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Trying to give up on the weird taste in her mouth from losing Smith, from letting him take Mahmoud out. She could see him, in her mind’s eye, popping out of some secret door somewhere, trying to make his way by secret spook passages and guile, to the Pelican. No, he wouldn’t make it. Wouldn’t last long on his own. Even gladder now that she’d beaten him up. A small victory, but still. He’d feel it for the rest of his short life. He’d remember her.

The corridor was so long that Percy had been tossing flares down toward the end of it like he was playing in some weird shuffleboard tournament. Reached farther than their flashlights. Flares they had plenty of, bullets not so much any more. They’d taken a break to wolf down some MREs, but still she was hungry.

MacCraw’d acquitted himself well, too, despite his bitching. When they’d made it back to the Red Horse, she’d tell Foucault that. He scooped up the flares they reached, squinting and handing them back to Percy to throw again. Wished they could do the same with bullets.

Singh came to a sudden halt.

“Talk to me,” Lopez said.

“I heard something.”

Lopez studied him a moment. Singh was holding it together. Barely. Don’t get jumpy.

“Flare, Percy.”

He obliged. Flung it as far as he could, until it came to a hissing stop at the far edge of their vision.

Right at the feet of a silhouette, the figure of a Marine.

MacCraw frowned. Singh held a hand up to his eyes to shield them from the glare.

The figure came out of the flaming mandala of the flare, roughly fifty meters away.

“Is that . . . ?” MacCraw began and then trailed off. “That can’t be . . .”

“It’s Ayad,” Singh said. “It’s definitely Ayad.”

Lopez could see him clearly now, running toward them. Loping almost. Trying to make a sound in the back of his throat, but it was coming out like thnnnnnn or thmmmmmm. Should’ve been a hum, more like a moan. Holding out a hand as if in greeting. A huge smile on his face.

MacCraw let out a whoop. “Ayad!”

“It’s not Ayad,” Lopez warned.

“What do you mean it’s not Ayad?” Singh said. “Of course it is. It’s Ayad.”

Ayad hadn’t had a smile that went from ear to ear. Or something growing out of the back of his head. Ayad hadn’t had an extra arm with a claw, held a little back behind him, as if to disguise it. Ayad hadn’t been preceded by a smell that made Lopez’s eyes water.

But MacCraw kept babbling on, like he didn’t want to believe it, and Singh just fed into that, almost manic. Percy backed up until he was level with her, would’ve slipped back farther if she’d let him.

This wasn’t the way Lopez wanted it to end.

When Ayad was about forty meters away, she put a bullet through his left shoulder. It knocked him off his feet. Which brought MacCraw and Singh out of their trance or whatever the hell it had been. A lot harder for them not to see the problem.

Ayad rose with a howl, and kept coming, running now on all fours like something born to it, with MacCraw babbling in a different way now.

“Don’t fire until he’s closer,” Lopez ordered. “Right after he’s cleared that intersection.”

Ayad reached the intersection—and something with all the speed and weight of a freight train smashed into him and splattered him up against the opposite wall. Ayad fell as the creature howled at him, then picked him up and held him with one monstrous hand out in front, turning toward them. The other arm weighed down with what could almost have been antlers coming out of its palm.

The suddenness of the act, the viciousness of it, shocked Lopez. Threw her for a second. Just a second.

“That’s an Elite, ” Percy said. “Look at the size of it!”

Lopez had never seen one bigger, either. Its head almost bumped against the ceiling. As it came toward them down the corridor, she could see the striations of infection running up and down its legs, the suggestion of an outline on the Elite’s chest of the same fungal-jellyfish thing that’d taken Rakesh.

The infected Elite turned this way and that, sniffing,