'Are you ready, William?' Katerina whispered.

'Nnnnnh!'

Katerina straightened, her hand heavy on Billy's shoulder. He sensed her turn to face the other occupants of the room.

'The boy is prepared?' she asked.

'Yes ma'am, everything is all set and ready to go.' KindVoice. Nervous and quiet. 'He - he'll come off the drugs in a few minutes, it was just to keep him quiet.'

'Here - is he really The One?' WhiteCoat asked.

'What?' Katerina. Her voice silky. Dangerous.

'You know,' WhiteCoat persisted, seemingly oblivious to the woman's tone, 'is he really the one - the key to everything we've been looking for?'

'That, my increasingly short-lived friend, is what we're going to find out. In any case, he is definitely the key to something.'

'Wow. Just - wow. I mean I've been here five years and all the Techies talk about is how we're just working off some incomplete scan of the perfect child. You sure it's him?'

'You sure the machine is ready?'

'Yes, but -'

'Excellent. You may leave.'

'What?' The man. Argumentative, angry. 'But the boss said-'

'I said, you may leave.' A pause. 'Now.'

'Well, fine. Only don't blame me if his head explodes. I'm going to have words about this.'

'Of course you are. Get out.'

'Y-yes ma'am. We'll be leaving now then. If you need us we'll be-'

'I won't need you. Go. Now.' The door hissed closed. Silence. Just the two of them again. Her black form moved into his field of vision, a new shadow against the whiteness of the room. Billy thought he could see the faces of demons in the darkness.

'Hello, William.'

'Nnnn-nnnh!'

'Oh hush, boy. We've been looking for you a long time,' Katerina said. 'Do you know, I had almost given up, too. But we have people all over the world looking for special little boys like you.' She checked the contacts on his head, traced the wires and checked the connections into the machine. 'It was only a matter of time.' she added.

'Nnnh.'

'Yes, I know. But the old man will take too long. He should have given himself up while he had the chance.'

'Nnh!'

'Oh don't worry, we'll catch him too. Few manage to evade me for long.' Billy shut his eyes as Katerina kissed him on the cheek. She cracked her knuckles like pistol shots and stood back, satisfied.

Katerina marched over to the bank of screens.

'Are you ready?' she said again, mocking his helplessness. She tapped on the keys.

Billy screamed.

The fizzing sensation intensified, became hotter, louder. Sharp bolts of pain shot through his head and his back arched, as if his body had taken on a mind of it's own.

'Excellent, it's all coming through now,' Katerina said. 'My, what an interesting mind you have.' she fussed over him, checking the things attached to his head while he writhed and screamed. Knives scythed through his consciousness, filling him, cutting his mind into pieces.

'Okay, that’s all working,’ said Katerina. ‘moving to level two.'

Afterwards, Billy could not remember actually hearing her words. He recalled the pain, yes. Pins and needles multiplied a thousand times, and in his brain. But the words came back later. Katerina had become more and more excited, scribbling notes and laughing. She pushed the machine up to level five, which she assured him was the final scan, but by then he knew he had lost the battle. His body trembled and spasmed, sweat running from every pore, while images from his life flashed before his eyes. The strange talking blackbird, Thomas, Davey, his mother, numbers, colours, triangles... but most of all: the Shadow. His fists clenched so tight that his fingernails gouged into his palms.

The Shadow came out of hiding.

Billy stopped screaming.

It expanded out from under the chair, behind the wall of machines, from his bleeding hands. It poured out of his mouth and nose, and merged into a floating cloud of blackness above him. He stared. There was nothing else to do. Something shimmered in the void, impossibly far away, beyond the ceiling. In astonishment, Billy realised he was looking deep into space, into a night without stars. The distant shimmering became a face, if you could call it a face. There were eyes, big round eyes. Something like a mouth. And teeth. It was there and it wasn't. The Shadow was at once both the face and the void. Billy felt like he was looking into infinity itself, although he did not know what infinity meant.

Suddenly the face was upon him.

NOW, it said.