perfectly normal. It was the connective tissue between all the different echoes. We fumbled with flashlights for a moment.
“Hello?” a voice called.
We whirled around. Dr. Kapoor half raised her shotgun.
“That was Lily,” Liam said.
“Lily’s dead,” I said.
“I know,” Liam said. “I know that.” And yet he was peering into the mist, something almost as solid as hope in his gaze. Could there be any way—?
“It’s a trick,” Dr. Kapoor said. “It makes copies, that’s all.”
“Not anymore,” Sophie said. She twisted her hands together. “They come out wrong. They all come out wrong.”
“Liam?” Lily called. “Sophia?” She came closer with staggering, lurching steps. There was something wrong about her silhouette in the mist. Something misshapen. “Help me. I got away, but I—” She coughed, whined.
The indistinct outline of her body was solidifying, the shape of her clearer. There was movement where there shouldn’t be, something jerking and tugging at her side while her head lolled to the left. “Please,” Lily called.
“You don’t want to see,” Sophie said. She retreated back toward the bunker.
Liam let out a breath, the not-quite-hope extinguished. He followed Sophie.
The thing in the mist screamed. It threw itself forward, racing along on all fours, its grotesquely lengthening arms pulling it along the ground faster than we could react. It leapt from the mist and straight for Liam, its limbs streaked with purplish veins like a blood infection.
It had Lily’s face, but it was wrenched to the side, her neck crooked and a tumorous wing bulging from it. Slashes and open sores covered her body as if she’d tried to slice the traitorous growths from her skin.
I didn’t think—I just threw myself in her way. She struck me and we toppled to the ground, her hair stringy, her mouth a razor-slash of a smile, too full of teeth. She had one arm around my neck before I could react, and then she was pulling us both back into the trees, scuttling crab-like on limbs that bent wrong and reached too far.
The others screamed. I caught a glimpse of the shotgun muzzle and Dr. Kapoor’s furious eyes, but the Lily-thing held me between her and the gun, and then we were vanishing into the mist.
“Where’d they go?” I heard Dr. Kapoor demand. “Did you see?”
The forest was a maze of mist and identical trees. I twisted, tried to pull free, but she held me tight, cooing softly against my cheek.
“One to bring and one more to fetch. Even broken dolls have uses, and I’m oh-so useful now,” she whispered, and her tongue darted out, scraping my face with a quick cat’s-tongue rasp.
I tried to scream. Tried to breathe. But there wasn’t enough air in my lungs—
Water closing over me, darkness rushing in—
She charged out of the mist, half-blind—Dr. Kapoor, wielding the shotgun like a club, slamming it into the Lily-creature’s elbow. I heard bone crack. Her grip went slack. I rolled free, gasping, and then came the blast, so loud I heard nothing else but ringing as I clawed my way upright, surging to my feet. I staggered, but Dr. Kapoor grabbed my elbow, steadying me.
I didn’t look down. Didn’t want to see. The ringing in my ears faded.
“Are you all right? In one piece?” Dr. Kapoor asked. The brisk efficiency of her voice was belied by the worry in her eyes.
“I’m okay,” I said, though with the adrenaline coursing through me I couldn’t feel my body enough to be sure if it was true.
“Let’s get—” Dr. Kapoor began, but she didn’t finish.
“Help me.” Lily’s voice. Lily’s shadow, off to the left.
“Please.” Lily again—but this one was off to the right, this form tall, like it had been seized and stretched by some great hand.
“Help,” she called, her voice garbled with the clamoring of birds, her figure a swarm of shadows approaching from straight ahead—a woman at the center with demented creatures flapping crookedly around her.
And there were more. They were everywhere.
“Get back to the bunker,” Dr. Kapoor said calmly. “Run and don’t look back.”
“You’re not coming?”
“Maybe I am. Maybe I’m not. But you’re not going to wait for me. Clear?” Dr. Kapoor said in the same even tone she used to instruct me in how to fill a spreadsheet properly.
The Lily to the left lurched forward. The blast of the shotgun made my ears ring. The figure dropped with a wet thud. But there were more shadows, more voices, pleading and whimpering and calling.
“Now,” Dr. Kapoor commanded, and I obeyed.
I ran through the mist, through the trees, following the