Ortman saw it on the faces. Captivated by the smile and the heaven-climbing gaze, he always stayed after death for at least a few safe moments, cataloguing the changes that signaled Margaret had come to seize and begin reanimating them.

First sign, always, was color draining back into the face like an old photograph retouched by hand: more pink-cheeked, flaxen-haired and rose-lipped than alive. Then, next, the breathing would begin again in a new, moderated, mechanical fashion. There were other signs too--the long unblinking stare into a middle distance above the ceiling, the flexing of fingers, knees and joints, a soft gurgling in the lungs--but usually Ortman left after the dead began to breath, wanting to be gone when their eyes opened. He would touch the brass foot of the bed with a paternal pat of his hand and leave until the next patient was ready, inescapably ready, to die.

"One," Ortman said, watching color creep back into the cheeks of the little boy in the sanitarium bed at whose foot he now stood. He extended a single digit of his hand, ticking off the first sign of Margaret's presence.

Then, after a moment of stasis, when the blankets nuzzled around the boy began to rise and fall, Ortman put out a second finger and said, "She's here."

He closed his eyes, pursed his lips and inhaled, trying to taste or smell something of the boy's departing self. Strangely, he thought he picked up a trail, a musk. It wasn't the ethereal scent of a spirit, but another body, an earthy odor so faint it only tickled his palate. But, even as he breathed more deeply, the wind rose and rattled through the open window, evaporating the odor.

"You're paranoid," Ortman said, dismissing the sensation. He turned around and opened the door behind him that led into the hall.

Before passing through the doorway, a scraping shuffling noise made the muscles in Ortman's arms tighten and his body freeze, hesitating half in and half out of the room. The noise came from the south wall, close by, between the little boy's bed and the door.

A clothes chute, leading down several stories to the basement laundry facility, cracked open and two eyes peered over the lip. A head of close-cropped but mangy hair revealed itself above the chute door. Again Ortman smelled the musk, stronger now, flooding from the chute. The eyes looked around, saw Ortman and shut. The head did not duck back into its hiding place. Whoever it was knew they were caught.

A gulp and the sound of a young girl's voice came from the chute: "Are you the Devil?"

The question struck Ortman speechless. The few times he had ever actually spoken with someone in Margaret's world the conversations were preformatted. Margaret didn't bother getting creative with Ortman. She didn't waste her resources.

"Good evening, Drake," one of the other doctors might say, passing a room where Ortman lingered, "Not much hope there."

"Never is," Ortman would reply, always wondering why Margaret chose to call him Drake.

But this time, the question was more piercing. It contained observation, thought, intelligence, and a small measure of fear.

"No," he said at last. "No, I'm not the Devil."

"You're not a doctor either, for all your pretending. I've seen the records and there is no Dr. Drake at Thornton."

"You're right. I'm not a Doctor."

The girl twitched, looking down into the darkness of the chute beneath her dangling feet. Her lip started to tremble, about to speak. Then footsteps sounded in the hall outside. Margaret was waking up. She had sent someone to check on them.

"Listen, whoever you are, can I trust you?"

"Yes," Ortman said, hoping it was true.

"Then meet me outside in the gazebo by the duck pond in fifteen minutes. Another of us will be dying out there soon. It's the only time I can think straight, when someone is dying."

Ortman frowned.

"Don't look at me like I'm crazy," the girl said, her voice rising dangerously. "The Devil lets go of his control when people die. He pays attention to them and he lets go of me. Then I can think straight."

"Yes," Ortman said even though she sounded crazy. He thought about the Devil and about Margaret blinking away in the bowels beneath them.

"...I believe you. I'll meet you. Fifteen minutes."

Ortman pulled his hands out of the console, stripped away his bodysuit and blinked many times quickly in succession to help his eyes adjust to the brightness of the control room.

Fifteen minutes.

It was a good suggestion, just long enough to check his 'outside' world and verify that the dust in the corridor had not been disturbed. Lately he had been worried that he was imagining things. An epidemic of small mistakes--doors and hatches untouched but creaking, chairs misplaced, lights left on and windows smudged with handprints--had made him apprehensive. Sometimes he even heard the sound of singing in distant rooms.

Is someone else awake? he often asked himself, before remembering the gruesome outcome of his few attempts to wake them: bodies left to rot under their glass domes. These were the only two deaths Ortman knew--the rotting he caused and the reanimation in Margaret's world. He hadn't yet decided which he preferred for himself.

Others awake? Impossible, he decided. I am alone.