“Who?”
Reese waved a hand at the monitor. “The subjects, the unknown Anubis, they’re not dead.”
“I thought you said the ichor only worked on the dead.”
“It did.” Reese and Echols had toyed with the idea, but after seeing the results with cell samples, it became one of thosewhat iftopics discussed late at night over microwave dinners.
Reese scrubbed a hand over his mouth. “It was a hypothesis. Life ends with death, so what ends death?” They’d laughed at the implications because it suggested there was more than nothing when everything ended. Not necessarily an afterlife but something.
Harrington nodded at the private. “Continue with the footage.”
He adjusted the picture and the scene advanced. Nash reached the breezeway. The blur of black lunged. Even at twice the man’s size, he’d stopped its forward momentum. Both figures neared the wall and disappeared from sight because of the angle.
Then Nash stepped back, and his arms from the elbow down were swatches of incomplete darkness. In less than a second of elapsed time, Nash yanked his arms wide. Ichor splattered the ground, the walls, then the dark form solidified just enough for the two halves of the creature’s head to show clearly in Nox’s hands.
“Fuck.” The private winced. “Sorry, sir.”
Nash’s image winked out, reappeared just beyond the stairwell, then disappeared again before he ever hit the shadow. The footage reached the point of contact between Nash and the other Anubis, then continued till he disappeared for the third time. The private paused the picture again. “That’s all there is. The camera isn’t strong enough to see to the other end of that hallway.”
“Keep playing it.” Reese took a sip of his water.
“There’s nothing to—”
The colonel slid his gaze to the private. He continued the playback.
“What are you expecting to see?” Harrington said.
Reese bit his tongue. If he told Harrington, he’d want to know how he knew. Then Vic might wind up under the microscope and drilled by a bunch of military boys with something to prove.
Or worse, Phillips.
“I have a gut feeling.”
“Really?”
Reese drank his water to avoid having to answer.
More doors opened on both top and bottom levels. A dozen or so people inched into the scene.
Private Todd twisted his mouth into a smug smile. “See there’s—”
A ripple warped the edge of the building, expanding with each frame, distorting the picture until the image vanished under a haze of white.
“What is—” The private looked at Reese.
At least Reese managed not to gloat. “They fought.”
“I think the bodies we collected from the back already establish that fact, Dr. Dante.”
Reese coughed and set aside his water. “I mean, when two Anubis come into contact with each other, they will polarize.”
“And that means?”
“Remember how I said we hypothesized the ichor was made of the strings believed inside particles?”
“Vaguely.”
“Well, strings vibrate at different frequencies, the vibration of those strings is what’s believed to influence how a particle will be constructed. We have reason to believe the parameters that dictate each Anubis as an individual being is the rate their energy strings vibrate. Think of it like characteristics such as eyes, bone structure, skin tone.”