As he walked toward his door, a head popped out of another to his right. It was a woman named Maria, and she was one of the departmental secretaries.

“Your phone’s been ringing for over an hour,” she said.

Russell stopped suddenly. “Why didn’t you answer it for me?”

“I did. It was the same guy every time, and when I told him you weren’t in yet, he just hung up and called back five minutes later.”

As she explained this, he heard a distant phone ringing. Maria disappeared into her office briefly, then came out with a bemused smile on her face.

“Yep. It’s yours again,” she said. “Someone must be desperate to talk to you.”

Russell fumbled with his keys and hurried to his office.

“Not desperate enough to leave a message, though,” she called after him.

Russell flung open his door, tossed his case onto a chair, and then hesitated, his hand hovering over the cradle. It seemed like a long delay before he snatched the phone up, but it was only the gap between rings.

“Hello?” he said.

“Is this Benjamin Russell?” said a quiet voice.

“Speaking.” He wondered if he sounded too eager.

The line crackled, but the speaker said nothing for a while.

“Would I happen to be talking to Michael Philips?” Russell asked.

After a while, a voice said, “No. It’s Tim.”

Russell’s excitement waned. He didn’t know anyone called Tim. His first suspicion was that it was one of his many anonymous students, phoning in sick to get out of an essay deadline. The guy definitely sounded hung-over.

“We met at Indigo Chase yesterday,” Tim said.

“Oh, Tim. Of course. Sorry.” He remembered the boy who had come looking for Michael Philips hadn’t actually given Russell his name. “How are you?”

What’s he doing calling me himself? Russell thought.

“I got your number off your card,” he said.

The card he was meant to give to Michael Philips. “Yes, I remember. Couldn’t you find Michael Philips, then?”

“Nah. I didn’t go.”

“Oh. Probably for the best.” If he really was going to kill him.

Then Tim began to mumble. “I was going to. Yeah, I was going to, but then something came up. Well, actually it was Sarah. I like got a call. You remember I was telling you about her? They told me she woke up yesterday.”

“Sarah?” But then Russell worked it out.

“Yeah. My girlfriend.”

“Well, that’s great, Tim. See? I told you she might wake up.”

There was a long, silent pause.

“Tim, you still there?”

“She’s gone blind,” he said eventually.

Russell frowned. All of a sudden he was glad Tim had called after all.

The boy began mumbling again. “They’ve taken her away somewhere to do some tests, and they said it was otomet-opmet-op-something-rics, and I recognised that word, you know, and then I remembered it was from your card.”

Russell took out one of his cards. At the bottom was his departmental office number and campus extension number. At the top was his name, and beneath his name were the words ‘Specialist in conceptual philosophy and optometrics’.

Not as out of it as he looks and sounds, Russell thought.

“I’m sure they’ll look after her,” he said distantly.

Tim snorted. “They didn’t seem to have a fucking clue what was wrong with her, man. There was like this thing on her eyeball and none of them knew how it got there, and you know what really pissed me off? They won’t let me see her; I mean, the other day they said she wouldn’t wake up, and now she has; it’s like I’ve been given another chance with her, and the bastards won’t even let me see her.”

“Hang on. Back up. What thing on her eyeball?”

Tim sniffed. “I don’t know. They wouldn’t let me look. Jeez, it was like I wasn’t even there. I don’t matter; I’m only her fucking boyfriend!”

“Do you remember anything else they said?”

“Nah. They were all talking in Latin or some shit like that.”

Russell didn’t say anything for a moment.

“So, I was, you know, hoping you could do something. I mean, I don’t know if you can do anything for her, but these bastards are your people, and maybe you can like, talk to them or something.” He sighed. “I just want to see her, man.”

Russell swallowed. “Where are you, Tim?”

A couple of minutes later, Benjamin Russell emerged from his office. As he locked his door, Maria poked her head out into the corridor.

“Did you find out who it was?” she asked.

Russell knew the woman may have been the assistant secretary to the department, but she was its chief gossip.

“Yes. I need you to cancel my classes,” he told her.

“Again? Something wrong?”

“I need to get to St Bart’s.”

He finished locking his door and headed for the elevator.

