Busted Flush

Political Science 201

Ian Tregillis & Walton Simons

YVETTE: Fourteen days, nine hours.

YVES: Fifteen days, eighteen hours.

YECTLI: Sixteen days, two hours.

CHRISTIAN WAS OUT THE door on the way to his regular postcoital physical before the first egg appeared.

Don’t trust him, Yvette had said.

Zoë, a petite girl with a pageboy bob of strawberry-blond hair, asked, “Why not?” Not-not-not-not . . . The echoes came from every corner of the room. They made concentration difficult. A strange deuce.

Her brother Zane flashed his chromatophores into ripples of fire-truck red by way of response. He snuffled at Niobe’s palm with his tentacles.

Zoë frowned. “What does that mean?” Mean-mean-mean . . .

“It means shut the hell up,” said Zenobia, the frail and birdlike baby of the clutch.

“Mom! Zen swore at me!” Me!-me! . . . Zane recoiled, covering his earbuds. He retaliated, using a camouflage ability that extended to projecting invisibility. Zoë bumped, loudly, into an invisible nightstand.

“Ouch!” ch!-ch!-ch!-ch!-ch!

Niobe said, “Hey. Be nice, you two.”

But why would she say that about trusting people?

I’ll find out, Mom. Zenobia walked to the door, dispersed into a cloud of mist, and was gone. Niobe considered calling her back. But in the end she wanted to know what Yvette had meant, too.

Zenobia drifted through the entire medical wing and found no sign of Christian. He was nowhere to be found. It appeared he’d left the facility, until Zenobia heard laughter and muffled voices coming from a storage room.

Behind the industrial-sized cans of tomato paste and five-gallon tubs of elbow macaroni, four folding chairs were arranged around a card table. One chair sat empty, but Christian was there, chatting with two men.

Mom, I found him!

Good work, sweetie. I see him.

I don’t think he had a physical.

I know.

A fourth man hurried in. He sat across from Christian.

“What’s the good word, Pham?”

“Girl, boy, girl. Deuce, joker, ace.” The man named Pham summarized Zoë, Zane, and Zenobia for the others.

“Good work, Pham,” said Christian.

“Why can’t you just stick around to see what pops out of those eggs, Chris?”

“Would you stay any longer than you had to?”

Twin pangs of hurt and betrayal passed each other on the way up and down the bond between mother and daughter.

Smitty slapped Christian on the back. “He does the hard work. Who can blame him, wantin’ to get out of there?”

“Yeah, speakin’ of hard, how the hell can you do her, anyway? She’s disgusting.”

“Gentlemen, I just sit back and think about my bank account.” Christian grinned. “Every litter of freaks is another hefty little bonus.”

“Yeah, so’s you can afford all the child support!”

“You get paid extra to screw her?”

“Of course, retard. Would you do it for free?”

Far on the other side of the complex, Niobe cried.

“I would if she looked like Curveball. Shit, I’d pay to screw her. Yeah, I would wreck that girl. I’ll bet half the guys on the Committee are bangin’ her.”

“The way I hear it, Tom, you got no choice but to pay for it.” More laughter all around the table at this.

“This season’s better. Green chick? Talk about hot.”

“I like that acrobat, Minx. Now she’s bangable.” Tom leered. “And I’ll bet she’s freaky in the sack, too.”

Smitty laughed again. “Could you imagine Genetrix on American Hero? Fucking before each challenge? Her teammates would have to draw straws.” Pham pounded the table with his fist, laughing.

Christian took a deck of cards from the table. “Okay, so we got a deuce girl”—Christian removed the deuces of hearts and diamonds and set them in the center of the table, faceup—“a joker boy”—he added a joker to the deuces—“and an ace girl”—the aces of hearts and diamonds went into the mix. “Someone do the honors.”

Mom? What are they doing?

Niobe didn’t say anything. Even Zoë had fallen silent. Zane’s mantle faded to gray.

Pham flipped a coin. Christian added the deuce of hearts back to his deck. They repeated the process, and the ace of diamonds went back.

