I open my eyes. The room has turned sideways because my head is against the floor. Through this canted view I watch with vague disinterest as a white, pulpy shape waddles down the corridor outside the medical storage room. One of those bulging bags of fingerlings, ignorant that I'm in here, lying on the ground. I think it's the first time one of them has failed to notice me. I wait until the sound of its feet has died away, then sit up. As I shift the gurney shakes and Nikki's personal computer falls off, bounces off my arm, and hits the floor next to a plastic syringe. I pick up the computer. It's gone into low power mode. I fold up the camera and tuck it into one of the pockets on my belt. Then, pausing, I peer down at the syringe on the floor. It's in the clear area, where Nikki killed herself. She's probably dead. She died here, poisoned herself with something, then the bacterium came along and infested her, and now she's shambling around out there, off with all the other creatures on their mystery island ball. *** Uncertain even of his own sanity, Marcus Stone returns to the Pandora to find it a changed place. And he is no longer alone. What lies in those corridors began in terror and death and now continues, into dead space again, where lies the strangest thing: hope.