Page 109

She had never witnessed anything like it, and nothing in her training or the many manuals she had read prepared her for this sight. The intensity of the light, its evident heat—mere pinpoints on the globe itself, and yet her trained eye knew that these were explosions of enormous magnitude.

The station was rocked by another firm impact. This was not the usual small metal hail of space debris. An emergency indicator went off, yellow lights flashing near the door. Something had perforated the solar panels. It was as though the space station were under fire. Now she would need to suit up and—

BAMMM! Something had struck the hull. She swam over to a computer and saw immediately the warning of an oxygen leak. A rapid one. The tanks had been perforated. She called out to her shipmates, heading for the airlock.

A bigger impact shook the hull. Thalia suited up as fast as she could, but the station itself had been breached. She struggled to fasten her suit helmet, racing the deadly vacuum. With her last ounce of strength, she opened the oxygen valve.

Thalia drifted into darkness, losing consciousness. Her final thought before blackout was not of her husband but of her dog. In the silence of space, she somehow heard him barking.

Soon the International Space Station joined the rest of the flotsam hurtling through space, gradually slipping from its orbit, floating inexorably toward Earth.

Setrakian’s head swam as he lay on the floor of the rumbling Locust Valley Nuclear Power Plant.

He was turning. He could feel it.

A constricting pain in his throat that was only the beginning. His chest a hive of activity. The blood worms had settled and released their payload: the virus breeding quickly inside him, overwhelming his cells. Changing him. Trying to remake him.

His body could not withstand the turning. Even without his now-weakened veins, he was too old, too weak. He was like a thin-stemmed sunflower bending under the weight of its growing head. Or a fetus growing from bad chromosomes.

The voices. He heard them. The buzz of a greater consciousness. A coordination of being. A concert of cacophony.

He felt heat. From his rising body temperature, but also from the trembling floor. The cooling system meant to prevent hot nuclear fuel from melting had failed—failed on purpose. The fuel had melted through the bottom of the reactor core. Once it reached the water table, the ground beneath the plant would erupt in a lethal release of steam.

Setrakian.

The Master’s voice in his head. Phasing in and out with his own. Setrakian had a vision then, of what looked like the rear of a truck—the National Guard trucks he had seen outside the plant’s entrance. The view from the floor, vague and monochromatic, seen through the eyes of a being with night vision enhanced beyond human ability.

Setrakian saw his walking stick—Sardu’s walking stick—rattling around just a few feet away, as though he could reach out and touch it one last time.

Pic—pic—pic…

He was seeing what the Master saw.

Setrakian, you fool.

The floor of the truck rumbled, speeding away. The view rocked back and forth as though seen by a thing writhing in pain.

You thought poisoning your blood could kill me?

Setrakian pulled himself up onto all fours, relying on the temporary strength the turning imbued him with.

Pic—pic…

I have sickened you, strigoi, Setrakian thought. Again I have weakened you.

And he knew the Master could hear him now.

You are turned.

I have finally released Sardu. And soon I will be released myself.

And he said nothing more, the nascent vampire Setrakian dragging himself closer to the endangered core.

Pressure continued to build inside the containment structure. A bubble of toxic hydrogen expanding out of control. The steel-reinforced concrete shield would only make the ultimate explosion worse.

Setrakian pulled himself arm by arm, leg by leg. His body turning inside, his mind aflutter with the sight of a thousand eyes, his head singing with the chorus of a thousand voices.

Zero hour was at hand. They were all heading underground.