“Leave it with me,” said Maria. “I won’t let you down.”

I doubt that, Russell thought as the elevator doors opened and he got in.

St Bartholomew’s Hospital was a great sprawling expanse of a hospital spread over several square miles in the heart of the city. It reminded Benjamin Russell of his old alma mater, Oxford University, where the buildings were integrated into the surrounding metropolis, rather than located on one enclosed site. Had he not known in which building the optometry department was situated, he could very easily have got lost, but after deciding to specialise in optometrics, Russell had done a three-month internship at St Bartholomew’s, so he knew exactly where he was going.

The optometry department was in a building that was several hundred years old. In the same building was the ear, nose and throat department. In another building across the road was the psychiatric department. The joke had been repeated so often that it had become a cliché: everything from the neck up had been lumped together; Russell remembered it with a smile as he left the tube station and gladly found the signposts still pointing in the same direction they had fifteen years ago.

With the departments spread out as they were, it made no sense for there to be a general outpatients and inpatients reception, so each building had its own. Russell walked through the automatic door into the busy foyer of the ENT department, which also catered for optometrics. There were perhaps eighty or ninety people standing around or sitting on beige leather seating arranged into open-ended quads, bordered by tropical houseplants and centred round a gently bubbling fountain.

As he approached the reception desks, Russell watched out for Tim. He didn’t know whether he could, as the boy hoped, use his clout to gain him access; he wasn’t sure if he had any. Being a qualified, if not practising, optometric specialist did not guarantee him special privileges above and beyond any other member of the public, though he did wonder if there was anyone still here who he might have known. It wasn’t Tim who he had come here for, anyway; it was Tim’s girlfriend, Sarah.

There were three reception desks, each with a queue. Russell joined the shortest, but there were still five people ahead of him. He stood in the queue for nearly five minutes before he got to second place in it.

“Professor Russell?” said a voice.

Russell knew before he shot a look over his shoulder that it wasn’t Tim, nor anyone from his intern days; he’d been plain Doctor Russell back then.

“Miss King. Well, this is a surprise,” he said uneasily.

Indira King, the young Indian pathologist with Scotland Yard, was standing behind the queues for the reception desks, with one hand on her hip, the other arm crossed over her waist, and a puzzled look on her face.

“What are you doing here?” she said.

Her eyes were probing him. I feel like one of her cadavers, he thought.

“Just following something up,” he said.

“Following something up?”

He instantly regretted having said it. Why didn’t you just say you were visiting someone? he scolded himself. That was plausible, and not suspicious.

Miss King raised an eyebrow. “Without me?”

“Did I say it was about your case?”

“Why? Isn’t it?”

She knew a liar when she met one, and he knew that too. For a moment he didn’t say anything, then he said, “Well, what are you doing here yourself?”

The hand on her hip snaked across her waist.

“I didn’t think your work took you amongst the living very often,” he added.

Then he broke into a cold sweat.

If Miss King was here, did that mean Sarah was

That morning Indira King got to work early like usual. The roads were quiet and Todd’s car was frosted up in the parking lot. The only thing notably different from the previous morning was how bright the day was turning out to be. It left Indira in an uplifted mood as she went into the lab and found Todd hard at work.

“Good morning, Todd,” she said, taking off her coat.

Todd mumbled something, but remained hunched over a scope.

“I’m fine, thanks,” she said, because he hadn’t asked.

As she hung up her coat, she looked at the whiteboard on the wall. There had been one new arrival overnight, and Todd had pencilled her in for the autopsy.

She strolled over to the bench where Todd was working.

“What’re you working on, kiddo?” she asked. She sometimes called him that to sound condescending, but it always reminded her she wasn’t that old either.

“Take a look at those,” Todd said, not looking up.

He had gestured a hefty wad of notes attached to a clipboard. Indira picked them up and glanced through them. They were test results, scores of them.

“Did someone get bored last night or what?” she said.

Todd finally sat up; he rubbed his eyes, sighed and turned to her. “I thought I’d carry out a few more tests on our mysterious unidentified compound.”

Indira frowned, looking at the notes again. “This is the dye?”

“It was.” Todd snorted.

