Jaime Fernández didn't look up when Famosa entered his ramshackle office. This was partly because Fernández had delved deeply into his stack of paperwork, and partly because Famosa did not knock. Then again, Famosa never knocked.

"Drop all that stuff and come with me," Famosa said, with no preamble. "Right now."

Now Fernández looked up, half-glasses slipping down his nose. "What is it? The López woman?" Magalys López was failing quickly; uterine cancer was rarely treatable on the island, especially among elderly women.

Famosa rolled his eyes. "No. Not the López woman. Come on, I mean it. Right now, and no questions."

That earned a pair of raised eyebrows from Fernández. Right now, and no questions rarely meant anything good was about to happen, but long practice quickly squelched any further visible reaction. He moved to stand as Famosa swiveled in the doorway, ordering, "Bring your bag."

Fernández nearly turned down the wrong corridor in pursuit; he'd assumed Famosa was leading him to the intensive care unit, when instead the hospital director made for the nearest exit. Fernández almost opened his mouth to ask the obvious, then clamped his jaw carefully shut. No questions.

Once outside, Fernández automatically raised a hand to shade his eyes from the sun. He would normally wear a hat, but he'd left it on his battered filing cabinet in his haste. Once again he almost missed Famosa, who had not turned towards the tiny row of parking for the hospital's most senior officials (consisting of Famosa, the chief of security, the chief surgeon, and Famosa's personal secretary).

Instead, the director walked straight up to a new (new?!?) Army truck, engine running, parked on the side of the cracked street, flanked by two blank-faced soldiers with slung machine guns.

Fernández halted in his tracks.

"Oh, come on," Famosa snorted. It's not that. I wouldn't be coming with you, would I?"

Lacking a response, Fernández clambered into the back of the truck along with his boss. The canvas-domed truckbed was full of seated, armed soldiers, none of whom offered either doctor a hand, or offered to make more room available as they squeezed into the crowded benches on either side.

The truck wound quickly through the decomposing maze of Centro Habana, and rumbled its way east towards the bay, then north. Fernández caught a glimpse of blue water beyond the slight flap in the rear tarp. With a jerk, the nose of the truck sharply descended, and the late afternoon sunlight streaming in from above the canopy was extinguished.

Fernández was rocked against Famosa on one side and the burly biceps of a soldier on the other as the vehicle descended through a spiraling ramp. He could no longer make out the details of the walls or ceiling beyond the truck's tailgate. The tunnel they were in contained no lights to assist travelers.

After a very few minutes, the truck decelerated sharply, and came to a dead stop. Looking out through the rear opening, Fernández could see a reflection of headlights against a solid wall, but that light went out almost immediately, to be replaced by another reflection, this one a much fainter red. Then another small, crimson light appeared, flickering back and forth across the truck bed.

"Andale, doctors, come out, right now," came a voice from behind the reddened flashlight.

Famosa dug an elbow into Fernández's ribs. "Come on, let's go." None of the soldiers moved. The two physicians clambered their way over the tailgate and out of the truck.

Fernández felt hard rock beneath his shoes' worn soles, which barely had time to touch the ground before the same gruff voice barked, "This way, follow me. No talking!"

The lensed flashlight darted towards a steady red glow in the wall facing the silent truck. A single bare light bulb painted the color of blood hung inside a steel cage, bolted to a harsh stone wall. Below it stood a metal door, bound at the edges and across its center in heavy, riveted bands. The colonel — for that is what he was, if the epaulets on his shoulders and Fernández's fading memory of his own Army service was any guide — banged on the door with the butt of his flashlight. Fernández felt more than he saw a slash of dim light, also red, as a slot barely three centimeters wide slid open at eye level. The colonel leaned in close to the slit and muttered a single, unintelligible word, then stepped back. The light behind the door blinked out, and the eye slit slammed shut.

After another moment and the sound of metal scraping against rock, the door squealed open. The doorway was wide, wide enough to allow at least three men to enter abreast, but the colonel held up a hand, and then motioned first Famosa and then Fernández in, calling out their names to the still-unseen presences beyond the doorway. Fernández squared his shoulders and nodded in the near-darkness, as if acknowledging a long-awaited moment, and followed his superior into the gloom.

Fernández was barely three steps inside before he heard the heavy door slammed shut behind him, and a brilliant light was suddenly staring him in the face. He was unable to resist flinching as his irises recoiled against the glare. An unknown voice in front of him barked out his name, and papers rustled ahead and to his left.

"Yes, that's him. Let's go." The spotlight left Fernández's face, and as his battered vision adjusted yet again he eventually saw that he was standing in a small room furnished only with blank-faced men in uniform, all of whom were carrying heavy automatic weapons.

The only exits visible in the dim red light were the door immediately behind him, and its double embedded in the right-hand wall. Another colonel, this one mustachioed and relatively squat, motioned the two doctors towards it. "Move along. No time to waste." He banged on the new door sharply, and entered as it opened without looking back. Famosa and Fernández followed, accompanied by (if sound were any indication) at least half of the dozen or so enlisted men from the guard chamber.

They were led through a maze of stone corridors, lit only by more blood-red light bulbs mounted at regular intervals. At several occasions, Fernández could make out recessed alcoves with still more heavy doors along the sides of the walls. He did not think they led to banquet halls or infirmaries; "cell" faintly screamed from the faint reflections on the dun steel portals.

