The wail of the devil turned into a hiss for a moment, as the bullet tore into the arm, letting green blood spill out and drip to the floor. It wasn’t enough. Jask fired again, the second bullet impacting the arm just to the left of the first. The devil hissed once more, then relaxed its grip and withdrew the arm with an awful slithering sound.

The door slammed shut.

Breathing heavily, the captain grabbed a key card from his pocket and waved it over the panel beside the door. Somewhere in the walls of the room, metal shifted and clanked, and the panel beeped.

‘Locked,’ the captain said softly.

‘That didn’t do us much good last time,’ one of the guests said, clambering to his feet. He was the one who had spoken before.

His companion stood as well, glowering at Jask for some reason.

Turning to them, the captain inclined his head. ‘Less of us this time, though, and that one knows we have some bite. Maybe it’ll just move on.’

He paused, raising a finger for silence, and they listened as the sounds of a slithering creature moved slowly along the wall, then away, its wails fading into the distance as it followed its companions.

‘See?’ said the captain. He turned to Jask. ‘Good work, lad. I probably would’ve been dead if you hadn’t scared that thing off.’

Suddenly remembering his etiquette, Jask clasped his hands behind his back and bowed his head a little. ‘Happy to help, sir.’

The captain just snorted. ‘At ease. No point to all that formality right now. My name’s Havok. Yours?’

‘Delta 5-721, sir.’

‘No, not your designation, your name.’

Jask looked at him for a moment. ‘Uh… we don’t get names, sir.’

‘No, I’m aware of that.’ He took a step forwards and raised an eyebrow. ‘But I know you all give yourselves ones anyway. So come on, what’s yours?’

‘Um, Jask, sir.’

‘Nice to meet you, Jask.’ He patted Jask on the shoulder, took his gun back, and stepped away again. ‘We’re a small unit in an unprecedented situation. Team coherence is essential if we’re to survive, and knowing each other starts with a name. What about you two?’

The guest who’d spoken before drew himself up to his full, mediocre height. ‘Feriandor. My wife here is Arivelle. Before you say it’s nice to meet us too, Captain Havok, I’d like to know something. You said earlier that the majordomo was “establishing the situation”. Tell me, is she dead, and did you know?’

Havok was quiet for a moment, with his head tilted. ‘I didn’t know where she was. I lied to try and keep everyone calm. I have no idea if she is still alive.’

‘Can’t you radio?’

‘That would be with the radio I dropped outside.’

Feriandor threw his hands up. ‘Well, you are helpful!’

‘I needed both hands to pull Endal from the jaws of a devil.’ Havok didn’t look angry with the guest. He just looked. There was no expression on his face. ‘I managed it, but another one just grabbed him. I shot one of those things in the mouth and all it did was recoil. I imagine it’s still alive.’

‘Are we stuck here?’ Arivelle wanted to know.

‘No, not really. We could go outside, but if there are any lurking out there, we’ll die.’

‘Well,’ sighed Feriandor, quite violently. He paced around the room for a while, clicking his tongue. ‘What if we give them him?’ He jerked his head at Jask.

Jask opened his mouth, but Havok spoke first.

‘No, no, no. Won’t work. This lot are different. Never heard of a swarm this size. They followed the ship the Third Lady Silvon Paravir came on.’ He shook his head. ‘We tried to scramble some bait together, but it was too late and too little. This lot aren’t here for that. I don’t think they even know about it. They want the whole Sanctuary.’

‘So what do we do?’ Feriandor demanded.

‘Don’t know,’ Havok replied. ‘Working on it.’

After that, the two guests retreated to the other side of the room to talk in hushed voices, and Jask nervously approached Havok and cleared his throat.

‘Excuse me, sir.’

‘Yes, what?’ Havok turned to him. ‘I’m trying to think of a way out.’

‘Sorry, sir. But, what did he mean? He said “give them” me.’

For a few moments, Havok just looked at him. His eyes were soft and hard at the same time, as if behind them there was a conflict between two souls, one the uniform, the other the man who wore it. Eventually, he licked his lips and said, ‘How many times have you been to the docks?’

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‘Not many,’ said Jask.

‘When you have been there, what have you seen?’

He shrugged. ‘People. Ships. Mostly people. Lots of them.’

‘Thousands,’ Havok agreed. ‘But what rank? What rank would you say you’ve seen the most?’

Jask frowned and tried to think back. Barring a few exceptions like the Third Lady, the ranks always arrived muddled, servants and guests alike disembarking as one confused, mixed group, all equally scared and all equally relieved, but as Jask thought harder and remembered more, he was quite sure he had seen far more of the grimy faces and ragged clothes of people like him, born to the lower decks, to no name.

‘Servants,’ he replied. ‘Mostly they’re servants.’

Havok nodded, slowly, and waited.

‘Oh. But guests outnumber the servants ten to one.’

‘They do.’

Jask realised. His eyes widened. He raised his hand to cover his mouth.

‘Delta 5-721, wasn’t it?’ Havok asked.

Jask nodded.

‘Numbers are easier to forget.’

Backing away, Jask came against the wall. This was what the majordomo had been doing back in that ballroom. Kara had been right to take them away. And all those who had stayed, who had gone with the majordomo, from the best of them to the worst, they had all had names of their own, but not ones the Sanctuary recognised. To the law they had all been numbers, disposable, forgettable.

