The last time Zag had been conscious, or had it been the time before, Tanya had asked him to arrange passage back into the underground. He thought he’d made that call, but he wasn’t sure. How long ago had that been? Had they gone down yet? Had they encountered resistance? He tried to call a nurse to bring him his link, but the weak mumble that came out probably couldn’t be heard over the machine that was extracting, filtering, and replacing his blood.

Then he heard the buzzer. He thrashed weekly, anticipating the pain to come. Indeed soon his whole body felt like it was dipped in acid as they returned his body to a state that was supposed to be hostile to the HMMV virus — but which was barely any more hospitable to his own existence. Mercifully his mind shut down and he lost awareness of just how long the pain went on.