“This isn’t the same substance we found yesterday,” she said slowly.

He sighed again. “Tell me about it.”

“What happened?”

“Some sort of chemical reaction? Don’t ask me, Indira; I don’t know. It seems to be turning into some sort of salt. Don’t ask me what the catalyst was either. That’s what I’ve been trying to find out for the last three-and-a-half hours.”

Indira spied a mug half full of coffee sitting on the bench beside his keyboard and wrapped a few fingers around it. The drink was cold.

“It looks like it’s breaking down,” she noted.

Todd nodded. “Yeah. It’s unprecedented. I tried to get another sample from the guy’s eyes about an hour ago, and it’s borderline undetectable.”

“So you’re still working with the samples we took yesterday, then.”

“What’s left of them, yeah.” He nodded again.

Indira frowned. “So that means it, whatever it is, breaks down a lot faster when it’s actually inside the human body. Right?”

“I wouldn’t put money on it, but if it’s barely detectable after forty-eight hours, I reckon it’ll be gone completely within seventy-two.”

Indira stared at him. Todd stared back.

“And you said it was synthetic?” she said.

“Without a doubt.” He looked back at the monitor.

Indira chewed her tongue. “Which means it was engineered this way, is that what you’re saying?” She deliberated. “Why would someone do that?”

Todd started rubbing his red-rimmed eyes again. “Get some caffeine into me and I’ll whip up some conspiracy theories for you if you like.”

She sighed. “Milk and two sugars?”

“Not today. Three sugars; no milk.”

Indira swivelled her eyes. The small staff lounge was between the laboratories and the morgue where they kept the bodies in individual freezers. It was a warm refuge with comfy chairs and a coffee maker. Indira poured two drinks.

As she returned to the lab, Todd spun in his seat.

“You’ve got to see this,” he said.

“What is it?” she asked, laying the mugs down.

“I had an idea while you were out of the room.”

She looked over his shoulder. “What am I looking at?” On his computer screen were database index numbers and their corresponding names.

“It should have occurred to me earlier.” He sighed. “Yesterday I did a correlative wildcard search for our mysterious compound.”

“A what search?” The only machines Indira could fathom were the organic ones she dissected on the surgical slabs behind her.

“It means if its chemical structure cropped up anywhere in Met records, in whatever context, then the computer would show me.”

“What did you find?”

“Well, nothing. Obviously.” He paused for effect. “Yesterday.”

Indira saw where this was going and stood up straight.

“So I did it again just now,” Todd explained. “This time entering the chemical structure of the salt, rather than the original compound.”

Indira stared at him. “And?”

Todd motioned the screen but looked her in the eyes. “Take a look for yourself; over one hundred appearances in the last six months alone.”

Indira leant over him and grabbed the mouse. She grasped the rudimentaries sufficiently to scroll through the list. She began shaking her head. “How is this possible? How could we have missed it so many times before now?”

“We didn’t,” Todd said, matter-of-factly. “Allow me.”

She relinquished the mouse and he began clicking on several of the database index numbers, which brought up their individual records.

“Here we go,” he said. “Tabitha Banks, student at the University of North London, recreational drug user.” He paused. “Stabbed to death in October.”

He closed that entry and clicked on another.

“Jonathan Docherty, homeless alcoholic, death attributed to the lethal dose of ketamine found in his system.” He paused again. “But his notes indicate severe mutilations to his chest and abdomen concurrent with a knife attack.”

He closed that entry and clicked on another.

“Ravi Kumar, assistant cook at the Delhi-catessen Indian restaurant near Willesdon Junction. Cause of death registered as gunshot wound to the head. Verdict: suicide.” He sighed. “But no history of depression and/or drug use.”

Indira frowned. “Well, that one doesn’t fit.”

“He had the salt in his system,” Todd said. “He fits.”

He went on to click a few more entries, précis the contents for Indira, scrolling down through the records and picking ones at random. The search had returned a disparate group of people from all over London. A disproportionate majority were casual drug users, but not drug addicts. A disproportionate majority died from knife wounds. The number of suicide verdicts was also double the norm.

“Wait,” Indira said suddenly. “That one.”

She jabbed a finger at the screen as Todd reached the end of the list.

