Kuzu crept through the lobby and charged up the stairs, using two feet while pulling on the wide stair rails. As he slung himself to the top, wasps whizzed down over his ducking head and under his belly.
The small room at the top got to a hatch, also open, which led to a room filled with counters, a large broken window on one side. According to the map, Maxim was inside the far door on the left.
Kuzu streaked to the door and cranked the hatch wheel, camouflaging his fur as his symbiants stirred up repellent to fend off the flying predators pouring through the broken window behind him. He sensed someone trying to stop him from opening the wheel on the other side and heard a shout through the steel. He gripped four hands and cranked with all his strength, pushing the door open and throwing two men backwards at the same time.
He fired the Kalashnikov at the two men as he entered, killing them instantly while slamming the hatch closed with his leg. As Kuzu moved into the dark room, a thin man with glasses and a goatee came running toward him. Kuzu flung two of his throwing stars at him, the disks striking him on each side of his neck, dropping him to the floor.
In the far corner, a large man sat on the bed, not moving. He turned his head to stare in Kuzu’s direction, his eyes and mouth widening at the sight of him.
05:31:07
As he rose, Maxim saw the dead bodies of Dimitri and his two loyal bodyguards behind the creature that reared over him now with a body blazing purple and red. “Are you the devil?” he murmured in horror.
“You’re Maxim?” Kuzu asked.
The large man crumpled to the ground before him, and Kuzu reached out with three hands, gripping Maxim around the ribs and hoisting him off the floor. Rising to his full nine feet, the sel slammed the tycoon against the corner of the room and looked into his small eyes with eyes that were twenty times larger, with six pupils focused on his soul. Like a volcano, Kuzu’s voice erupted: “POWER! NOW!”
The man looked up at him and fainted in his grasp.
Kuzu looked at him, perplexed. He threw Maxim on a bed and leaned over his face. “Wake up!” the sel wheezed like a steam whistle, stirring the human to consciousness. The man opened his eyes and looked up at Kuzu, blinking.
Maxim beheld the apparition, remote and delirious, convinced that he was dreaming or even dead as the demon sat down on one of the beds across from him. Like a Satanic chimera, a pagan monster, the being folded all its limbs intricately against its body, and its fur blushed a deep maroon that darkened to black. Mesmerized, Maxim watched Kuzu’s body shine a pale silvery light that popped with effervescing colors for an entire hour that seemed outside of time.
Hypnotized by the transforming light effulging from the nightmare sitting before him, Maxim was startled when Kuzu finally moved again. The devil incarnate unfolded his limbs and rose.
“Down!” Kuzu’s deep voice tolled, tearing open the air with its violence, and Maxim submitted, bowing down; and the great man wept before the terrible demon, accepting its sentence in a delirium of shame and terror.
With four hands, Kuzu rubbed fingers into the human’s hair, face, neck, and shoulders. Maxim shuddered as he smelled a strong scent exuding from the monster’s hands. He sobbed as he felt a flush spread like fire under his clothes and across his skin.
Kuzu stepped away from the human and watched. The sel knew that millions of nants were now colonizing the man’s body. They poured over him, gripping his skin like microscopic cat’s claws, each a shield that would link to another like chain mail to protect the human’s soft flesh. The nants continued to spread a thin mesh that would stop only at the moist edge of his eyelids and orifices, where chemical signals would compel them to stop.
Maxim knew then that his soul had been condemned as his body was utterly possessed. He had never believed in hell, or the devil, until now. Now that he was doomed he believed in them with all his soul.
“Safe now, Maxim,” Kuzu said perversely. He touched Maxim’s head, and the microscopic nants continued to flow from Kuzu’s four hands into the human’s hair. Maxim was paralyzed with awe at his own damnation as his entire body seemed to burn. “I make nants protect you or kill you. Understand?”
Maxim saw the hendro’s grin reveal wide yellow teeth, and he whispered, almost involuntarily: “Yes!”
Kuzu picked up an empty orange-juice bottle and examined it. Then he reached out and touched the screen that showed video feeds from different parts of the city. “Ah. Good!”
Then Kuzu lifted Maxim to his feet, leering inches from his face with his giant eyes. “Power. NOW!”
04:02:37
Hender sat still for more than an hour, his limbs folded against his body.
He had responded only once, when Nell, twenty minutes into his strange trance, asked if he was OK. Opening one eye, he had said, “I will save you, Nell.” Then he closed his eyes again, remaining perfectly still.
