Paradise-1

Book 1: Red Space

by David Wellington

Genres: Space Exploration; Colonization

Synopsis

ENDLESS DARK.
ENDLESS TERROR.

Paradise-1. Earth's first deep space colony. For thousands of colonists, it was an opportunity for a new life.

Until it went dark. No communication has been received from the colony for months.

It falls to Firewatch Agent Alexandra Petrova and the crew of the Artemis to investigate.

What they find is more horrifying than they could have imagined.

Paradise-1 begins a terrifying new trilogy of survival and exploration in deep space, from Clarke Award-nominated author David Wellington.

'A captivating, eerie story with such engaging characters you won't want to say goodbye at the end' S. A. Barnes, author of Dead Silence

'Wellington skillfully combines hard sci-fi worldbuilding with tense mystery . . . Readers will be on the edges of their seats' Publishers Weekly (starred review)

'Intensely creepy worldbuilding' Library Journal

Release date: April 4, 2023

Publisher: Orbit

Print pages: 688

Sample

Three days still before dawn on Ganymede, and the cold seeped right through her suit and into her bones. The only light came from what reflected off the crescent of Jupiter, a thin arc of brown and orange that hung forever motionless in the night sky. Occasionally a bolt of lightning would snap across the shadowed disk of the big planet, a bar of light big enough that even from a million kilometers away it blasted long black shadows across the charcoal ice of the moon.

Alexandra Petrova rotated her shoulders. Rolled her feet back and forth in the powdery ice, just to get some blood moving through her legs. She’d been lying prone for nearly six hours, out on the edge of a ridgeline a long way from the warmth and the unrecycled air of the Selket Crater habitat. Maybe, though, her suffering was about to pay off.

“Firewatch One-Four, I have visual confirmation,” she whispered, and her suit’s microphone picked up her words and beamed them up to a satellite, which blasted them back down to some operator in a control tower back in the crater, then transferred them over to the nice, cozy offices of Firewatch Division Fourteen. The central headquarters of the Military Police on Ganymede. “Subject is at a range of approximately three hundred meters, headed north-northwest.”

She lay as still as possible, not wanting to give away the slightest sign of her location. Just below her on the ridge a man was carefully bounding his way downslope, hopping from boulder to boulder, headed into a maze of narrow little canyons. He was wearing a bright yellow spacesuit, skintight. No faceplate, just a pair of dark goggles. Half the workers on Ganymede wore suits like that – they were cheap and easily patched, and they came in bright colors so that if you died on the surface your body would be easier to recover. A bar code on his back identified the suit as belonging to one Dzama, Margaret.

Petrova knew that suit was stolen. The man inside was a former medical technician named Jason Schmidt and he was – allegedly – the worst serial killer in the century-long history of the Ganymede colony. Petrova had turned up evidence of more than twenty missing persons cases that led straight back to Schmidt. Not a single body had been found, but that wasn’t too surprising. Ganymede might be one of the most densely colonized worlds of the solar system, but there was plenty of ice out there that still hadn’t ever been explored. The perfect place to hide dead bodies.

“Firewatch One-Four,” she said, “I am requesting permission to make an arrest on one Schmidt, Jason. I’ve already filed the paperwork. I just need a green light.”

“Copy, Lieutenant,” One-Four told her. “We’re just reviewing the case now, making sure you’re within your remit. We should be able to clear this any minute now. Stand by.”

All the evidence against him was circumstantial, but Schmidt was her man. She was certain of it.

She’d better be. She was staking her whole career on this case. As a lieutenant inspector of Firewatch, she had broad powers to carry out her own investigations, but she couldn’t afford to screw this one up. She knew very well she’d only gotten her job and her rank because of nepotism. The problem was, everybody else knew it, too. Her mother, Ekaterina Petrova, was the former director of Firewatch. Petrova had gone into the family business, and everyone believed she’d been given a free ride at the academy based on nothing but her mother’s name.

Clearing this case would go a long way to showing she was more than just her mother’s daughter. That she was capable of holding down this job on her own merits. The command level of Firewatch had just let all those missing persons cases go – presumably the new director, Lang, felt that a few missing miners from Ganymede weren’t important enough to spend resources tracking them down. But bringing Schmidt in would be a real win for Lang as well as Petrova. It would make Firewatch look good – it would show the people of Ganymede that Firewatch was there to protect them. It would be a public relations coup.

