"Who are you?" Stu asked, backing up warily. The girl did not appear to be a zombie -- her face wasn't rotting away or anything like that -- but that glowing red eye of hers spooked him.

  "My name is Millie."

  "What...what are you?"

  "That's a funny kind of question."

  "Are you a human being? Are you infected?"

  "Am I infected? No. Am I a human being?" She frowned thoughtfully. "I think I am."

  "You think?"

  "Well, I used to be. Now, though...I'm not so sure. What's your name?"

  "Stu. Stuart. Stuart Brakely."

  "That's a lot of names."

  "Just call me Stu." He was beginning to relax somewhat -- the girl didn't seem to be a threat, and he was pretty sure she wasn't a zombie or a mutate, because his Zombie Radar wasn't going off. That red eye, though... "That red light I saw earlier...that was you, wasn't it? I saw you in the woods, right before the zombies attacked."

  She nodded. "I was watching you."

  "Why?"

  "I was curious."

  "Who are you?" Stu demanded.

  "I told you my name."

  "Where are you from? What are you doing out here? What happened to your eye?"

  "That's a lot of questions."

  Stu was losing his patience. He didn't have time to sit around talking to this strange girl, whoever or whatever she was; he needed to find Lucky and Luna. "I have to go," he told her. "I have to find my friends." He turned to leave.

  "It's too late," she said again. "The Lab Rat took them."

  He stopped. "The Lab Rat?"

  "The Researcher's lackey. She needs human subjects for her experiments. She sends the Lab Rat out to collect them."

  "You're telling me this...this Lab Rat kidnapped my friends?"

  "That's right."

  "How do you know?"

  "I saw it happen."

  "And you didn't try to stop it?"

  "Why should I risk my life for people I don't even know? Besides, no one can stop the Lab Rat. He's invincible."

  "What is he, some kind of zombie?"

  "Not exactly. He's more like me."

  "Like you?"

  She lifted her bangs up a bit, allowing him to see her eye better. He realized then that the eye was some kind of cybernetic implant, an unblinking orb that had been installed into her eye socket. And the hand that had swept back her bangs...that was cybernetic, too, a robotic appendage complete with actuators and flexing aluminum tendons. Because she was wearing a jacket, he couldn't see how much of her arm was robotic, but her entire left hand, at least, was artificial.

  He knew that the science of this zombie-world was more advanced than his own -- humanoid robots had apparently been fairly common household items before the outbreak -- but even so, this cyborg-girl's appearance surprised him. "You're...you're a..."

  "An experiment," she muttered. "Just like the Lab Rat. Only I escaped the Researcher before she could install a grub module."

  "Who's the Researcher?"

  "She's the brainy who runs Heart's Glow. She moved into the hospital a couple years ago, cleaned out the zombies, ran off the Butcher's boys, and started doing experiments. She has robots and surveillance cameras set up all over the city. If she sees anyone come in on Route 90, or any of the other big highways, she riles up the zombies and sends the Lab Rat out to collect them."

  "So this Researcher kidnapped my friends, and is going to experiment on them?"

  She nodded. "Just like she did to me. I got lucky, though. I managed to escape. Your friends won't be so lucky."

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  "Oh?"

  "I was one of the Researcher's early experiments. Since she took over the hospital, and rebuilt all the robots she found at the Watch & Coppersmith factory..." She shook her head. "They won't escape. The Lab Rat is invincible."

  "You already said that."

  "Well, it's worth repeating." She looked at him carefully, her one red eye even seeming to contract somewhat. "Are you really from another world?"

  He blinked in surprise. "How did you know that?"

  "I overheard you talking with that girl before," she said. "You talked about video games, and about having special powers, and about how you miss your normal life."

  "I do, at that," he muttered. "You heard all that stuff, huh?"

  "Is it true? You're really from another world?"

  "Yeah."

  "You look human."

  "I am human," he said, a little defensively. But having said it, he wondered now if he really was human. How many humans could do the things he could do?

  "I thought you said you were from another world."

  "I am, but I'm not an alien. The world I came from was..." He shook his head, forgoing the explanation. "I don't have time for this. I have to save Lucky and Luna."

  "The Lab Rat will kill you," Millie pointed out. "If all the robots and grub-zombies she's got guarding the hospital don't kill you first."

  "They're my friends. Where is this hospital?"

  "On the other side of town."

  "Will you show me the way?" He was wary of this cyborg-girl, but she had a certain innocent quality to her that made him think she was probably telling the truth about all this, at least.

  "What's in it for me?"

  "Is there anything you want?"

  "I want to leave Heart's Glow," she said quietly. "I want revenge on the Researcher. She killed my father, and she...she did this to me."

  "I...see."