At long last the corridors ended in yet another metal door, but this one was different from its fellows. The surface was much brighter, though tarnished in an oddly random fashion, the coruscating purples of its face broken by a very bright and reflective patch at the level where a man's hand would be expected to push it open. In addition, instead of the now-familiar double rectangles cut out by bands of steel across the edges and center of the door, this entry was banded from top to bottom across its vertical center, with another heavy band crossing the first at shoulder-level.

The squat colonel banged against it, and it opened with no further preamble. He motioned the two doctors inside, then pulled the door shut behind them to remain in the corridor with his men.

Fernández found himself in another stone room, this one larger than the original entry chamber, but still small enough to be claustrophobic. Once the door behind him clanged shut, modern fluorescent lights flickered to life in the ceiling. As his eyes adjusted once again to the change, Fernández could see a chest-high barrier to his right, behind which a pair of soldiers were studying not the new entrants, but rather the glow of television monitors embedded within their side of the barrier. Neither so much as glanced at Fernández or Famosa.

Yet another Army colonel, this one tall, aquiline of face and pale of complexion (this last did not bode well by Fernández's estimation; his island's rulers held much greater stock in light coloration than their public speeches ever indicated) stood before them. Fernández stared at him with open astonishment. The pistol holstered on his right hip was not surprising, but a heavy silver cross on his chest, held by an equally brilliant silver chain, was as out of place as a new American sports car on the streets of Havana.

The colonel was holding a heavy sheaf of papers, the topmost of which were apparently affixed with photographs, and his eyes darted from the pictures to the two men before him as he studied the replicated and real visages with exaggerated care. Finally he spoke.

"Jaime Jiminez Fernández, physician, born second December 1962, unmarried, assigned to Freyre de Andrade Hospital, and not a member of the Party." The colonel's lip twisted slightly at this last. He continued, "You have been summoned to perform a service to the Revolution and your country. You are hereby forbidden to ever speak of where you are, what you see, and what you will do in this place. Your silence shall last for the rest of your life." He paused in the speech. "However long — or short — that may be. Do you understand?"

After a moment, Fernández found his voice. "I do not understand," (Famosa's body jerked, almost imperceptively, at this presumption), "why I am here or what I am to do, but I do understand your instructions, Comrade Colonel."

The colonel fixed him with a glare, then nodded slowly. "That will do." He nodded at the sheaf of papers in his hands. "You — and your relations — are bound to your duty. Do it well, and you will be rewarded." He did not bother to tell Fernández of the consequences for unsatisfactory performance. There was no need.

The officer stepped aside to reveal another wide, tarnished, metal-crossed door embedded in the rock, and then rapped upon it with a gloved hand.

"Then enter, and do your duty."

The door swung open, and Fernández stepped into a room the likes of which he had never even imagined.

Even though his eyes had by now adjusted to normal light, he had to restrain himself from lifting a hand to shade them from the glare within. For a few moments, all he could see were the bright, shimmering reflections of white light against silver: polished silver now, not the dun of tarnish and disuse. Everywhere against the far wall, and a large door at its center, was the glint of the precious metal, far more of it than Fernández had ever seen in his life; indeed, there was more silver embedded against the room's far wall than he thought could have lain in the tombs of long-dead Egyptian pharaohs.

Even more remarkable than the silver itself — if that could be imagined — were the shapes into which it had been wrought. Stars of David, bas-reliefs of the Blessed Mother, and crucifixes, everywhere crucifixes: carved, stamped, embedded against the wall, and in the door at its center. Numerous platters of what had to be gold, centered with intricately-painted portraits of Christian saints, martyrs, and most of all, pietas and images of the crucifixion, were also mounted against the silver walls.

"Quite a sight, isn't it?" rang a voice from the left side of the room.

As he turned to face the speaker, Fernández was unable to keep his jaw from falling open. Like everyone else on the island, he knew that voice as well as his own.

The bearded figure, sitting in a cushioned wheelchair and wearing incongruous western-style exercise clothes, was at once more gaunt and more corpulent than in the innumerable portraits that stared out of every conceivable space on the island. An intravenous drip bag hung behind the chair, its tube taped to the man's right forearm, and a compressed-gas tank hissed alongside. A noseplug-notched oxygen tube hung loosely near the bottom of the old man's beard. Age and illness had stripped the heartiness from his face while decades of luxuries had provided an ample paunch, but his dark eyes had lost none of their vitality.

"So what do you think, Doctor?" The old ruler waved at the wall of icons and crucifixes. "All that treasure, and there's far more to it than what you see here. It covers the entire outer surface of the next room, including the roof and the floor. There is nothing else quite like it in the world." He paused momentarily. "At least, not any more."

Fernández finally found his voice, and said the first thing that sprang into his mind. "I could never have dreamed of its like, Presidente. What is it?"

Fidel Alejandro Castro laughed, but not heartily. He stopped just short of falling into a fit of coughing. Finally he replied, "It is a cage, doctor. A cage for what the yumas would call an insurance policy." He chuckled again. "But first, doctor, here is your patient." The dictator gestured at his own chest. "I am in your care from now on — or at least for so long as I am in need of medical care."

At the time, Fernández wondered at the feral smile beneath the bushy grey beard. Even at first glance, the man before him did not look like he would be recovering to full health in this world, but Castro's smile was not one of a man who had come to terms with his mortality. It looked more like the anticipatory growl of a predator in sight of prey.

Famosa bustled over — Fernández had almost forgotten that he was there — and shoved a heavy stack of medical charts into Fernández's hands. Fernández blinked at Castro, then adjusted his spectacles and looked down at the pages. He flipped through them rapidly, reading the words from the music. The dictator was a decidedly sick old man: diverticulitis, severe peritonitis, repeated resistant infections, recurrent internal hemorrhaging, further surgery very dangerous. Finally he looked up at Famosa.