The others had watched in astonishment as Hender’s fur went black and then burned with pulsating colors until he disappeared and his coat turned dark again, twinkling white points like a midnight sky. They became increasingly worried and frustrated as the time ticked by.
“What on Earth is he doing?” whispered Nastia.
“Is he dead?” Bear wondered.
Then Hender suddenly opened his eyes and rose on two feet. “Kuzu is rescuing Maxim,” he announced.
“Jesus,” Dima said.
“That smart son of a bitch,” Abrams said.
“How does he know?” Bear demanded.
“Why, Hender?” Nell asked.
“Chess,” Hender said simply.
“Huh?” Bear said.
“Damn it, Hender, you’re right,” Abrams said. “It’s exactly the right move.”
“Yes, Abrams.” Hender nodded. “Kuzu will use Maxim to turn the power on. He is the most powerful piece on the board.”
Nell bowed her head. “Shit.”
Galia bowed his head. “What can we do?”
“The charges in the tunnel will not detonate,” Hender said then. He opened both his large trinocular eyes and looked at each of them. “Kuzu lied.”
“F*ck!” Dima said.
“I thought hendros never lied,” Nell said.
“He learned it from humans. I’m sorry,” Hender said. “I did not see his plan until now.”
Abrams nodded. “Check-f*cking-mate.”
“We’ve got to get to the palace,” Nell said.
“You don’t even have full body armor, Nell,” Abrams said.
“We must try, anyway,” Dima said.
“How?” Nastia said.
“Give me four knives,” said Hender.
03:01:03
Glowing bugs dive-bombed Maxim as he emerged from the hospital, gashing his head and hands. But his attackers immediately retreated and sprayed a scent that drove off other predators as nants closed over his bleeding wounds.
Kuzu snatched three wasps out of the air and stuffed them inside the empty orange-juice bottle. He shoved Maxim into the front seat of the limo that was parked in front of the hospital. He got in on the other side and closed the door. “Drive!”
The wasps and drill-worms buzzing inside the vehicle tried to attack Maxim again, but they were all attacked by nants and sprayed repellent inside the car. Kuzu cracked the window and they flew out. Then he closed the window.
Maxim turned the vehicle toward the gate of Sector 4. His wounds were already being cleaned up by symbiants, which consumed the blood as they knitted a shield over his injuries.
“Go!” Kuzu commanded.
Maxim drove the limo through the gate to Sector Four and turned left, heading north toward the power plant.
“Go fast!”
Maxim pushed down the pedal, his soul upended as he zoomed into the blackness pierced by their headlights, Henders wasps and drill-worms splattering on the windshield.
“Go right,” Kuzu ordered, following the map in his mind.
Maxim turned the wheel with shaking hands.
“Go faster.”
They passed the giant warehouse on the right, where a cataract of creatures still poured out of the broken windows. Maxim wept, but a part of him rose up, urging him to crash the car.
“Stop!” Kuzu commanded with a voice like an earthquake.
At Kuzu’s command, Maxim slammed on the brakes, doubting that he had any free will left inside him now that he was damned. He was either in Hell or hopelessly insane and, in either event, no more than a spectator of his own fate.
Pushed by the beast, he staggered out of the car at the base of the stairs. Then the creature lifted him like a toy and carried him on its back as it ran with a three-legged gallop up the narrow stairway, fending off the flying predators with mantis-like reflexes.
They rose over the polished slope as Kuzu loaded and fired three arrows in rapid succession, twisting with Maxim on his back and downing two spigers that were climbing the stairs behind them. Both of them tumbled and slid down the smooth slope to the street, paralyzed by bull’s-eyed shafts that pierced their second brains.
They arrived at the entrance to the geothermal well. Through its door was the one goal Maxim wanted more than any other thing.
He wondered then if this was the shape damnation took.
03:25:04
Hender unsheathed two of the four knives they had given him. Two were combat knives from Dima and Abrams, the other two butcher knives they had found in the kitchen. “Now, wait for me.”
Hender glided down the stairs and pushed open the hatch, closing it behind him.
Crowding at the window, they watched the riot of animals that had gathered around the smoldering magnesium flare Kuzu threw in front of the apartment. A feeding frenzy had accumulated after a curious spiger was wounded by the flare, with fatal results. Hender scampered down the brownstone’s steps like a shadow and jumped onto a streetlamp while this was happening.
“He’s climbing a lamppost,” said Abrams, who could see his silhouette clearly through his night vision goggles.