She just had to convince someone in Selket Crater to give her final authorization to make the arrest. Which should not have been so difficult. Why were they dragging their feet?

“Firewatch, I need authorization to make this arrest. Please advise.”

“Understood, Lieutenant. We’re still waiting on final confirmation.”

Below her, Schmidt stopped, perched atop a boulder. His head twisted from side to side as he scanned the landscape. Had he noticed her somehow? Or was he just lost in the dark?

“Copy,” she said. Petrova crawled forward a meter or so. Just far enough that she could keep Schmidt in sight. Where was he headed? She’d suspected he had some kind of stash house out here on the ice, maybe a place where he kept trophies from his kills. She’d been following him for a while and she knew he often left the warmth of the city and came out here on his own for hours at a stretch. That worked for her. She would have a better chance catching him out of doors – in the city he could simply disappear into a crowd.

This would be the perfect time to act. Take him down out on the ice, preferably alive. Drag him back to a Firewatch covert site for interrogation. She reached down and touched the pistol mounted at her hip. Checked that it was loaded and ready. Of course it was. She’d cleaned and reassembled it herself. There was only one problem. A little light on the receiver of the pistol glowed a steady, unhelpful amber. Meaning she did not yet have permission to fire.

“I need that authorization, Firewatch,” she said. “I need you to unlock my weapon. What’s the hold-up?” She kept her voice down, even though there was little need. Ganymede’s atmosphere was just a thin wisp of nothing. Sound didn’t carry out on the ice. Still. A little paranoid caution might keep her alive.

Schmidt finally moved, jumping off his boulder and coming down hard in a loose pile of broken ice chips. He fell on his ass and planted his hands on either side of him, fingers splayed on the ground. He was unarmed. Vulnerable.

“Confirmation still pending. Director Lang has asked to sign off on this personally. Please be patient,” Firewatch told her.

Petrova inhaled slowly. Exhaled slowly. Director Lang was getting personally involved? That could be good, it could mean that her superiors were showing an interest in her career. More likely though it was a problem. It could slow things to a crawl while she waited for the director’s approval. Or worse. Lang might shut her down just out of spite.

When Petrova’s mother had retired from Firewatch a year and a half ago, Lang had made it very clear that she wasn’t going to cut her predecessor’s daughter any slack. If Petrova had to wait for Lang’s approval she might freeze to death out on the ice before it came.

Screw this, she was moving in. Once she had enough evidence to make her case against Schmidt, no one would question her collar.

She got her feet under her and jumped. In the low gravity it felt like flying, just a little bit. Maybe that was the adrenaline peaking in her bloodstream. She didn’t care. She came down easy, two feet and a balled fist touching ice, right behind him. Her free hand drew her weapon and extended it in one fluid motion. “Jason Schmidt,” she said. “By the authority of the UEG and Firewatch, I’m placing you under arrest.”

Schmidt spun around and jumped to his feet. He was faster than she’d expected, more nimble.

At the same moment, someone spoke in Petrova’s ear. “This is Firewatch One-Four…”

Schmidt came straight at her, like he planned to tackle her. His move was idiocy. She had him at point-blank range. She brought her other hand up and steadied her weapon. It was a perfect shot. She knew she wouldn’t miss.

“… authorization has been checked…”

Schmidt didn’t slow down. He wasn’t trying to talk her out of it. At this distance he couldn’t fake her out, couldn’t dodge her shot. She started to squeeze her trigger. If he really had killed all those people—

“… and denied. Repeat, authorization of apprehension is denied.”

The light on the receiver of the pistol changed from amber to red. The trigger froze in place – no matter how much strength she used, she couldn’t make it move.

“Cease operations and return to your post immediately, Lieutenant. That’s an order.”

Petrova just had time to duck as Schmidt barreled into her, knocking her back into the ice, which burst apart in a shower of snow with the force of the impact. The breath exploded out of her lungs and for a second she couldn’t see straight. Struggling to get up, to grab Schmidt, she missed and went sprawling, faceplate down into the snow. It only took a fraction of a second to twist around, get back on her feet, wipe the snow off her helmet so she could see—

But by then he was gone. Of course. And now he knew she was on his tail. He would run. Get as far away as he could, maybe leave Ganymede altogether and restart his murder spree somewhere else. She tilted her head back and raged at the blank stars.