After shuffling and letting Tom cut, Christian dealt four cards to each player.

“Okay, gents. Ante up.”

Niobe gasped. They’re gambling, Zenobia. They’re gambling on you and Zane and Zoë.

A little salad of green bills accumulated in the center of the table. It grew as bets and raises and calls swirled around the table.

“Fifty bucks says the octopus croaks first.”

A pang of terror and anguish through the bond. Niobe stroked Zane’s head. His mantle turned ink black. “Shhh, shhh. Don’t listen to them. They don’t know what they’re talking about.”

Back at the game, Pham said, “I’ll take that action.” He dropped a few bills on the table. “Bet the octopus outlasts the chubby kid Justice brought in a few weeks ago.”

Drake . . . ? A cold, sickly feeling took root in Niobe’s gut. Why would they say that?

Zen, that’s enough. C’mon back now.

I’ll get him! I’ll drift right into his body and—

No. Leave him alone. That goes for all three of you.

Zane ruffled his tentacles. His sisters nodded.

I need to think for a while.

He was asleep the next time they came for him, although the dreams kept him from sleeping very well. Drake didn’t really know if it was day or night. There was no clock in his room and he’d watched all the DVDs, some more than once.

Drake could barely feel his feet on the floor as they shuffled him down the hall in the direction of the interrogation room; Justice seemed to be lifting him more than guiding him. Once there, it was going to be more of the same stupid questions and he really couldn’t tell them anything.

Smitty and Dr. Pendergast were waiting for them inside the interrogation room. There was someone else, a woman who was about the same age as his teachers back at school. Her dark hair was pulled back and her eyes darted around the room like a fish in an aquarium. Drake flopped heavily into the empty chair and put his head onto the desktop. “Please let me leave. I can’t help you.” He closed his eyes, hoping it would all just go away.

“We’re going to try something different this time, Drake,” Smitty said, in his flat but somehow scary voice. “Something to help you remember. Your file from BAMC indicates a reaction to a particular type of sedative. Dr. Carlisle will be sitting next to you while you’re under. She has the ability to see into your mind somewhat and will share that with us.”

Dr. Carlisle pulled up a chair next to him. Pendergast moved around the table and stood by Drake’s other side, a hypodermic in one hand. He grabbed Drake firmly by the shoulder, and before the boy could struggle had the needle into him.

“You may feel a little uncomfortable for a moment,” the doctor said, “but . . .”

The rest of the sentence was a hopeless garble to Drake, like someone was speaking a foreign language to him from inside a well. The room tipped and rolled beneath him. The light over the table dimmed and went out, and it seemed he was falling slowly into a dark hole filled with cotton candy, but the hole didn’t have a bottom. He closed his eyes.

This wasn’t like the dreams. It felt like someone pushing open his mind and chipping bits of it loose.

He was sitting at the computer playing WoW . . . His brother Bob was behind him, yelling, saying it was his turn . . . Drake hitting the floor, coming up punching wildly . . . one flailing fist catching Bob in the balls . . . Bob choking him and demanding that he give . . . Drake trying to get air any way he could, no air . . . Bob saying “What’s wrong with your eyes?” . . . Drake feeling like he was growing . . . A flash of light, blinding, blotting out Bob, and Sareena downstairs, and his mom and dad out by the stock pond . . . A feeling of collapsing, darkness . . .

Where was he?

Drake opened his eyes again, back in the interrogation room. His head was over a trash can and he was throwing up. Drake couldn’t believe how much was coming out of him. He hadn’t been eating much lately.

“That’s all right, Drake,” Pendergast said. “That’s what it’s there for.”

Smitty glanced up from the notebook he was writing in. Dr. Carlisle was whispering in his ear. She looked scared. “Get him out of here,” Smitty said. “We’re done for now.”

Drake tried to get to his feet, but his thick legs were wobbly beneath him. “What did you do to me? Does this go away?”

