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a stack of ripped-out spines began to pile up.
    Some of the men tried to run; others stood their ground, desperately striking blindly at whatever was attacking them. This had no effect on the presence, which continued to work its way over to where four men stood against the gas chamber wall, two on each side of its door.
    The darkness was filled with screams as body parts continued to fly. A red haze formed, so intense it seemed to attack the darkness itself.
    Ortega slipped off to one side of the death chamber, Banner to the other. The Hmong was nowhere to be seen.
    Cross and Nyati remained, now standing alone. At a “Go!” from Cross, they both stepped back through the opened door of the gas chamber, still watching the inexorable progress of…something as it moved through the wall of human flesh.
    “Sweet Jesus!” Nyati muttered under his breath.
    “This is too soon,” Cross hissed. “I was sure they’d—”
    Cross cut himself off. The presence he felt to his right wasn’t the one gutting and discarding individual prisoners; it was the Hmong, joining them.
    The three men backed all the way into the chamber. Cross seated himself in the chair where condemned convicts were once strapped down. He lit a cigarette.
    Nyati took the other chair—dual executions were far from uncommon in Chicago’s past.
    The Hmong crouched in a far corner, covered entirely in a dark mesh blanket.
    A black mist approached the threshold of the death chamber. The men instantly realized the presence had been divided into small pieces by the slashing attacks of the mass of convicts it had oozed its way through. But then they all saw it begin to regroup into a unified mass. Slowly, it struggled to form a single entity. The black blob had been deeply wounded—chunks of its border were missing, and gaping holes were visible within its remaining mass. And yet it kept moving forward, as if the human flesh it sought would be the replenishment it needed.
    As the misty black mass entered the death chamber, Ortega and Banner slipped behind it and slammed the door closed. They dropped the heavy outside crossbar into place and took off, running.
    They didn’t run far. As soon as they reached the control room, both men threw a series of heavy switches, releasing cyanide pellets into a shallow pool of acid under the death chairs. A greenish gas immediately began to billow up, filling the chamber.
    “Now!” Cross yelled, reaching behind his neck and pulling into place a flat-faced mask with a dark filter over the front. Nyati and the Hmong did the same.
    Cross jumped to his feet, drawing a heavy bear-claw knife from behind his back. Nyati unsheathed a thick length of pipe and waved his wrist; a razor-edged arrow popped free at each end. The Hmong cradled a beautifully crafted blowgun.
    Without warning, Nyati and Cross attacked, slashing at the encroaching blackness…and finally penetrating the shadow-blob, which became more visible every time it took another hit.
    The Hmong was the last to act. Holding the blowgun as a brain surgeon would a tumor-seeking scalpel, he emptied his lungs to blast off a single shot.
    The shadow collapsed, breaking into patches of black on the floor of the chamber. But the patches immediately began to pool once again.
    Nyati crawled over to the mass, tentatively extending his hand.
    “It’s still alive. I can feel…something. Like a pulse, maybe. If we’re gonna finish it—”
    Cross pounded his palm hard against the door to the death chamber. Banner and Ortega threw off the crossbar and left it just long enough for two of the men inside to dive out.
    Cross pulled off his mask, opened his mouth wide, reached in, and wrenched the phony molar free. He pressed the top of the tooth, which immediately began to hum.
    “It’s down. In the chamber,” he barked into the mini-mike, his voice calm, precise…and urgent.
    The blond man was in the War Room, Wanda at his side. He was shouting into a fiber-stalk microphone.