“At the moment he’s working,” Nijinsky said. “I can’t make out what’s on his monitor—I have a pretty good tap, but you know what it’s like.”

They all, all except Anya, did know what it was like. Tapping an optic nerve was a bit like watching an old-fashioned TV in a thunderstorm back before cable, when the picture could be wildly distorted and never entirely clear.

“Has he been in touch with the Armstrong Twins?” Plath asked.

Nijinsky nodded. He tapped a cigarette out of some exotic, foreign pack and lit it. “Four days after that ship went down in Hong Kong. By the way, Lear is sure that was an Armstrong thing. Some kind of messed-up human zoo. By that point I was done wiring Burnofsky. I sent him back in. But nothing face-to-face. Wherever the Twins are now, they aren’t talking to Burnofsky in person; it’s all video link.”

“Do you have a biot in his ear?” Plath asked.

“No.”

There was pause while everyone absorbed this. It meant Nijinsky could see what Burnofsky was seeing, but could not hear what he was hearing.

“Why not?” Plath asked, deceptively quiet.

Nijinsky blew his smoke toward her. It was not a subtle gesture. He resented being demoted and didn’t mind if she knew. “Because I was using my other biots to train Billy, here.”

“For a month?”

Nijinsky shook his head. “Fuck you, Plath.”

Keats’s eyes narrowed angrily, but Plath remained cool. “A lot has been asked of you, Jin. And you’ve endured a lot.”

“Endured,” he said, sneering at the word. “Yes, I’ve endured a lot. A lot of enduring has gone on.”

“Why not have Anya generate a new biot and use it?”

Billy and Wilkes were watching the back-and-forth between the two, like spectators at a tennis match. Vincent was elsewhere in his mind. Keats was keeping still, irritated by Nijinsky, but accepting that this was up to Plath to handle.

“Why not generate a new biot?” Nijinsky mocked. “When you play Russian roulette, you put one bullet in the gun and spin the chamber. Click.” He mimed shooting himself in the head. “A one-in-six chance you’re dead. Two bullets? That’s a one-in-three chance. Three? At that point it’s fifty-fifty. You know why not, Plath, so don’t give me that hard look. Vincent barely survived the loss of one biot. Keats’s brother is shackled in a loony bin for losing two biots. You want to hear what Burnofsky’s hearing? Tell Wilkes to do it. Or do it yourself, Plath.”

Plath nodded. “Okay. Fair enough.”

“What are we doing?” Anya asked wearily. “What is this all about anymore? The Armstrong attempt to control the president is obviously ended. And it seems the same is true of the Chinese premier. The Twins are in hiding. Burnofsky has been wired and switched sides. Bug Man is gone. What are we doing? Are we playing a game? If so, what is our next move?”

“They still have the technology,” Plath said. “They will try again. In some other way. They won’t give up.”

“How do we know that?” Anya demanded.

“They found Keats and me. They blew up the boat that was coming to pick us up.”

“Convenient, wasn’t it?” Nijinsky said.

Plath didn’t say anything to that, because she’d had the same thought. Convenient. If you wanted to push her and Keats back to New York. Say, after you’d ignored an order to get your ass back there already.

The punishment for desertion is death, isn’t it? Or is that some Hollywood bullshit?

The boat had blown up, but there was no follow-up. No attack on the beach, no attack on the compound they’d been staying in. No attack as they rushed to the airport and flew away from the island.

No attack waiting for them when they refueled in Kenya or Madeira, and no attack when they’d landed at Teterboro.

Had a quick change of hair color somehow thrown off the kind of people capable of tracking her to Madagascar and then to Île Sainte-Marie? Not likely.

Just enough violence to send her running back to New York. Not as if someone was serious about killing her.

Like someone wanted her back in the game.

Get back in the game.

That had been the text from Lear. The one she’d ignored, because, why? Because she was Sadie McLure, that’s why. Since when did she take orders? What was she, someone’s butler suddenly? Fuck you, Lear. I’m on a beautiful island with a beautiful boy who loves me and wears himself out trying to please me.

For the first twenty-four hours after that she had felt liberated. Like maybe she had regained control of her life. But slowly her doubts had grown. What right did she have to blow off Lear? Lear was BZRK. Lear was the general, and she was a lowly lieutenant or whatever.

And he’d been right, hadn’t he, Lear? Right that she had to get back in the game? The Armstrong Twins seemingly still lived. The nanobot technology still existed. The liberty of all humanity was still in danger.

The Armstrongs still had to be stopped. Didn’t they?

“I’ve heard from Lear,” Plath said. She wasn’t sure why, but she was reluctant to tell them. Maybe because once she said it she would have to take action.

“Did he mention whether he liked the whole blonde look you have going on?” Wilkes. Of course.

“Lear says the Armstrongs have developed some kind of remote biot killer. Nature unknown. No other details. But …” She shook her head ruefully. “But his instructions are to destroy AFGC. Destroy their data in particular so this new technology doesn’t go into use.”