“Mind if I put some music on?” I asked.
“Go ahead.”
I headed into the next room and took the opportunity to check out what it was that Vamp thought was so important. The video file was small, just a clip of something. I dropped it into the media player and moved it to the foreground as I pulled up the music tuner on the TV.
As soon as the recording began to play, I could see it was part of an eyebot log. It was video recorded from the app after it tagged a couple of security guys. A few seconds in, I saw one of the soldiers was Pei Ligong.
This was in the Pot, I realized. This was taken in the old man’s apartment, from my feed.
The view turned back to the kitchen doorway as one of the soldiers stepped through. The little girl stood nearby as he approached the others, holding up the sheet of bloody remains he’d found in the trash. Part of a matted hospital gown was plastered to it, and a circle appeared around it with a message.
The girl wore this.
It was true. The gown was just like the one the girl had been wearing in Dragan’s wet drive recording.
The soldier passed the girl, and behind him she and the old man, the one I was sure had died, looked right at each other. The looks in their eyes didn’t quite fit, somehow, like something was passing between them.
Vamp, what am I looking at?
The video highlighted the open bedroom door, and another circle appeared over the mattress, which had a big bloodstain on it. The old man knelt in front of the bed while soldiers milled around outside. The video zoomed in on him.
I hadn’t been paying attention to what he was doing. On the recording, though, it was clear that he pulled something out from under the bed, something wet and rubbery. It was only visible for a second, but long enough for me to make out fingers and even part of a face.
It was skin. It was the old man’s skin.
Didn’t you sense a haan in that apartment? Vamp messaged.
I nodded. Yes. Two. I’d noticed the first when we first entered, and the second appeared just as the old man, who we were both convinced had died, sat back up.
On the recording, the old man bundled the skin up and hid it in the dresser.
Vamp, where are they now?
No one knows.
The man stepped back through the bedroom door and for a second, just a second, his shadow on the wall seemed wrong. The shape of it didn’t line up. Almost, but not quite. Then it resolved, as the soldiers joined him.
The video zoomed in on the girl as a scalefly landed on the back of her hand. She raised it up, close to her face as it vibrated its iridescent wings, and stepped closer to one of the soldiers.
“Sam, everything okay?” Dragan called. My hand felt numb as I tuned into one of the feed stations. As mellow music began to pipe through, Nix’s words from just before we entered the Pot came back to me.
“We were like you once….”
The little girl blew out a breath, and sent the fly buzzing toward the soldier’s neck as if blowing him a kiss.
“One day, you will be like us.”
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