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Hydras, on the other hand, reproduced on their own. Like the crawlers, they hijacked stem cells, made those stem cells produce more hydras. As far as Margaret could tell, hydras would provide permanent immunity from the infection — no booster doses needed.

But with that possibly permanent immunity came a larger problem: Margaret still had no idea what else the hydras might do. Using them might very well be trading the devil she knew for the one that she didn’t.

“Okay,” she said, “let’s get in there.”

She opened the airlock door and stepped into the containment area. Four hospital-gown-clad captives looked at her.

Clark was still sedated and strapped to his bunk. Triangles were beginning to show; pale blue shapes beneath his white skin.

Edmund, of course, wasn’t ever getting up again.

Cantrell stared out, eyes only for her. She’d done nothing to the man, but he couldn’t hide his hate for her. She didn’t know why and didn’t have time to worry about it.

Margaret looked at the three new men.

Men? Of course they were men, although two of them looked like boys. Especially the one who cried silently, tears wetting his young cheeks.

He was in the cell next to Edmund. How old was this boy? Nineteen? Maybe twenty, tops? Had Margaret made different choices in her life, he was young enough to be her son, just like Candice Walker was young enough to have been her daughter.

Margaret closed her eyes briefly, gathered herself. There was no time for those thoughts.

“Clarence, which one was the killer?”

Clarence pointed his gloved hand at a thick-chested man in the second cell in the left row, the one just past the p.r.o.ne Clark.

“Chief Petty Officer Orin Nagy,” Clarence said. “Killed two men with a pipe wrench. They were trying to give him the cellulose test.”

Nagy stood ramrod straight, fists at his sides, staring out at Margaret with rage-filled eyes and a smile that promised pain. He had a salt-and-pepper buzz cut. Blood trickled from a purple welt on his forehead. His gown’s short sleeves revealed arms knotted with long muscles, skin dotted with faded tattoos. He looked like a navy man from a ’60s movie.

He didn’t seem to notice the wound on his head. Margaret felt fear just looking at the man, at meeting his dead, psychotic stare.