"I don't understand," he said. "I am not a gastric surgeon. Why me?"

"You are here," Castro replied, "because despite your unwillingness to embrace the Party, you are still the leading geriatric physician on this island, and you have a background in emergency medicine besides." He fixed Fernández with a glare. "Your nation will be in need of both skills very soon."

Castro abruptly shifted his gaze from Fernández to Colonel Lima, who had followed the two doctors into the treasure-lined chamber. "Show him. Now."

Lima stepped forward, producing a large, archaic iron key from within his pocket. He unlocked the door at the center of the shining wall, pushed it open, and stepped in, motioning for Fernández to follow. After a second's hesitation, Fernández obeyed.

He found himself in a tiny antechamber, lit by a single caged, red bulb. Another silver-encrusted door was directly opposite the one the two men had just entered. Every surface of the small chamber was covered with silver and religious artifacts. Lima reached across Fernández's body to pull the entry door closed and lock it. He then retrieved a different large key from his pocket, and turned to the opposite portal.

Lima rapped harshly on the door with the key's pommel, then flipped it in his hand and inserted it in the keyhole. "It should be waking by now," he muttered to Fernández.

The door opened inwards on oiled hinges. The light inside the room within was yellow and dim, but as the door swung wide, Fernández could see that the interior was plain stone, with none of the garish ornamentation of the two outer chambers.

And then he saw it.

The figure was upright, hanging slightly forward from the far wall by short, thick chains manacled to its thin wrists. Its ankles were similarly confined. The tall body was clothed in grayed rags that might once have been black. The feet were bare, the head covered with matted ash-white hair. At first glance, Fernández thought it was the most pitiful and wretched man he had ever seen.

Then it raised its head, and opened its eyes, and smiled, and Fernández could not stifle a scream.

The eyes were wide, hollow, and yellowed, but the pupils were dead black, and shone all out of proportion to the faint electric light.

Its teeth were not yellow. They were long and sharp, as white as flawless polished marble, and they stood out against a thin oval face with sunken cheeks. The thing's lips were peeled back in a rictus-like grin, and it leered at Fernández.

Fernández managed to hold its ground for long moments, until the thing's mouth opened, and it spoke. He couldn't understand the words; they were at once guttural and soft, and they rang with harsh consonants that would later remind him of the Russian he'd been forced to learn as a schoolboy — but for the moment he was hardly capable of making any such association.

He was racked with a sudden, wrenching indecision. Every instinct screamed at him to turn and run away from the abomination, but as the low, harsh voice continued to speak, Fernández also felt a gnawing compulsion to step inside the room, to walk across the stone floor, to come face to face with the terrible, hideous... fascinating thing.

His left foot shuffled forwards.

And then Lima grabbed Fernández by the collar, and yanked the doctor back into the tiny antechamber. The face of the thing against the wall twisted with sudden rage, and it spat unintelligibles at the colonel, hissing and screaming now, the low and somehow more terrible tones banished in a torrent of obvious abuse.

With Fernández stumbling behind him, Lima reached for the totem hanging from his own neck and held it out before him. "Quiet, wretch! This one is not for you!"

The thing screamed, its words now rolling into an extended howl as Lima grabbed the door handle and pulled it shut, closing off the cell and its gibbering inmate.

Fernández heard rather than felt a muffled slap as his buttocks and shoulder blades whacked against the far door. His eyes were as wide as those of the thing in the next chamber. Lima regarded him coolly, waiting for the doctor to regain enough composure to speak.

"What... what is that?" Fernández finally managed.

Lima shook his head. "Not for me to say. He will tell you what you need to know," and the tall colonel nodded past the shaking physician's shoulder. "I think he will tell you very soon, but it is not enough to be told. First you have to see."

Fernández started to turn towards the exit door, anxious to put as much distance between himself and the thing in the cell as possible, but Lima caught him by a shoulder and firmly turned the doctor back around. "Not yet. First I have two questions for you, and unless you want to see that thing much closer up, I suggest you answer them truthfully." Fernández stared, then nodded curtly.

"First," Lima said, "do you have one of these?" He gestured with the heavy crucifix, still gripped in his left hand.

Fernández paused, thinking. "I'm not sure," he said slowly. "I may, but... I'm not sure," he repeated.

"Well, get one," Lima replied, "preferably from your brother."

Fernández started briefly, then inwardly shrugged. Of course they know, why be surprised?

"Second," Lima continued, "and this is the most important question you will ever be asked, Doctor: Do you believe?" he asked, shaking the silver cross.

Fernández did not answer. Decades of conditioning against speaking truthfully on matters such as this stopped the words from leaving his mouth more effectively than any gag.

"Don't be a fool!" Lima snapped. "I'm not some DGI shithead trying to make my informant quota. This is important, because of that thing in there! Your life depends upon it. Now — do you believe?"

After a long moment, Fernández simply nodded, and Lima nodded back. "Good. We thought so; you are close to your brother, after all. Now, get one of these, immediately," Lima shook the crucifix again, "and never set foot in that room again without it. Understand?"

Fernández nodded again, this time more enthusiastically. "I do, Comrade Colonel. Is this why... why me?"

Now it was Lima's turn to nod. "Yes, Doctor. Not only are you the ideal physician for this... project... you also have the ability to protect yourself from that thing. Many others — that fool Famosa out there, for instance — do not."

Lima dropped the crucifix, then reached for Fernández's shoulder again, this time more gently. "Step aside, doctor, so I can let us out of this place."