Dr. Pendergast handed him a glass of water. “You’ll feel better if you get some of this down.” Drake took this glass in an unsteady hand and balanced it against his lip, gulping down as much as he could. At least it took a little of the vomit taste from his mouth.

When he was finished, Justice tugged at him. “Time to get back to your room, Drake.”

Drake tried to take a step but lost his footing and collapsed face-first to the floor. His forehead bounced heavily off the cold linoleum. Smitty laughed. Drake clamped his jaw shut. He wasn’t going to let them get him to go emo if he could help it. At least whatever they’d drugged him with dulled the pain as well as making him a spaz.

Justice lifted Drake up by his armpits. “Shut up, Smitty.” He glared at his fellow BICC agent.

“Thanks,” Drake said. “I’m okay now.” It was a lie, but he was going to do his best to pull it off. He could tell that Justice wasn’t taking up for him because he liked Drake. It was because he thought Smitty was a jerk-off. It was one of the few things they agreed on.

On the way back to his room Drake tried to get Justice to tell him what they’d injected him with, not to mention what it had done to him. As expected, Justice told Drake exactly nothing except that it was an advanced interrogation technique. Justice gave Drake a stick of gum when they got back, “to take the taste out of his mouth.” Then he left Drake alone again.

Drake lay on his bed, chewing the gum slowly to keep the taste for as long as possible. As near as he could tell, they were going to keep him here forever. All he knew was that he had to get out of here soon, and he was going to need help. Major help.

Niobe, Zoë, and Zane pretended to watch American Hero in the lounge while Zenobia snuck into Pendergast’s office. Zane chuckled (in the form of cyan and burgundy cross-hatching) when the Laureate, the weakest of the competing aces, managed to get Tesseract, the most powerful, voted off the show. Team Clubs was screwed.

Niobe turned inward, focused on Zenobia. The filing cabinet was locked. Zenobia reached inside with a phantom finger and tripped the latch. It took a bit of searching to find Drake’s file.

Got it, Mom. Zenobia pulled out a thin hanging folder. The tab said “Thomas, Drake.”

Good job, kiddo. Don’t keep me in suspense.

Zenobia started reading. “No. Freaking. Way.”

Drake was, apparently, the only survivor of the accident in Texas that had been on the news. An Air Force reconnaissance patrol had found him, naked but otherwise apparently healthy, near the center of the devastation. SCARE suspected that Drake had played a role in the event. Whatever it had been, it wasn’t a grain silo explosion.

A page slipped out of the folder and fluttered to Zenobia’s feet. It was the end of an e-mail. Pendergast believed in paper trails, apparently, and kept hard copies of everything.

In a report to his superiors in Washington, Pendergast had concluded: “ . . . constant danger to this facility, its staff, and the other patients. As the trump virus has failed, I see no choice but to euthanize the subject.”

My God. Reading those words revived the sickly feeling in Niobe’s gut. The newest entry in Drake’s file, dated that morning, recommended that he be moved to the deepest part of Q Sector for “containment” in case of an accident. Pendergast stressed the importance of keeping Drake calm—which Niobe found at odds with tossing him in BICC’s worst neighborhood—until he could be subtly euthanized. Pendergast suggested piping carbon monoxide into Drake’s new cell.

The television blared. Zane jumped. Pham, a player in Christian’s secret mistigris game, had picked up the television remote and was cranking the volume.

“Hey, not so loud!” Loud!-loud!-loud!-loud! . . .

He ignored Zoë’s echoing protest, plopped down in a recliner, and tore open a bag of corn chips. Niobe hoped his lewd fantasies of superpowered starlets would distract him from wondering where her third child had gone.

Pham shifted around in the chair, trying to get comfortable. After a moment he grunted, unhooked the jangly key ring from his belt, and tossed it on a side table.

“Mom.” Om-om-om-om. Zoë whispered, “It’s too loud for Zane.” Ane-ane-ane-ane-ane . . .

“Hush, kiddo. Don’t make me lose my train of thought.”

