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has fallen into disrepair. A rat squeaks by my foot and scuttles away into a hiding place. Slime smears the wall on my left.
    And then we come to the gates, sharp with oil, shiny with newness.
    The gates to the hospital above. Locked, of course.
    I lean into the steel bars, fill the locks and shift the bolts. The gate falls open for him, the man who can help me.
    I know him now. I remember. Kato. Taurin-forsaken, they say.
    But then, now, so am I.
    Into the cellars of the hospital. A place of concrete and steam and mold, full of hulking machinery. Instinct and memory commingle. I cringe from a table with great iron rivets at the sides, jump away from two mechanical arms with nozzles facing each other. Reddish lines streak tables and pool on the floor.
    This is the place of blood and fire, screams and sharpness.
    This is where they broke me for the first time.
    Are you the one? Are you the one? Are you the one?
The question batters my mind once again. I want to melt away but
he
won’t let me. His solid presence anchors me in the now, to this place.
    The lock at the stairs is huge, rust-stained. I pause and stare at it, while something alien and cold twists my insides, demanding obedience. A memory rears its ugly head.
    The worst is not here. The worst is on the other side.
     
    After the arcane devices and torturous implements in the cellar, the hospital itself is a shock. It is white, a white so clean it hurts the eyes. White tiles span the corridors and slash halfway up the walls. The plaster above them is the same clinical color. Every angle is square, every corner sharp. There are no shadows, no slack, no give. th, no gip>
    An inflexible mind designed this place. An inflexible, sterile mind.
    I never came inside when Sera worked here, meeting her instead on the steps outside the front doors. More often than not she was late, fatigue heavy in her eyes. She invited me in, wanted to share her work with me, but I had no interest. The science of it all made me nervous.
    Even back then I couldn’t pull away completely from Taurin’s teachings.
    And then one night she’d started home too late—or so they said—and in the morning, there was nothing left of her but half-disintegrated clothes and goo, the distinguishing marks of a cloak attack.
    Or so they’d said, in their hushed, horrified voices. Their sympathy had oozed over me like syrup, smothering my anger.
    It was only outside, away from the solicitude of Sera’s co-workers, that my rage had quickened into action.
    I’d hunted cloaks, then, in my vengeance. I should’ve been hunting doctors.
    I should’ve come to the parties here. I should’ve toured the labs, like Sera wanted me to.
If I’d paid more attention, Sera might not be suffering right now, the way Flutter is, caught between instinct and memory, trapped in a shifting body.
    The place smells of disinfectant, a pungent stench of alcohol and ammonia. The fumes would make you dizzy, if you stood inhaling them too long.
    Corridors slash off each other, like knife cuts. Stairs march up to upper floors. The lack of concealing places bothers me—no draperies, no furniture, no unlit nooks. White lights glare from boxy fixtures in the ceiling.
    My shoes squeak on the polished floor, leaving faint smudges. I take them off. There are no potted plants to stash the incriminating evidence, so I carry them in my left hand while I pad after Flutter in my socks.
    Oh, I look so threatening I’m sure, creeping about, holding my shoes so as not to smear the nice clean floors.
    Flutter pauses, flattens herself against the wall. She spreads, but doesn’t turn to mist. Instead she goes blurry, grainy, as if the walls have no pores for her to slide through, as if they resist the movement of her atoms into them.
    What other anti-mourning cloak measures do they have?
    I copy her. A door in one of the branching corridors opens with a clang. Shoes squeak. Weary women’s voices float down the hall.
    “Keeping us up so late.