Across the city from Sara Gaspard and her demonic house guest, hours before the woman would wake to the creature's watchful red eyes, a portly security guard sat in his office and watched a portable television.

Robert Carlson reclined in his desk chair and flipped through the channels in search of a replay for last night's basketball game. A bank of fixed monitors surrounding him relayed flickering, monochrome images, various angles and shots capturing the words Klau Incorporated back-lit in white neon along a wall. The pieces came together in disjointed patches and patterns. Streetlights at the curb illuminated oblique lines through the empty lobby, and the light caught the side of one rounded pillar, the bottom of the mezzanine, and the banister's rail. Benches and padded chairs lined a recessed pond where koi fish swam laps in quiet, restless circles.

Coins piled in the belly of a plastic charity box glittered at the pond's front.

Robert found the right channel and popped a pretzel into his mouth. He brushed salty crumbs from his uniform.

Ambiance from the idle monitors provided relief in the otherwise dark, unlit room, the screens blinking from one black and white image to another every twenty-five seconds, as designed. Dozens upon dozens of unoccupied rooms came into focus while Robert watched his game: conference rooms and storage blocks, technician floors and individual offices, long halls, barren basements, and cluttered cubicles. Only the CEO's private level remained unpictured.

Though Robert didn't understand why the company desired such an abundance of surveillance, he didn't question his job and definitely didn't question the substantial paycheck he received for his implied discretion. If he occasionally sold bits of information regarding the building's goings-on to interested parties, that was no one's business but his own, and he saw no harm in it. Why anyone would be interested in such boring recordings, he'd never know.

The game progressed, and time went on. Robert finished his pretzels, balled up the empty bag, and shot it into the bin several feet away, tossing his arms up when the crumpled plastic sunk over the rim. Dials beneath nineteen of the surrounding monitors continued to blaze a positive green and their pictures rotated with precision every twenty-five seconds. Flick, flick, flick.

One, however, had changed.

Robert surveyed the monitors and paused when his eyes caught the final screen in the row, the indicator beneath it burning a steady red.

Grunting, Robert levered his weight upright, the chair groaning its approval, and went to the monitor, tapping the indicator twice to ensure the sensors hadn't malfunctioned. They hadn't. The image remained fixed upon a section of the lobby, the pillars supporting the upper mezzanine casting shadows by the pond's edge. At first, Robert saw nothing out of the ordinary; he'd locked the main doors hours ago and had done his single, passing patrol, though the koi had been known to trigger the sensitive cameras if riled. He grumbled about stupid fish and went to sit in his chair again—when he saw the man.

The man stood at the pond's lip, slouched enough to observe the panicked fish thrashing in the water, his body almost invisible in the colonnade's shadow. In the monitor's black and white image, his face appeared moon-like above the darker gradations, and Robert would have mistaken it for glare on the lens if the man hadn't shifted and looked to the camera up above.

"What is that?" Robert murmured, brow wrinkled as he fiddled with the dials to adjust the monitor's contrast. The man did not disappear, and Robert, fumbling with the keys on his belt, did not take his eyes from the screen's grainy display. He'd only just completed his walkthrough of the building a few hours ago; starting with the floor below the CEO's private level before winding down to his office near the lobby itself, and though he'd had to rouse the occasional sleeping technician slumped over their desk in the past, tonight hadn't been one of those nights. The main doors locked remotely and the loading dock in the building's rear had shut hours before closing time.

Where had the man come from?

Robert found the right key and pinched it between his chapped thumbs, slotting it into the proper lock on the drawer below the monitors. Inside, he shifted through strewn folders and crumpled papers until he found the issued 9mm pistol, and though Robert touched it, he paused, his pudgy fingers wrapped upon the handle, then shook his head and continued digging until he retrieved an unused stun gun. The intruder had to be a worker Robert had overlooked in his rush to watch the game; there was no reason to terrify the poor guy.

Robert's flat feet slapped the stone floor as he toddled from his office toward the lobby, working through the narrow, ill-lit barrow of interior corridors before passing into the main entrance. The door swung in on silent hinges as Robert took his flashlight from his belt and clicked it on, a narrow beam of light slicing through the sullen dark, sweeping back and forth, settling at last on the koi pond's rippling surface.

The lobby was empty.

Robert spun in a tight circle and shone the light upon the lower mezzanine and against the reception desk, spotting nothing out of the ordinary. "All right," he said aloud, clearing his throat. "I know you're there. Time to come out."

His voiced echoed without an answer. The security guard strained both his eyes and his ears, but he saw nothing shift and heard nothing aside from his pulse thumping and the slight shuffle of his shoes.

"The facility is closed for the evening. I'm going to have to ask you to step out so I can escort you from the building, sir."

No response.

Exhaling, Robert muttered under his breath and approached the pond, aiming the flashlight toward the main entrance, Verweald's exterior ambiance glaring against the tinted windows and painting blotched colors on the floor. The illuminated sign on the tower across the avenue blazed crimson and gold. The koi flicked through the pond's shallow waters.

