The wire cut through Drake’s still-standing torso just below his ribs. It stopped at the spine.

Brianna yanked, but the wire would not cut the spine. She yanked and yanked and the meat of Drake’s body twisted sideways so she could see the insides, see the organs, the sliced raw flesh like steak, the pale intestine, and all of it clinical, like a drawing, like some hideous display.

And suddenly her frenzied yanking, legs pummeling the slippery marble for purchase, succeeded, and with a grinding, grisly sound the spine parted and Drake fell in two pieces to the floor.

Brianna was aware of screaming. Jamal, hand over his face but eyes staring in horror. Screaming and screaming like he would never stop.

Brianna wanted to scream, too. But not in horror. In sheer, vicious triumph. She wanted to dance and smear herself with the blood of her beaten enemy. She wanted to leap atop the body chunks and kick them in contempt.

Brianna threw back her head and howled at the broken rafters and the sky beyond. “Yaaaaah! Yaaaaah! The Breeze!”

Jamal stopped screaming. He was gibbering, making word-like sounds, like a crazy street person. He was crawling away across the floor.

Brianna laughed. “What’s the matter, tough guy? Did you figure out you picked the wrong side?”

The tentacle was around her legs before she knew what had happened.

She looked down and stared, unable to believe what she was seeing. Drake’s whip hand was coiled twice around her ankles, squeezing hard, crushing the bones together.

Brianna tried to kick but couldn’t even budge.

Drake’s head was four feet away from his upper torso, but now the cruel mouth was back, and grinning. The cold eyes were watching.

Alive!

The upper torso used its good hand to shove itself toward the head while the tentacle held her tight with a python’s strength. The lower torso—stomach, hips, legs—was kicking and flailing, trying to move toward the upper torso.

Drake was putting himself back together.

Brianna fell on her butt. She reached reflexively for her knife, but it was too far away.

Her sawed-off shotgun. She had re-holstered it. Her hand found it, yanked it free. She took aim at the tentacle that held her fast, aimed at the part just beyond her feet, pulled the trigger.

BLAM!

The blast came from Jamal’s gun. He had found it. She saw smoke curling from the muzzle.

Brianna fumbled with her shotgun, but her fingers wouldn’t work right and her ears were ringing and somehow there was blood all over her chest.

Drake’s head made a silent laugh.

Brianna lay helpless, watching as the legs, the lower third of the creature began to change. Not Drake’s legs. A girl’s chubby limbs.

Drake’s head cried out without sound.

The tentacle was already sliding away.

Jamal walking as if in a dream, his smoking rifle held at his side.

Brianna could see Drake’s lips form the words, “Kill her. Kill her.”

But without lungs, no sound came out.

The body parts moved together. The arms of a girl fumbled for and found what was now Brittney’s head and dragged it to its perch on her shoulders.

The legs kicked and scrabbled until the lower third melded back. Brianna watched it all, unable to move, unable to think clearly.

The last thing she saw was Jamal using Brianna’s wire to wrap Brittney’s hands tightly behind her. He tore a sleeve from his own shirt and made a gag of it and stuffed it in Brittney’s mouth.

Then he stepped back to Brianna. She could barely hear his words through the ringing sound and could barely understand what she did hear.

“I could kill you,” Jamal said. He pointed the automatic rifle down at her, the barrel an inch from her face. “Most likely Drake comes out on top. But if not, you remember that I coulda killed you.” He shouldered the gun. “But I didn’t.”

It was only a few minutes before Edilio, accompanied by Ellen, both armed with automatic rifles of their own, came rushing in. Jamal and Brittney were long gone.

Edilio knelt beside Brianna. She saw worry and compassion in his dark eyes and in her delirium really liked him for that.

“Ellen, get Lana. Now!” Edilio ordered.

To Brianna, he said, “Is he gone?”

Brianna found it hard to get her voice to do what she wanted. But she managed after a few tries to say, “Have to . . . get Sam. Sam. I . . . I can’t beat Drake.”

Edilio looked grim. “Yeah, that’s a good idea,” he said as he examined the bloody wounds in her shoulder. “Unfortunately Taylor took off. And no one exactly knows how to find Sam.”

“Jamal . . . ,” Brianna whispered. But before she could complete the thought, the marble floor seemed to open wide and drag her swirling down into darkness.

Lance came bursting in the door.

“Drake is out!” he yelled.

Turk—formerly Zil’s number one guy, at least he thought so, and boss of what was left of Human Crew—said, “Yeah, whatever.”

Human Crew had been a group formed to defend the rights of normals against freaks. At least that was the Human Crew line. Most people now saw Human Crew as a straight-up hate group.

Lance grabbed Turk’s shoulder and practically yanked him up off the stinking couch where he lay. “Turk, listen, man, listen to me: don’t you see what this means?”

Turk did not see what it meant, or at least not whatever Lance thought he should see. Turk mostly disliked Lance. They were friends, kind of, but only because they’d both been with Zil and riding high. And now they were reduced to doing the worst work Albert could find for them: digging slit trenches for kids to go in, and then covering them up when they were full.