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furniture apart from a series of enclosed, glass-looking pods every six or so feet. Each of those containers stood at about chest height, Kirev noticed, with round, covered holes where a scientist might insert their hands without disturbing the sterility of whatever lived inside.
    They reminded him of images he’d seen in a magazine once, of a human child born with some disease that prevented him from living in regular air with regular bacteria and germs.
    Kirev didn’t know if the lights came on by themselves, or if one of the seers had triggered them with a switch, but the entire ceiling seemed to glow as he walked out over that linoleum floor. Looking up, he couldn’t see any lit tubes or bulbs of any kind embedded in that ceiling, either. Instead, the tiles themselves seemed to emit their own form of illumination, brighter than any artificial light Kirev had ever seen.
    He saw Tan looking at those same lights before he turned, giving Rigor a hard look.
    “You think those are alive, too?” Rigor whispered.
    “Alive?” Kirev said, whispering as well. “What does that mean?”
    Ute answered though, speaking in her regular voice as she strode deeper into the room, walking down the middle aisle between those glass cases.
    “…It means they are building machines of us now, little brother,” she said, her voice cold, stripped of anything but hatred. “It means the humans have found a new excuse to kill even more of our kind. We will now light their homes. Likely power their refrigerators…”
    Kirev felt the hated seething off her like a physical force.
    Still, he could make almost no sense of her words. He looked back at Wreg, who was peering into one of the glass-enclosed cases nearer to the elevator. When the older seer looked up, he glanced at Venai, who had gone pale, Kirev realized.
    He decided to keep his mouth shut for now, if only because he wasn’t sure he could deal with his own emotional reactions if he were to understand fully. Now was not the time, he told himself. He could ask them all the questions he needed later.
    Even so, he found himself moving closer to one of those glass cases himself. Still gripping his gun in both hands, he moved until he was alongside it, peering in with his gun still aimed forward if towards the floor. Once he’d focused through the glass window, however, he stopped, blinking down at what he could see through the transparent pane.
    Whatever it was, it had living light.
    Kirev’s eyes followed the thing’s aleimic field, as it moved liquidly around the small cage. It did look like metal, but it moved like some kind of sea creature…or like the wall had upstairs. Undulating along the bottom of its metal and glass cage, it emitted a faint form of distress, primitive, but noticeable enough that Kirev felt the emotion deep in his gut.
    “Gaos,” he breathed, staring down at the thing.
    He could feel it now, some remnant of consciousness, like a part of it had been stripped from its host, leaving only the bare motor functions of its light behind.
    “Gaos…” he said again, then burst out, “Who would do this? How could any creature do something so obscene?”
    “Fucking humans would,” Tan muttered, giving him a dark look.
    Kirev had nothing to say to that. He couldn’t be sure if he agreed even. Somehow, to ascribe this to human nature was something his mind couldn’t accept, either. Something darker lived here. Something unseen, that seethed out of these very walls.
    He was still staring into the case, trying to control his breathing, when Wreg caught hold of his arm on the other side. Kirev flinched violently as Wreg caught hold of the right one, which was still sore as hell from being shot.
    Wreg immediately released him, holding up his hands.
    “Sorry, brother!” he said, his light exuding apology. “I’m very sorry! But do not look in there anymore. It will do you no good right now.”
    Staring at his face, Kirev tried to make sense of his words, still