“Lieutenant, please confirm you received last order. Lieutenant? This is Firewatch One-Four, please confirm—”

She walked over to where her gun lay, half buried in the powdery ice. She grabbed it and slapped it back on her hip. The ice of Ganymede was a deep gray brown, but only on the surface. Where the gun had broken through the crust it left a glaring white silhouette.

Just like her boot prints, and the furrow in the snow where she’d been knocked down.

Just like the boot prints Jason Schmidt had left, which headed around a massive boulder and into the shadow of the ridgeline. Bright white footprints standing out against the dark ice. And what was that she saw, from over that direction? It looked like a light. Artificial light sweeping across the dark surface. It must be coming from some structure over there. Some hiding spot.

Maybe a trophy room.

“Lieutenant? Please acknowledge.”

She crept around the side of the boulder and saw exactly what she’d expected to find. The light came from an old emergency shelter, basically a prospector’s hut. A big metal hatch was stuck into the ice and a light on the hatch flickered slowly on-off, on-off – the universal signal that the bunker behind that hatch was activated, full of air and warmth. Like a chased rabbit, Jason Schmidt had run for a bolt-hole.

It would be crazy to follow him in. To literally walk into his lair, when he knew she was coming. When her gun was locked down.

“Lieutenant? Come in, Lieutenant. This is Firewatch One-Four. Lieutenant, do you copy?”

Petrova slapped a big button on the face of the hatch and the airlock beyond blasted out air, equalizing pressures. She stepped inside and closed the outer door behind her. A moment later, the inner hatch slid open and she looked down into darkness.

“In pursuit, One-Four. I’ll check in when I get a chance.”

She switched off her radio. It wasn’t going to tell her anything she wanted to hear.

Beyond the lock’s inner door lay a concrete-lined corridor that spiraled down into the ice. Tiny light fixtures on the ceiling and walls lit up bright as she passed, then dimmed again behind her. Condensation hung in long, stalactite-like beads from the ceiling, spikes of pure water waiting for Ganymede’s low gravity to finally bring them plopping down on the floor. At the bottom of the spiral, the corridor opened into a larger space. She expected to see a big room filled with crates of emergency supplies and old mining gear.

Instead the main room of the bunker was open, cleared out. The concrete floor was stained and damp but clear of debris. Dark chambers – caves, basically – led off the main chamber in every direction. This place was huge, she realized. This wasn’t just an emergency bunker. It must be an entire mine complex, though it looked like it had been abandoned.

She thought she heard something – a real sound, echoing in the concrete space full of actual air. She crouched down and tried to stay perfectly still. There was no good place to hide, but maybe Schmidt hadn’t seen her come in.

She ducked low into a shadow as he stepped out of one of the side caves. He’d shucked his suit down to the waist, the arms and hood hanging down behind him like tails. He had a large crate in his arms and he dumped its contents on the floor without ceremony. “I’m back,” he called, in a sing-song voice, like he was calling to pets who’d been waiting for him to come home.

Petrova watched as the crate’s contents slithered out onto the floor. Hundreds of silver foil packets. Colorful pictures were printed on each packet, showing a serving of some mouth-watering foodstuff. Pureed carrots. Mushroom stew. Algae salad. Petrova recognized the pictures right away, as would anyone who had spent time on Ganymede. She knew the pictures were nothing but lies. There was food inside the packets, food nutritious enough to keep you alive, but it never resembled the tempting picture. Instead it was more likely to be a thin gray slop grown in a big bioreactor: proteins and carbohydrates excreted by gene-tailored bacteria in a vat of sugar water. It was the kind of food that workers got when they couldn’t afford anything better, when they’d run out of luck. The government of Ganymede wouldn’t let any of its people starve, but the alternative wasn’t much better.

“Come and get it,” Schmidt called out, in that same lilting cadence.

She was about to move in and put him under arrest when she caught a flicker of motion from one of the caves. Bright eyes glistened back there, catching the light. The filthiest, most unkempt human being she’d ever seen came rushing out, almost running on all fours. It was dressed in rags and its face was so grimy she couldn’t tell its gender or even its age. It moved cautiously as it approached Schmidt, as if it was afraid of him. It didn’t say a word, didn’t so much as mumble a greeting.