“What’s he doing?” Nastia asked, watching through her Russian-issue NV glasses.
Nell shook her head, bewildered. “I can’t see a thing.”
“He’s climbing the lamppost,” Abrams said again.
“Why?” Galia fretted. “What’s he doing?”
“Don’t ask me!” Abrams shrugged.
Hender climbed out on the arm of the streetlamp in front of the apartment, which reached out to the middle of the street. Positioning himself directly over the feeding frenzy that swirled around the flare, Hender seemed to bunch up like a spider, descending on his stretching tail.
“What’s he doing now?” Nastia wondered. “You look!” She handed her binoculars to Nell.
Nell looked. “I’ve never seen this!”
03:23:02
Hender dangled on his elastic tail over a smaller spiger that had jumped on top of the pile below him. With four quick motions, the hendro stabbed both the spiger’s brains with knives. Then he clung, invisible, to the spiger’s back as he felt its nants abandon their host and adopt Hender as their next host, spreading rapidly across his skin before any other scavengers arrived to ravage the fallen predator.
02:58:12
Kuzu and Maxim opened the steel door to the power plant and stepped inside the giant steam well.
The hulking sel pushed Maxim inside and pulled the door closed behind them, leaving them in almost total darkness as the sweltering heat burned their skin. Kuzu shook up the empty orange-juice bottle, which made the Henders wasps trapped inside glow more brightly. He handed the bottle to Maxim.
Maxim took the glowing jar as Kuzu pushed him forward. Maxim stumbled down the steel stairway, Kuzu close behind, and they reached the catwalk that encircled the massive steam pipes.
Maxim saw the detonator, which still lay on the catwalk between the chewed and tattered clothing of two men. The heavy switch was connected to a battery from which thick lead cables.
Kuzu noted Maxim’s recognition of the switch. He lifted the switch with one long arm and handed it to Maxim.
Maxim looked up at the angry, wedged brows of the beast as it took his hand and pointed his finger like a prod, pressing down on the large red button of the detonator.
Nothing seemed to happen for a moment, and Maxim looked up with a glimmer of hope. Then they felt the deep blast welling up through layers of rock and swaying the catwalk as crystal chunks broke off the walls above them.
Kuzu dodged and deflected the falling crystals, protecting Maxim with his body.
Maxim looked up from under the devil at the vibrating conduits as superheated steam rose through them and fed the waiting turbines in the plant above. A whining hiss grew, rising in pitch, and immediately a hundred lightbulbs glowed in fixtures on the wall of the well around them, some popping as they ignited.
They felt and heard the generators revving in the plant above as Maxim saw the needles in the glass gauges on the sides of the pipes rising steadily and pushing into the red zone before finally leveling out.
A deep chugging vibrated in the rock then, echoing in the vertical chamber as pumps began drawing water from the distant river into injection wells and belching air pockets. The perpetual-energy source of Pobedograd was priming itself with perfect efficiency, just as it had been designed to do half a century ago.
02:55:02
Geoffrey and Sasha watched different views of the city near the tunnel, searching in vain for Nell and the others when, suddenly, light dawned over Pobedograd on the screens, flooding every sector, every building.
“Look,” Geoffrey whispered.
The star on the cavern’s ceiling ignited, dawning like a summer sky.
“Papa turned it on!” Sasha shouted.
“Yes, he did,” Geoffrey said.
02:55:02
“What is Hender doing?” Dima asked.
“If I had to guess,” Nell said, “I’d say he’s replenishing his symbiants.”
“Huh?” Bear said, peering into the dark.
“Symbiants are microscopic animals that take the place of bacteria and microbes on our own skin, helping to exfoliate the hendros,” Nell said. “They also defend them from attack and help heal their wounds. The hendros lost them when they were taken from Henders Island and doused with salt water.”
“Wow,” Nastia said.
The streetlamp above Hender suddenly flared brightly and exposed him hanging above the maelstrom of hungry carnivores. The light agitated the gorging animals, attracting them to Hender as it grew brighter over him.
“Hey!” Bear yelled. “What’s happening?”
“The lights are turning on,” Nastia answered, lowering her binoculars.
As they all watched through the window, a sudden dawn illuminated the city as the five-pointed star ignited across the sky 350 feet above. Its five radiating arms infused with golden light that filled the streets below even as streetlights spluttered and flared throughout the city.