“‘Gunter Wrocdlaw’?” he read.

“Click it. That name rings a bell.”

So Todd brought the record up. “Gunter Wrocdlaw, Polish research scientist working in Holloway.” He sat up in his seat. “Well, here’s why you recognise the name. You’re down as having done the autopsy on him.”

“And what did I say?” she murmured.

“Death from exsanguination.” He turned and raised an eyebrow. “You put in his notes that you thought it looked like he’d been attacked with a sword.”

Indira stood up straight, feeling the chill suddenly.

“Are these in chronological order?” she asked.

“No. Alphabetical,” said Todd.

“Can you put them into date order? I want to see when it was that we first detected this salt.” She folded her arms over her chest.

Todd complied. “Here we go.”

“‘Gunter Wrocdlaw’,” she read once again.

“Came in September 21st; autopsy carried out the next day.”

Indira nodded slowly. “By me.”

“I guess that means you were the first person to discover this thing, Indira.”

She motioned the monitor. “Is Toby Welsh last on the list?”

“I’d imagine so.” He scrolled down to check. “Oh. No. Hang on.”

There was one more record after Toby Welsh’s.

“‘Sarah Forster’,” Indira read off the screen.

Todd inhaled noisily as he clicked on the entry.

“That’s not the girl who came in last night, is it?” Indira asked.

Todd shook his head, frowning.

“What is it?” she said.

“This isn’t one of ours.”

“What do you mean?”

“We didn’t make this entry. It’s not even a record in the Met database.”

Indira leant over him again. “Then what is it?”

“It’s what we call a ‘feeler’.”

“Meaning what, exactly?”

“I was going to do one myself if I still hadn’t worked out what this salt was by the end of my shift. It’s what you do when you’re stumped, basically. You make all the data you have available to other scientific bodies in the hope that someone somewhere will know something you don’t. It’s the interweb equivalent of you going to find the Nutty Professor at King’s College yesterday.”

Indira felt mounting impatience. “Where did this ‘feeler’ come from, Todd?”

“Some doctor at St Bart’s; Joseph Katzsuki.”

“What’s he say?”

“Not much; that he found this salt and can’t identify it.”

“Well, does he know anything we don’t?”

Todd sighed as he breezed through a hefty looking document, several hundred words, scrolling so fast he couldn’t possibly have been reading them all.

“Whoa,” he said, suddenly stopping.

“What? What is it?” she said.

Todd turned to her, his gaze electric.

“Indira, he says Sarah Forster’s still alive.”

“Can I help you?” said the receptionist.

Benjamin Russell turned round. He was at the front of the queue.

“We’ve come to see Doctor Katzsuki,” said Miss King.

Russell glared at her. She stepped in beside him to make it look like they were together. She gave him a look that made him avert his eyes.

“Do you have an appointment?” the receptionist asked.

“Yes; Indira King, ten o’clock.”

“Okay. I’ll page him to tell him you’ve arrived.” Then she waved a hand toward the beige leather seating and asked them to take a seat.

“So what led you here?” Miss King asked as they sat down. “I mean, it can’t be a coincidence that we both turned up at the same place for the same thing.”

Russell hadn’t told her about Tim yesterday, and he didn’t tell her about him now. He told her that contacts he maintained in the optometry department here had told him about a patient with something imprinted on her eyeball.

It was perfectly plausible; she bought it.

“Let me guess,” Russell said. “You want to ask her whether she saw any strange beasts with seven pointy legs before she lost her sight.”

Miss King didn’t get a chance to answer.

“Get the fuck off me! Fuck off!”

They both turned toward the shouting. Two bulky security guards in white tunics were wrestling someone out of the department.

The person shouting and struggling, Russell realised, was Tim.

Russell leapt to his feet. Miss King matched his move. She followed him as he headed across the foyer to anticipate the guards before they reached the exit.

Tim stopped squirming long enough to spot him.

“Doctor Russell!” he cried.

“What’s going on here?” Russell asked.

The security guards stopped, but didn’t let Tim go.

“The kid was causing trouble upstairs,” one of them said.

“Tim, why didn’t you wait for me?”

