He knelt there crying until his knees hurt. Until his face hurt. Until his eyes hurt from all the tears. One of the effects of the serum was that in changing the physiognomy of his eyes, it had changed the makeup of his tear-ducts. They now produced an acidic compound when he cried . . . so now he had tiny burnt rivulets in the skin of his face from where he had been sobbing, and they stung.

He got to his feet, somewhat more sober now.

“I will find a way, Astrid,” he said through gritted teeth. “Do you hear me? I will find a way to get him out of me. I swear. That’s number two on the list after finding a way to bring Anastasia back.”

“I’m with you all the way, Father,” she said.

“God, I will never get Jetta back, now,” he moaned. “Never. I have missed her so much, and she was right here, behind my back, the whole time.”

“I am so sorry, Father,” said Astrid. “I should have figured it out earlier. It’s my fault for not being clever enough.”

“No,” he said. “It’s my fault for not being observant enough. It’s my own damned house and I should’ve known there was another person here. He must’ve kept her well-sedated, and must’ve timed everything perfectly. Her bathroom breaks. Her meal times. Everything. God, I wish I could kill him.”

“So do I,”said Astrid. The sincerity in her voice was remarkable. And now, she was all that he had. “If it helps . . . I really do think of you as my Father . . . because you are my father, Father. You’re everything to me. Even if Rojetta is gone . . . you still have me. Even if I don’t count for much. I love you, Father.”

“And I you, Astrid. I you.” He stood up a little taller, and straightened his clothes. There, that was better. God, what did he do now? Try to think — where would she go? “Astrid, do me a favor, and unlock the security door leading to the old fallout shelter beneath the house. I need to check on . . .” A chill went up his spine as he said the words: “The Other Children.”

“I wish you wouldn't call them that,” she said, sounding frightened. “‘Your children.’ They’re nothing like me. They belong to . . . him. Ravenkroft.” She sneered the name.

“Yes, I suppose they do,” he sighed. “But they are also my creation. There is some of me in them, as well. Ravenkroft is . . . of me. And so are they. And so I must care for them, for they are, regrettably, just as much my children as you are.”

“If you say so,” she said. “But be careful.”

“Don’t worry. I will be.”

He made his way to the back of the house. The basement door sensed his approach and creaked open on motorized hinges. He frowned, picked up the can of WD40 sitting on a nearby table, and spritzed them. The fluorescent lights in the stairwell flickered on, and he descended into the house’s lower laboratory area. Viktor’s parents — may whatever forces ruled the universe rest them in peace — had originally intended the basement of the place as a luxurious nuclear fallout shelter, two stories deep underground, longer and wider than the house itself. A series of concrete columns and beams supported its tall walls and ceiling. There in the midst of all this sat his lab equipment, bubbling glassware atop three longish lab tables, its complex maze of tubes and pipes, flasks and test-tubes strewn throughout a lattice of steel rods and clamps. On one side, to the left of the lab tables and the chemical maintenance machinery, stood ten glass cylinders, each a meter wide and two meters tall, and each filled with a synthetic approximation of amniotic fluid, within which, throbbing and pulsating — and attached to an electromechanical umbilical cord made of bubbling hoses and wires — there floated a large, globulous, translucent sac of goo, in which there gestated a living, breathing, vaguely-humanoid fetus. A child, by all appearances, its head drastically misshapen such that it resembled the head of some animal, as did its toes and fingers . . . or were those claws and talons?

Where would she go? Where would Jetta run to if she were in trouble?

Each one looked different; each head differently misshapen in the likeness of a different animal’s head: Some had the heads of bears; others rams, others goats, others bulls, others giant rats. Each set of claws — or talons — was unique in its deformity. The creatures would grow in these sacs, these vats of nutrient-rich amniotic fluid, as the system rapidly aged them from the zygote stage to a state roughly equivalent to that of a fifteen-year-old human . . . only in a matter of weeks, not years. The NeuroScape programmed their brains with a basic grasp of language, and a set of rudimentary, rule-based algorithms, command structures, and fighting maneuvers that relied on a combination of enhanced instincts and incepted intuitive reasoning. Obedience training. Basic language skills. A knowledge base of virtual life-experiences. Simple learning tools. Ravenkroft had created them to be his perfect soldiers of the apocalypse, his perfect killing machines.

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Who were her friends before she ran away?

Across the basement from the cloning vats stood sixty large cages in ten neat rows of six cages each, with straw in them and stinking chamberpots in each corner. Half-eaten trays of food in the other corners. In each cage, one of Ravenkroft’s already-finished Mutants slept. And as they slept, their Neuroband Headsets educated their minds at a rapid pace. Presently, they were all curled into furry — some more so, some less — lumps of serrated-edge evil as they snored and tossed listlessly in their sleep, no doubt dreaming of bloodshed and carnage as they absorbed their lessons for the day. The biomechanoid implants in their bodies no doubt caused them great pain . . . all the better, in Ravenkroft’s view, to fuel their rage at a world they were destined to help tear apart.

