The first emerged from the office of the British secretary of defense, backlit by a wall-to-wall projected map of what had once been the European Economic Community. The secretary, wearing a crisp gray uniform decorated with medals, had lurched to his feet from where he lay sprawled on the floor next to his desk. He marched toward Red Wraith with his swagger stick tucked under one arm and his head lolling against his shoulder from the karate chop that had snapped his spine. His step was certain but disjointed, a shambling stagger. But his hands were still fully functional, and were monstrous constructions of gun-metal blue steel. As they closed around Red Wraith's throat he felt the bones of his spine start to splinter and crack…

The secretary of defense disappeared.

The German trade ambassador came next. He emerged from his penthouse suite wearing his housecoat and slippers and holding a snifter of the brandy that had been laced with 200 milligrams of strychnine-twice the dose required to kill a man. Hi amp; face was twisted with pain, and occasionally he was forced to stop as his body jackknifed nearly double with the convulsions the poison produced. Yet somehow he continued to stagger toward Red Wraith, and somehow he avoided spilling any of the brandy in the snifter around which his portly fingers were wrapped.

Wrenching Red Wraith's mouth open with one hand, the German ambassador poured the amber liquid down his paralyzed victim's throat. Red Wraith choked and sputtered and felt hot brandy trickle like spittle from the corners of his mouth, but was forced to swallow just the same. Within seconds the strychnine hit, sending spasms of pain throughout his body. His gut felt as though it were filled with iodine bile, a churning sea upon which razor blades were bobbing, their sharp edges sawing into the lining of his stomach. His vision blurred with tears as the pain intensified beyond what he could bear…

The trade ambassador vanished.

The Russian policlub leader emerged from the steam room, his muscular young body wrapped in a towel. His damp curls framed piercingly intelligent black eyes that stared out from beneath the mask of Daniel's face. The bottom of that face was a bloody ruin. A portion of his jaw hung to one side on tattered strands of flesh-the exit point of the bullet that had been fired into the back of his head. He held a gun in his right hand-a Walther PB-120 with a body and silencer made entirely from fiberglass and plastic, materials that would pass through a metal detector without a blip. As super-hot steam swirled around his lower legs the policlub leader raised the pistol, sighted, and fired. Although Red Wraith was looking down the barrel of the gun, the bullet somehow struck him from behind, ripping apart his lower face and jaw in a bloody explosion of flesh, gums, and teeth.

Just as the first two men had, the policlub leader vanished.

Attacker followed attacker in rapid succession, each killing Red Wraith in the same way that he had been dispatched. But the last one-the Greek minister of finance- wasn't satisfied with merely slashing Red Wraith's throat with the spur mounted in the heel of his boot. Just as the steel blade bit into flesh, he transformed into an image of Lydia, her own throat gaping open in an obscene red grin that mirrored Red Wraith's own wound. She tried to speak, to whisper words of endearment to Red Wraith. But then blood erupted from her throat, fountaining over him in a ghastly spray. As she died, Lydia's eyes locked on his- accusing, wounded, filled with hate…

Unable to bear it a second longer, Red Wraith closed his eyes and choked back a moan of agony. Then he clamped down upon the shard of determination that remained. He refused to suffer, to die this way. This was all just some nightmarish hallucination, some deathbed construct with which his own mind had chosen to torment him as he lay on the verge of death. Summoning up the last vestiges of his will, he fought back, forcing his hands up and away from his body, palms outward against Lydia's chest, in violent defiance.

His ghostly hands passed right through her. And that gave Red Wraith an idea. His persona resembled a wraith, an insubstantial figure composed of red mist. He'd customized his masking program to allow him to pass through walls like a ghost. Perhaps he could use it to escape from the tesseract that enclosed him now.

Shaking off the last of the paralysis, Red Wraith hurled his body forward into the room that resembled the office of the secretary of defense. He struck the wall map at the back of the room, was momentarily slowed by it-and then passed through it as if it was not there.

He had escaped!

But the scene he found himself in was grim indeed…

Lady Death lay on her back on the rumpled sheets of the hotel bed. They were wet, but warm. She plucked weakly at the sheets with one hand and saw that they were splotched with vibrant red. The same red stained her fingers and, she saw when she looked down, her bare legs.

Harsh lights-the kind they use in operating rooms- glared down from above. Were they the lights that she had been rushing toward, just an eyeblink ago? They shone harshly upon the walls of the room, which were a sterile white, inset with medical equipment and monitors. A hiss of air conditioning washed Lady Death's skin with a chilling cold, carrying with it the sharp smell of medicine and disinfectant.

Dozens of figures crowded around the bed. Each was Shinanai-and yet not Shinanai. The skin on one was a little too ruddy, the hair on another a little too short or too long over the ears. That one's luminescent face paint was the wrong shade of blue, and the cast of this one's eyes was too angular. This one's mannerisms were too abrupt, not flowing and graceful like Shinanai's, while that one's laughter was too harsh and unkind.

The not-Shinanais crowded around the bed, poking at Lady Death's hair, clothes, and skin with cold fingers. All held hypodermics with needles the width of her little finger and syringes the size of soda cans. Flexible rubber tubing ran from the top of these hypodermics into their mouths, like drinking straws.

After pressing the skin to find a vein, the vampires plunged the tips of the needles into Lady Death's skin with painful jabs, then drew the plungers back. The syringes filled with blood, which the vampires greedily sucked up through the tubes, turning them from pale white to a murky pink. As they fed they smiled reassuringly down at Lady Death, dribbles of blood trickling over parted lips. Occasionally one would pause in her feeding and bend down to mark Lady Death's pale white skin with bloody lip prints. Then" kisses were gentle but delivered with remote formality, in just the same way that Hitomi's own parents had kissed her good night.

Lady Death stared up at the vampires, helpless and weak. Even though these were only imperfect replicas of Shinanai, a part of her knew that these creatures loved her. What they were doing to her was for her own good. It was a treatment, a cure for life. A mercy killing…

Realizing that she wasn't thinking clearly, Lady Death shook her head. What had happened? There had been a bright light, and Shinanai's voice, and then scenes from her childhood and early teenage years. They had sped by impossibly fast, like a tridcast skipping forward several seconds at a time: Hitomi playing in the Shiawase arcology's exclusive, executive-class daycare; her guardians beating the private tutor who had been caught teaching Hitomi an unauthorized subject-how to French kiss; trying in vain to gain the attention of her mother and father by wearing increasingly outrageous fashions and body art; the night at the Black Magic Orchestra concert when she had slipped free of her guardians and fled backstage to meet Shinanai. The final scene had been set in the hotel room in Seoul where Shinanai had made love to her. And then she had awakened here, in a room that was a strange blend of the hotel room in Seoul and her family's private medical clinic…