Tim wrenched one of his arms free and tried to explicate himself from the vice-like grip of the other guard. “Get your fucking hands off me!”

“You know this little darling?” the guard said.

“Look, he’s just worried about his girlfriend. She’s just woken up from a coma and he hasn’t been able to see her yet. I’m sure he meant no harm.”

The guards looked at each other and snorted.

“The patient he kept demanding to see wasn’t even on the ward, but he just wouldn’t take their word for it,” said the one holding Tim.

“They’re fucking lying!” Tim cried. “I saw her go in days ago!”

“Tim, if you don’t calm down, they’re going to throw you out,” Russell said.

Tim glared at him, then stopped struggling.

“Can we leave the kid with you?” asked the second guard, letting Tim go. “It’s not in our job description to be bouncers, or babysitters.”

Russell nodded. “Sure, I’ll keep him out of trouble.”

“Good.” Then the security guards walked away.

Tim rubbed his arm. “Twats.”

Russell rested a hand on his shoulder and turned him round. “Come and sit down,” he said. He noticed Miss King’s suspicious expression.

“Is your girlfriend Sarah Forster?” the young pathologist asked Tim.

Tim glared at her. “Yeah.” He looked at Russell. “Is this yours?”

Miss King laughed rather loudly, Russell thought.

Before they got to the seats, an accented voice said, “Ms King?”

They turned round and saw a silver-haired man of Japanese extraction standing behind them in a pristine white laboratory coat.

“Doctor Katzsuki?” Miss King asked.

“Yes.” He spied Tim. “Is this troublemaker with you?”

Russell squeezed Tim’s shoulder to stop him spouting off. “Yes, we’re all together. This is Sarah Forster’s boyfriend, Tim.”

Katzsuki nodded. “I know who he is. I think everyone upstairs does by now, but as we kept telling him, Sarah Forster isn’t upstairs anymore.”

Russell got that sinking feeling again. Is she dead? he wondered.

“Where is she?” Miss King asked. “We need to see her.”

“Before I tell you where she is, do you mind telling me why?”

Miss King was an unhesitant liar, Russell realised. She flipped open her Met identity card and said, “She’s an important witness in a crime I am investigating and it’s urgent that I talk with her immediately, Doctor.”

Katzsuki glanced at the card and his sceptical expression softened. “Well, I’m afraid she’s not going to be a particularly insightful witness, Ms King.”

“Why not?” Miss King asked.

“Where is she?” said Tim.

“She’s been moved across the road.” Katzsuki looked at Tim; his face now looked sympathetic. “To the psychiatric department.”

“What?” Tim murmured.

“Why did you move her there?” Russell asked.

Katzsuki took a deep breath. “I’m afraid she hasn’t been coping well with blindness; she’s had a full-blown psychotic reaction to the shock.”

Russell and Miss King swapped glances.

“What does he mean?” Tim asked Russell in a plaintive voice.

“She was sectioned under the Mental Health Act,” Katzsuki continued. “They had to sedate her to move her to a psychiatric ward.”

“I want to see her,” Tim said.

“Aren’t psychotic reactions a bit of an unusual response to going blind?” Miss King asked. Russell suspected they both already knew the answer.

“As I understand it,” said Katzsuki. “In certain personalities predisposed to borderline emotional states, sudden blindness would be sufficiently traumatic to induce a hyposchizoid episode. But I’m not a psychiatrist.”

“Well, neither am I, but-” Miss King began.

Russell frowned. “Hyposchizoid episode?” he interrupted. He recognised the condition from somewhere, but he couldn’t recall where.

“What is it, Professor?” Miss King said.

English clearly wasn’t Doctor Katzsuki’s first language, Russell thought, as the Japanese optometrist took this question literally.

“It’s a psychotic episode marked by severe delusional periods, sometimes also hallucination,” he said. “It bears much in common with paranoid schizophrenia, but differs in that it is only temporary. Most people who have a hyposchizoid episode never have a second, and very few develop actual schizophrenia.”

“I want to see Sarah,” Tim told Russell.

