Drexler moved to his left, slowing his pace, straightening, his blood chilling in his arms, his chest tightening. The hallway was silent except for a faint transformer-buzz coming from the EXIT sign. His nostrils flared, it was a powder smell -- a powder smell mixed with lilac. It made no sense. The door had been jimmied, the frame was crushed and dented at the latch; the metal of the door showed silver where it was torn from the force of the tool. Just outside the threshold on the carpet was the letter G.

Memo's place.

He reached for his phone, then heard a sound from within the apartment, a faint purring sound almost, a whispering purr, full of air. He took his hand from his phone and gently shouldered the door open.

A long black crowbar stood against the wall next to a low entrance table. The floor was parquet wood, square tiles laid in a checkerboard pattern. A framed print of a line drawing hung askew on the wall, startled nymph-faeries leaping from lilly pads on a swirling pond. He could hear the sound more clearly now, thrumming distantly, a steady undertone; it was a totally unfamiliar sound and he couldn't locate its source.

He looked past the opening to the living room into the cubbyhole of a kitchen. White metal cabinets. Microwave. Sink-in-dishwasher. Everything orderly, everything tidy. He pushed the door almost-closed with his elbow and stepped toward the arched opening to the living room, placing his feet carefully, his senses keen.

The room was wrecked. The bent chrome stem of a floor lamp lay in the shards of what had been a glass-topped coffee table. In the corner a small desk, overturned in a snarl of wires and the shattered frame of a flat-panel computer display angled drunkenly against the wall, two of its legs broken away. Water from the broken bowl of a ceramic tabletop-fountain soaked the carpet, and polished pebbles were strewn across the floor. A phone with a severed and twisted cord lay smashed next to the table. There were candles too, many of them, everywhere.

And diagonally across the sofa was the black-suited body of the motorcyclist's twin. He lay face down, his hips on the edge of the cushions, one leg crooked on the floor the other jutting straight across the arm of the sofa, his left arm bent under his torso, blond hair splayed across his collar.

Drexler heard the whispering sound again, he turned his head but couldn't locate it. He moved across the room, carefully placing his feet here and there, choosing a clean path through the debris. He leaned over the unmoving body and saw the light change on the highlights of the wrinkles of the leather bodysuit where it stretched across his back. The man was breathing; faintly, but he was breathing. Drexler looked for signs of violence but could see none. The man was young, Drexler thought, athletic. The lashes of his eyes were blonde, fine, slightly wet. There was a sepia mole on the right side of his neck, the size of a child's fingernail, but with an irregular outline. The fluttering sound came to his ears more clearly from here, it seemed to be coming from the hall.

Drexler straightened and listened, standing motionless in the debris that had been made of Memo's possessions. An extension cord, or a wire -- he scanned the room. The noise was a constant undertone now, and the hair on Drexler's neck quickened. He stepped towards the hallway, something fragile crunched under his foot and the noise of it caught him off guard. He looked at the sofa and it's motionless occupant, then back at the archway. Nothing moved, no shadow twitched out at him. He looked back at the hallway, scanning the walls, the floor. A dark something in a parallelogram of sunlight slanting against the wall caught his eye and he bent to examine it, then knelt down.

It was a machine of some kind, about the size of an egg. It had been a delicate and fine object once, but now it was crushed and bent, a strange twisted wing hung from its side. He picked it up and flinched. It was covered in blood, and a clear fluid oozed on his fingers. He turned it the light, puzzled. The underside of the machinery was a mass of semi-circular razors, some bent and flattened, some still standing proud and threatening. The blades were clotted with a dark gel of thickening blood, and there were pieces of flesh pinched between the glistening blades, torn chunks of bright red on the silver blades.

He heard the whirring sound again behind him but he didn't feel the sting of the needle in the back of his neck as it drove home it's fluid payload, yellow in the golden afternoon sunlight. Sunlight that faded to darkness.

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