Who did Jetta trust?

“Jesus H. Christ in a dumptruck driving backwards!” whispered Astrid over the speakers, the red light on the wall-mounted camera coming on. “The sight of them never ceases to give me the shivers! And I can’t even actually shiver! I’m software!”

Where did she feel she fit in? Where would she go if she felt threatened?

Viktor walked over to the nearest set of computer monitors. The flickering numbers and graphs there were almost a kind of pretty. He checked the gauges and dials connected to the various machines that sat next to the computer. Readings seemed nominal. A fluctuation in the oxygen supply to Tank #12. He reset the pump, and the flow evened out after a few seconds. The steady beep of the heart monitors, their waveforms persistent and rhythmic, were almost hypnotic. Ah, an arrhythmia in one of the creature’s hearts. Hmm. Biomechanoid #47. He keyed in a dosage of nitroglycerin into its nutrient flow, and also keyed in some additional medication to be intravenously delivered. That should help with that. The hum of the transformers sounded normal; hmm, no flaws in the electrics just by listening to them, and all the readouts were okay. The hiss of the oxygen tanks made for a steady background of white noise. The vibrations of the coolant pumps and the sloshing sounds of the liquids traveling through the various tubes and hoses were almost like the sounds of a mechanical forest. The bubble of the tanks made for a soothing sound, as well. The swooshing noises as the creatures in the tanks moved around in their embryonic slumber, layered on top of that, though, was a bit creepy. He was used to it, though. It had become almost a comforting sort of creepiness . . . a familiar, hauntingly atmospheric soundscape.

Dammit think. Where would Jetta go?

“Doesn’t it bother you, Father, that Ravenkroft has created these things and that he’s going to unleash them on the world and that you’ll be blamed for it?”

“Dizzy will stop him,” said Viktor as he worked. “She always stops him.”

“But what if she doesn’t? What if she fails?”

“Then,” said Viktor with a sigh, “we are all well and truly nailed to the wall, Astrid.”

Where would she go? Where did she feel comfortable? Where did she like to go?

Dammit, God how he hated it, but these were his children, too. He hated their very existence — hated that they slumbered right beneath his own bed — but he could not abandon these poor, helpless creatures to suffering, starvation, and a painful death by way of neglect. Ravenkroft wanted to use them to do great harm, and no doubt he would, before the end. But perhaps they could be saved from that fate, somehow. If he could only figure out how to get rid of Ravenkroft . . . how to banish him forever to some prison inside his mind, or exorcise him completely . . . Ah, what an idle fantasy! No such thing was really possible, though. No, truly, he had given up on that long ago. You could only hope to mitigate the damage the madman did, not destroy him or cast him out. He had thought about some form of therapy, some way to reintegrate Ravenkroft into the rest of his psyche . . . but he knew that was impossible as well. For Ravenkroft was not your “standard” split personality. No, he had come to be through stranger means than simple trauma, though that had been a part of it . . .

He walked back to the bottom of the stairs, shut the lights off, ascended the stairs.

“Astrid, lock the security door,” he said.

“Yes, Father,” she said. “With pleasure.”

He was about to head to the bathroom to do just that when he heard the sound — like a jet-engine, whining as it cycled down slowly — and saw the lights outside the window. Brilliant lights, like flood-lamps, a piercing blue-white color. Floating down from out of the sky and landing in the forested area behind the house. Down they went, like a meteor softly, gently crashing, into the trees . . . and then they disappeared.

Oh no. That meant that Ravenkroft’s rather unsavory business partner from the stars had arrived . . . and Viktor knew that this Visitor from space meant great harm to everyone who was of this Earth. Just like Ravenkroft did.

“Father? Father, are you alright? Your heart rate has increased.”

“I’m . . . I’m fine Astrid,” he said, trying to catch his breath.

Oh no. Not again! He felt the change coming over him.

“Astrid,” he said. “It’s Ravenkroft. He’s . . “

He grew dizzy. Lightheaded. There was a ringing in his ears, and a distant bell-like clamor ringing in his head. Oh no. No. Not again! No! Ravenkroft was coming . . . coming out . . . he was almost here! God, no. No! He needed to solve the mystery of where Jetta was! If only he had more time . . . But Ravenkroft would be here soon . . . any second now! And oh God, he was going to lock him up again, wall him up inside his own mind . . . trap him, make him a prisoner within himself . . . just like always . . . He had to make for safety, run, hide . . . yes, the TARDIS. The TARDIS in his mind. Concentrate, focus on the Police Box. The Police Box! Get inside, get inside it, quick! Oh Christ, oh God, the pain! He shut his eyes and felt himself shoved backward in his own head, losing consciousness, his head growing swimmy, his grip loosening, his soul fading . . . His eyes fluttered, the room around him blurring . . . and then . . .