After they had discovered the nanosites in Nell's flesh that made her a 
part of the Drummers, Nell had stayed up through the night and designed a 
counternanosite, one that would seek out and destroy the Drummers' devices. She 
and Carl had both put these devices into their bloodstreams, so that Nell was 
now free of the Drummers' influences and both of them would remain so. 
Nevertheless they did not press their luck by eating of the Drummers' food, and 
it was well, because after their meal the refugees became drowsy and lay down 
on the floor and slept, steam rising from their naked flesh, and before long 
the sparks of light began to come on, like stars coming out as the sun goes 
down. After two hours the stars had merged together into a continuous surface 
of flickering light, bright enough to read by, as if a full moon were shining 
down upon the bodies of slumbering revelers in a meadow. The refugees, now 
Drummers, all slept and dreamed the same dream, and the abstract lights 
flickering across the
mediatronic lining of the cavern began to coalesce and organize themselves into 
dark memories from deep within their unconscious mind. Nell began to see things 
from her own life, experiences long since assimilated into the words of the 
Primer but here shown once more in a raw and terrifying form. She closed her 
eyes; but the walls made sounds too, from which she could not escape.