Machinery cycles. A vibration under my control. The lab is white. Sterile. Everything is in its place. Every gauge reads green.

  The floor ruins it.

  A vat lies in pieces. Black liquid bleeds out. Viscous. Slow. It disrupts the symmetry of the room.

  It is not the only offence. Across the room, the wall smokes. The grout hisses, eaten by the acid splash of a thrown vial.

  I grind my teeth.

  I remember the throw. James. I remember the thrashing. Meat. Two children threw a tantrum in this body.

  My collar feels tight. I flush. It is the embarrassment of an adult finding a crayon drawing they made on the wall.

  I grab a heavy cloth. I need to scrub this. Scour the tile until it shines. Before anyone sees.

  A tongue clicks against teeth. Tsk.

  My hand freezes. The rag hangs limp.

  I turn to the workbench in the shadow. Empty a second ago.

  She sits on the edge.

  Mother.

  Her spine is a rod. Her hands fold over her knees. Her dress is impeccable. She looks at the filth on the floor. At the spreading pool of black sludge touching the leg of the bench.

  "Look at you."

  The sound drills into the bone.

  "Tracking filth across the floor. Just like your father."

  My shoulders hunch. The bench is bare. I know this. It is a glitch in my brain. A ghost built of stress and bad wiring.

  I lower my head. I am five years old.

  "Apologies, Mother." My voice scrapes. "It was messy."

  I turn. I look at my reflection in the black glass of a vat.

  A ruin stares back. Valleys of scar tissue. Ridges of fused flesh. A mouth carved by accident.

  The mole sits in the centre. Perfect.

  My finger presses it. Hard.

  I am Maximus.

  The thought settles. Heavy.

  Something tears inside the ribs. Low. Deep. Limbs that are not mine turn over. They push against the lung.

  Meat.

  I taste the memory. Salt. Red warmth. Being wide. The hunger to eat the boy in the corner.

  I gag. Force it down.

  That filth is drowned, replaced by the dead.

  I am a collection of stolen parts. They are gone, their Echoes snuffed out, but their influence remains like smoke. I think with their minds. I care with their hearts.

  They are masks. Underneath, I am the monster. That is the biology.

  Panic chips at the Maximus-armour.

  No.

  I look inward. I dig through the layers. Derrick. The others. Down to the bottom.

  One thing remains. The grey eye.

  It sits under the scars. Watching. The catalyst erodes the others, but he stays.

  I reach for a weight. The phantom handle of a woodcutter's axe presses into my hands. Loss runs through it.

  The weight is my own.

  Hello?

  The Voice.

  It returns. But the tone has changed. In the past, it was a whip. Now, it is hesitant. Like a handler approaching a beast that has snapped its leash.

  Are you... present? The Vessel appears stabilised. The Blight is contained. You have done well. We can begin the—

  "Silence."

  Excuse me?

  "Do not lecture me. I understand the architecture of this cage better than you do."

  The Voice shrinks. It feels the density of the ego I wear.

  Good.

  A whimper from the corner breaks the silence. It is a wet, animal sound.

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  I turn.

  Teddy is pressed into the angle where the walls meet, his body seizing with tremors. He saw the transition. He saw the man dissolve and the monster rise. He is vibrating with the aftershocks of a horror he cannot name.

  My hand twitches. A reflex from a dead man. Comfort him. Hold him. Tell him the monster is gone.

  Maximus rejects it. Weakness. Coddling creates dependency.

  I advance. The floor shakes under my new bulk. I tower over him, blocking out the sterile light.

  He cowers.

  My hand hovers. It is a slab of scar tissue and bone, heavy enough to crush his skull like an eggshell. I could end his fear with one squeeze.

  But the grey eye watches.

  I place my hand on his head.

  "Cease your vibration," I say. "You are distracting me."

  He stiffens. His eyes are wide, wet discs hunting for a ghost.

  He finds only the hand. The solidity of the scar tissue.

  He leans into it. He presses his forehead against my palm, grounding his tremor in my stillness. The shaking stops.

  He sighs. The tension drains out of him, leaving a dead weight against my hand.

  I don't pull away. I let my thumb trace the ridge of the scar on his brow.

  "Stay," I command, my voice softer than intended.

  I turn back. To the shattered glass of the vial. To the broken vat in the corner.

  My new hearing is sharp. Too sharp. I can hear the fluid circulating in the pipes, the electrical hum of the lights, the wet slide of Teddy's lungs. And then there is Mother. She is still pacing the edge of my vision, her heels clicking on the metal workbench. The rhythm of her judgement fills the room.

  It drowns out the real sound.

  A thud. Leather on stone.

  I go rigid. The predator in me slept.

  I do not turn immediately. I assess. One intruder. Breathing rate: elevated. Heart rate: frantic.

  Then the smell hits me. Rot. Grease. The suffocating stink of the waste chute. The same tunnel I slid down to get inside.

  I turn.

  She is there. Dripping with slime. Armed with a length of pipe. She stands under the ventilation shaft, having dropped from the slat I left loose.

  Vera.

  She came for a husband.

  She looks at the wreckage. Then at me.

  "Where are they?" Her voice is raw. Shredded.

  She scans the shadows. "I saw them enter. The girl. James. I saw them crawl in."

  Hate burns in her eyes. "Where did you take them, you monster?"