They had scarcely stepped back into the room with the wall of treasure before Castro turned in his wheelchair to fixed Fernández with an avid gaze. "So, Doctor, what do you think? Quite a sight, isn't it!"

Fernández stared for a moment, mute, then finally said, "What is it?"

Castro smiled broadly, his eyes hard. "Why, I told you before, it is seguro, Doctor. What the nortenos call an insurance policy." The dictator settled back against his cushions. "Ceauşescu's insurance policy, to be more precise."

"Ceauşescu..." Fernández trailed off.

"Oh, yes," Castro continued. "Nicolae's insurance policy, and his greatest secret, one he kept from Stalin himself." Now even Fidel shuddered a bit. "Thank every god who never lived that he was able to do that!

"Ceauşescu found this thing, somewhere deep in his wretched country, way back in the mountains," the old comandante went on, his voice now as animated as if he were haranguing the crowd in the Plaza de la Revolution, "just after the war ended, we think. We never learned how he captured it, but somehow he did, and he kept it locked up, just as we have here, for forty years.

"He planned to use it to cheat death," Castro mused, "but the fool waited too long. He let the gusanos take him, and they put so many bullets in him that even that thing in there couldn't get more than a mouthful of blood, if it were on the floor next to him!" Castro spat in contempt. "The weakling. Lined up and shot by peasants-with his wife! Pah!"

Now Castro's smile was hard. "We learned much from our fraternal allies over the years. More than Ceauşescu ever suspected! And when he died there against a wall, when Romania fell to the gusanos, we were ready." He thumped the armrest of the wheelchair. "I was ready!

He leaned forward again, with the relish of one telling a tale long concealed. "My people knew where the thing was, and when the army deserted and the Securitate ran to hide from the peasants' revenge, they went in and took it! Took it out of that cold hellhole, locked it in a silver-lined box, and smuggled it to the Adriatic. Then a submarine, a long voyage-a very unusual voyage-and then finally... here. To Havana. Where it remains still.

"Ceauşescu's insurance policy." Castro smiled again, his eyes cold. "My insurance policy.

"But all this is ancient history, Doctor," Castro said after a long moment. "And the past is not your concern. What you do need to know, you will learn over there." He pointed across the room to the unoccupied end of a long metal table, where two blank-faced soldiers were studying small television monitors, their eyes never rising to see the other men in their midst. A large, thick, hand-bound file sat on that end of the table, a ring in its spine padlocked to a heavy chain that was locked to a larger ring on the cell's floor at its far end.

"Go on, get reading!" Famosa said, shuffling forward. "The summary is in the front, the rest is test reports."

Fernández stepped numbly to the long table, and slumped into a hard wooden chair. The binder's cover was stamped with a profusion of security markings and dire warnings against unauthorized access. I suppose I'm cleared for this, he thought wildly, and opened to the first page.

The summary referred to the thing in the cell simply as "the Subject," and after only a few minutes, Fernández grew to hate that simple word. A page of charts showed declining bodily functions-heart rate, blood pressure, respiration, EEG-over a period of days. The charts were built from statistical analysis of what the report referred to as "donors."

There appeared to have been a great many donors, but just one Subject.

The donors' vital signs diminished steadily after three highlighted inflection points-marked "donations" in still more coldly bureaucratic notes. They seemed to stabilize, always at a lower level of health, until the third "donation." After that, the last charts in the sequence showed flatlines on all of the telemetry, going on over a time scale that made no sense to Fernández-why continue to measure long after the patient is clearly dead? His skin began to crawl as he guessed the answer.

The final page of analysis proved his fears correct: first the pulse returned, then the EEG, and finally a ghost of a signal in respiration. After about twelve hours, the hearts and lungs and brains of the dead donors had resumed function, albeit at bizarre rates with nonsensical gaps and just as inexplicable surges. The patients were certainly not normal, but they were alive.

The last section of the report was a compilation of the donors' behavior during and after their ordeals. Phrases like "highly susceptible to commands from the Subject," and "sensitivity to ultraviolet light" and "increasing hostility towards guards and physicians," and "considerable strength despite physical infirmities," and "physiological changes accompanied by overwhelming hunger" abounded. The end of the report noted, "Donors euthanized by the usual method after observations were completed."

Fernández continued to review the report for the better part of an hour, lost in horror and sick fascination as he picked through the vast compilation of test data that made up the bulk of the file. He scarcely noted Castro and Lima conferring over folders of their own, or Lima muttering orders that were ferried out of the room by a uniformed aide.

Finally he closed the file, and self-consciously wiped his hands on his trousers. Castro noted the motion and smiled his cold smile again. "So, Doctor. What do you think of our little research project, eh?"

Fernández could not meet the dictator's eyes. "How... how many... donors were used in the research?" he stammered.

Castro laughed heartily. "Oh, enough, quite enough! Ha ha ha!" He waved a hand airily, trailing a length of plastic IV tubing. "Don't concern yourself with that, Doctor." The smile grew wider still. "We will not run out of them. There are always more gusanos."

*****

Shortly afterwards, Fernández was ushered out of the dungeon (he could now think of it in no other terms) and driven back to the hospital. Before he climbed down out of the truck, Famosa hissed to him, "We will begin tomorrow at sundown. Be ready!" The night was warm, but Fernández shivered all the same.

He staggered into his office, where he learned that Magalys López was dead.

*****

Father Ricardo Fernández stumbled as he hurried down the long aisle of Nuestra Señora de Montserrat. Some fool-if fool he was, and not a DGI squad there to accost him again (Ricardo crossed himself without conscious realization he was doing so)-was pounding at the church's large wooden doors incessantly, and had startled the priest away from study (well, actually, a short nap) in his small office behind the chancel.

