He took her good hand, and the warmth of the simple touch was soothing, pulling her back from the murky territory of Dave's unknowable mind to the solid, immediate reality of Dimitri beside her.
She leaned toward him, intending to kiss him, when the sound of the intercom announced Dave.
Petrov buzzed them in, and as the reinforced door opened, eight pairs of footsteps followed, perfectly synchronized, like a single heartbeat distributed across sixteen boots. The sound filled the stairwell and drifted up through the hallway.
Dave had arrived for his shots.
Dimitri's hand tightened on hers for just a moment. Then he let go of her and stood.
"They are early," he said. "I need to go."
"I know." She looked up at him, searching his face, and found calm determination where she'd expected to see dread. "Be careful. If Petrov is right about what happened at the harbor, Dave already knows more than we think. He'll know if you're lying."
Dimitri leaned down and pressed his lips to her forehead. "I'll be downstairs. If you need anything, call me."
"Go." She gave him a small push with her good hand. "Go take care of our eight-bodied protector. And try not to say anything that gets us killed."
He managed a smile at that, but it didn't reach his eyes.
29
DIMITRI
The stairwell felt longer than usual.
Dimitri descended one step at a time, listening to the muffled sounds of movement below—the subtle creak of plastic chairs adjusting under the weight of eight bodies, the quiet hum of the lab's air conditioning, and the complete absence of conversation. Dave's eight bodies didn't talk among themselves. There was no need. The merged consciousness communicated in a way that didn't require words, and the silence the Eight created when they were together had a quality that was unsettling. It was the silence of something thinking with sixteen brain hemispheres, processing reality through sixteen eyes, and waiting with the patience of a predator that knew it was powerful.
He paused at the bottom of the stairs and took a breath.
Be smart. Be careful. Don't say anything you can't take back.
He walked into the main lab.
They were arranged in their usual formation against the far wall, seated in the plastic chairs that the lab had been furnished with.Their bodies were different, but their postures were identical, relaxed but alert, hands resting on their thighs, backs straight, heads slightly inclined.
Sixteen eyes tracked Dimitri as he entered. One organism observing him through eight bodies.
He was never going to get used to that.
Petrov was at his station, hunched over his work with the exaggerated concentration of a man who was very much not concentrating on what he was doing. His eyes flicked to Dimitri for a fraction of a second, a glance loaded with questions and warnings, before returning to the printout he was pretending to read.
Dimitri's stomach tightened.
"Good morning." He crossed to his workstation and picked up his lab coat from the back of his chair, shrugging into it with more deliberation than necessary.
The routine of putting on the coat, checking the equipment, preparing the syringes, and assuming the role of the scientist helped. The role was armor, and he needed it right now.
"Good morning, Dimitri." Number One spoke. His voice was calm, neutral, the tone he always used when initiating a conversation, which was the same tone he used for everything. "How is Mattie doing?"
The question surprised him.
Not because Dave was asking about Mattie, the Eight had shown an unusual interest in her well-being since her injury, but because of the way the question was asked. It wasn't a segue, a pleasantry tossed out before the real conversationbegan. Number One leaned forward as he asked, and the other seven bodies mirrored the movement, a subtle but unmistakable shift of attention that suggested the answer actually mattered to them.
"She's in pain," Dimitri said. "The doctor said her hand will heal, but it'll take weeks, maybe longer."
"Her fingers were broken," Number One said.
"Yes. There were multiple fractures." Dimitri opened the refrigeration unit and began pulling out the vials he needed for the shots. "The doctor set them and splinted them. He seemed satisfied with the alignment."
