Inside the Enclave warehouse, it's all edge.

A hundred-odd fanatics, weaning themselves from the blood the Vyrus demands, pushing their metabolisms to the crazed point Amanda Horde described, when memory T cells will stop reminding their own immune systems what not to attack.

The Vyrus, pushed to starvation, jacks their nervous systems. Desperate, it hammers on them to feed. At the edge of death, it empties its hosts of all resources, strengthening them for the kill.

Strong, fast, impervious to pain; blow a limb off one and they'll pick it up to beat you to death with it.

They vibrate with insanity.

That's what the kids on the street feel.

I feel it too. It goes to my guts, the madness in this place. The clattering of

their bones striking one another as they endlessly spar, honing killing skills. The numb and complete silence that falls when they meditate on the Vyrus, focusing their wills to resist its hunger. The whisper of dry lips and tongues when they break their fasts and sip spoonfuls of blood to appease the Vyrus.

The fasting, its not a rejection of the Vyrus1 hunger, its a supplication.

They are not its enemy. They are its acolytes.

Suggest to one of them that the Vyrus is a virus, an earthly thing, and they'll laugh in your face. Or chew it off.

Heresy is something they take pretty seriously around here. And rejecting the Vyrus as a supernatural agency of redemption is about as heretical as it gets for these guys.

All they want, all they starve for, is to be like the Vyrus, to let it gradually feed on them, creep into their bones and tissue, and transform them into something other, something that will stay in this world, while being entirely of another.

Fanatics to the ground, when they've found one who can complete that transformation, and he's taught the others to do the same, they think they'll become immune to sun and all the weapons of this world. And then, like all true believers, they II go out and kill everyone not just like them.

It's weird shit.

I don't follow it.

And I don't like coming here.

But I used to be welcome all the same. The old boss, he had it in his head I was really one of them, that I just didn't know it yet.

But he died.

Daniel. Old man. Crazy old man.

I stop thinking about how he died, how the weight of his corpse was nothing in my arms, I put it away where you keep the things you don't want to think about. That place, It's goddamn crowded at this point.

I put it away so I can focus on the Enclave, mind myself so I don't end up dead.

The two that brought me inside leave me as soon as the door slides shut behind us and darkness cover drops. I can hear more of them around me, breathing, barely breathing, meditating. I can hear others softly grunting, the whip of their limbs through space, the crack as they strike one another, a splinter of bones. I can smell their decaying flesh and the special taint of starving Vyrus that clings to them.

My pupils open, gathering light from candles scattered across the huge

space. It looks the same as the last time I saw it. I figured that would be the very last time I'd see it at all. The last time I'd see it before I came back to burn it down.

But the best laid plans of mice and men and all that.

I had to come back without a torch.

I want to see my girl, after all. —Simon.

I look at him, coming out of the gloom, wrapped in white like the other Enclave.

I nod. —Nice suit.

He stops ten feet from me, fingers a lapel of the spotless white three-piece. —Yeah-huh, right?

He tilts his head at the lines of squatting Enclave deep in meditation. Beyond them others spar, flickering, frozen for an occasional heartbeat as they study the others defense, looking for a weakness before striking again. —Like, I had no problem with the color scheme and all, but there was no way I was gonna be sporting a toga or a shawl or something.

I'm not paying attention to him, I'm paying attention to the others, watching them as my pupils widen and take in more light and the warehouse stretches and I see how many of them there are. More than a hundred. Many more. Twice that. At least.

I look at him.

He nods. —Oh yeah, man, I been busy.

—Truth to an old friend, it ain't easy. This shit ain't easy at all. Like, let me tell you, man, that meditation shit, that is some boring-ass shit. Just sitting there, trying to get into the Vyrus and all that. And the sparring. At first I was so down with that. I wanted to get up and go kung fu. But that shit is hard work. And it fucking hurts, man. Enclave, there's no such thing as a pulled punch with Enclave. You have to, what you have to do is, here, let me show you. Punch me as hard as you can.

He comes close, crossing the small chamber he led me to in the lofts above the warehouse floor. —Seriously, man, just hit me as hard as you can.