"Yes, yes, I'm coming!" he cried, fumbling with his keychain at the large, dark doors that opened onto la calle Galiano. He was sufficiently irritated at the late interruption that he flung the door wide, and summoned all the gravitas he could manage to glare at the (surely a drunk, surely not them) miscreant.

His arms and jaw dropped when he saw the man reeling on the doorstep. Even in the near-darkness he recognized the haggard face.

"Jaime?!?"

Fernández fairly leapt inside the threshold, pushing past his startled brother. Ricardo stood there for a moment, stunned, then followed, pushing the tall door closed behind him.

"Jaime, what on earth are you doing here? What has happened?" he finally managed.

His brother whirled around on the edge of the nave. "Don't ask! Don't ever ask!" He brushed back the shock of salt-and-pepper hair on his forehead absently. "Trust me, Rico, you do not want to know!"

Ricardo stared. He thought he'd seen every conceivable emotion that could visit his brother's face, but the wild eyes and shaking visage before him might have belonged to a stranger. "What's happened?" he asked again.

Fernández shook his head, violently. "No! I told you-don't ask!" He staggered against the back of a pew, stopped, and raised his hands to his face. He stared at them for a moment, then clenched his eyes tightly shut, and his hands into fists. Finally, the shuddering stopped. He opened his eyes and looked at his brother.

Ricardo was still agape at the sight of him, his jaw almost slack against his tattered workaday cassock, and Fernández stared right back. Only the white clerical collar below Rico's chin looked clean, but below the collar...

Fernández lurched forward suddenly, and grabbed the item dangling by a long beaded chain around his brother's neck. "Rico, do you have another of these?" he demanded.

Completely nonplussed, Ricardo blurted out the first word that came to his mind, "Why?"

Fernández shook his head again, violently. "No, no! Don't ask why! Just tell me, do you have another of these? I need one!"

Ricardo studied his brother's face for a long moment, and stepped back. "Then you will have this one, Jaime." He reached behind his collar, lifted the chain over his head, and folded it around the carved cross in Fernández's hand.

Fernández gazed at the simple wooden totem, and muttered something Ricardo could not understand, even at this short distance. He didn't say, 'not silver,' did he? Ricardo thought.

Fernández's head snapped up, and his eyes were pleading now. "I think it will do, thank you, Rico, but... your blessing. Give this your blessing! Don't ask why!"

With a look that blended wonderment and concern and something akin to shock, Ricardo complied, wrapping his hands around his brother's and murmuring in Latin. Finally he released his grip.

"May it help you find what you seek, Jaime."

"May it help us all, Rico." He shook his head again. "I have to go. Now. Thank you. I will see you soon if I can." Fernández whipped around and bolted from the church before his brother could utter another word.

*****

"The primary problem," Famosa said, as they were ushered through the stone maze the next evening, "is to keep him alive until the third donation. He is old, and sick, and weak. If his heart fails before then, he will simply die. And if that happens, so will we, in short order.

"I assume," he continued, "given the state of anemia we anticipate in the patient, that you plan to conduct a transfusion immediately after the donation, correct?"

"Certainly not," Fernández replied, striving to maintain a professional detachment. "Direct transfusions as a treatment for anemia are essentially an old wives' tale." He disregarded Famosa's insulted head-jerk and went on. "The studies have shown them to be, if anything, deleterious, particularly in the elderly. No, the treatment will be epoetin alfa to stimulate red cell production, B-12 compound to relieve deficiencies, one hundred percent oxygen inhalation, and a constant saline IV to maintain blood pressure and lessen dehydration. I have brought all the necessary items with me."

Castro and Lima were waiting for them in the large, gilt-walled antechamber. The dictator's face was drawn, but his eyes were hard. His knuckles, gripping the arms of the wheelchair, were white with strain, but whether he was holding so tightly out of fear or resolve, Fernández could not say. He seemed focused on the ordeal to come, and for once, did not speak. Lima noted the wooden cross dangling outside of Fernández's lab coat, and the doctor thought for a moment that the colonel would berate him for not having a more ornate totem, but the rebuke died unspoken.

Fernández checked the old man's vitals, replaced the saline bag with a fresh one, and then nodded when Lima asked, "Are you ready?" Lima nodded back, curtly. "You take this," he said, pointing at the IV rack, "and I will push the chair. This is a good time to begin. It is just dusk, and the thing should be sluggish for a little while."

Feeling entirely unreal, Fernández complied, and carried the aluminum rack alongside the wheelchair as Lima unlocked and opened the outer door, then squeezed in to the tiny man-trap while the colonel first locked them in and then opened the door to the dark cell.

The thing against the far wall did not look sluggish to Fernández. It was awake and staring at them when they entered its dingy room, with an expectant leer on its toothy face. Almost at once it fixed its gaze on the seated Castro, and began to murmur in a low voice that almost would have been soft if not for the harsh consonants of the language.

Castro's eyes widened, and he began to push on the armrests, as if to rise. "Not yet," Lima said, holding Castro down with a hand on his shoulder. "Stay in the chair for now." He turned his head to Fernández. "You should be safe enough with that on," he nodded at the crucifix, "but don't get within its grasp, all the same."

Fernández nodded enthusiastically. This time, he realized, he felt no compulsion at all to get any closer to the chained creature-very much the opposite, in fact.

