“I would still like to know how I came to be,” I say.

“Consider it a mystery,” Terra Spiker says. “Like the Big Bang. One second there’s nothing, and the next second there’s a universe.”

“Evening created me.”

“Yes, she did. And now you’re going to find her. You’re going to bring her here. For you, she’ll come back.”

“Where is she?”

Terra Spiker says nothing for a long time. I wonder if she hasn’t heard me. But I can see that she is thinking. Her forehead creases. Her eyes narrow.

She corresponds to images I have of thoughtfulness.

“I have an idea where she might be,” she says at last.

“What if she won’t come with me?”

“Oh, she’ll come,” Terra Spiker says. “It’s the fate of all creators: They fall in love with their creations.”

– 31 –

It’s a gray, halfhearted dawn, cold as hell, a fairly typical San Francisco morning, no matter the time of year. The fog isn’t as thick or as low as it was last night. It looks as if it might burn off later.

Solo will wake at any moment. And when he does he’s going to ask me for the flash drive, and we’re going to find a place to upload it.

The sequence of events that will follow is lurid, even in my imagination. I see my mother with her manicured hands in chrome handcuffs. I see federal agents swarming all over Spiker, demanding passwords, hauling computers off to labs that can crack them open and make them spill their secrets.

I see my mother in jail. An orange jumpsuit.

She hates the color orange.

I see her in court. She’ll have great lawyers, of course. But the damning evidence will come from her own daughter. At the very least she’ll have to sign some kind of a deal. She’ll lose her business.

The horrors will end.

But so will the work on Level One. Projects that might bring relief to millions or save tens of thousands of lives. Some kid in Africa lives or dies because of what I decide.

This is too much to think about. I need to focus on what matters. I’ve been manipulated, used, a guinea pig. I’m a mod, in Solo’s casual phrase. A genetic experiment.

To achieve this, terrible crimes were done and nightmarish horrors were created.

I close my eyes and see the monsters in their vats.

I blink them away, focusing my gaze on the stack of my dad’s paintings piled haphazardly against the wall.

They’re good, some of them, really good. Still lifes, landscapes, a few hastily sketched faces. Charcoal, mostly. Some watercolor. There’s one of me as a baby, with chubby cheeks and a single tooth.

My hand freezes on the last canvas. It’s my mother. The oil pastel my dad attempted, then abandoned.

It’s been worked and reworked. I can feel him struggling with the gaze, the smile.

Smiling has never been my mother’s strong suit.

Still, there’s a soft vulnerability to the eyes. A gentle sweetness to the mouth. This drawing was done by someone who loved my mother deeply. Without reservation.

I think back to the endless fights and icy silences. Is it possible, beneath all that high-octane drama, that they really loved each other? Did he see something in her that I can’t see?

I take my own sketch out of my jeans pocket. It’s smeared at the folds. I compare it to the portrait of my mother, studying the strokes and smudges, moving an imaginary pencil over my drawing.

“Whatcha doing?”

Aislin joins me. She’s still a mess, but beautiful in her tough-but-not-really way. She squeezes herself against the cold and lays her head on my shoulder.

“Let’s go outside,” I suggest in a whisper. “Don’t want to wake Solo.”

She grins. “Are you sure?”

The breeze is brisk and smells of fish. I look down at the water. There’s a sea lion gazing back up at us hopefully. No doubt it expects breakfast. I’m not sure the sea lions in the bay ever actually fish anymore. I think they just wait for bits of burger and chalupa ends.

“I got nothing,” I say. I display my empty hands. The sea lion dives smoothly and disappears.

“You should sleep,” I tell Aislin.

“Mmm. Should. I don’t really do ‘should’ all that well.”

I smile. “I’ve noticed.”

“You do ‘should.’”

“Do I?” It’s a genuine question. I’m not sure I know the answer.

“That was some scary stuff. On the computer,” Aislin says. She sounds tentative. She’s feeling me out.

“Yeah. Stuff from a horror movie.”

“What are you going to do?”

I heave a big sigh. “I don’t know yet. According to you I do the right thing. But what’s the right thing?”

She laughs. “Really? You’re asking me?”

I look at her. “You know, Aislin, I don’t always agree with what you do. But you are a good person. All the way, deep down, you’re a good person.”

She squeezes my hand, but she doesn’t believe me.

“Tell me, Aislin. What do I do?”

She heaves a sigh that’s an echo of my own. “It’s a hard thing to go against family,” she says.

“My mother deserves it,” I say. “If she’s really responsible.”

Aislin laughs a little bitterly. “Remember when my dad had that mistress, Lainey, and my mom kicked him out? For a while. Then she let him come back. And my mom’s obviously got a drinking problem, but I think he still loves her. And despite everything I’ve done, they still haven’t thrown me out.”