The windows in the star-shaped tower lit for one blazing moment above all the buildings before the surge of power blew out thousands of antique bulbs. Clouds of wasps and drill-worms were revealed in the sunlike radiance as they swirled around the building, energized by the blazing rays of light.
The entire city gasped before them, breathing the oxygen that wafted from the instant greening of clover covering almost every surface. Pobedograd sighed, groaning with the ghastly sound of ten thousand radiators filling with steam for the first time and haunting its hundreds of buildings with a hellish chorus as Henders organisms joined in.
“Talk about chess,” Abrams said. “Kuzu just queened us.”
“He turned the power on!” Nell said.
Neon signs blinked to life across the city, streaking across the Star Tower itself. As they watched, they knew they were seeing a preview of every city on Earth as it was overrun by the explosively prolific hunters of Henders Island.
“Mautam,” Nell breathed, staring hopelessly.
“What?” Nastia asked.
Nell shook her head. “Every forty-eight years, bamboo expands across northeastern India and explodes with fruit. The rat population doubles and ravages crops, causing mass starvation. Mautam,” she repeated.
“Never heard of it,” Bear said.
“You’re looking at it,” Nell said. “This is Moscow, Berlin, Paris, Mecca, and Mumbai, only a few decades from now, if we don’t seal that tunnel. And a few years after that, it will be Lima, Los Angeles, Vancouver, Taiwan, and Tokyo.”
As they watched, Hender slid over the lamppost to the sidewalk.
“Somebody has to open the door for him!” Nastia yelled.
Abrams jumped down the stairs. “Tell me when!”
“Now!” they all shouted.
Abrams swung open the door as Hender leaped through and slammed it shut.
“Thank you, Abrams!” Hender breathed.
“Sure,” Abrams said.
Hender leaped upstairs and Abrams followed.
“OK, Nell,” Hender said. “I protect you.”
02:49:33
Maxim wavered at the top of the long stairway outside the steam well as he stood beside the six-limbed beast. The long, vaulted corridor outside the power plant lit up as long bars suspended from the ceiling ignited for the first time since they were installed. The steam pumping through the plant was finally powering the city’s grid.
Red and purple clover on the slope to each side of the stairs turned green in front of their eyes under the dawning light. Centralized heat and hot water began circulating like blood through the city’s veins. As he followed the creature down the stairs, Maxim knew only then the extent to which he had betrayed his species—his world—himself. And he knew there could never be redemption.
02:43:28
Hender gazed at Nell with both his trinocular eyes. “I’m going to put nants on you now,” he said with a smile.
“Wait,” Nell said. “How do you know you can do that?”
“Because Kuzu turned the lights on,” Hender said.
“I don’t understand,” Nell said.
“Maxim must have helped him,” Hender said.
“I don’t understand, either,” Nastia said.
“He must have done for Maxim what I will do for you,” Hender said. “He could not have reached the power plant any other way. Understand?”
“Yes,” Abrams said, for the record.
“But how can you pass your nants to me?” Nell asked.
“Because I’m pregnant, Nell. So is Kuzu.”
Nell looked at Hender in awe.
“Did I miss something?” Abrams said.
“F*ck!” Bear groaned.
“Sels are hermaphrodites,” Nell explained. “They mate once in youth but don’t get pregnant until they will it, which can be thousands of years later. Hender! Why now?”
“When I’m pregnant, I can make my nants cover you,” Hender said.
Abrams shook his head. “If I ever get out of here, this is gonna be a bestseller.”
“Nah,” Bear said. “They’ll never believe it.”
02:47:16
Kuzu followed Maxim down the long stairway, and when they got to the bottom, the sel pushed Maxim through the car door and got in the other side.
“Go back!”
Maxim stepped on the gas, obeying the infernal voice as though it were his own will speaking for him.
02:40:51
Hender rubbed his fingers in Nell’s hair and stroked her neck, shoulders, and back with four of his hands, which secreted a mellow scent like wax and vanilla. Nell tried to remain calm as she felt the migration of microscopic animals flowing over her body as Hender rubbed the scent over her skin.
“Whoa,” Abrams said softly.
Nell felt the nants mesh together on her ears and right up to the edge of her lips and eyelids, gasping as her heart quickened, squeezing one of Hender’s wrists. She knew that each microscopic organism was attaching itself to the others around it, all of which were equipped with a circle of eyes on their backs and transmitting relays to millions of others with identical signals like ripples on water. She focused on regulating her breaths and slowing down her heart to manage the sensation of panic that was overwhelming her.
