EAST NEW YORK, NY

"One thing I've got to say about hanging with you," Patrick said as he drove them past peeling houses behind yards littered with old tires and charred mattresses. "I get to see all the city's ritziest neighborhoods. Say, you live in Brooklyn, don't you?"

Yes, Romy thought as she stared straight ahead through the windshield. She thought of the neat little shops and bistros along Court Street, just around the corner from her apartment in Cobble Hill. That was Brooklyn too, but a world away from this place. East New York was the far frontier of the borough. The economic boom of the nineties had run out of gas before it reached here, and the boom of the oughts had kept its distance as well. The faces were black, the cars along the trash-choked curbs old and battered, the mood grim.

"Hello?" Patrick said. "Are you still with me?"

She nodded and looked down at the map unfolded on her lap. She knew she hadn't been good company on the slow, frustrating drive across the Manhattan Bridge and through the myriad neighborhoods of the borough, but the nearer they moved to their destination, the tighter the icy clamp around her stomach.

Lieutenant Milancewich's call nagged at her. Her sim-abuse tips had helped him make a few busts over the years and in return he occasionally gave her a heads-up on investigations he thought might interest her. But he wasn't a friend, merely a contact, and she knew he considered her a little wacko. Maybe a lot wacko. He had no use for sims and thought her overzealous in her one-woman war, but a bust was a bust and he was glad to have them credited to his record.

Today, though, she'd heard something strange in his voice; she couldn't identify it, but knew she'd never heard it before. She'd pressed him about what it was he wanted her to see but he wouldn't say anything beyond,Iain't been there myself, so I don't want to pass on any secondhand reports, but if what I hear is true, you should be there.

Is it bad? she'd asked.

It wasn't good.

And that was what bothered her. The strange note in his voice when he'd said,It ain't good.

"I hope we're almost there," Patrick said. "I don't think I want to get lost out here, especially with sundown on the way."

She focused on the map. "Make a left up here onto - there!" She pointed to a pair of blue-and-white units just around the corner. "See the lights?"

"Got 'em."

Patrick pulled into the curb and they both stepped out. She let him lead the way as they headed toward the yellow crime scene tape. Once they were past that, Romy took the lead. Three of the four cops at the scene were either in their units or leaning against them as they talked on two-ways. Romy approached the fourth, a patrolman sipping a cup of coffee outside the front door of a shabby, sagging Cape Cod. He looked to be in his late twenties, fair-skinned, with a reddish-blond mustache.

After showing him her ID and going through the what-is-OPRR? and what's-OPRR-got-to-do-with- this? explanations, and making sure to smile a lot, she got him to open up.

"Got a call about a bad smell coming from the place." He cocked his head toward the house as he spoke in an accent that left no doubt he was a native. "So we investigated. Had to kick in the front door and that's when it really hit us. Ain't the first time I smelled that."

"Somebody dead?"

"That's what we figured, only we had it wrong. Notsome body - manybodies. And they ain't human."

Romy closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She was afraid to ask. "How many?"

"Looks like a dozen."

She heard Patrick's sharp intake of breath close behind her.

"How many sims were taken from the globulin farm?" he asked.

"Thirteen," she said without turning. "At least they think it housed thirteen." That was the count the police had painstakingly gleaned from one of the computer chips plucked from the ashes.

"Hey, you think these might be the missing sims from that Bronx fire a couple weeks back?" The cop shook his head. "Don't that beat all. I thought that job was pulled by a bunch of sim lovers."

"These may have no relation."

How could they? It didn't make sense that people who spray-painted "Death to sim oppressors" would kill the very sims they'd liberated.

The cop said, "Well, if they're the same, I'd guess from the stink and the condition of the bodies that they were done the same night as the fire." He shook his head in disgust. "Pisses me off."

Surprised, Romy looked at him. "Killing sims?"

"You kidding? No way. I mean, I'm not in favor of someone going around killing dumb animals, but what pisses me is that even though they ain't human I gotta hang around with my thumb up my ass  - 'scuse the French, okay? - while everybody figures out what to do and who should do it."

"How'd they die?" Romy asked.

"Don't need no forensics team for that." He poked his index finger against his temple and cocked his thumb. "Bam! One to the head for each of them. Must've used jacketed slugs because - "

"Thank you," Romy said, holding up a hand.

"Yeah, well, it was messy, all right. But not near as messy as what was done to them after they was shot."

Romy stiffened. "What do you mean?"

"Sliced them open from here" - his gun barrel finger became a scalpel and he dragged it from the base of his throat to his groin - "to here."

"Christ!" Patrick said.

Romy swallowed. "Why on earth...?"

"Beats me. Dragged all their guts out and piled them in the middle of the cellar floor. Freaking mess down there, and if they think I'm gonna clean it up because it's 'evidence,' they can - "

"I want to see," Romy said.

"No, you don't, lady. If there's one thing I know in this life, lady, it's you do not want to go down in that cellar."

She looked around at the hollow-eyed buildings and the hollow-eyed stragglers with nothing better to do than stand at the police tape and stare.

He's so right, Romy thought. I don't.

But she had to see this for herself. Nothing made sense. If these were the sims from the globulin farm, what were they doing here? Had they been "liberated" just to be executed and mutilated?

Setting her jaw to keep her composure, Romy pulled a stick of gum - Nuclear Cinnamon - from her purse and began to chew.

The cop nodded knowingly. "I see you've been down this street before."

"What's going on?" Patrick said.

She turned and offered him a stick, saying, "Because sometimes the smell's so thick you can taste it."