But Russell had just remembered where he’d heard about the hyposchizoid episode from. He had been wracking his brains, trying to recall it from his days in medicine, but that’s not where he’d heard about it at all. It was more recent, in an ontological thesis by a Jewish PhD student he was supervising. It was her supposition that Abraham’s vision of Yahweh was in fact a hyposchizoid episode.

Katzsuki was explaining to Miss King.

“What did she see?” Russell interrupted again.

“I beg your pardon?” said Katzsuki.

“Sarah; the girl; what did she see?”

Katzsuki shifted his weight from one leg to the other. “She believed she was being stalked by strange animals.” He turned his attention back to Miss King. “Many people suffering a hyposchizoid episode personify a threat; it’s part of the brain’s way of coping, turning an abstract fear into something that can be defeated. Of course, the battle happens only in the mind; there is no real threat, but once the patient believes they have got rid of it regardless, the hyposchizoid episode comes to an end.”

“Wait. What strange animals?” Russell said.

“Monsters; the imagination can be-”

Miss King shot Russell a worried look.

“What kind of monsters?” he asked. “Did she describe them?”

Katzsuki sighed. “Acknowledging her delusions was not my priority, sir. Once she woke up, she claimed she could see these monsters in the room. Of course, she couldn’t actually see anything, but because she refused to accept her blindness, what her traumatised mind told her she was seeing, she believed she was.”

Miss King didn’t look in a mood for this lecture anymore either. “What did they look like?” she asked. “You must have heard something.”

“Is this really that important, Ms King?”

Russell and Miss King glanced at each other, but said nothing.

Katzsuki lifted his palms in defeat. “All I remember is something about seven arms or legs.” He sighed again. “I only remember that because it stuck out.”

Russell and Miss King stared at each other in disbelief.

What the hell is happening? Russell thought.

“We have to see her,” Miss King said.

“I can phone across; make you an appointment.”

“No. You have to take us there right now, Doctor.”

“Please, doc,” said Tim. “Please.”

Katzsuki glared at the boy, then sighed.

“Fine,” he said. “Follow me.”

The two buildings were connected by a tunnel that went under the road. This was a quicker route than using the pedestrian crossing, Doctor Katzsuki told them as he led them down the stairs into the basement of the ENT building. The tunnel was for staff use only and had a number-lock on the door. Katzsuki typed in his code, and a couple of minutes later they were climbing the stairs in the other building.

“What’s the rush?” Katzsuki asked when he found himself behind the other three. Nobody answered him. Russell didn’t want to worry Tim.

The psychiatric department was a sterile white building with barred windows and locks on every door. Katzsuki only got so far before his number-lock was no longer valid, and he had to plead their case to the wary-looking desk clerk.

“Yeah, I know the one you mean,” he said, nodding. “Real wild one. Actually, her sedation’s probably wearing off about now. Sure you want to risk it?”

The clerk had to summon one of the two floor administrators - he cheekily referred to them as the ‘matrons’ - the most senior psychiatrists on duty, under whose jurisdiction Sarah’s treatment fell. The one who came was Doctor Kennedy.

“Sarah’s not in a suitable condition to receive visitors at the time being,” he told them, looking in particular at Tim whilst he said it.

“Please, this is important,” Miss King said. “We’re not here to make things worse. We just need to make sure she’s all right.”

“She wouldn’t be here if she was.”

Eventually Doctor Kennedy relented and said two of them could go onto the ward with him, provided they left again after a couple of minutes.

“Will you come with me?” Tim asked Russell.

“Of course.” Russell glanced at Miss King; she did not seem to appreciate having been arbitrarily ruled out of being one of the two.

Doctor Kennedy stopped outside the ward.

“I’ll wait for you here, then,” Miss King said.

The psychiatric ward was like a normal hospital ward, except it was properly partitioned, and not just with flimsy plastic curtains. Doctor Kennedy held the door open and then led Russell and Tim along the ward. There was a smell of disinfectant, barely masking that of soiled beds. Not all the beds were occupied, but those that were contained sleeping patients. Russell noticed most of them were restrained at the wrists and ankles. Some also had straps across their chests and thighs.

Doctor Kennedy stopped. “Don’t take too long.”

Russell put a supportive hand on Tim’s shoulder as they went behind the partition. Tim stopped at the end of the hospital bed and said nothing.

