[ Almost certainly they were the same stories -- that part can't have been that different, right? Stupid tales for little kids about a world they'd never see, with feasts and strange animals and things like snow. If the plants had to tear them out of their worlds and drop them someplace random, why couldn't they have ended up someplace wetter? A green world, where food grew right out of the ground, or fell out of the sky, or however those stories went.

No point in thinking about it, though. They're make-believe stories -- they're not real. Earth's not even real, not really. Not anymore. ]

I bet you're right. [ There's nothing up here, just... he slams a door open with the butt of the Punisher, long past caring about keeping quiet. It's another meeting room, this one even plusher and shinier than the ones downstairs. Real money sat in those seats. Real money bought and sold people in here. ] This shit up here, that's for Master Chapel and the rest. The real facility's probably under our feet.

[ But if he was going to stick around in an abandoned place like this, he would want the poshest, cleanest, fanciest room he could possibly find. He'd want to be up here, you know? With a view, and all the coffee and tinned stew he could eat. He'd want...

There's a quiet click from a nearby room, the unmistakable sound of a clip being loaded into a gun. Wolfwood raises a hand -- did Livio hear it too? -- and points at the far wall. Through there. There's somebody there, somebody who's now armed.

Let's get 'em. ]