“You miss your little love slave?” she asked.

“Jessica? You know about … that?”

“Yes, of course. You’re a rapist, Bug Man.”

He flushed. “No, I’m not. I never forced her to do anything.”

She leaned toward him, elbows on knees, drink cradled in both hands. “You programmed her. You took away her free will. You replaced it with your own. You enslaved her. And when you have sex with someone in that condition, it’s rape.”

He shook his head and took a drink just so he’d have an excuse not to meet her gaze.

“Rapist. Murderer. Terrorist. That’s you, Bug, by the standards of the wide world, yeah.”

Bug Man frowned. No, that wasn’t right. “I’m … no. No way. I’m a gamer. I’m just playing.”

“Buggy, Buggy, Buggy.” She patted his knee, and he felt his flesh creep. “If you were charged in a court of law, you’d be looking at life without parole in New York. In Texas, hell, they’d execute you, yeah. Electric chair in Texas? Let me Google that.” She pulled out her phone and opened the browser.

Bug Man let loose a weird giggle, and then was appalled by the sound he’d made.

“You’re a very bad person. In this world. In this real world the way it is. You’re a monster. Don’t you know that? Damn! I was wrong.” She held up her phone for him to see. “Lethal injection in Texas. The needle. That’s such a weak way to die.”

“I don’t know what you want,” Bug Man pleaded.

She didn’t answer directly. Then she said, “Drink,” and he drank. Then she said, “You didn’t listen closely enough. I said ‘In this world. In this real world the way it is.’ But this isn’t the only way the world could be. Is it?”

The whiskey had started a fire in his throat. And now a dangerous warmth spread from his stomach outward. He flicked his eyes up at her. She wasn’t stronger than him. She wasn’t armed. He could probably smash this heavy glass against the side of her head. Push her out of the window. It was, what, six floors down to the pavement? What did he have to lose if what she said about him was true?

“I sent a text just now,” Lystra said.

“So what?”

“So … wait. Ticktock. Ticktock, yeah.” She smiled. It was almost playful. “Ticky tocky.”

“Lady, I think I’ve had it with your shi—” His mouth still moved, but no sound came out. Because just then a window opened in his brain.

“Mmmm,” Lystra said, savoring it.

A second window opened in his brain. A second little TV screen with nothing in view but something that might just be an insect’s leg.

“Is the third one up yet?”

A third window. This one showed all too clearly the shape he’d come to know as prey and fear as predator. A biot.

“You ever hear the phrase ‘dead man’s switch’?”

He had. But he felt as if he couldn’t open his mouth. Fear seeped into his blood with icy fingers that outraced the warm glow of alcohol.

“A dead man’s switch. They use it on subways and things like that,” she explained. “If the subway conductor dies, see, he lets go of the switch and the train automatically stops, yeah. Yeah. That’s me now. I’m your own personal dead man’s switch. Because if my heart stops beating, guess what?”

When he didn’t answer, she bared her teeth, and once again, that skeletal presence seemed to burn through her flesh. “If I die, little Bug Man, all three of your biots … oh, and they are yours now … die as well.” She put a fist over her heart, opened it, closed it, opened it, in a mockery of sinus rhythm.

“What do you want?” he screamed, losing the last of his self-control. Then, weeping, softly repeated, “What do you want? What do you want?”

“I’m going to create a new world,” she said, sitting back, dreamy now, her eyes gazing toward the French doors and the city beyond. “A whole new world. I am its god. But it’s a lonely thing, being god; you could ask the real God, if he existed. He’d tell you. He created the world, and then, he was all alone with no one to talk to. He needed friends. But!” She held up a cautionary finger. “He needed friends who understood who they were, and who he was, and who held the lightning bolts, and who was there to cower and serve. He needed the love that only comes from those who are afraid. Love me, your god, or burn in hell. I’m offering the same deal as Jehovah.”

“You’re fucking crazy.”

He flinched, expecting her to reveal that awful presence again, but instead she laughed a genuine, happy laugh. “Crazy? Nah. I’m BZRK.”

THIRTEEN

Keats pulled away from her. “What’s the matter?”

“Wire, Noah. Wire in my brain.”

It took him a few seconds to make sense of things. “You’re down in the meat?”

She nodded—distracted, scared. She pushed him off her and jumped from the bed. She grabbed at clothing. “I knew something … I just … Something was weird, so I looked.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you ask me to help?” But even as the words were out of his mouth, he knew the answer. “You thought it was me.”

Plath didn’t answer, her attention was elsewhere. The biot—if it was a biot, how could it be?—had disappeared, and its light along with it. Plath swung her biot left, right, shining her illumination around in the brain fluid.