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down the white corridor to another security door. “Where are we going?” John asked as they went through the door into another long white corridor. “I thought Theo’s room was on the third floor?”
    “It was, until she woke up,” Cho said. “Your wife began to exhibit symptoms that we really don’t understand,” he explained, appearing uneasy.
    “What kind of symptoms?” John asked.
    Cho stopped in front of a closed door. “See for yourself,” he said, unlocking the door and opening it wide.
    John went into the room expecting the worst, but finding the most amazing of sights.
    His wife, although looking tired and sickly, was sitting up and smiling weakly as several doctors and nurses attended to various tasks around her. John paused for a moment, hearing Cho behind him begin to question his staff about Theo’s condition. John made his way toward the woman who had made his life complete, catching snippets of the team’s responses as he drew closer to her bedside. “I’ve never seen anything quite like it. . . .”
    “Vitals were all over the place and suddenly they were normal. . . .”
    “It’s like she became another person. . . .”
    John was standing at her bedside, gazing into those bleary, yet still beautiful icy blue eyes. “Hey, you,” he said, reaching to take her hand in his. It was then that he noticed the restraints, binding her wrists to the side of the bed.
    “I guess I was pretty wild,” she said, pulling on the bonds. John didn’t even hesitate, freeing one hand, then reaching across her to undo the other, ignoring Dr. Cho’s urgent warnings. “John, wait! Not yet! Be careful!”
    And then John heard the laughter. At first he thought it was a happy sound, his wife joyfully chuckling at the idea that he would need to be careful of the woman he loved with all his heart and soul. But then he realized that it was not his wife who was laughing. The blow was savage and unnaturally powerful, sending him hurtling backward into some medical equipment before crashing to the floor. The room was suddenly alive with activity, but no one had a chance to touch Theodora before a pulsing preternatural energy burst from her body, scattering doctors and nurses like leaves in the wind. John had lost his cane, but he hauled himself up from the floor, using the radiator for support. It was as he’d feared.
    Actually it was worse.
    His wife floated above the hospital bed, her face twisted with an expression that looked like a grimace of pain. But John knew otherwise.
    It wasn’t pain at all.
    “What’s wrong with her, John?” Stephan cried from the corner of the room where he recoiled in terror. “What’s wrong with Theodora?”
    It was absolute joy.
    John lurched toward the bed under the woman’s watchful eyes.
    “It’s not her,” he said.
    A smile split her face wide, showing off razor-sharp teeth. “Hello, John,” she said with a voice composed of a multitude of demonic voices. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

CHAPTER THREE
    T he alarm clock rattled.
    It didn’t really ring anymore, the mechanism inside the wind-up travel clock muffled by something mucking up the works. But it still did the job.
    Barrett Winfield turned over in his bed and fumbled with the back of the clock, silencing the alarm. He lay there on his side for a moment, gathering his thoughts—booting up, so to speak—and stared at the face of the clock. He’d never noticed the bodies of dead insects that had been trapped inside the clock face, crumbled at the bottom, just beneath the six. On closer inspection he saw that they were the remains of cockroaches and thought how odd it was that they’d found their way inside the plastic.
    Now he knew why the alarm was probably muffled. Barrett smiled with his newfound knowledge and sat up in his bed. Once again he found the old adage to be true—one truly did learn something new every day.
    He picked up the clock and gave it a little shake, watching the buggy remains