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slowly inward.   Concrete stairs went down into the dark.   He saw eyes blinking up at him, but the overlay was clean and clear.   “Anyone down there?”
    Silence.   He waited, leaning against the frame.   The thing like a rat came back out, scampering across the floor and away.   Somewhere inside Mason a hysterical giggle started, and he clamped down on the noise.   He pointed the Tenko-Senshin’s beam down the stairs, picking out the peeling paper on the walls.   A light switch, green with mold, was mounted at the top of the stairs.   Mason reached forward and clicked it a couple of times, the sound sharp against the quiet.
    He reached into his pocket for a drone, twisting the sphere and tossing it down the steps.   It bounced, a scattering of red lasing out as it tumbled down into the dark.   Mason let the overlay fill up, picking out the layout of the room below.   He sealed the front of his jacket, shrugging his shoulders as the helmet chattered out of his collar and lapped into place around his head.
    “There’s no one down there, Mason.”   Carter’s voice was all business.
    “I thought I told you not to talk to me.”
    “Your heart’s getting significantly elevated.   I was concerned.”
    “You were what?”   Mason put a foot on the stair case, starting down.
    “Concerned.”
    “You got the satellite up?”
    “Not yet.”
    “I’d be more concerned about that.”
    Carter sighed.   “I can do more than one thing at once.”
    Something with a gash instead of a mouth reached for him from the dark below.   He blinked twice, feeling his heart kick in his chest.   “It seems worse, here.”
    “The satellite is worse here?”
    “No.   The—”   Mason coughed, feeling something like phlegm in his throat.   “Stuff.”
    “Stuff?   What are you, five years old?”
    Mason leaned against the wall, his forehead resting against the peeling paper.   He breathed in deep and slow, his hands shaking.   He felt a little stab of anger at Carters’ words, then he grinned as the anger pushed back the fear.   “Thanks, Carter.”
    “What for?”
    “Keeping it real.”
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about.   But really.”
    “What?”
    “‘Stuff?’”
    Mason continued down the stairs, the beam of light pushing back the darkness in the basement.   Water trickled from a crack the ceiling, the old concrete chipped in spidery lines.   He played the beam along the cracks.
    “You getting this?”
    “Yes.”   There was a pause, then Carter cleared her throat.   “I don’t think those cracks are that old.”
    Mason followed the cracks as they seemed to converge, stepping past a support beam.   He paused, looking at the beam.   It was charred and black along one side, the side facing where the cracks in the ceiling were converging.
    That’s when he saw the body.   It was covered with a layer of carbon, barely recognisable, black from head to foot, the corpse curled up in a foetal position against the floor.   Water had mixed with the ash, a pool of dark stretching out around it.   Mason checked the feed.   The body was there in digital too.
    “I think we’re getting warmer.”
    Carter snorted.   “Don’t you think that’s just a bit in bad taste?”
    “What?   Oh.   Right.”   Mason’s mouth tugged at the edges, the expression more habit than feeling.   “Bad choice of words.”
    “Accurate, though.   Find it, Mason.   We can’t afford to lose this one.”
    They came out of the darkness at him then, eyes milky from the grave.   There were seven of them, their shambling gate bringing them into the Tenko-Senshin’s beam.   Their grasping hands reached for him.   The feed —
    Mason pulled the trigger, the scream of the weapon deafening in the basement.   The blaze of the flechettes, bright and angry, stabbed across the floor between him and the walking corpses.   The heat from the weapon sparked and kicked at the air, and one of the corpses