Zen, can you put Drake’s file back and pull mine?

The file marked “Winslow, Niobe” was twice as thick as any other. It began with a capsule biography summarizing her life, the long journey from a Connecticut mansion to a subterranean government laboratory.

Next, the file detailed every child she hatched at BICC: photographs, medical examinations, descriptions of their abilities. But they weren’t catalogued by name. The paperwork reduced each child to a serial number, starting with 1-A-1 for her darling and dearly missed little strongman Aaron, all the way to 1-Z-3 for Zenobia.

Like Drake’s, Niobe’s file contained Pendergast’s handwritten observations. Not long after her admission to the facility, Pendergast had enthused to his superiors: “The subject’s unprecedented ability to circumvent the natural statistics of the wild card virus, most notably the routine suppression of the Black Queen among her hatchlings, presents tremendous possibilities. Isolating the mechanism should be our highest priority.”

Back in the lounge, Niobe hugged Zane and Zoë to her. Zenobia kept reading.

Unraveling the peculiarities of Niobe’s children had proven difficult. Slow progress dampened Pendergast’s tone. Six months in, he’d become paranoid that Niobe might decide to leave the facility before BICC could achieve its research goals. He’d had her elevator card deactivated, and as a further precaution he’d filed papers with SCARE.

She’d been a prisoner for over a year and hadn’t known.

Six months after that, he’d written: “We have met with moderate success extending the mean hatchling life span. If more resources are devoted to this work, future clutches may be turned into deployable assets. In this vein, the subject should be utilized as a biological reactor until reliable suppression of the Black Queen has been achieved.”

Niobe hugged her children until they gasped. Reactor? That’s all I am? An egg factory? You want to turn my children into weapons?

Zoë huddled closer to her mother. Mom, what are they going to do to us? It was hard to believe she could sound so quiet, so mousy, so frightened.

Niobe didn’t know what to say.

Zenobia read further. Pendergast had been reading all of Niobe’s incoming and outgoing e-mails. Her correspondence with Bubbles prompted lengthy and graphic speculations on Niobe’s sexuality.

The final entry, dated two days earlier, was terse: “Fulfilling our research objectives will require several hundred clutches. Recommend accelerated schedule, with multiple partners.” A chart accompanied this note. Pendergast intended to pair her not only with nats, but also with aces, deuces, and jokers. Including some from Q Sector. “Staff should develop techniques for forced insemination should subject prove uncooperative.”

Niobe shivered. The entire family fell silent. Niobe wiped at her face, flicking away tears before Pham or another orderly noticed.

Zane rode on her shoulder as they walked back to her quarters. The picture frames on her shelves rattled when the door slammed shut behind her. Her children—row upon row of them—smiled, grinned, mugged, gave the thumbs-up from dozens of photographs. The picture frame on her desk housed an autographed photo of Michelle Pond. Two photos cropped side by side, in fact, contrasting thin Bubbles and large Bubbles.

Niobe clicked the remote for her stereo. The little Bose player was plugged into her iPod. Haunting vocals and mournful guitars echoed from the cinder-block walls and wrapped around Niobe like an acoustic blanket. Espers’s “Children of Stone” had become her anthem the moment she first heard it. Stone children never age, never die.

She flopped down on her bed and cried. Christian’s betrayal had been painful enough. Two years. Two years, she had let them poke her, prod her, humiliate her, all in the stupid belief that they wanted to cure her children. But they didn’t give a shit about any of that.

She felt stupid. Ashamed.

They were going to chain her to a table and use her like a machine. But not before they murdered Drake.

Zoë and Zane climbed into her lap. Zane, a mournful cobalt blue with spots of jade, nuzzled her hand. Zoë’s tears, hot with sorrow, trickled down Niobe’s neck. They sat that way until Zenobia said, Uh, Mom?

She had unlocked the lower compartment of Pendergast’s TV cabinet. The shelves were crammed with DVDs. Many had austere white labels on the spine: “Genetrix Insemination Session, 1-H,” and so forth. But others had garish sleeves plastered with titles such as “All Joker Action,” “Tentacle Tramps,” and “Herne Takes Jokertown, volume 3.”