“All yours,” Schmidt said, and stepped away from the pile of food packets.

A hint of motion from another cave mouth grabbed Petrova’s attention. Then another – soon people were emerging from a dozen directions at once. All of them as dirty and decrepit as the first. They moved quickly to grab silver packets from the pile, then they raced back toward their caves as if afraid someone would try to take the food away from them. They tore the packets open with their teeth, then stuck their fingers inside. They shoved the food straight into their mouths, getting as much of it on their skin and in their beards as they actually ingested. Their faces sagged with relief, as if they’d been starved for days and this was the best thing they’d ever tasted.

Petrova had no idea what was going on. Time to get some answers.

She rose to her full height. “Schmidt,” she called out. “Keep your hands visible.”

Schmidt winced but at least this time he didn’t just come running at her like a bull.

“Jason Schmidt, you are under arrest. Back up against that wall. Facing the wall,” she ordered.

He shook his head. His hands were up, in front of him, but he wasn’t holding them up to show he was unarmed. He beseeched her with them. It looked like he might fall on his knees and beg her for mercy.

She needed answers. She needed to know what was going on. “You,” she called, to the nearest of the unwashed people, who was busy licking out the insides of a third food packet. “Is this man holding you prisoner? Do you need help?”

The man – at least, he had a beard – looked up at her as if noticing her existence for the first time. He dropped the foil packet and stumbled towards her. His hands clawed and patted at the air, seemingly at random. Despite herself, Petrova took a step back as he came closer. His mouth opened but the sound he let out wasn’t a word. Just a raw syllable, cut loose from any kind of meaning.

“Do you need help?” Petrova repeated. “Are you trying to ask for help?”

“He can’t do that,” Schmidt said. She jabbed her pistol in his direction and he shut up, lifting his hands higher in the air.

The victim came closer still and grabbed at Petrova’s arm. She pulled away from his touch and he grabbed for her helmet, instead, grasping one of the lamps mounted on its side. He let out a crude fricative, his mouth opening wide, spittle flying everywhere. She had to shove him, hard, to get loose.

Someone else hissed like a snake. All of Schmidt’s other victims were making sounds now, raw noise, just the roots of words.

“What’s going on?” Petrova asked. “What did you do to these people?”

Were these the missing persons she’d been tracking? She’d assumed Schmidt had murdered them all. But if they were here, alive, apparently kept captive—

They were moving now, all of them. Lumbering toward her, their hands describing shapes in the air, or clawing at nothing. Their faces were contorted in strange expressions she couldn’t understand. They spoke only in meaningless monosyllables. Ph. Kr. La.

They grabbed at her, clinging to her legs, her arms. Petrova had to dance backward to get away from them. They weren’t particularly strong – now she saw them up close she could see how emaciated and sickly they looked under their coating of dirt – but there were a lot of them.

“Get back,” she told them. “Stay back! Firewatch!”

“They don’t understand,” Schmidt called.

Schmidt – she’d lost track of him. As the clawing, swiping people came at her, she’d forgotten to keep an eye on him. She twisted around and saw him creeping backward up the ramp, toward the surface. His hands were still up but he was getting away.

One of the victims growled, raising her voice as she bashed at the back of Petrova’s suit with weak fists. She yelped like a dog.

Petrova pushed her away, harder perhaps than she should have. She was getting scared, she could feel it. She was afraid of these poor wretched people – she needed to get a grip.

She needed to get the situation under control. Well, she knew where to start. Schmidt was all but running up the ramp, away from her. She dashed after him and smacked him across the back of his neck with the butt of her pistol. “Down!” she said. “Get down and stay down, motherfucker.” She hit him again and this time he fell down. “What did you do?” she demanded, as he tried to get up. She hit him again. “What did you do?”

Schmidt rolled on the floor, rolled until he was lying on his back. He lifted his hands to his face. She realized he was sobbing.

What the hell?

She retrieved a pair of smart handcuffs from a pouch at her belt. Moving fast, she grabbed Schmidt and shoved his face up against the concrete wall. She touched the cuffs to his hands and they came to life, twisting thick tendrils of plastic around his wrists and fingers, locking them in place. He made no effort to resist.

“Oh, thank God,” he moaned. Quietly. His eyes were clamped shut. “Oh, thank you.”

“What the hell is wrong with you?” she asked.

“It’s over,” he said. “It’s finally over.”