A low chuckle jerked Robert around, and he almost toppled into the pond when he turned, leg smacking the raised edge, the fish congregating at his back as if waiting for food. The man appeared ten feet from Robert as if he'd always been there, the flashlight's shaking beam traversing a tall, lean figure, the golden buttons upon the bespoke suit flashing like nocturnal eyes, the man's dark styled hair combed with a slight curl at the ends, like flaring forked tongues. Robert couldn't see the intruder's hands.

The security guard swallowed and lowered the flashlight. A flare of green arrested the man's eyes, then vanished when the light went out, leaving behind vacant black pits below a pitched brow. "I don't know how you got in here, but we're closed for the evening. You're going to have to leave."

"Am I?" The man spoke in a languorous murmur and the hair on Robert's arms stood on end.

"Yes. I'm authorized to detain you until the authorities arrive if you don't vacate the premises." Robert had never detained anyone before. He'd trained at the academy, had practiced the maneuvers with his classmates, but that had happened years ago, under the watchful eyes of trained instructors on sunny afternoons tinged with nervous laughter and shared grimaces. His tongue probed the inside of his dry mouth and Robert wished he hadn't eaten so many salty pretzels now.

The man drew in a lingering breath and smirked.

Something wasn't right. Robert knew that with everything in his being, and his hand fell to the stun gun tucked into his belt as he realized how hard he was shaking. "Sir—."

"I hear you're an excellent source for certain...information."

The security guard froze as the man took a single step closer, body moving with sinuous energy, leather sole touching the floor without a sound. Robert's heart raced in his chest and a shiver pebbled his skin. The man took another step forward. The fillings in Robert's teeth ached as he sucked in the frigid air.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he stuttered, slipping the stun gun into his hand. Cold sweat coated his palm. He doesn't know about that—he doesn't. Only Jimmy knows about extra tapes and the leaked time tables. Did Jimmy sell me out?

"Don't you?" Another step.

Robert's breath whistled through his nose and issued in a fine white plume. When did it get so cold?

"Sir!" His voice rose high and broken as a boy's. "This a final warning—."

The man stopped. Robert's knees shook in the face of the man's casual disdain, and he couldn't rightly say why; the terror crouched fat and potent in his middle, curdling his guts and causing perspiration to percolate in copious sheets under his arms and against his spine. Give him what he wants, a voice in his head urged. Robert possessed no valiant spirit. He'd expected to find a hoodlum or a sleep-deprived technician locked in after hours, not this towering stranger with a bladed tongue and sneering mouth.

Danger, his every nerve screamed. Danger!

"R-right," the security guard managed to force past his chattering teeth. "Sure, n-no problem. Information, right. I—I can—. I can get you i-information—."

"Hmm. I need you to deliver a message."

"Message? What m—?"

Something changed. Before Robert's very eyes, the man moved—moved like liquid, an effortless slide of limbs and body too quick to follow, breaching the space between them faster than the security guard could blink. Robert didn't scream. No, he would need working lungs for that, and his chest felt frozen, as petrified as stone itself, eyes wide and mouth open. His hand, in an ironic twist of fate, managed to move, and his thick finger squeezed down upon the stun gun's plastic trigger. It went off with a raucous pop, and as the prongs buried themselves in the man's side, electricity sparked and crackled and gleamed on the predatory smile shown for Robert's benefit.

The man didn't flinch. He did nothing aside from grin and allow fifty thousand volts to pour into his flesh without resistance. Then, he plucked the prongs free and flicked them aside.

"Was that supposed to hurt?"

Pale and sputtering, Robert dropped the gun and recoiled, only for the man's long-fingered hands to spring up and delve into the security guard's chest, sliding through skin and muscle like honed knives. Shock dulled the resulting pain. A resounding crack echoed through the lobby when the intruder parted Robert's ribs as if opening a stiff book, and instead of perusing the written word, the man grasped the security guard's panicked heart and pulled it free with a wet, nauseous squelch.

Robert Carlson collapsed to his knees, and then to his back, one limp arm splashing into the pond where it shattered the thin veneer of ice forming over the water and floated among the shocked fish. Blood pattered upon the floor and emitted small, near imperceptible hisses where the heat met the chilled stone. The man cradled the pulsing muscle between his hands without saying a word, without expression or thought.

Red stained the white cuffs of his bespoke suit.

"Filthy," he whispered, tipping the heart into one open palm as he paced to the head of the koi pond and paused by the waiting charity box. "Another filthy, wretched mortal, wasting my time...."

With his free hand, the man tore the top from the box and dropped the still heart onto the glittering mound of grubby coins. Blood streaked the glass and the man sniffed, the odor of wet metal rising, his painted hands falling to his sides where they continued to drip and hiss against the invading cold. Behind him, ice began to creep from the floor to the security guard's soiled clothes and white steam curled from Robert's gaping chest. The man exhaled. The temperature rose.

"Yes," he muttered as he touched the glass, red fingerprints almost black in the night. "That'll do nicely."

With a final look at the security camera, the man turned on his heel and vanished in a burst of blurred heat. Blood continued to seep through the given coins, and the dead koi bobbed in the settling water. Deeper in the building, in the empty office of a dead man, a sports program came to its close, and twenty monochrome monitors flickered into darkness one by one until nothing but humming static remained.