Mom, there’s magazines here, too, with—

Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

She’d thought nothing could be worse than how he viewed Niobe and her children as tools, means to an end. She was wrong. He spent half his time jacking off to her sessions and the other half trying to turn her children into weapons.

She felt filthy.

“Mom,” Zoë whispered, “we can’t stay here.”

Niobe blew her nose. “If we leave, you’ll get sick.” She didn’t add “soon.” “If we stay, you have a chance.”

“No.” Zenobia shook her head. “No we don’t. A few extra weeks at best.”

Her siblings agreed. “Besides.” Ides-ides-ides-ides. “Drake needs our help.” Elp-elp-elp-elp-elp-elp.

His arm still hurt from the shot they’d given him. Whatever it was supposed to do, it hadn’t worked, and the doctors weren’t happy about it. Justice had him in tow again. The hallway they’d entered was blue and the doorway to it had two heavy bolts on the outside.

“Is that you again, spic?” a voice came from deep inside one of the rooms. Drake couldn’t see inside because the heavily barred window was too high. Justice didn’t reply and kept walking.

A horrible face appeared at another one of the windows. It was gray and the mouth had huge teeth. “Love to eat them fat boys. Fat boys what I love to eat. Bite they fat-boy heads off. Nibble on they fat-boy feet.” The voice put a cold knot in Drake’s stomach.

“Why are you putting me in here with them?” he asked.

“It won’t be for long, Drake. That much I promise you.” Justice unbolted the door to an empty room and herded Drake inside. There was a bed, a toilet, and not much more. Justice closed and bolted the door in place. His footfalls receded evenly down the hallway.

“Love to eat them fat boys.” There was a laugh that sounded like gravel being poured down a garbage disposal.

Drake sat down on the hard, lumpy bed and closed his eyes. There had to be a way to make all this go away.

Zane waited in the television lounge, mimicking the color and wood-grain pattern on one of the tables. The same table where Pham tossed his key ring when he watched TV. He didn’t notice when his keys disappeared.

Good work, Zane! I’m proud of you, said Niobe. Okay, you two, it’s your turn.

They had until the end of Pham’s break, a little under half an hour. Niobe headed for Q Sector. She stifled the urge to run. Hurrying would arouse suspicion.

Meanwhile, Zoë and Zenobia crept toward the central guard station. Zoë hid around the corner while her wraith-sister drifted down the corridor to take a position under the console. She studied the controls until she found the switch that unlocked Drake’s cell.

Ready, Mom?

Ready, kiddo.

Zenobia flipped the switch. K-chunk. A four-inch steel bolt slammed into the solenoid situated on the outside of Drake’s door.

Niobe tiptoed inside. “Psst, Drake,” she whispered. “It’s me, Niobe.” She nudged his shoulder. “Wake up.”

“Go ’way. Sleeping.”

“It’s Niobe. Please, get up. It’s important.”

A heavy sigh. “Fine.”

Drake sat up, a sad and pudgy figure in his underwear. His hair was pressed flat on one side and sticking straight up on the other.

She licked her thumb and wiped little crumbs of sleep from his eyes. He pulled away. “What?”

“Get dressed, kiddo. We’re leaving.”

His eyes opened a little wider. “What?”

Niobe opened the bag she carried and yanked out shirts, pants, socks, and underwear. “Do you like it here?”

“No.”

“Well, you’re gonna like it here even less when you find out what they have in store for you.” She handed him the bundle of clothes, then looked away while he changed. “They’re gonna hurt you, Drake.”

“Done.”

“Here,” she said, pulling a handful of cotton balls from her pocket. “Shove these in your ears.”

Drake looked at her. “Are you nuts?”

“Trust me.” She winked.

“Why should I?”

“Please? Just take them.”

She held her hand out to him. Slowly, reluctantly, he took the cotton, but he didn’t put it in his ears.

