There was nothing new about walking into a cell.  There was typically a smell.  Under the best of circumstances, there was a close odor of stale air, body odor, and an open toilet.  But in Maxwell Wiley's experience, things were often worse.  By the time he entered a cell, the prisoner had usually given up hope.  All kinds of bodily fluids saturated their clothes, the floor, and the mattress if there was one.  Too frequently, these dark, windowless rooms baked in the sun. The desert heat slow-cooked the contents to a rank, unbearable stench.  Then there were the cells where the prisoners had become ill.  The inhabitant suffered from dysentery that festered to the point of some sort of intestinal rot.  Feces would be stinking up the blistering hot cell for days, while the detainee sweated out a sewer of toxins.

But Maxwell had never encountered anything as awful as the odor that greeted them when the security portal opened.  He heard the stomach-turning wretch of R.J. gagging beside him and fought with every fiber of his being not to do the same.

It was a fetid, bestial aroma, like a hundred wet dogs had been held in there for a year – and died in captivity.  Overlaying that was the raw offense of the shit on the floor.  Just before dawn, the creature had relieved itself right under the central monitoring array.  The pile of black excrement stood like a monument – an ancient cairn representing corruption and hate for all that was good and decent.  If the room hadn't been airtight, there would have been a swarm of demonic flies buzzing around it.

Maxwell regretted not wearing the full containment suit.  He would have very much welcomed a tank of fresh oxygen.  The thin plastic face shields only made the air feel dense and every horrible smell slid around its sides and up through the open bottom.

R.J. produced a hacking cough, as though trying to expel poison from his lungs.  When he was done, he said, "Is there a way we can get this aired out?  There's no way we can put the girl in here tonight with it smelling like this."

"The vents can flush the room.  But it'll need to be cleaned first."

"I'll get some people on it.  We're going to want to collect some of the urine and the stool anyway."

Oh, Christ, he hadn't spotted the urine.  Maxwell took a hasty step backward.  He'd almost put his foot in the putrid, yellow-orange liquid.

"LARS also left some hair."  R.J. pointed to the broken wall array.  A tuft of fur was caught in the cracked remains of the Plexiglas dome.  He went over and examined it closer, being careful not to dislodge the strands from the jagged shards.  "Amazing."

"What?"

R.J. answered without looking towards Maxwell, clearly absorbed in his own thoughts.  "There's no blood.  You would think that with the momentum she had, the skin would have at least been grazed."

He reluctantly turned away.  "Once we retrieve the samples, I'll have them hose the place down and bleach it.  Can we get that fixed for tonight?"  R.J. pointed back to the broken sensors with his thumb.

Maxwell surveyed the smashed electronics.  Not a chance.    

"It's not like I can order a new one online.  It's going to take a while."  That stupid animal had to go straight for the most expensive thing in the room.  The budget spreadsheet played in his head.  One-point-two million dollars was the cost for one of the arrays.  They were produced at some military contractor's top-secret factory in Colorado.  Could they even get another one?  He'd have to talk to Grierson.

And the damn freak would probably try and smash it again as soon as it was installed.

"We'll need to have the dome reinforced too," he said.  "That will create additional delays."

"Uh-huh."  R.J. stepped past him deeper into the enclosure.  "You better get a new dome for the ceiling sensors too.  She's just going to get stronger."

There was a lovely thought.

Maxwell began to list all of the repairs that would have to be done and divide them between the essential ones that would have to be completed before sunset and those that could wait. 

The tinted shock glass needed to be replaced.  They might have to install metal bars or a wire cage to prevent the thing from continuing to look to it as a way out.  The foam pallet was shredded and scattered around the enclosure.  Luckily, there were several in the stockroom.  It was just about the only non-high-tech piece of equipment in the pen.  And the broken array should be capped off until the replacement came.

The scratches and gouges in the metal walls and floor would have to be sanded and repainted.  But that could be done in the weeks before the next full moon. 

Should we even bother?  That beast is just going to wreck the place every time it's in here. 

