The place in which Alex ended up, after a huge number of winding transitions and murmuring descents, is somewhat similar to an amphitheater - a stage, a semicircle of spectator seats, a beam of light directed to the middle.

"It'll be all right," Stan tells her, shielding her from everyone's eyes.

Alex nods, surveying this cold and utterly gloomy place. There are many grooves and holes in the floor of the stage, in the middle there are sawn and poorly covered with clay legs from a table that once stood here.

There were other performances here - with students, doctors, with frightening instruments, with missing, not yet opened anesthesia and...