  "And I want to know more about you, and about this world you say you come from."

  "Well, that's easy enough. If you help me rescue my friends--"

  "I didn't say anything about that. I only said I'd show you the way to the hospital."

  "Fine. If you show me the way to the hospital, I promise to tell you about my world, and I promise to put an end to this Researcher, and I promise to get you out of Heart's Glow. Fair?"

  "You won't succeed."

  Her pessimism was beginning to irritate him. "Do we have a deal or not?"

  She shrugged. "Okay, we have a deal. The hospital's this way." And without another word, she waved him on and started heading up to the highway. Stu watched her for a moment, wondering what he was getting himself into, then followed her up the embankment.

  * * *

  "How long will it take us to get to this hospital?" Stu asked.

  "Twenty, thirty minutes," she answered. Depends on how fast you walk."

  "And this place is guarded?"

  "Oh, yes," she said, chuckling. "There's robots all around the perimeter, and grub-zombies too."

  "What the hell is a grub-zombie?"

  "It's a zombie with a grub module installed in its brain. The Researcher made them. It allows her to control them remotely."

  "Remote-controlled zombies?"

  "You don't believe me?"

  "I guess I don't have any reason not to," he admitted. He had seen plenty of strange things in this world; the idea of a remote-controlled zombie wasn't that crazy. "How many are there?"

  "Grub-zombies? I don't know. Hundreds."

  He blanched. "Hundreds?"

  "She's been very busy these last few years."

  "Tell me about this Researcher. What's her story?"

  "She's a brainy, like I said. I think she used to work in the hospital before the outbreak."

  A brainy, Stu recalled, was an irregular-zombie who retained his or her human intelligence after the infection. According to Lucky, brainies were extremely dangerous, for despite maintaining their intelligence, they were just as aggressive and bloodthirsty as any other zombie. He hadn't encountered any of these yet; apparently they were fairly rare.

  "So she's a zombie?"

  "Yes, but she doesn't really look like one. She takes this drug, called philo, to keep herself from going berserk and killing everyone she meets. She claims to have invented it herself, but I'm not sure I believe her."

  "You've actually spoken to her?"

  "She kept me prisoner for six months. Of course I've spoken to her."

  "What's her goal? What's she planning? Why is she kidnapping people and experimenting on them?"

  "Research," she said, shrugging.

  "Yes, but to what end?"

  "I think she's trying to find a cure."

  "A way to turn zombies back to normal, you mean?"

  She nodded.

  "Is that possible?"

  "How would I know?"

  All this made Stu rather uneasy. He had known, almost from the beginning, that the zombies of this zombie-world were, technically speaking, diseased people, but it was something he had preferred not to think about. He couldn't afford to think about it; he couldn't afford to waste time worrying about the morality of killing a zombie every time one of them jumped out of the shadows and tried to bite him. That kind of hesitation could get him killed.

  On the other hand, if these zombies really were just diseased people, and could be cured...did that make him a murderer, then? And that was why he preferred not to think about it.

  They continued on, through the darkened streets of Heart's Glow. Stu didn't like using his Night Vision skill unless he absolutely had to, but the streets were so dark that he could barely see where he was going, and so, reluctantly, he activated it, and suddenly the city was perfectly illuminated. Millie, for her part, seemed to have no trouble seeing where she was going, which Stu suspected had something to do with her robotic eye.

  "Are you from here?" he asked her.

  "No. I'm from Pretoria. My father was...I guess you'd call him a kind of traveling salesman. He did a lot of business with the Pale Riders. We were passing through Heart's Glow, on our way to Meku, when the Lab Rat captured us and took us to the Researcher."

  "And you father...died?"

  "Yes," she said, with a rather curious lack of emotion. The girl had a very flat affect overall; her voice was nearly monotone, and her expression rarely changed. "The Researcher killed him with her experiments. But I escaped."

  "And you've been living in Heart's Glow ever since?"

  "I had nowhere else to go." She looked at him with her eerie, glowing eye. "I've met a few people since I escaped, people like you, but...they were afraid of me, of what I've become."

  "I'm sorry."

  "The robots leave me alone," she went on, "and I guess the Researcher lost interest in me, because she never sent the Lab Rat out to recapture me."

  "I'm sorry."

  "What do you have to be sorry about?" She suddenly threw a sharp glance into an alley, to their left. Stu thought he caught a hint of movement there, but whatever it was, it disappeared from view almost instantly.

  "What is it?" Stu asked.

  "One of her robots. They've seen us. They know we're coming." She bit her lower lip, then said, "This is no good. We'll have to take the long way." She turned off the street, leading them into a different alley.

  Stu, unsettled by her story and by her warnings about the Researcher and the Lab Rat, followed her into the alley.