Despite this, he gritted his teeth and followed as Lima eased the wheelchair towards the awaiting thing. Lima stopped a meter away from the outstretched hands. Its nails were long, and filthy, and looked very sharp. "Anything you need to do beforehand," he said to Fernández, his eyes fixed on the grinning jaws ahead, "do it right now."

Fernández checked the oxygen supply feeding an inhaler in Castro's nose, opened up the valves on the saline drip, and fumbled in his own pocket for the syringe of epoetin alfa and B-12. "The settings will do for now. I will need to add this to the IV as soon as... as soon as it's over."

"Very well," Lima replied. He released Castro's shoulder, and without stepping forward, pushed the wheelchair out to his arms' length.

When the chair stopped moving, Castro was within the span of the thing's arms, looking up at its face with wide, staring eyes, his jaw slack. Ceauşescu's insurance policy gazed back at him, and instead of reaching down, cooed in its soft, harsh, awful voice.

And Castro obeyed the summons, rising slowly from his chair to meet the creature's gaze.

The rictus smile grew ever-wider in anticipation as the thing leaned forward. It sniffed obscenely at Castro's cheek, then nudged the famous beard aside with its own nose, and with a groan that was shared by both "subject" and "donor," sank its fangs into the old man's throat.

*****

When it was over, Castro collapsed backwards into the chair. The thing that had fed on him licked smeared blood from its lips laviciously as Fernández and Lima steadied the old man and hurriedly pulled the wheelchair back to the center of the room. It smiled down at them and crooned contentedly while Fernández jammed the syringe into the IV feed and checked Castro's vitals.

"His pulse is weak, but it is steady. He must be kept on the IV to maintain his blood pressure." He looked up at Lima. "Let's get him out of here, for God's sake." The last generated a sharp hiss and a stream of invective from the monstrosity in chains.

After Lima closed the inner door of the man-trap, Fernández asked, "Did that thing understand me just now?"

Lima hesitated, then said, "I'm not sure. We don't think it comprehends Spanish, but..." he trailed off. "It has been here a long time, and it's certainly intelligent. And as you could see, it does not like to hear the words 'dios' or 'Jesus' spoken in its presence." Lima stroked his chin thoughtfully. "I wonder how it would react to 'Allah' or 'Mohammed'?"

"Tell me later, if you ever find out," Fernández said. "For now, please open up that door."

Out in the gilt-walled antechamber, a hospital bed was waiting for the comandante. He remained unconscious as two soldiers lifted him onto the sheets, but as Fernández bandaged the punctures on his neck, the old man's eyes flickered open. He began to moan, and his limbs thrashed fitfully.

"Yes, I would imagine that's painful," Fernández said. "I will give you a local anesthetic near the wound," he continued, and rummaged in his medical bag.

"Ah, no!" Castro gasped. "No, no! Get me away-away from that!" He pointed a shaky hand towards the glittering wall.

"Away from the Subject?" Lima asked, more to Fernández than to Castro.

"No, you fool! Away from all that!" He gestured again at the shimmering silver icons and thrashed more energetically on the bed.

After exchanging a glance with Fernández, Lima barked orders to open the outer door, and they pushed the wheeled bed out of the chamber and into the corridor beyond. Once the door was closed behind them, Castro stopped his squirming with a sigh, and almost immediately fell unconscious again.

"I should have expected this," Lima muttered, mostly to himself. "It will make things more difficult, but there's no helping it." He turned to the doctors. "The sergeant will take you to an infirmary room. I will stay here and deal with the situation. Doctor Fernández, we will resume this... operation in 72 hours. In the meantime, you and Doctor Famosa are to monitor El Presidente's condition at all times. I suggest you work in shifts."

He spun on his heel, rapped on the door, and pointedly ignored the physicians as they wheeled Castro away from the elaborate cell.

*****

Famosa look his leave almost immediately after they reached the tiny infirmary; a brusque "You will take the night shift," was his only response once Fernández reported that Castro remained unconscious but stable. Unsurprised, Fernández settled on a metal stool next to the gurney and alternated monitoring the old man's status and reviewing his massive stack of medical records.

"What fool performed that surgery?" he murmured to himself at one point.

"A fool who will not be performing any more," came a whispered response from the patient. Fernández started, then stood and checked Castro's vitals. His blood pressure was, as expected, lower than normal, but the pulse was steady and his eyes clearing.

"How do you feel?" the doctor asked.

Castro humphed, assessing. "Tired. Weak. Weak, but... getting stronger, I think." Now the old man smiled, and only a conscious effort of will prevented Fernández from shuddering and stepping away from the bed. His teeth... they can't be longer, can they?

"Yes, stronger," he repeated. "And I will be stronger yet." The smile widened, and Castro even laughed quietly. "Oh, I will surprise many with my strength, Doctor." Now Fernández did shudder, and Castro noted his revulsion with a contented grin.

"It will not be so bad, Doctor, do not fret. I will not miss the sunlight; I shall be kept quite warm enough in all the years to come." Castro shrugged his shoulders to sit more upright, his eyes now focused far beyond the white walls of the infirmary. "How they will flock to me, to hail my miraculous recovery." He laughed again, and now Fernández could feel the hairs rising on the back of his own neck.

"Yes, the fools from California will come to pay homage, and we will talk deep into the night... and then I will dine on something much better than ice cream!"

The door to the infirmary quietly opened, and Lima entered. Castro, lost in his anticipatory reverie, scarcely noticed.

His voice rose in pitch and volume. "They will go back to el Norte, and spread my... gospel, ha ha ha! And that will just be the beginning. That baboon, Chavez, thinks he will be my successor-I will make him my vassal!"