"You're going in?" he said. He looked genuinely concerned. "That's way above and beyond, Romy. Leave it for the forensics people. You don't have to do this."

"Yeah, I do," she said. "Because they're sims the M-E will give them a cursory once-over, if that. Most likely the remains will be shipped back to SimGen and we'll never hear a thing. I don't expect you to come with me, Patrick. In fact, I'd prefer you didn't. But I need to see what's been done, so I can get a feel for the kind of monsters we're dealing with here."

She turned to the patrolman. "Let's go."

"Sorry," he said, shaking his head. "Might smell a little better in there now with the doors open, but I'm not going back in until I have to." He pointed toward the open front door. "Once you're inside, head straight back to the kitchen; hang a U and you'll be facing the cellar stairs." He handed her his flashlight. "There's no electricity so you'll need this. Just don't drop it. Or blow lunch on it."

"Thanks. I won't."

Knowing that if she hesitated she might lose her nerve, Romy immediately put herself in motion. She'd examined dead sims before, some of them in a ripe state of decomposition, and had learned some tricks along the way.

She'd gained the top of the two crumbling front steps and was pulling a tissue from her purse when she sensed someone behind her.

Patrick. His face looked pale, and despite the cold she thought she detected a faint sheen of sweat across his forehead.

"Wait for me out here," she told him.

"Sorry, no. I could have stayed in the yard if the cop had gone with you, but I can't let you go down there alone."

"Patrick - "

"Let's not argue about it, okay. I'm going in. Give me a stick of that gum and we'll get this over with."

She stared at him a moment. Patrick Sullivan was turning out to be a gutsy guy. She handed him a tissue along with the gum.

"When we head down to the cellar, hold this over your mouth and nose, pinching the nostrils and breathing into the tissue. That way you'll rebreathe some of your own air."

He nodded, his expression grim as he unwrapped the gum and stuck it into his mouth. "Let's go."

Romy led the way. Despite the open doors front and rear, the odor was still strong on the main floor; but when she rounded the turn and stood before the doorless opening leading down from the kitchen, it all but overpowered her. She heard Patrick groan behind her.

"Tissue time," she said. "And it could be worse. At least it's cold; that slows down decomposition. Imagine if this were August."

Patrick made no reply. Romy stared at the dark opening of the cellar doorway. She wished there were someone else she could dump this on, but couldn't think of a soul.

Steeling herself, she flicked on the flashlight and started down into the blackness. She kept the beam on the steps, moving carefully because there was no railing. The odor was indescribable. It made her eyes water. Even with her nostrils pinched, it wormed its way around the cinnamon gum in her mouth and made a rear entry to her nasal passages by seeping up past her palate.

When she reached the bottom Romy angled the beam ahead, moving it across the concrete. At first she thought someone had started painting the floor black and run out of paint three-quarters of the way through; then she realized it was blood. Old, dried blood. The cellar must have been awash in it.

She flicked the beam left and right to get her bearings and stopped when it lit up what looked like a pile of dirty rope. She remembered what the cop had said - dragged all their guts out and piled them in the middle of the cellar floor - and knew she wasn't looking at rope.

She swallowed back a surge of bile and forced herself forward, trying not to step in the dried blood -  might be evidence there - as she moved. She stopped again when her beam reflected off staring eyes and bared teeth. She'd found the dead sims. Clad only in caked blood, their bodies ripped from stem to stern, they'd been stacked like cordwood against one of the walls. Their dead eyes and slack mouths seemed to be asking,Why? Why? And she wanted to scream that she didn't know.

Behind her she heard Patrick retch. She turned and saw him leaning against one of the support columns.

"You okay?" she said through her tissue.

"No." His voice was hoarse. He held up a thumb and forefinger; they appeared to be touching. "I'm just this far away from losing my lunch."

"I skipped lunch, thank God." She paused, then, "Look, I need to get closer."

"I don't. I'll stay back here and guard the steps, if you don't mind."

"I appreciate it," she told him. He'd already proved himself as far as she was concerned.

Turning, she spotted fresh, dusty prints ahead in the dried blood, leading to the cadavers; one of the cops, no doubt. To avoid further contamination of the scene she used them as stepping stones to move forward, knowing all along that it was wasted effort - no one was going to spend much time sifting this abattoir for clues. But there was a right way to do something, and then there was every other way.

Closer now she flashed her beam into the gaping incision running the length of the nearest cadaver's naked torso. A female. Her ribs had been ripped back, revealing lungs but no heart. Romy leaned forward and checked the abdominal cavity. Liver and kidneys gone. She craned her neck to see into the pelvis - uterus and ovaries missing too.

She moved onto another, a male this time, and the results were similar except that his testicles had been removed.

Romy straightened. They'd been gutted, all of them, and the males castrated. She took a quick turn around the rest of the basement but found no sign of the excised organs. The intestines had been removed and discarded in a pile because they were valueless and only got in the way. But all the rest were missing.

"Let's go," Romy said, taking Patrick's arm and pointing up the steps toward daylight and fresher air. "I've seen enough."

More than enough.

They hurried to the first floor and back out to the front yard. Romy didn't understand the missing ovaries and testicles - she knew of no use for them - but she understood the rest all too well.

Furious, she went straight to the cop and slapped the flashlight back into his palm.

"Didn't you notice anything missing down there?" she said.

He looked uncomfortable. "Like what?"

"Like their organs! They weren't just killed, they were harvested! Andthat " - she jabbed a finger at his chest - "is a felony!"