‘You said… too late and too little.’

Havok shook his head. ‘I know what you’re hoping. I’m sorry, lad. The devils near the Sanctuary understand. They know if they don’t attack, they get a steady food supply. We thought… a bigger swarm just needed a bigger sacrifice. We were wrong, but we only found that out when the swarm ignored the bodies.’

‘They weren’t bodies,’ Jask whispered. ‘They were people. One of them was called Pellad. Delta 5-683. I knew him.’

‘We tried.’

‘You killed. You killed us. For how long?’

Havok’s mouth trembled a little, and he turned away. ‘It was for the good of the Sanctuary. It worked, for so many years. The sacrifice worked, and the devils left the Sanctuary alone, and humanity endured. The people of the Ocean are only alive today because of the sacrifice.’

‘How long?’ Jask repeated.

There was a short silence. ‘Delta 5-721. The last digits are the number of servants registered before you during the year you arrived. The digit before the dash is that year. And “Delta” is the name of the millennium that year belongs to.’ He turned back, staring with empty eyes. ‘This is Millennium Delta. The fourth since the founding of the Sanctuary, according to the Seneschal’s history. Four thousand years.’

Jask said nothing. He couldn’t think of anything to say. What was there? What could he argue? Four thousand years of death, and all of it leading to what? He looked around the room, at Arivelle and Feriandor, still muttering to one another, at the door, still locked, and at Havok, gazing at him with those dead eyes.

‘Don’t people notice?’

‘The guests know,’ Havok replied. ‘But today was an emergency. Normally the sacrifices are taken before they register... and we take whole ships, so no one you know would ever go missing.’

Jask opened his mouth to say more, but they were interrupted by Feriandor’s voice from across the room.

‘We have to leave,’ he declared. ‘If we stay here, we’re sitting ducks if another one of those things come along. Better chance if we can run.’

Havok nodded, his eyes not leaving Jask’s face. ‘Agreed. Let’s go.’

No one spoke as Havok unlocked the door with his key card. They stepped outside as quietly as they could, then stopped. Jask, the last of them, was still in the doorway and had to peer around the others to see what they had seen.

What they had seen were devils. There were three of them, but all were unmoving. At least, Jask thought they were unmoving at first, but when he listened, he realised he could hear a quiet, wet crunching, and when he looked at them more closely, he realised that they were wrapped around other things. From underneath them, from the underbellies, where the mouths were, he saw legs, clad in the uniforms of the guards.

As they fed, the devils did not appear to move or be particularly concerned with anything that was going on around them. Part of Jask wondered if they even realised there was anyone there, but another part of him silently acknowledged that each and every one’s seven eyes were locked on him and his companions.

It was at that moment, amidst the terrible quiet of that corridor, that something wailed. It was a mournful cry he knew, the hunting cry of a devil. Someone shouted something, and Jask jumped sideways and forwards, tumbling down next to one of the feeding devils, landing in amongst its arms. For a single moment he froze, his heart racing, certain that the arms would wrap around him and hold him there, and he would be the next meal.

But they didn’t. He managed to push himself up with the wall. He looked ahead, down the corridor, and froze again.

Havok, Feriandor and Arivelle had all jumped in the other direction from him, and between him and them was the devil that had wailed. Its momentum had carried it through the doorway and into the room they’d just left, but now it was crawling back out, reorientating itself, its eyes moving back and forth between Jask and the other three.

‘Jask!’ Havok shouted, drawing his gun. ‘Run!’

Jask ran. He ran as fast as he could, which he knew was not fast enough to escape the devil, so as he ran he prayed that it would chase the others instead, and he hated himself for doing so, because he supposed that was exactly what the Sanctuary had been doing for four thousand years ― hoping that the devils would kill someone else first.

It worked, as it had worked for all those years.

He stumbled to a halt some distance away, having made many turns through many corridors and run past many more feeding devils. Breathless, he stood amongst them and listened, not to the sounds they made, but for wailing, or for screaming. He could not tell whether the fact that he heard none was a relief, it it was something to be afraid of, or if it was something to be ashamed of.

But he knew there was one thing he had to do. He had to keep walking. Maybe he was doomed, maybe the Sanctuary was doomed, and if it was, then maybe humanity was doomed with it, but there was one thing that he knew for certain, and that was that he did not want to die. So he kept walking, and he kept finding feeding devils. Some were almost finished; others had only just started. All ignored him, engrossed in the meals they had at hand.

He did his best to ignore them as well, until he came to one that he could not. It was in a corridor like any other, although it was on its own. There were no corpses and no other devils nearby, nor any other wandering people like the very few he had passed by, who had not wanted to speak to him or know him or help him. This was one was far on the edge of the chaos, alone.

It was consuming its victim from the head down, slowly inching its way along her body, and it was about halfway done. That meant that when Jask glanced at it as he went past, unable to resist the temptation, he glanced a second time, then stopped and stared at it, into a pale dead face that he recognised. Into clever yet tired blue eyes he knew well, only they were glassy and unseeing, and none of that personality was behind them any more.

Kara was looking at nothing.