The girl in the bed - Sarah - was bound, like the others, by leather straps buckled around her hands and feet. Unlike the others, she wasn’t catatonic, but she was barely conscious either. Her eyes were shut, and her head lolled back and forth on the pillow as if in slow motion. Occasionally her face twitched.

Tim finally moved again, and went up to the head of the bed. He leaned over her pale, sweaty face and whispered, “Sarah? It’s me.”

“She can’t hear you,” Doctor Kennedy said from outside.

Russell glanced at her notes, then went up the other side of the bed. Tim was still talking to her when Russell leant over her and peeled back one eyelid. Beneath it, her eyeball was slowly swivelling. It stopped momentarily when it seemed to be looking right at him, which made his throat tighten with apprehension.

“Do you have a pen-light, Doctor?” he asked.

Doctor Kennedy peered around the partition, giving him a curious look. After a few seconds, he gave Russell what he wanted, and asked no questions.

Russell shone the narrow but powerful beam into Sarah’s eye, much like he had shone it into Mr Welsh’s eye twenty-four hours before. It seemed much longer, he thought, as he looked around for a similar branding on the girl’s retina. Though he was expecting to find it, it still gave him chills when he did.

Suddenly, Sarah made a groaning sound.

Tim lurched away from her. “Jesus.”

“She’s just waking up,” Russell told him.

“Okay. Time to go,” said Doctor Kennedy.

“Please, just a few minutes more,” Tim pleaded.

Sarah’s groaning extended into a wailing.

“Sarah? Sarah?” went Tim, putting his hands on her. “It’s okay. It’s me. It’s Tim. I’m here. It’s okay, Sarah. Don’t cry. Don’t make that noise.”

“All right, let’s go,” said Doctor Kennedy.

Suddenly, Sarah froze. Her eyes shot open.

She’s looking right at me, Russell thought, even though he knew that was meant to be impossible. Her eyes, so wide open that he could see the whites all around her irises - just like Mr Welsh’s - seemed to be focused on him.

He stepped back. Her eyes didn’t follow him.

“Sarah? Can you hear me?” said Tim.

“This is not helping her,” Doctor Kennedy said angrily.

Suddenly, Sarah began to scream. It made them all jump. She started to kick with her legs and strain her wrists. Her eyes, still staring where Russell had been standing, started to pivot. They were now trickling with tears.

She stopped struggling, was frozen to the bed again. She stopped screaming, and Russell noticed Tim was sobbing now himself.

Sarah’s breathing was short, shallow. Her eyes continued to pivot. She looks utterly petrified, Russell thought. He looked round. Of Doctor Kennedy?

There was nobody else there, even if she could see.

Suddenly, there was a horrific rending sound, like thick cardboard torn asunder by a great strength. Then Sarah relaxed.

It was Tim who screamed now.

“Holy shit!” said Doctor Kennedy.

“Oh my god,” was all Russell could manage.

At the other end of the ward, the doors burst open.

Miss King arrived with Katzsuki in time to see the second great tear appear in Sarah’s gown all by itself, and the blood start to well on her naked, gouged flesh beneath. The third rip split open her carotid artery, but blood did not spurt.

By that time, the girl was already dead.

NOTES:
Whilst perhaps being typically overwritten (was some of the technobabble chitchat in this chapter really necessary?), this was my favourite chapter to write. Not much to write in the way of notes. I made up the geography of King's College and St Bartholomew's Hospital (though I did go there once, over a decade ago, and from what I remember, it was spread out over several sites). Likewise most of the science (right down to hyposchizoid - "hypo" being 'less than', and "schizoid" being 'like schizophrenia', ergo "hyposchizoid" would be 'almost but not quite like schizophrenia'). I seemed to have better than usual luck with names in this chapter. Wrocdlaw came to me straight away (Gunter being pinched from Gunter Grass), as did Delhi-catessen, which is so woeful it could almost be real. Katzsuki was originally meant to be a German name, but ended up sounding more Japanese. By the time I got to naming the psychiatrist, however, I was all out of ideas, so just pinched Kennedy from Ted Kennedy, who was on the news during one of my breaks from writing (calling on the IRA to disband).