Shapes began to climb over the rocks then, and within seconds, he could see that each shape was — had been — a person. Like the tendrils, they were red instead of black, exposed muscle tissue visible as they crawled to the edge. Even without their skin, he could see faces he knew. He saw his men, his soldiers. He saw his brother Burt and his father. He saw Heinrich, his dead friend from The Adalgisa. The captain looked up at Harald as he crested the edge, and he smiled. It was ghastly: a ghoul's grin to match a ghoul's figure. And then, he pitched himself over. They all pitched themselves over, dropping like rain into the blackness. Their screams thundered through the air, spiraling down into the nothing.
Suddenly they were gone, and Harald was alone over the pit. The quiet was worse than the din.
One more figure appeared then, striding to the lip of the void. When he came to rest, Harald could see that he was whole, not peeled bloody fruit like the others. Then, Harald remembered: it was him, the one who had been haunting his nightmares.
The figure reached into his jacket and pulled out a pistol. As the figure began to raise his arm, Harald tried to swim through the air. He moved by slow degrees, his arms feeling as if they were mired in fluid. He would never reach the figure in time.
A woman's voice came to him, trickling down from the heavens. She whispered something inaudible, and he yelled back. But she spoke in that same soothing tone, taunting him. She said…
She said…
“What are you doing in my room?”
Harald shot up, nearly knocking Lucja with his head. “Wh… what?”
She stepped back, alarmed.
The lieutenant looked about at his surroundings and then remembered. He had been… had been… “I was looking for your father.”
“Our father?” Lucja asked. Little Zofia stood just behind her, and it was clear she was offering herself as a shield.
“What I mean to say is that your father was not at his post in the laboratory. I came here, thinking he had come home early. When he was not here, I must have dozed.”
“You're just looking for him?”
He stood up and straightened himself, feeling a strand of sleep-strewn hair on his forehead and correcting it. Had he really been so tired as to nod off here in the prisoners' bunker and leave himself so vulnerable? Richter would have his balls if he found out.
“Listen to me,” he said. “I don't know what your father is doing, but he is running out of time. Do you hear me? He is running out of time! You tell him to come see me. It's important.”
Flustered, he brushed past the girls and burst out of the room.
Why did the figure in his dream keep returning, and why did it leave him so distraught? He must have looked a fool. For a time, he had thought that it was Richter who had been haunting his subconscious, and that it was simply his own insecurities getting the best of him. Now, he was not so sure. Admittedly, the figure in the dream looked a lot like the commander, especially the uniform. The the hair was wrong, though. The man in his dream had hair the color of blood.
“Ah, there you are,” Linus Metzger said as Harald walked out of the bunker. “Commander Richter would like to speak with you.”
3
Harald approached the shoreline, his eyes focused on the solitary figure at its edge. He had shaken off the remnants of sleep, but the bad feeling had yet to leave him. There was something portentous in the air, and he couldn't shake the idea that each step was bringing him closer to a terrible end.
Richter stood facing the water, his hands clasped behind his back. He seemed lost to his own thoughts, and he didn't turn as the lieutenant approached.
“I've been persuading people a long time,” he said. “You might say I enjoy it. There is a great deal of satisfaction in making a man see your point of view. In this case, we're not even really dealing with men, are we?”
“Sir?”
“Kriege is missing,” the commander said simply. “I have learned that one of the cages in the laboratory was left open. Kaminski believes it possible that he has become, what is the word? Infected with the stuff.”
Harald felt himself flush. Surely nothing had been alive in that cage to do any harm.
“The spores of the fungus are quite contagious, I'm told. While it is possible the man has fled, I deem it unlikely. Kriege is a civilian, but he is of good German stock, and I don't believe he would abandon his duties. I'm inclined to believe Kaminski's theory instead.”
“His theory?”
“He believes that Kriege has become like Smit: that he is no longer thinking as a man thinks.”
“Kaminski doesn't know what the hell he's talking about!”
“Doesn't he?” Richter returned his gaze to the water, following the small chunks of ice floating on the surface. In spite of the heat emanating from the tentacles, winter was almost upon them, and the water was getting colder. “Regardless of what has happened, we no longer have civilian oversight into the laboratory. The time to persuade Kaminski is now. Do you agree?”
“Yes, of course,” Harald heard himself say.
Silence again. Harald found it maddening, which was why, no doubt, the commander employed it.
“Have you read John Watson's theories on behavioral psychology, by chance?”
“Should I have?” Psychology had never been within the realm of his tastes.
“Most of our countrymen prefer Freud, but I don't think we should discount the American psychologists just because they're American. Watson is a white man, if a bit misguided by the misfortune of his birth place. His ideas are quite interesting. He believes that to the true psychologist, one's thoughts, feelings, and emotions are irrelevant. These are things we cannot observe or influence directly. What we can observe, however, is behavior. And so our goal, as men of science, is the prediction and control of behavior. Do you see what I'm getting at, Lieutenant?”
Harald nodded that he did.
“I don't care one bit for Kaminski's feelings, or his happiness, or what he says. What I do care about are his results. I care about his behavior. In order to alter those things, we have to be willing to take the appropriate measures. When we get right down to it, the success of this operation depends on him.”
Behind them, several sets of footsteps came crunching along the rock. Harald turned to see Boris Seiler, Hans Wägner, and a small entourage of soldiers around them. In front, he saw Lucja and Zofia.
Lucja stared at him with fear and sadness and loathing in her eyes. He had tried to warn her though, indeed he had. This was her father's fault. Kaminski was just taking too goddamned long, and now it was too late.
4
Zofia looked at the Bad Man and shivered as he smiled at her. She didn't know how a smile could look scary, but his did.
Beside her, Lucja was running her hands through her hair, trying to keep calm. Her sister had said the Bad Man was just another army man like Mister Dietrich, but Zofia knew better. It was Mister Dietrich who had brought them here, but he was not a Bad Man, not like the other one.
“I understand you all like to go ice fishing,” the man said, talking to the fat soldier and the boy with the glasses. “I thought we could try something like that today. What do you think?”
The boy looked uncertain. “Yes. All right! Commander, sir.”
Seiler, on the other hand, looked withdrawn. She searched for a word and remembered it as humble. He looked humbled, though Zofia didn't know why. Maybe he had done something bad.