“How do you feel, Nell?” Nastia asked.
“Warm.” She exhaled. “Like I just took a niacin tablet.”
“Are you OK, man?” Abrams asked.
“Yes,” Nell breathed.
“Good!” Nastia said, reaching out a hand to soothe her.
“Don’t touch!” Hender trumpeted, grabbing Nastia’s wrist. “Nell can’t control them. They will attack you, Nastia. Don’t touch!”
Nastia withdrew her hand.
The others watched with growing impatience and incredulity as, for twenty minutes, Hender laid his hands on Nell. They began to suspect Hender’s motive for taking so much time when they saw that Nell’s skin refracted purple pixels of color at shifting angles as it was coated with microscopic creatures.
“God, what are you doing to her?” Bear asked.
Hender removed his hand from her and stood back. “Nell will be safe,” he said.
“What about the rest of us?” Dima muttered.
“You have armor,” Hender answered. “Now Nell does.”
Nastia was suddenly terrified. “If we go out there, we’ll be slaughtered!” She looked at Nell. “It doesn’t matter if we have body armor! If one of those spigers comes along … Be honest with us, Hender! We can’t make it! You know there’s no way!”
Hender pointed to the gate on the map spread out on the coffee table. “That is where we are going?”
“Yes!” Nastia said.
“And it is safe inside the farm?” Hender asked.
“Yes.” Nell nodded.
“We can make it there, Nastia,” Hender said. “The mule—” He pointed. “—send it the other way.”
Abrams nodded. “Right. We’ll pack that big dead slug on top and light it up with some flares. We’ll send it down the street like a Fourth of July barbecue!”
Hender nodded. “Very good, Abrams.”
“Then what?” Nastia asked.
“We run like hell in the other direction,” Dima said.
“Yes, Dima,” said Hender.
“All right,” said Abrams. “A two-hundred-yard dash is all we’ve got.”
“Can we duck into buildings along the way?” Dima asked.
“Nooo!” Hender’s woodwind voice intoned like a bassoon. “Moving is better!”
“Then, how should we do this?” Bear asked.
“We run in groups of two, looking forward and behind,” Nell said. “We change direction when the one behind tells us.”
“Yes,” Hender agreed.
“OK.” Abrams started clamping on his armor. “Suit up, f*ckers!”
Nell felt a rush as her entire epidermis seemed to itch and be scratched simultaneously, producing an overwhelming euphoria.
“The farm should be lit now,” Galia said. “All the sectors should have power from independent turbines in the power plant.”
They all looked at Maxim’s thin gray-haired assistant for a moment.
“OK,” Abrams decided for all of them. “I guess we don’t have to worry about flashlights. But let’s take them anyway. Anything we need from the mule, I can carry on my back. Anything we don’t need, kiss it good-bye.”
Nastia covered her face. “Oh, no! This is crazy!”
“What’s crazy is a woman who hates rats studying sewers,” Dima said gently, putting his arm around her shoulders for a moment of reassurance.
“I know,” she agreed, laughing tragically.
“It’s OK,” Dima urged. “We can do this.”
Nastia hugged him. “Spasiba.”
“We’ve all got to watch each other’s backs now,” Abrams said. “Hender, you look after Nastia and Nell at the rear.”
Hender nodded. “OK, Abrams!”
“All right, let’s get to work.”
01:49:48
The magnesium flare in front of the building finally burned out, and the feeding frenzy that had gathered moved on now with the stream in the direction they were heading.
Since they didn’t have helmets, Nell was given a walkie-talkie along with Hender so they could communicate with the others. She clipped hers to her vest as the others suited up. Abrams encased himself in his body armor and climbed into the buzzing exoskeleton.
After embedding flares in the flesh of the ghost octopus, which they had lashed to the back of the mule, they walked the robot downstairs, lit the flares, and sent it out the door.
Dima steered the robot with his dog whistle against the stream of traffic as it hit the street, and the headless machine trotted forward, drawing a vortex of attackers with it.
They opened the door.
“Remember,” Hender buzzed. “Keep moving! Change directions! Never stop!”
“OK!” Abrams said. He handed Nell a field shovel. “Not a bad weapon,” he said.
“Thanks.” She nodded, taking it.
Then he leaped out the door, carrying a terrific load of gear on his bionic back as he bounded down the steps and turned left, jogging up the street. Battered and scarred, Talon-1 charged down the stairs behind him, following.