“What did you do to those people? What’s wrong with them?”

“It’s acute aphasia, it’s… it’s—”

“They can’t talk,” Petrova said. “I got that. Why? Did you… did you do something to them?”

“I saved them,” Schmidt whined.

She stared at the back of his head, unable to comprehend. She had no idea what was going on. Then she glanced down at the pistol in her hands. The light there remained a steady, unchanging amber. Great.

“Tell me everything,” she said. “Then I’ll decide what to do with you.”

His face changed dramatically. All the hope drained out of it, and he nodded in resignation.

“Just… come with me. I need to show you something.”

She got him up on his feet. “We’re not going anywhere until my backup gets here,” she said. She glanced down the ramp, at the naked, filthy people down there. They had gone back to tearing open food packets and devouring their contents. They seemed occupied enough with their meal not to notice her or Schmidt.

Scowling, she tried to decide how she should proceed. Answers, she thought. “Just tell me what happened. All the details. Now.”

For once he actually complied. He started talking and quickly fell into the cadence of someone accustomed to giving reports on the medical status of a patient. “It started at the hospital in the Nergal Crater habitat, a couple hundred kilometers from here. There was just one of them at first, an elderly male. He presented with aphasia, like I said. The doctors couldn’t find a cause for it, though. There was no sign of physical trauma, no sign of disease. He was perfectly healthy – but he couldn’t talk. More than that, he couldn’t communicate at all.”

“What do you mean?” Petrova demanded.

“Like, at all. Normally, if somebody can’t talk, even in cases of profound aphasia they can still get something across. Sometimes they can still read and write, or at the very least they can use gestures and facial expressions. You can tell if they understand what you’re saying. They can cry or frown to tell you they’re in pain. This patient, though, he was clearly trying to communicate but his efforts didn’t make any sense.” Schmidt shook his head sadly. “He would wave his hands around, his face would twist up in these expressions nobody could read…”

“That was one patient,” Petrova said. “I saw nearly twenty people down there.”

Schmidt nodded. “Yes. The second one to come in was an adolescent girl. That really worried the doctors. With elderly patients you see all kinds of neurological complaints, but young people – it’s rare. Really rare. Next came a whole family, and the doctors worried this thing was contagious, but they couldn’t find any kind of pathogen, any kind of cause. Soon we had a whole ward of them…

“That was when things changed. The doctors decided they couldn’t be cured. There wasn’t any kind of treatment we could give them.” Schmidt sniffed volubly. “They were going to send the patients to a special facility. I knew what that meant. Those people weren’t going to be patients anymore. They were going to run tests on them – until they ran out of tests and then – then these poor people were going to be dissected.” Schmidt’s face was racked with anguish. She was certain he was telling the truth. “I couldn’t let that happen.”

“So you kidnapped a bunch of patients from a hospital and brought them – here?”

“Yes,” Schmidt said. “To save them.”

“And now—”

“Now I feed them! I try to keep them healthy. There’s only so much I can do but… but I couldn’t let them… I couldn’t…” He opened his eyes. “What are you going to do with them?” he asked.

“That’s not up to me,” she said.

His eyes searched her face for a long time. Perhaps he was trying to find some mercy there. She honestly wished she had some to offer. Eventually, he just nodded. Resigned, perhaps, to the fact that things were out of his hands.

“I can’t look at them anymore,” he said, turning his face to look up the ramp. “Please. There’s a place up there, a room where we can wait for your friends. Can we just go there?”

He looked like a beaten dog. He was making no effort to get away from her. Best to make sure, though. She yanked his suit down over his legs, gestured for him to step out of it. Without the suit he wasn’t going anywhere – he would die the second he stepped out of the airlock. She nodded and gestured up the ramp. “You go first.”

Schmidt led her up to a door near the top of the ramp. Petrova noticed an odd light coming from inside the room beyond the door. “Don’t move,” she said. No worries there. Schmidt sank down to sit on the floor, his head between his knees. He looked beaten. Done.

She reached over to touch the release pad that opened the door. It slid open easily. She glanced inside but there wasn’t much in there, just a pile of what looked like computer parts in one corner. An unstable hologram flickered next to them, showing the three-dimensional image of a little boy made of light. He sat curled up, his face buried in his knees. The reddish light the hologram gave off was the only illumination in the room.