Fernández exchanged a quick look with Lima, whose face remained impassive. Castro went on.

"Ah, Nicolae, you fool. You never had the courage to face the Master. You were content to rule your cold little prison. If you only knew..."

His voice trailed off at last, and after a harsh series of breaths, his eyes fluttered closed, and his head rolled slightly on the stacked pillows. Lima's eyes widened now, but Fernández gripped the old man's wrist and quietly said, "It's all right. He's just asleep."

Fernández chuckled ruefully. "Well, I suppose 'all right' is a relative term, isn't it?"

Lima didn't seem to hear the last. "'The Master,'" he murmured. "It's started already."

"What do you mean?" Fernández asked.

"That's what the donors always call the Subject after the first bite," Lima said. "You've read the reports; they fall more under its sway the longer they've been exposed."

Fernández started. "But... why would he subject himself to that thing's rule?""Oh, he has no intention of being ruled," Lima said with a gruff chuckle. "I already have orders for dealing with that situation." Lima shook his head very slightly, and now his eyes were the ones focused on the future instead of the infirmary. "After that, though..."

The colonel recovered himself, and glanced sharply at Fernández. "After that," he repeated, in a firmer tone, "we will do our duty, as always. Carry on, Doctor," he said as he turned to leave the room. "I must be sure the cell complex has been... prepared... in time for the next donation."

*****

Three days later, Fernández pushed Castro's wheelchair back to the strange cell, but the outer chamber had changed in the interim. The dazzling wall of icons was gone, but the room was no longer uncrowded; a half-dozen stone-faced soldiers, each wearing a small but heavy crucifix, now stood guard, facing the door to the prisoner's cell. Fernández started when he saw they did not carry machine guns or pistols. Each man bore a crossbow, black and gleaming with the sheen of modern composite materials, but the sharpened bolts in their quarrels were of heavy, unfinished wood.

The small room between chambers was also cleared of religious symbols. This time, Castro could hardly be kept in this chair as Lima went through the ritual of locking and unlocking the doors.

When they entered the cell, the thing within was wide awake and expectant. This time it did not even speak (to Fernández's short-lived relief), it merely gestured with one manacled hand, its fanged grin focused on the bearded old man. Castro fairly leapt from the chair and lurched towards it, leaving Fernández to stumble forward himself, scrabbling with the IV rack as he followed as far back as he dared.

Castro's head simply lolled back this time, and the thing fed.

*****

Back in the infirmary, much to Fernández's surprise, Castro regained consciousness quickly. The old man's pulse was fast and thready, his breathing ragged, but his eyes, though sunken now in their sockets, were bright with life, almost as if lit from within by a pale flame.

"Soon!" he rasped, again and again, "Soon my time comes!"

The next two days and nights passed in a blur for Fernández. The constant saline IV improved Castro's blood pressure, but his vital signs remained dangerously uneven. Fernández eyed the modern defibrillator at Castro's bedside more than a few times. He feared its use would be too much for the old man's ravaged system to bear, and he wrestled within his own heart as to whether that would be the best outcome after all.

Finally, in the dim early hours of the third day, Castro's pulse and breathing stabilized, and he lapsed into a deep sleep. The research study indicated this was not unheard-of for late-stage "donors," and after some coaxing, Famosa agreed to take the day's shift, allowing Fernández to escape into the light, into the city, and at last into his dingy one-room apartment. He collapsed into the unmade bed fully clothed, and sleep took him.

*****

Fernández bolted awake, screaming.

He gazed wildly around the tiny room for long moments, his eyes wide. The dream was still with him: dark shapes prowling the moonless streets of Centro Habana, muffled, gurgling screams, cold laughter from the top of the great citadel. The night had long held many fears in Havana, but the leering figures in Fernández's mind's eye needed no guns or chains or even cells to freeze his heart. Teeth were enough.

He shuddered, checking the window again and again to confirm the strong daylight beaming through the dirty pane and tattered curtains. After some time, he thought to check his battered wristwatch: it was just past three P.M.

It will be tonight, he thought. The last donation, the last gasp.

What have I done? Then, more importantly, What can I do?!?

It was too late to do anything. Even if it were possible for him to run away, Lima would find a way to complete his awful assignment. Even a buffoon like Famosa could keep Castro alive for just a few more hours. Even Famosa could...

Fernández snapped alert, the dream momentarily dashed from his mind. His eyes locked onto the scuffed leather of his medical bag, tossed aside at the door and forgotten until that moment.

He started at the bag for a long while, then rose, grabbed its handles, and strode out of the dim apartment, into the sunlight.

*****

Ricardo Fernández tried to maintain a light tone as he studied his brother's haggard face. "At least you didn't wait until the middle of the night this time."

Fernández stared back evenly. "I need your help again, Rico."

The priest nodded. "Yes, I believe you do. And of course, you're not going to tell me why." Fernández shook his head.

Rico grasped his brother's shoulder and leaned in close. "Jaime, why didn't you leave? Whatever they're doing to you, you could have escaped it, long ago. God knows you had enough chances."

"This is a very old argument," Fernández breathed back. "You know how it ends." He stared back into his younger brother's eyes. "And you know why very well."

Rico shook his head, "I never asked-"

"No, you didn't," Fernández said. "And I would never ask it of you."

A long moment passed. Finally, Rico broke the silence. "Well, then, what is it you want of me?"

Fernández smiled now, with a clean joy that surprised his brother far more than his previous drawn determination. "Why, something that you do every day." He opened the medical bag, and when his brother looked within and then cocked his head in puzzlement, he even found the strength to laugh.

