She said nothing. But she held his gaze. She was waiting for him to start changing again, he realized. Watching to see her own face reproduced on his, like a reflection appearing through subsiding ripples after a pebble has broken through a pond's smooth surface.

Several little flies hovered through the room, and one alighted on her chin, crawled toward her mole as if might be some rare berry. The woman turned her face toward her shoulder and crushed the bug against herself. When she returned her eyes to Stake's, he saw the tiny insect smeared across her lower lip in black flecks.

Without thinking, seemingly without willing it- but aware that the heavy door was closed behind him-Stake reached out with his thumb and wiped the flecks from her lower lip.

She opened her mouth, and closed it around his thumb.

For a moment he expected her to crush her jaws together. Then shake her head from side to side like a dog with a cat in its teeth. Instead, she sucked on his thumb. Keeping her eyes fixed on his. They were black again, at the same time mysterious and full of meaning.

And that was when Corporal Jeremy Stake knew that he and the Earth Killer were going to be lovers.

With her still sucking on his thumb, and swirling her tongue around it, he heard a strange sound from beyond the thick door. Unearthly, uncanny. Between the sound and the woman's actions, the hair rose on the back of his neck. He realized it was the sound the monks made through the spiral hole where their faces had once been. All ten monks were making the sound together. It was a time for chanting. They could see no timepieces, but it must have been an hour they felt arrive inside them.

The noise grew louder. Louder. It hurt his ears. Became deafening.

Stake no longer saw the woman. He saw only his pain. He clamped both hands over his ears, and opened his mouth wide in a cry of agony. His mouth widened. Widened. The sound of the monks was now coming from his own mouth, which widened more and more. His mouth was going to open until it swallowed his nose, then his eyes. Until all that was left was a gaping hole screaming in the center of his face.

Oh my God, he thought. I'm changing into one of them.

His eyes sprang open, his palms still pressed to his ears. That horrible sound still pouring out of his wide, wide mouth. Jeremy Stake scrambled out of the chair in front of his computer station, awake once again, and staggered into his bathroom. Terrified of what he would see in the mirror there.

But when he dared to activate the mirror-screen (which reversed his reflection for him, so that he might appear to himself as he appeared to others), Stake saw that his mouth was not locked open wide, and spreading wider, after all. It was more of a drooping grimace, really. And he panted through it, gripping the edge of the sink. Gazing at his reflection, he muttered a chant of his own.

"Jeremy Stake. Jeremy Stake. Jeremy Stake." As if he were his own prisoner of war, giving his name, rank and serial number.

"These are the ones we've killed inside the building," said Mira, waving a plump little arm. A neat row of five mostly intact bodies lay on their backs in the gloom of apartment 6-B of Steward Gardens. "Five to the ten of us they've killed."

"I didn't notice the missing spaces when we were outside," Javier said, referring to the narrow alcoves the Blank People occupied. He stepped closer to the corpses and prodded one's leg with the toe of his shoe.

"Like I say, this is only five out of seventy-two of them. No wonder you didn't notice."

"So they're not androids, huh?" Javier said dubiously, crouching down beside one of the bodies. Even this close he smelled no decay from the corpses, just a faint fishiness from the raw wounds where the Tin Town Terata's guns had blown chunks out of them. Most of the killing wounds were to the heads. He lifted a slender but heavy arm, completely blown off at the elbow. It was rubbery to the touch and in consistency. He noted the whitish filaments that dangled out of the stump in place of veins, or maybe nerves, or maybe tendons.

"They're belfs," Mira stated. Bio-engineered life forms. "But very simple ones, not like real people. They're like organic androids."

Javier laid the limb on the floor again, and bent closer to this creature's decimated head. The interior was as gray as the exterior. A slime of clear fluid coated the insides of the creature's wounds, and a viscous pool had spread under its body, but he saw no shards of skull. He saw no brain. Just solid gray meat throughout, interwoven with a network of those white filaments. However, inside the gaping head he did spot a corner of the shattered programming chip that Mira had alluded to. "So these chips are all turned on."

"All I can think is that the people who would've opened this place, but never did, left the Blank People active to keep out intruders and vandals. And they're probably all tied in to one computer server, along with the generator."

Javier looked up at her. "Okay, but if the power in this place is on, and if these things and the homicidal trash zapper are all running off one server, then why can't the computer just open every window in this place and let all the Blank Fucks inside to finish us off?"

"Well, I can't tell. Maybe the owners programmed the computer to just communicate with these things, to use them as security, and the trash zapper is either an oversight or they left it fully active because the owners still needed to use it. But the weird way it attacked your friend makes me think its program is crossed with the Blank People's program. They're following the same purpose."

"A mixed purpose. To dispose of us trash."

"Yeah, but even the Blank People's behavior can't be normal. The way they're acting, it wouldn't have worked out for this place. Can you imagine these things waking up and killing every visitor, every deliveryman? They're too aggressive. Their program is glitched. Who knows; maybe the owners of this place didn't leave them turned on. Maybe a virus got into the system just recently and woke them up. It could be that homeless guy they killed triggered the initial effect, by messing around in here somehow. Being the first person to trip a security alarm, and bring the things out of a dormant state, but now they're filling their role in a distorted way."

Javier got to his feet and smiled his city tough's sneering smile. "Huh. You're pretty smart, you know that?"

He saw her beautiful face redden. "My body is stunted. Not my brain."

"So are you the leader of your gang?"

"Oh no. No. He was killed by the gang we were fighting, before we even got out of Tin Town."

"But the others seem to do as you say. More or less."

"They respect me, I guess." She shrugged humbly.

"I wish my people would be respecting me a little better. They've always been rough dogs to rein in, but lately I don't know. Maybe because I'm getting old for this dung. I'm twenty-five. I ain't a teenager anymore. Hell, most of the original Snarlers have all gone off and gotten married and whatnot. These kids you see me with all came later."

"Maybe with us mutants that's not an issue so much. We're together more out of survival than to, um…"

"Than to what-be criminals? Sell drugs? Mug people? Torch cars and abandoned warehouses for a cut of the insurance money?" His tone had become defensive. "Yeah, I've done all those things."

Mira stammered, "I just mean, our gangs in Tin Town can have people of all ages."

He drew in a breath to calm himself. "Well, I'm definitely feeling ancient for the Snarlers. Twenty-five is like being a worn-out old grandpa."