“I can do this on my own, you know.”

“Not a chance.”

The crutch was too unstable; they left it behind and went on, Michael supporting Alicia from one side. A rifle dangled over her shoulder. Her steps were labored, more hobble than walk. From time to time, she issued a tiny gasp he knew she was trying to hide. The minutes dripped away. They came to a small shelter of elaborate iron scrollwork, painted white with pigeon guano. The smell of the sea had grown strong.

“This is it,” she said.

From his pack, Michael removed a lantern and lit the wick. As they descended the stairs, he detected small movements along the floor. He paused and raised the lantern. Rats were scurrying everywhere, long brown ropes of them hugging the edges of the walls.

“Yuck,” he said.

They reached the bottom. Arched brick columns supported the roof above the tracks. On the tiled wall, a sign in gold lettering read ASTOR PLACE.

“Which direction?” Michael felt turned around in the dark.

“This way. South.”

He dropped onto the rail bed. Alicia handed him her rifle, and he helped her down. As they passed into the tunnel, the air became colder. Water sloshed at their feet. He counted their steps. At one hundred, the light of his lantern caught a frisson of movement: the hissing spray of water that shot from the edges of the bulkhead. He stepped forward and pressed his hand against the thick metal. Behind it lay untold tons of pressure, the weight of the sea, like an unfired cannon.

“How much time?” Alicia asked. She was leaning against the wall, scanning the tunnel with the rifle.

They had used forty-five minutes. He stripped off his pack and removed his supplies. Alicia was keeping watch on the far end of the tunnel. He twisted the wires of the blasting caps together, then clipped the end to the cable from the spool. Keeping everything dry would be a challenge; he had to prevent water from contacting the fuses. He returned the dynamite to his pack and searched the door for something to hang it on. Its surface was absolutely smooth.

“There,” Alicia said.

Beside the bulkhead, a long rusty screw jutted from the wall. Michael hung his pack on it, handed Alicia the detonator, and began to pull out the cable from the spool.

“Let’s go.”

They emerged into the Astor Place station and scrambled onto the platform. Unspooling the cable behind them, they headed for the stairs and ascended to the first landing. A particle-filled daylight filtered down from street level. Kneeling, Michael placed the plunger on the floor, split the cable with his teeth, and threaded one wire into each of the two slotted screws on the top of the box. Alicia was sitting on the step below him, goggles pushed up onto her forehead, her rifle pointed into the blackness below. Circles of sweat drenched her shirt at the throat and armpits; her jaw was tight with pain. As he tightened the wing nuts, their eyes met.

“That ought to do it,” Michael said.

Ten minutes to go.

—

Amy in darkness: First came the pain, a sharp-edged thudding at the back of her skull. This was followed by the sensation of being dragged. Her thoughts refused to organize. Where was she? What had occurred? What force was pulling her along? Solitary pictures drifted by, pushed by mental winds: a television screen of spitting static; fat, feathered snowflakes descending from an inky sky; Carter’s garden, a carpet of living color; the tossing, blue-black sea. There was the floor—dirty, scuffed. Her tongue was dense and heavy in her mouth. She tried to make a sound, but none would come. The floor passed by in aortal jerks, timed to the rhythm of the tugging pressure on her wrists. The idea of resistance took hold, but when she attempted to move her limbs, she found she had no power to act; her body had been sundered from her will.

She sensed, then saw, a light, a kind of filtered glowing, and in the next instant everything changed: how the air moved on her skin, the way sound behaved, her intuitive sense of the physical parameters around her. Noises expanded and leapt away; the air smelled different, less confined, with a biological tang.

“Leave her there, please.”

The voice—nonchalant, even a little bored—came from someplace ahead. The pressure on her wrists released; her face slammed into the floor. A hot, glowing ball ricocheted around the interior of her skull like an ember spat from a fire.

“Gently, for God’s sake.”

Consciousness ebbed, then, like a dark wave returning to shore, broke upon her again. She tasted blood in her mouth; she had bitten her tongue. The floor was cool against her cheek. The light, what was it? And the sound? A low-grade murmuring, not made by voices per se but by a volume of breathing bodies. She sensed the presence of faces. Faces and also hands, lurking in a fog. Her brain told her: Look harder, Amy. Focus your eyes and look.

It wasn’t good. It wasn’t good at all.

She was surrounded by virals. The first layer was crouched around her at a distance of just a yard or two—jaws clicking, throats amphibiously bobbing, hooked fingers caressing the air with small, syncopated movements, as if tapping the keys of invisible pianos. This was bad, but not the worst of it. The room writhed and throbbed, a population of hundreds. They carpeted the walls. They gazed down from the balconies like spectators at a contest. They filled each nook and corner and perched atop every ledge. The space was squirming like a pit of snakes.

“That all went rather smoothly,” the voice drolly continued. “I’m a little bit amazed, actually. I was worried that their enthusiasm might get the better of them. They do that.”