*****

Dusk brought the truck, and the soldiers, and the long ride into darkness. He was led through the labyrinth again, to Lima and Famosa and the old man, who clung now to the arms of the wheelchair with long, yellowed nails. Castro's once-ruddy complexion was now nearly transparent. A blue vein pulsed on his brow, and his lips were drawn and tight against white, white teeth.

Lima checked his watch and nodded grimly. "It is time," he said, and took a black crossbow from one of the soldiers. He checked its heft, double-checked the nocked bolt, then pocketed two more bolts before raising its heavy strap over one shoulder.

"Doctor, are you ready?" He asked in his most formal tone.

"I am, Comrade Colonel." Fernández moved to push the wheelchair, then stopped. "Oh, one moment, I should replace the intravenous," and began pawing in his medical bag.

Lima nearly told him to forget it; what difference would it make now? But long years of leading men reasserted themselves. Let the doctor do his job. He is a fine man who has performed admirably. A shame he will be... Well, never mind that now. He nodded curtly, and Fernández finished the exchange. Castro, his eyes locked on the door to the thing's prison, scarcely noticed either of them.

Lima slung the crossbow across his back, then turned to repeat the rite of the keys and doors one last time. Fernández followed, holding the IV rack with two fingers as he pushed the rattling combination of rack, wheelchair and comandante through the entryway.

The thing was wide awake, and straining at its bonds. Fernández noted with horror but no real surprise that its hair was now a lustrous iron grey, and its features no longer sunken, but bright and almost plump with florid life.

Its eyes had not changed at all. Nor had its speech, and it barked a sharp, discordant command at Castro.

The old man's own eyes flashed, and he nodded. "Free him!" he demanded, glancing quickly at Lima before turning his gaze back on the imprisoned thing. "Free the Master at once, Colonel! That is an order!"

Lima shook his head grimly. "No, Presidente. That is an order I will not follow. You left very specific instructions in this regard."

The Subject rasped at Castro again, but Lima simply stared back at it. "No, creature. That will not happen. Not today."

Lima stood his ground, and at last the thing, after fixing the colonel with a baleful glare, turned back to Castro and began cooing in its dreadful voice. Castro smiled like a child, and raised himself up from the chair. He staggered towards the thing, and Fernández, holding the trailing IV, followed.

At last, Castro managed to shamble within the creature's grasp, and the ancient thing licked its pale lips in anticipation.

"Now,' Castro said, and his head lolled backwards.

"Now," the thing replied, in Spanish. It bared its fangs, and plunged them into Castro's withered throat. Its eyes rolled back in ecstasy as it drew forth the first spurts of the old man's remaining blood.

"Now," Fernández murmured to himself, as he opened the valve on the IV, and squeezed the heavy plastic bag.

For a long moment, nothing happened other than the thing sucking contentedly and Castro lolling against its putrid body, and Fernández's veins turned to ice as he thought, It didn't work. Oh, God help me, it didn't work.

And then many things happened at once.

Castro's eyes flew open, and he screamed against the thing's face. The creature's eyes refocused almost at once, first on Castro in puzzlement, then on Fernández in rage and agony. After a struggle to free its jaws, it released its grasp on Castro, who shuddered briefly, then fell to the stone floor like a string-cropped marionette. He lay at the thing's feet, twitching. Two tendrils of acrid smoke rose from the ragged puncture wounds in his neck.

The creature shrieked, and both Fernández and Lima involuntarily stepped back. Its long arms stretched out against the manacles, and it screamed again as black smoke began to pour out of its open mouth.

It shuddered, convulsing, and to the amazement of Lima and satisfied triumph of Fernández, its throat burst open with a gout of bright flame, and black ichor poured down its chest.

The thing shook now as if it were being electrocuted, its undead veins and arteries bursting as they were flooded with the simple saline solution it had ingested via Castro, the sterile, salty water that had been blessed by the hands of Ricardo Fernández within the halls of Nuestra Señora de Montserrat just hours before. On the floor, Castro convulsed as the holy water broke apart his own internal organs, the pure sanctified liquid destroying flesh that had been corrupted by the touch of the thing.

The creature screamed one last time, then collapsed, sagging against its restraints. Its face was now truly a rictus, black and stripped of flesh by the fiery combination of holy water and unholy blood. Its body held there for a moment, then collapsed into a pile of foul bones as its ancient sinews gave way. Its putrescent remains fell onto the corpse of Castro, who lay gazing lifelessly at the stone ceiling.

Lima simply gaped at the scene for a long while, then turned to Fernández. "What... what did you do?!?" he finally managed.

"I did what had to be done. I did what you should have done the first time you laid eyes on that thing, Comrade Colonel." He returned Lima's gaze fiercely. "And you know it."

Lima stared, his eyes almost perfect circles of shock. One of his hands began reaching around for the crossbow, then stopped. Duty and resignation warred briefly on his face. The latter finally carried the day, and the colonel nodded, and whispered, "You're right. It had to be done. I did not have the courage." He shook his head. "I did not have the courage."

Fernández brushed his hands together, as if ridding them of ash after cleaning a fireplace. "Well, I believe we are finished here, Colonel. Shall we go?"

Lima gazed around the cell, wildly. "But... what will we tell them? El Presidente is dead, and the thing..." He stared again at the jumble of stinking bones settled against the body of the ex-tyrant.

"I do not know, Comrade Colonel. I am a doctor, not a soldier or a political man, and so I will leave that up to you." He stopped and eyed Lima levelly. "But if I were you, I would not tell Raul that you were helping his brother to rule forever!"

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November 2, 2009