The room was like an extension of his life and his career: torn to shreds and shit on.  After what happened last night, he was going to be stuck down here for years, perhaps until retirement.  Any other assignment and he could quit and go to a private firm, but Maxwell was intimately familiar with how much the DTAA wanted to keep this secret.  There was no way to simply walk away from Project LARS.

He still felt a little stunned.  He had read the reports, watched the video – he knew what that girl was supposed to be, but there had always been something removed from reality about it.  In the back of his mind, he was certain that this would be like the clairvoyant he investigated in Boston or the alleged pyrokinetic in Butte.  Once they actually started looking into it, it would turn up a fraud, a charlatan, a lunatic.  But this was different.  The monster under the bed was real after all.

"Having only one sensor is going to be like having only one eye."  R.J wandered over to the ragged remains of the Subject's clothing and looked down at it with a frown, as though he expected to find something gruesome among the rags.  "She's intelligent, and she's fast.  She did a pretty good job of avoiding us.  We're going to be severely limited with the data we can collect tonight."

"It might not change,"  Maxwell spoke like he was providing the voice of reason and kept the notes hopefulness buried beneath the surface.

"True."  He crouched down and probed the clothes with a tentative finger.  "But if she does, it'll be our last chance to observe her for a month."

If Maxwell's world was in tatters after the transformation, then R.J.'s had just blossomed.  There was an eager energy about him that hadn't been there before.  He was enjoying this.

"Are you telling me you don't have enough data to analyze?  I'd think all those gigabytes could keep you busy for a month."

"Take a look at this."

Maxwell slowed his steps after his legs obeyed R.J.'s command too quickly.  He peered down at the spot on the floor that Blass's glove was drawing his attention toward.  There was a multicolored capsule smaller than a grain of rice.

"An RFID chip?" 

"The metamorphosis must have expelled it from her body."  R.J. seemed far too pleased about it.

Now Maxwell had security concerns to add to his list of headaches.  "Shit."  

"Fine then."  R.J. stood up.  He looked over at the Observation Center much as LARS had done the night before.  Nothing was visible beyond the wreckage.  "We can have a quiet night.  Let our people rest.  Might not be a bad thing with Horus out of commission."

Maxwell's nose detected the fake nonchalance in the words – it was coming in loud and clear over the reek of shit.  The forced shrug under the thin, yellow coveralls only reinforced the impression.  Blass was trying to play him by feigning disinterest.  He must think that Maxwell and his superiors wouldn't let things slide, even for one night.  If it changed into the monster again, they would want every possible drop of information about it.  And he thought he could use that to get what he wanted.

Maxwell wasn't sure what he disliked more: that R.J. thought he could be so easily manipulated, or that he was right.

"Any word?" R.J. asked while Maxwell was still contemplating his next move.  "Is the good doctor going to be alright?"

As opposed to the bad doctor, I guess.

"It wasn't a heart attack.  The doctors are calling it a heart episode.  But Horus will probably be out for a week."

"That's too bad.  LARS will need some counseling after this."  R.J. shifted his attention to the door to the Subject's bedroom.  His concern rang hollow. 

His interest in Horus and the girl seemed perfunctory, like Maxwell's tallying of the damage and the work that would need to be ordered.  R.J. was the project's administrator, and he was assessing the people as tools and tasks.  It wasn't a coldness.  It was the same level of detached calculation that Maxwell had seen from commanders in the field.  R.J. was much more capable at his job than he ever thought possible on that day in the crumby Dutch Harbor apartment.  He had expected him to be weak and emotional, but he was proving to be a good second in command for the operation.  He knew what needed to be done and what people to put where.

And he had some notion fermenting in his brain about how to salvage the night.

Maxwell decided to bite.  "So do you have any ideas how we can get some worthwhile data with that array out of commission?" 

"Well, if you were to lift the ban on entering the enclosure,"  R.J. spoke hesitantly like he was musing out loud.  "We could send someone in to get blood and tissue samples."