“What the hell is this?” Petrova demanded. She was only peripherally aware that she had stepped over the threshold, into the room.

“It’s an old AI core. You should talk to it.”

“What?” she asked, so distracted she barely heard him.

She watched the little hologram boy as it started to rise to its feet. The light it emitted had begun to turn a darker red, and she wanted to know what that meant.

She wasn’t watching Schmidt. Dumb mistake. Without warning he kicked the door shut and she heard it lock automatically.

“No!” she said. “No!” She dropped her pistol and raced to the door, both hands up to slap at the release pad. Uselessly. It couldn’t be opened from inside. She hammered on the door, over and over. “Schmidt! Schmidt!” She pounded and pounded but there was no answer.

Goddammit! she thought. What a stupid mistake she’d made – a real rookie blunder. All of her training, everything she’d put into learning the job and… and she went and did the one stupid thing no inspector was ever supposed to do, underestimating a subject.

You need to be tough, to do this job. Sashenka, you are not tough.

Her mother had said that to her, a hundred times over. Her mother, who had done this same job herself, who had basically written the playbook. Maybe her mother was right about her, Petrova thought, and her heart sank in her chest. She didn’t have time to spiral, though. She heard something behind her. A noise like paper rustling maybe, or – no. Like a tiny voice, whispering to her.

Every muscle in her body froze at once.

The whisper came again. So quiet, so soft. She couldn’t understand what it was saying, but she was certain it was the little boy. The hologram. It was trying to talk to her. Red light flooded the room, cast long black shadows across the floor.

“What do you want?” she asked.

The whisper was so tantalizing. She could hear words in there, she was certain if she just tried a little harder she could understand what the boy was saying. She felt a desperate urge to just turn around, to look at the boy. If she did, she thought she would understand.

But there was another voice inside her. Her mother’s voice. Still admonishing her for her stupidity but now – warning her as well.

Don’t look, foolish girl. If you turn around you’ll be lost.

But the whispering continued. Words she was certain she would understand just fine, if she would just turn and look, if she looked at the boy’s lips—

Petrova almost felt like she couldn’t resist. Like there was no point to even fighting now. She recognized those feelings didn’t strictly belong to her. She didn’t know what that meant.

She realized with a start that she was panting for breath.

Her eyes were clamped shut. Slowly, carefully, she opened them. She started to turn, to turn around to face the boy. She knew that once she looked she wouldn’t be able to unsee what was over there in the corner, but there was a big part of her that had to know.

Do not look, Sashenka. You need to be strong, now.

She shouldn’t look. She couldn’t. Looking would doom her in some way she couldn’t imagine but she was certain, certain it would be the end of her.

She couldn’t look.

She couldn’t.

She couldn’t not look.

The whispers wouldn’t let her go.

She was nearly crying from the effort of trying to resist. She had to fight her whole body. It wanted this. What a relief it would be to just give in. All her problems, all her worries would be over. If she just.

Turned around.

And looked.

She started to turn, to move toward the boy—

Then she stopped. She’d seen something near her feet. Just a patch of color. The entire room was bathed in a blood red glow, except for one tiny patch of the floor, which was glowing a bright, agreeable green.

The green came from a light on the receiver of her pistol, which lay where she’d dropped it on the floor.

Someone over at Firewatch One-Four had finally given her permission to use her weapon.

She snatched it up in both hands. Eyes closed, she twisted around and blasted away at the old AI core, yanked the trigger over and over again until – finally – the whispers went away. Her head started to clear as she ran for the door. It was still locked, but a few quick kicks with her boot opened it.

She lurched out into the hallway, eyes wide. She had no idea what had just happened. What would have happened, if she hadn’t… if she…

She couldn’t stop and think about that. “Schmidt,” she called out. “Schmidt! You’re coming with me. We’re going to figure this out and then—”

He was right behind her. Dazed as she was, mind still reeling, she’d fallen for the oldest trick in the book. He had a massive wrench and he came in low, swinging hard for her side. The least-armored part of her suit. His strike connected and Petrova gasped in pain. Tumbling to the floor, she fought to turn, to get herself in a position to fight back.

“You killed him,” Schmidt said. “You killed him, you killed him… you…”

He was weeping. The tears pooled around his eyes in the low gravity, only slowly dripping onto his cheeks. His voice descended into a howl of pure an