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Kaplan nodded. He turned to Rain. "C'mon, Rain."

"They fuckin' killed J.D., man. That's shit!"

Spence grabbed her arm. "They're gonna fuckin' kill us if we don't move our asses!"

Shrugging off Spence's hand without looking at him, Rain turned and moved for the door. Kaplan followed, as did Spence.

As they ran, Rain asked, "So what the fuck did happen to the rest of the team? They zombie food, too?"

"No, the Red Queen's defenses got them."

Rain stopped and grabbed Kaplan by the shoulder. "Say the fuck what? I thought you were supposed to bring down—"

Spence pushed them both forward, one with each hand. "Can you two kill each other later?"

Throwing his head back, he indicated the hordes of people shuffling toward them.

Kaplan ran ahead. He opened the door to the Red Queen's chamber, waited for Spence and Rain to come in, then shut the door behind them.

It was his fault.

All of it.

He'd tried not to think about it, but Rain was right. It was his responsibility.

Dead people all over the place. And the people best qualified to stop them were cut to ribbons before his eyes. Because he missed something, because he fucked up, over half the team was dead.

"Whatever they are, there's too many of them out there," Rain said.

"Whatever they are?" Kaplan repeated, trying and failing not to sound hysterical. "It's pretty obvious what they are. Lab coats, badges—those people used to work here!"

"All the people working here are dead."

"Well," Spence said philosophically, "that isn't stopping them from walking around."

"Where did they come from? Why didn't we see them on the way in?" Kaplan couldn't stop moving—if he stopped moving, he feared he'd die, and if he died, he'd become one of them.

Rain spoke in a deliberate voice. "When you cut the power, you unlocked the doors. You let them out."

Something else that was on him. No, it wasn't enough that he got One and the others killed, but he was responsible for letting all the dead people out to kill J.D.—and, for all he knew, Alice and Addison, too.

The panic took over completely.

"We're never gonna make it to the surface."

Rain shook her head, then kicked the clip out of her rifle. "I've got one in the breech, and one spare mag."

Spence shook his head. "We are so fucked."

Twenty

THE ENCOURAGING THING FOR ALICE WAS that this was all starting to look familiar.

Unfortunately, each memory that was triggered had an unpleasant connotation.

She walked through the abandoned corridors of the Hive, dimly illuminated by the emergency lighting. Matt had wandered off, and Alice had lost track of Rain, J.D., Kaplan, and Spence.

At the very least, the corridor through which she walked was empty, and so bereft of the undead horrors.

Some areas she walked through meant nothing to her, but others triggered flashes. Here, the office belonging to the person in charge of Project: Open Book. There, the lab where they did some of the preliminary work on the Nemesis Program. Over that way were the cubicles where the support staff for Pharmaceuticals worked, answering phones, processing invoices, making photocopies…

She turned another corner, and the name Clarence fell into her head as she spied a wall lined with eight animal cages: two horizontal rows of four. Each cage had wire mesh on the door—mesh that was currently covered in blood and ripped open from the inside.

Was Clarence one of the animals? She couldn't remember.

With each memory that came back also came the mounting frustration of what she didn't recall.

She heard a noise and whirled around, but saw nothing.

Typical.

Again, she looked at the cages. She could not for the life of her recall what kind of animal was housed in those cages, but the evidence suggested that they had broken out on their own, and they were probably in the same condition as the Hive employees they'd been spending the last half-hour shooting, punching, and hitting.

Then she heard the footsteps.

No—not feet.

The scratchy sound of clawed feet on metal floor.

Tap tap tap tap tap…

She turned