“With an eye to infiltration or attack?” Charles demanded, while Benjamin remained ominously silent.

“No way to tell. But gentlemen, there’s good news as well.”

Charles raised his eyebrow. Benjamin glowered at Jindal, as if holding him personally responsible. “Good news?”

“The hackers have been hacked in return,” Jindal said. He was giddy now, torn between excitement and fear. “We tracked them back and found a way into some of their systems.”

“BZRK?”

“No. McLure Labs Security. That’s who’s been watching us. McLure Security. Presumably at the direction of”—Jindal hesitated, knowing the effect his next words would have on the Twins—“Sadie McLure.”

“The little bitch,” Benjamin spat.

“Do we know where she is?” Charles asked.

Jindal shook his head, impatient to get to the one remaining piece of good news. “No, nothing directly on BZRK. But we can now track the movements of the main McLure Security folks, and if we follow them, we’ll likely find a way back to Plath herself.”

“Bah,” Benjamin snorted. “No time. They’re planning an attack here, that’s obvious. We have to hit them hard, now. Now!”

Charles looked queasy, but as Jindal watched, he could see wary acceptance grow on the wiser brother’s face.

“We don’t have the gunmen we used to, thanks to that disaster in Washington. But we have other means, as you know well. Massed preprogrammed attack,” Benjamin said harshly.

Charles smiled faintly at that. He shrugged his shoulder. “Go ahead, Benjamin. You know you’ve wanted to say it ever since you came up with that name for the drones. Go ahead.”

For once Benjamin did not scowl. He smiled. And said, “Locate Stern. And any other important actors in McLure Security. And as soon as you have the location and Burnofsky is ready … I will release the Hounds.”

TWELVE

Down in the meat.

P2: soulless, mindless biot, Plath’s creature, Plath’s bizarro-world daughter. P2 zooming across Plath’s eye, six legs stroking as Plath had learned to do, like an Olympic speed skater.

The room was dark, shades drawn, door locked, a GO AWAY Post-it note on the door. In the darkness, her eyeball—which in light could look like a frozen lake—looked like some impossibly vast jellyfish, at least here on the white.

Her eyelids—the onrushing “shore” lined with palm trees—looked less benign, more like needle-sharp teeth.

Her eyelid swept over her, rubbing across her biot back, a slight pressure, greater darkness; then it rushed away as though that row of teeth had rejected the tiny meal.

Sadie, you need to ask yourself: Is this you?

That barb stuck. It stuck, and Plath could not shake it off.

Are you really, truly a person planning what would look like a terrorist attack in Midtown Manhattan?

The World Trade Center was falling in her memory, and now there was a musical track to go with it. An old, old song, a Beatles song: “Piggies.”

It added a vengeful but playful note to the video atrocity.

How had she felt about that footage the first time she had seen it, back in the classroom? She had been horrified. Sickened. She had always been that way, always capable of being outraged by terrible injustice. In school they had done a unit on World War Two, and as part of that they had done a couple days on the Holocaust. She was not Jewish. She was not part of any group that had been touched by the Holocaust, but she’d been unable to sleep afterward, unable quite to control the sickened hatred of people who could do that to other human beings.

They had watched parts of Shoah in class—actual first-person testimony from Holocaust survivors. She remembered vibrating with the suppressed fury she’d felt. She remembered giving up finally on any effort to control the tears.

She still felt that way when she recalled the Holocaust unit. But she no longer felt horrified by the World Trade Center. Now it was … what?

Beautiful, is what it was.

Is this you?

Was it really this easy to cross lines that should never be crossed? Had the stress of this unasked-for war of hers, this BZRK existence, simply washed away the part of her that cared about right and wrong?

Or. Or had she had some help?

Is. This. You?

Plath had three biots. She had sent P1 into Anya’s brain. It sat now on Anya’s optic nerve, looking out through Anya’s left eye. It was a window open in Plath’s head, showing, at the moment, a bowl of soup, a rough hunk of baguette, and three slices of sausage. Anya’s hand lowered a spoon. Raised a spoon. Pause. Lower spoon. Raise spoon. Put down spoon, hands to bread, tear off a hunk, raise it toward mouth.

Plath’s final biot, P3, was an enhanced model. Faster, with better sensors, stronger. It was still in the vial attached to a chain around Plath’s neck, staring at nothing—a very dull TV show of curved glass wall, and not so much of that in this light.

The line is there …

Mr. Stern suspected she’d been caught up in something, and needed some time to think it through more calmly. Plath had different suspicions. Because, yes, she was thinking of attacking the Tulip. Guns blazing. Bombs blasting. The image of the Tulip disintegrating, toppling, falling to the ground in fire and smoke was almost … almost erotic.

And this was Plath—Sadie—who had refused when she had the chance to kill the Armstrong Twins.

She had left for Île Sainte-Marie feeling betrayed that she’d been trapped into BZRK. Feeling sickened by the violence and by what she had seen and done down in the meat. Now she was ready to launch an actual attack. To kill. To kill innocent people. Why? Was it just because Lear had told her to?