THEY WERE MERE HOURS AWAY. Two men connected by history, one her enemy, the other... Alexia didn't know about the other, not yet, but knew that he meant to reclaim the girl she'd taken from the snow machine. Probably the boy, as well. None of them would be leaving, of course... but she was looking forward to the petty intrigues and overblown, self-impor - tant dramas that their humanity would bring to her home. She would enjoy the chance to observe their natural ten - dencies and instincts before forever altering their lives. She stood in the great hall considering things: possi-ble futures, her next transformation, the structural and psychological changes her new synthesis would create in humans, how she should welcome her new guests...... and it occurred to her that her home, deep beneath the ice and snow, might be difficult for them to achieve. She immediately wished for the doors to be opened, for ob - stacles to be removed... and she heard and saw and felt the result in the same instant, existing in a hundred places at once as locks were broken and walls were taken down, as debris was pushed aside and apertures were widened. She was prepared. Things would move quickly now... and what happened in the next hours would, to a degree, define her choices for some time to come. It was all still so new, the templates of her new life written only in sand... Smiling at her own poetic notions, Alexia went to see about the first series of injections for the boy.