Deadstock

'If you say so,' Theo added.

Javier pocketed the hand phone and scurried to the next position. The numbered black doors had made him nervous, before. He had expected one or more of them to fly open and reveal-what?- standing there. But now he knew there was only more of that gray flesh bulging behind them.

He came to the edge of B-Wing s front, and looked over at the smaller section of the complex that connected the two wings and contained the lobby.

He saw the front doors. He saw they stood open. And he saw there was no glossy gray flesh filling the space. The threshold was black, empty. It gave access to the building s interior.

Javier had risen unconsciously from his crouch. He began walking toward the front doors, oblivious to the rain that smashed and soaked him. From his pouch, he extracted a round ball, which he held ready in his right fist. From his pants pocket, his left hand withdrew the remote device. His thumb poised itself over the key that he had programmed for the arming of individual grenades. He pointed the device at the ball in his fist to link them. And kept approaching those gaping front doors.

Once, he had confessed to Mira that as a Folger Street Snarler he had torched cars and abandoned warehouses for a cut of the insurance money. He had always made certain there was no one inside those warehouses, not even a single squatter. So he had done this sort of thing before. But not with this level of equipment, and not with the intent to kill. His heart hammered. He could not calm it this time.

Just paces from the open front doors now, but still he could not see inside. Javier slipped away the remote to trade it for the hand phone. 'People,' he said into it. 'Where are you at?'

'Almost done,' Patryk reported.

'Me, too,' said Barbie.

'I still got some left,' said Theo.

'Just leave the bags with what you have left against the building, and get back to the car,' Javier told them. 'I ll meet you in a minute.'

'Where are you now?' Barbie asked.

'Just go,' he commanded.

He switched back the phone for the remote, and then Javier walked the rest of the way to the front doors.

He stood at the very threshold, expecting some trick, some booby-trap to be triggered. This close and he still couldn t see anything at all within the building. He might as well have been looking into the vastness of outer space. Stupid; he had not thought to bring flashlights for them, maybe too afraid that their beams would be seen by cars moving along Beaumonde Street. And just as he thought this, a light came on in the lobby before him. A single, distant and weak emergency light had stuttered into life. Startled, Javier very nearly pressed the button on the remote that would give the grenade a three-second delay for throwing. He took one step inside.

Another step, and he realized that the light was buried like a fly inside amber. The light shone through a translucent wall of flesh; he couldn t yet tell how thick. The flesh formed a tunnel through the lobby, seemed to have vaguely ribbed sides and a curved or arched ceiling. Javier grew warier still, fearing that this living chute would abruptly contract, squeeze down to crush and eject him. Or swallow and digest him. But he took another creeping step.

On his fourth step, he saw a figure detach itself from the gloom ahead of him. A figure that became a silhouette against the weak, imprisoned light. Javier halted his advance as their two bodies regarded each other.

'Javier,' said the figure, so small that it might have been a child. But he knew better than that. He recognized her outline, her proportions, even though her head seemed strangely smooth and hairless.

'Mira!' Javier said. The grenade of his heart had been armed. He almost lunged forward right then and there, to grab her up in his arms and run with her out of this place. He almost burst into tears. She was alive! That monster in the cellar had captured but not killed her, and now she had found her way out! She had been waiting for him, waiting for him to return and take her away from here.

'Javier,' she said again, and this time even though he recognized her voice, he realized he was not hearing it with his ears. It was bypassing his ears to go directly to his brain. But she could do that, right? She had her gifts, didn t she? 'Don t come any closer,' the voice in his mind continued. 'I don t want you to see me.'

'Mira… I got to get you out of here!'

'I can t leave, Javier.'

She took a few stiff, waddling steps toward him to lessen the space between them just a little. He saw that she held something in one hand. She was dragging a length of rope or cable. He grasped that it was secured to her. She was bound. Still a prisoner.

No, not bound. It tethered her, yes, but now Javier understood the rest. He understood because he saw Mira s silhouetted flesh glisten around the edges as it moved against the pallid light. The light glistened on the silver and black striped cord, too, though he still couldn t tell if it were attached to her front, like an umbilicus, or her back. For a moment, because it was uneven and distorted by the ribbed walls of the flesh chamber, a little of the light had slid around the side of her face. It was dark in here, yes, so it might only have been an illusion that she had no face. Might have been, but he doubted it.

'You son of a bitch,' Javier said, shaking his head slowly from side to side. His tightening fingers made indentations in the clay he held. It began to mimic the lines in his palm, like imitation flesh patterning itself intimately after his own. 'You son of a bitch.'

The familiar outline came to a stop. 'It's me, Javier. He took me. He s taken others, too. He swallowed his own mother.'

'You re one of those things!' Javier shouted. 'Like the Blank People!'

'You want to destroy me. Good. You have to destroy me, Javier. You have to set us free. Even he wants to die now.'

'Who are you talking about?'

'The Outsider. He swallowed his mother. He swallowed her fear and it hurts him. He s confused. He s. lost. He wants it all to end, Javier.'

'This is a trick.'

'You must do what you came to do. I didn t come to stop you. I only came to say goodbye.'

It was Mira. It was a trick, yes. A forgery. But it was still Mira at the same time. He knew it. He just didn t want to believe it. And yet, he was also desperate to believe it.

'I m sorry I didn t save you,' he croaked. Tears had started from his eyes.

'You can save me now. Please hurry. Part of him wants to die. Part of him wants to stop hurting. But part of him wants to destroy. Destroy everything. And that part is growing. Soon, that s all of him that will be left.'

The outline extended both its short arms, like a child asking for a hug. A lover asking for a parting embrace. But Javier knew, without her voice in his mind even having to tell him, what she really wanted him to do.

He closed the distance between them. As he came, he thumbed the pouch s strap off his shoulder. He got just close enough to pass the pouch of explosives into her waiting hands. He did not want to brush her imitation flesh. He did not want to see her face any more clearly. He backed off quickly once she had folded the pouch against her chest.

'Thank you, Javier. You have to go now. Please hurry.'

'I m sorry, Mira,' he said, backing off further for the doorway behind him. The night and the rain.

'Don t be sorry. It will be okay now.'

He paused at the very threshold again. 'Love you.' He d never said it before. To a girlfriend, to his mother, to any of the Snarlers.

The one buried light flickered out. The voice flickered out in his head, but he heard in a trailing, ghostly whisper, 'I love you, too.'

The others had just managed to get Satin inside the car when Javier arrived and let himself into the driver s seat. Patryk, Barbie, and Theo piled in, and the hovercar lifted from the wet pavement.

'Where were you?' Barbie asked.

'Inside. I left my bag in there. We got to get out of here, fast.'

She saw the remote gripped in his right hand as he started the vehicle moving with his left.