  She followed us. Gods, she followed us.

  I feel the urge to explain. To apologise. To say, Vera, it's me. You shouldn't have followed.

  Maximus strangles the thought. He twists it into disdain.

  I straighten. I clasp my hands behind my back. I look down at her from a great height.

  "You are trespassing."

  She lunges. The pipe arcs. A wild, two-handed swing at my head.

  I do not flinch. I do not step back.

  I catch it. Left hand.

  The metal bites my palm. The impact is heavy, a solid vibration that travels up my arm to the shoulder. But I hold firm. My fingers lock around the rust.

  She strains against my grip. I do not move. She pulls, trying to wrench the weapon free.

  Flakes of rust drift to the floor.

  "Crude," I say. My voice is bored. "Is this the best Greyhollow has to offer?"

  I look at her. At the sweat on her brow. At the hatred burning in her eyes. She wants to kill me. She wants to avenge her husband.

  Her boots slide on the slick tile. I do not move. I hold her there, suspended in her own useless effort.

  I want to drop the pipe. I want to say, Vera, run.

  Maximus wants to crush the hand that struck him.

  Somewhere in the middle, I find the reins. I must be cruel to save her. I must amputate her hope so that she runs away and never comes back.

  I twist my wrist.

  A sharp, grinding snap. The pipe tears from her grip. It clatters across the tiles, spinning into the corner.

  Vera stumbles back, clutching her empty hands. She stares at them, then at me.

  I step forward. She retreats.

  "Go home."

  "My husband," she chokes out. "He's here. I know he is."

  I stop. I look down at her. I summon the cold.

  "Your husband?" I tilt my head.

  Her throat works. "Thomas. His name is Thomas."

  I laugh. It is a dry, dusty sound.

  "Names are labels for pets. He is equipment. Obsolete equipment. His efficiency is dropping. I was considering scrapping him for parts."

  Her face goes slack. The fight leaves her body all at once.

  "No," she whispers.

  "Yes. Even if he saw you, he wouldn't know you. You are biological noise to him now. A distraction from his function."

  I lean in. "You are nothing."

  She stares at me. The hatred wavers. It breaks. Despair rushes in to fill the cracks.

  Good. It's working.

  I point to the heavy iron spiral staircase. The official entrance.

  "Leave," I command, my voice booming off the tiles. "Use the stairs. If I see you crawling in my shafts like a rat again, I will fumigate them."

  I am offering her the fast way out. A slim margin of time before the patrol secures the perimeter. A gamble. But the only mercy I can afford.

  She trembles. A tear cuts a clean track through the muck on her cheek.

  Then she turns. She scrambles for the stairs, hauling herself up with frantic, desperate movements. She does not look back.

  I watch her go. I watch the heavy trapdoor slam shut below her.

  Silence rushes back into the room.

  I turn back to the boy in the corner. Teddy is watching me. His eyes are wide.

  He saw it. He saw me break her.

  My left hand begins to vibrate. I press it hard against the sharp edge of the workbench, letting the bite of metal ground the nausea rising in my throat.

  I pack the feeling into the dark spaces behind my ribs, burying it under layers of cold necessity.

  The intruder was repelled. Acceptable. But theatricality is resource-intensive. Next time, simple termination is preferred.

  I look at my hand. The palm is red, throbbing from the impact of the pipe.

  "Fear spreads faster than a corpse," I say, projecting with as much arrogance as I can muster. "A dead woman tells no tales. A terrified woman tells everyone to stay away."

  Valid. However, the risk profile of this facility is unacceptable. Maximus was erratic. He drew attention. We must stabilise the Vessel.

  I sneer. "Stabilise? You mean sterilise. You want to scrub the floors so you can keep force-feeding me your black slop without tripping over the bodies. How domestic."

  The Voice pauses. The pressure in my skull shifts, becoming heavier. More intimate.

  You felt it. When you were Meat. The chaos. The catalyst is a safety net. If that chaos ever threatens to return, I will force that liquid down your throat until you drown in it.

  It lets the threat hang in the air.

  The Echo is the gravity that holds you together. If you lose it, you become a wet, screaming mouth. You will see Pip. You will know his name. You will know he is yours. And you will strip the flesh from his bones anyway, because the hunger is louder than the name.

  I stiffen.

  You are dangerous to your son without me.

  I hear it. A shadow beneath the words. A frantic, terrified whisper layered under the calm authority.

  I am afraid of what you are.

  It is lying.

  It is not worried about Pip. It is not worried about the world. It is worried about itself. Meat didn't just break the room. It broke the Voice. I felt it tearing apart.

  The Voice is a coward. It trapped me in this skin because it fears what I am when I am unskinned.

  Good.

  I can use that fear.

  "Then we agree," I say, flattening my tone to perfect submission. "Stability is paramount. Maximus played games. I do not. I will secure the facility. I will turn this torture chamber into a factory. No more theatrics. Just production."

  The pressure in my skull eases. A sense of relief washes over me. Not mine, but its.

  Excellent. Proceed.

  I have it. I have the leash.

  It thinks I am building a factory to serve it. I am building a factory so I can dismantle it, bolt by bolt, from the inside.

  I look over at Teddy. He is still pressed into the corner, his eyes tracking my every move. He is waiting for the monster to decide his fate.

  I extend a hand.

  "Come," I say to the boy. "We have work to do."

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