“What now?”

“Now we wait.”

Now it was up to Zane. Pham’s key ring would unlock the elevator, but Zane had to get there first. There was a limit to how quickly he could shift his coloring. He could make other things invisible, but not himself.

Niobe watched through his eyes as he snuck through the complex. Twice he had to stop in plain sight while orderlies and security techs made their rounds.

Ten minutes until the end of Pham’s break. Five.

The elevator doors came into sight at the end of a long corridor. Close enough for government work.

“Get ready, Drake.”

Zen, now.

Zenobia, still hunched under the central guard station, reached through the console with ghost fingers to flip a row of bright red toggle switches.

Click, click, click-click-click-click.

Cell doors started to open throughout the medium- and high-security wings of the facility.

“What the—” The security tech immediately slammed the switches back. Zenobia reflipped them from her vantage inside the console, and then trashed the wiring.

“Shit, shit, shit.” The tech punched the alarm panel, drew his fléchette pistol, then bolted down the corridor.

Warbling sirens sounded throughout the facility at ear-shattering volume. Drake fumbled the cotton into his ears. “Happy now?” he shouted.

Niobe filled her own ears as best she could. It helped, but not much. But the cotton wasn’t intended for cutting down on the alarm noise.

As soon as the security tech left, Zoë joined her sister at the console. Niobe watched the monitors through her daughters’ eyes. Just as Zoë had predicted, the guards stationed outside the exit up top hurried down to help contain the escapees. Meaning they helpfully brought the elevator down for Drake and Niobe.

The corridors throughout the complex echoed with screams and gunfire. The corridors between Drake’s cell in Q Sector and the elevator, however, were empty.

Niobe squeezed Drake’s hand. It trembled. “Time to go, kiddo. Ready?”

“I guess so.” He nodded, though he looked scared.

“Stay close. Follow me.”

They slipped out of Drake’s cell. As they scooted down the corridor, a voice echoed from the far end of the wing.

“Chomp they tail, chomp they kiddies . . . ”

Oh, no, said Zenobia. Mom, I think I opened some of the other cells by accident.

Flames erupted out of another cell. The heat was so intense that liquid salt dripped from the ceiling.

“Run!” Niobe took off at a dead run, but Drake couldn’t keep up. Soon he fell behind, hunched over and panting. Niobe grabbed his hand and dragged him away from the burning salt caverns. The floor was slick with gallons of spilled glycerin.

“Outta my way, kike!” The Racist blurred past. The wind bowled them over, fanning the flames higher. Niobe shoved Drake toward the exit from Q Sector. Shouting and gunfire echoed through the facility.

Zoë! You know what to do, honey.

Zoë reset the alarm panel. The sirens stopped. She pressed the “general call” button on the PA system. “I’d like to dedicate this first number to my mother.”

Zoë, it turned out, had a lovely singing voice. It echoed throughout the complex both by virtue of electronic amplification and her own deuce. Security techs and inmates forgot what they were doing. After a few verses they started wandering aimlessly.

The cotton didn’t help much. Staying focused was a chore. Niobe chanted a mantra—elevator, elevator, elevator—as she half dragged Drake past scenes that could have been culled from some of the major riots of the 1960s. Her eyes watered, her nose ran freely, and her throat burned; somewhere, the techs had resorted to using tear gas. The HVAC system was circulating it through the complex faster than the filters could cleanse the air.

They hurried past one corridor where a pair of security techs grappled listlessly with an inmate. They had pepper spray and a Taser, but as long as Zoë sang, they couldn’t concentrate long enough to use them.

They rounded another corner. Niobe tripped over a body sprawled on the foor. Smitty lay faceup, eyes open, staring at the ceiling. Unblinking. Blood trickled from his eyes and nose.

“Don’t look, Drake.” Niobe covered his eyes as she pulled him along.

They were halfway across the cafeteria when Christian appeared in the doorway. His lips moved soundlessly, as though he was struggling to form a coherent thought—Zoë’s deuce at work again. He gave up, holding out his hand palm out. Stop, it said.

