes refused to look at him) created a sour realization that she was having a very different sort of reaction from his. Erin’s depression and avoidance were undoubtedly caused by the memory of the aftermath of the crash—when Justin had tossed that lit swatch of fabric and the whole thing stopped being an accident and became deliberate murder. He knew that act—that “necessary” act, he still insisted—had not sat well with Erin.

  They had both heard the stories on the radio.
Justin DeVeere was a mass murderer. Of course, he reminded himself, she was in this, too. Her swatch of fabric, her lighter.

  Stuck with me now, he thought. And I’m stuck with her.

  Justin’s state of mind was perfectly rational to his way of thinking. He’d done only what he had to do to survive. It wasn’t malice, just calculation. By destroying the aircraft and the people on it, he had hoped to erase any evidence, and yes, twelve people had survived and were talking to the FBI and, worse still, the media. But that didn’t mean the initial decision was wrong.

  No, there was only one true priority: survival. And anyone or anything that reduced his chance of survival had to be dealt with in the most effective way. That wasn’t him being some kind of bad guy, it was simple evolution, survival of the most fit.

  And who was more fit than the dagger-handed monster who now lived within him?

  A blue containership with the letters MAERSK painted along the side slipped under the bridge, heading toward Oakland to unload electronic goods from China. It swept through light fog gathered beneath the center span.

  “Picturesque,” Erin said bleakly.

  “Clichéd,” Justin sneered. “It’s just a picture postcard, basically, a shot you can find in a thousand versions online.”

  “Whatever.”

  Silence fell. There had been a lot of silence between them. A lot of silence and a lot of sidelong looks.

  “We need a plan,” Erin said. She had a tooth that was bothering her, and she poked at it with her tongue, which garbled her consonants. Her hair was a mess, her makeup was nothing like the neat perfection Justin had come to expect, and she was dressed in her sister’s “mom” clothes.

  This was not art, Justin thought, any more than the too-pretty view was art. Art was struggle and shock and the bleeding edge of the new and the never-before-seen. Like the . . . event . . . at LaGuardia. He closed his eyes and saw the blue flame racing across the spreading pool of jet fuel. He saw the way the escape chute crumpled like a leaf in the fire and spilled its absurd occupants into the flames.