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Balthazar. Knife.

0:06

Elevator. Holly pressing the button. Holly...

0:05

Holly? Something about Holly.

0:04

Something Holly said?

0:03

Something Holly did?

0:02

And with the expiration of the countdown came the horror of the realisation.

Stephen Swain was dead.

FIFTH MOVEMENT

30 November, 8:56 p.m.

----ooo0ooo------

In the janitor's room on the Third Floor, Paul Hawkins sat down against the wall beside Balthazar, and nodded, satisfied.

Across the floor from him, in front of the open doorway of the room, lay a large puddle of highly flammable methylated spirits -- and next to him, a box of old-fashioned phosphorus-tipped matches. He had been pleasantly surprised at what he had been able to find on the shelves of the old janitor's room.

He felt a little safer now. Any unwanted guests passing through that doorway would be in for a big--

And then, abruptly, he heard it.

The windows above him rattled slightly, while the floor shook gently.

Hawkins couldn't quite guess what it was.

But it sounded like a muffled explosion.

Selexin and Holly stopped at the top of the stairwell as the wooden banister beside them began to shudder.

'Did you hear that?' Selexin asked nervously. 'I felt it,' Holly said. 'What do you think it was?'

'It sounded like a blast of some sort. An explosion. From somewhere outside--'

He cut himself off.

'Oh no...'

'Clear?' 'Commander' Harry Quaid called again.

Marshall ducked behind the wall at the top of the ramp as Quaid rounded the corner and joined him.

The second blast rushed outward from the bottom of the concrete entry ramp. A billowing cloud of grey smoke raced up the ramp and shot out onto the street, thundering past Marshall and Quaid.

Fragments of metal -- the remnants of what had been the steel grating that closed off the library's parking lot -- clattered loudly to the ground.

The smoke cleared and Marshall, Quaid and a small cohort of NSA agents made their way down the charred ramp, stepping over the gnarled pieces of steel that now littered the slope.

Marshall stopped at the bottom of the ramp and stared in awe at the sight before him.

Across the wide rectangular opening of the parking lot -- filling the exploded round hole in the middle of the steel grating -- was an enormous grid of bright blue electricity, crackling and sizzling, lashing out every few seconds with long ringers of high-voltage lightning.

Marshall folded his arms as Quaid stood beside him, gazing at the criss-crossing grid of light before them.

'We knew it,' Quaid said, not taking his eyes off the wall of blue light.

'We did indeed,' Marshall said. 'So. They electrify the whole building, cutting it off, sealing it so that nothing can get in or out...'

'Right.'

'So, why have they done it?' Marshall asked. 'What the hell is going on inside this building that we're not supposed to see?'

----ooo0ooo------

Holly tapped her foot impatiently as she waited on the Third Floor landing of the stairwell. Selexin was peering around the open fire door into the study hall.

The room was a mess.

An absolute mess.

A diagonal line of pure destruction ran all the way across the study hall -- from the doorway to the janitor's room in the far corner, right up to the stairwell door. Desks crushed beneath the weight of the Karanadon lay in splinters, strewn all over the floor.

In the dim blue city light, Selexin could just make out the doorway to the janitor's room on the far side of the room. There didn't seem to be anybody there at the moment. In a dark corner of his mind, Selexin wondered what had happened to Hawkins and Balth--

Suddenly a shadow cut across his view of the janitor's room.

A dark shape, barely distinguishable in the hazy blue darkness, about the size of a man, but much, much thinner, moving stealthily between the desks of the study hall, heading toward the janitor's room.

Selexin ducked back behind the stairwell door, hoping that it hadn't seen him.

Then he grabbed Holly's hand and they began to descend the stairs.

In the janitor's room, Hawkins leaned back wearily against the concrete wall. He was watching Balthazar walk gingerly around the room.

Now that his eyes were clear of Reese's saliva and his vision seemingly restored, Balthazar seemed to be getting his strength back. A few minutes before, he had managed to stand up on his own. Now he was walking.

Hawkins looked out through the doorway -- over the wide puddle of methylated spirits he had poured -- into the study hall.

Everything was silent.

Nobody was out there.

He turned back to watch Balthazar pace awkwardly around the room, and as he did so, he failed to notice a sharp triangular head loop itself smoothly and silently around the doorway.

It looked inside, slowly tilting its head from side to side, alternating between Balthazar and Hawkins.

It never made a sound.

Hawkins turned idly and saw it. He stopped cold.

The head was a long, sharp, flat isosceles triangle, pointing downwards. No eyes. No ears. No mouth. Just a flat, black triangle, slightly larger than a man's head.

And it just hovered there, in the doorway.

The body was still out of view, but Hawkins could clearly see its long thin 'neck'.

Now, inasmuch as everything he had seen so far was basically 'animal' -- with eyes, limbs and skin -- this thing, whatever it was, was totally alien.