“Christian . . .”

Screams echoed from farther up the corridor. Christian frowned, turned, then frantically scrabbled at his holster for his fléchette pistol. Niobe and Drake scrambled backward, away from a surge of heat. Torrents of fire swept down the corridor. They swirled around Christian, and then he was gone.

Dad . . .

Niobe concentrated on finding a detour, on getting Drake to the elevator. Later. I’ll think about it later.

Drake jumped when a section of the cinder blocks next to the gleaming steel elevator doors pulled away from the wall. Niobe tickled her son under the chin.

“I’m so proud of you, Zane.”

He nuzzled her hand with his tentacles, using one to push a key into the slot next to the elevator doors. They slid open without a sound.

“Going up.” Niobe ushered Drake into the elevator.

C’mon, kiddos. She beckoned to Zane, and mentally waved a finger at Zoë and Zenobia. All aboard.

Zane climbed her shoulder; Zenobia drifted through the walls toward the elevator; Zoë didn’t move.

I have to stay behind, Mom, she thought. Zane and Zen can help you on the road. But the longer I sing, the better your chances of getting away.

But—

Zenobia thought, You know we’re right, Mom.

Niobe cried. “No . . . ”

A tiny frown touched the corners of Drake’s mouth as he watched Niobe.

No! That’s not what we agreed on.

Zane laughed, ripples of marigold orange limned with hints of sorrowful cobalt.

“We agreed to this. I love you, Mom.” Mom-mom-mom . . .

Zenobia rematerialized halfway down the corridor from the elevator. “Almost there, Mom!”

“. . . Chomp, chomp, chomp . . . ” Sharky turned the corner. “. . . Chew, chew, ch—” He paused when he saw little Zenobia running toward Niobe and Drake in the elevator. “Love to eat them kiddies.” His grin was a flash of serrated enamel as he set off at a loping run. “Yes, yes, yes. Fat boys what I love to eat.”

“Zen! Run!” Niobe punched the button to close the door, but didn’t send the elevator up yet. The doors moved with agonizing slowness. She shielded Drake with her tail. “Drake, get behind me.” Sharky reached for Zenobia, but his fingers passed ineffectually through her mist. He swiped at her, hissing and spitting, as she wafted through the doors.

The doors stopped with just an inch between them. Sharky had wedged three claws into the gap. He slid the rest of his long, pallid digits into the space and pried the doors apart. “Bite they fat-boy heads off . . .”

Niobe used her tail to push Drake as far away from Sharky as the tight space allowed. “Stay away from him!”

Sharky stepped inside. The doors closed. The elevator started moving up. He took another step, shoved Niobe aside, and grabbed Drake—whose eyes had begun to glow—by the collar. “Nibble, nibble, nibble on his fat-boy face.”

Zane flashed the truest black Niobe had ever seen. Drake disappeared.

“What—” Sharky faltered.

Niobe reached for Drake, managed to get a handful of shirt, and yanked him out of the cannibal’s grasp.

Sharky lunged toward the corner where he’d thrown Niobe. But Zenobia leapt onto his back, and the pair dissolved into clouds of mist. The clouds passed harmlessly through Niobe.

Drake reappeared. Niobe shoved him to the opposite corner of the elevator. Zenobia released Sharky. One of his forearms was stuck inside the wall, up to the elbow. He flailed, tugging viciously at his encased limb. It didn’t budge.

“Let me go! Let me go, you bitch!” Niobe pulled Drake near the door, out of Sharky’s reach.

Zane, Zoë, Zenobia, I love you more than I can say. You’re good kids. And I’m proud to be your mom.

We love you, too, Mom. Somewhere down below, Zoë sang an old Vera Lynn song.

Niobe put an arm around Drake. “I’m gonna look out for you, Drake. I promise.” Tears made it sound unconvincing.

The elevator sped up, up, up, until it spat them into a cold, dark desert, big as the world but somehow smaller than her promise.