Her head swung sideways with the force of his slap. Saliva flew from her lips, scattering across the room, adhering to whatever the globules hit. One eyelid swung open. An enlarged pupil stared sightlessly.

“Death Angel, you wake up and tell me!” A red image of his hand appeared on her cheek. “You tell me why! Why you made me die die die die!” Another slap punctuated his words. Her head rolled back.

“Stop it,” she mumbled.

“Death Angel?” His fingers tightened around her shoulders and shook.

“Stop it. He’s just different from all… you. Can’t help…”

“Death Angel wake up and tell me!” He floated above the capsule now, his feet anchored under machinery braces, his arms shaking hers.

You make me scream, Death Angel, make me die inside a thousand times more than out. Hurt. Hurt.

“Why do that? He’s not… hurting you…” She coughed and fell silent, closing her eyes.

“Death Angel wake up!” he shouted next to her ear.

“Brain activity is depressed, Virgil. You will not get anything out of her until she is in semiconsciousness again.”

He hovered directly over her for the next hour, watching, listening, speaking to her in a rambling monotone, apologizing, begging her to return. The computer suggested that he receive an injection of nourishment. He snapped the plastic tube into his wrist port to accept the trickle of dextrose and vitamins. After a while, the computer made a buzzing sound.

“Brain activity resuming.”

Death Angel, you make it hard. Harder than it’s ever been. So hard and you can’t be reached.

He pulled closer to her bare, pallid skin. The oxygen cannula under her nose hissed with quiet regularity. He floated horizontally over her, arms grasping the lips of the capsule.

“Wake up, Delia,” he whispered in her ear, pulling even closer. You make it so hard. He touched her. “I want to-”

“Free for-” she muttered. “Thrive. Sick heaven, hate. Trine. Men.”

“Delia.”

“Ate mine then. Mind. Denned. Dead. Dead. Frozen dead died.” Her head rolled about, loose as a rag doll’s. Wires rattled against the capsule. Her eyes opened. “Virgil. Killed me. Virgil. I died for Virgil.”

“You’re not dead.”

“Waited until I died. Cold dead.”

Closer he drew, pulling in, touching the flesh of his body to hers. “You’re not dead, Delia,” he said, his voice a low murmur. “Feel. Life is feeling. You’ve only died once, just once. Believe in me: you can die again and again with me forever.”

Slowly, reverently, he slid into her, feeling the cool touch of her thighs against his. For a moment, she murmured peacefully, beginning to move with his rhythm. Then her eyelids snapped open like a mechanical doll’s. Her pupils irised down into tight, black points of terror.

She screamed. A powerful shove pushed Virgil out, spinning him against a bulkhead. The food tube popped out of his wrist and snaked about, leaking fluid.

“No!” she shrieked. “Died enough. I’m dead!” She thrashed her arms about, tangling them in wires and pulling off the electrogel contacts. With a shriek of animal fury, she ripped the waste tubes from her. Blood smeared the catheter that snaked loosely about in the weightless chamber. Blood and urine sailed about in pulsating globules, adhering like living, hungry microbes to anything they touched.

Virgil kicked back toward her, whipping about to grasp at her thigh. Overcome by nausea, she doubled up, pulling in her legs. Virgil sailed past her, grabbing at air, and hit the opposite bulkhead.

“Delia. You’re safe here. I’m Virgil. Just keep calm.”

She dry heaved in small, rapid spasms. Coughing, she looked wildly about.

Adult fetus, hanging over me, her arms cradling her stomach, her eyes so scared. Death Angel so unprotected, so far from Nightsheet, so hungry for him. Hold still. Please.

“Hold still, Delia. I’ll bring you down.” He climbed over to her and reached out. Seizing one foot, he received a powerful kick in the face from the other. He hit one bulkhead and she the opposite.

“Damn you!” he shouted, covering his nose and eyes. “You’re alive. Thank me, damn you. I died and died to find you!” Gave up my body to get the dead man’s help. I boiled and froze.

Somewhere, a hatchway hissed open and shut. “She has left the room, Virgil.”

“What?” He uncovered his eyes to look about. “Well, stop her! Seal all hatches.”

“Done. However, I cannot keep a hatch sealed against a direct command unless there exists a pressure differential-”

“Then change programming.” He kicked toward the exit hatch and bumped his shoulder passing through.

“This is not programming, this is the construction of the hatch locks themselves.”

“It’ll slow her down, at least. Where is she?”

“Ring One, Level Five, Two O’Clock, going to One-Five-One. She is moving aimlessly, no apparent goal.”

Sniffing back a small puddle of blood building up in his nose, Virgil dragged through the passages, listening to the speakers for Delia’s location, keeping track of his own, and closing in.

And then, “Virgil-she has removed a wedgecutter from one of the emergency sealant cabinets in One-One-Twelve. Get there fast.”

“Send a robot!”

“None in the vicinity. Hurry.”

“I’m almost there!” he shouted, speeding through a passageway.

“Hurry. She has severed her aorta and superior vena cava. Respiration zero. Brain death in six minutes-”

He propelled through the hatch into the compartment and looked above him. She hung suspended in a carnelian haze. The wedgecutter stuck out of her chest, the jagged, meat-raw wound still voiding blood.

A billion ruby suns orbit around her, a crimson galaxy. I had you so shortly, Death Angel, and you brought Nightsheet to you. Stupid.

He moved through the floating droplets of blood to take her body in his arms.

“Get her to the medical bay,” the computer said. “We might be able to revive her prior to brain death.”

Virgil ran along the curving corridors in his own version of artificial gravity, then he sailed through the straightaways, taking the fastest path back. Her body drifted limply in his grasp, the wedgecutter grating against a rib. A red line flowed behind him, droplets of blood breaking loose and drifting until air resistance slowed them.

“Put her in the boxdoc.”

Virgil pushed her into the unit. Sealing the lid, he watched as mechanical hands and tools immediately dug into her chest. One hand withdrew the wedgecutter while a pair of heavy clippers crunched into flesh just above her left breast. After three powerful cuts, the clippers withdrew, pulling back the broken sections of rib.

They’ll cut you up, Death Angel, the Master Snoop’s revenge for joining Nightsheet. And you won’t come back to me, will you?

The boxdoc continued its efforts. A series of tubes plunged into the exposed arteries and veins. Pure oxygen pumped into the container. Two small extensions covered with a farrago of stainless-steel instruments performed the operation.

“Can you bring her back?” She won’t come back. Not from this.

“She has entered only the first stage of brain death. The medical parameters indicate that we can save her. Her heart will have to be replaced temporarily until a new one can be cloned. Ceramic braces will be cast to replace her ribs. She will probably suffer from diminished mental capacity-”

“Shut up!” He leaned over the unit, watching a thick red fluid pump into her chest. The blood on his arms and chest had dried into brown freckles and streaks that flaked when he moved.

Death Angel I can’t have you like that.

Her eyes fluttered open for a moment and her gaze met his. Her mouth opened as though to speak and her head shook weakly before she lapsed back into anesthesia.

No. Not like that.