“So we’re making her do it. Right? I mean, we’re unwiring her even though she obviously isn’t totally psyched about it.”

“Come on, guys,” Keats said. “It’s not the same. Someone wired her brain. Hacked her brain. Took over her brain. Now we’re fixing it. It’s not that difficult to understand.”

Wilkes began to argue, but then Billy yelled, “I see something!” His two biots had emerged from a brain fold to see a furtive shape disappear just beyond the reach of illumination.

“Nanobot?” Keats demanded.

“I don’t know. I can’t … I think it sees me. It’s running! He’s fast! He’s got moves, he’s got moves, man! 3D moves!”

“Stay with him, we’ll catch up,” Keats directed.

Billy was in the game now, racing as fast as his biots would go across a terrain of eerie hillocks, pulsing red worms as big as car tunnels, static sparks, and always the lethargically circulating fluid that slowed his every movement. His quarry disappeared into a shallow fold and Billy followed.

“Ahhh!”

“What?”

“Shit!”

Billy jumped out of his seat, knocking over his Coke. His fingers moved as though he was using a gamepad. His eyes seemed to dart after objects he could only see in the m-sub.

Billy’s first biot was down and minus two legs on the left side before he knew what hit him. He twisted both biots to see, and there, undeniable, unmistakable, the enemy: a biot.

“It’s a biot!” Billy yelled. “It’s a biot-biot-biot!”

“Don’t let him get away!”

“One of mine is down! I’m—he’s fast!”

The alien biot had raced up a vertical surface then pushed off, somersaulted, and dropped down behind Billy’s remaining mobile biot.

The foe was vertical and swimming downward. Billy made the mistake of believing he was safe until the biot landed, but the biot spun in midfall and fastened two pincers onto Billy’s eyes.

“I’m blinded!”

In the macro he instinctively rubbed his eyes, shook his head. In Billy’s brain the second window was blank, showing no picture. Like a TV tuned to a dead channel.

“I see him!” Keats yelled. “Come on, Wilkes!” He grabbed her hand in excitement.

Now three biots raced to catch the intruder. But the intruder was no longer fleeing. It had taken up a position on what seemed like a vertical surface and now waited.

Keats pulled to a halt. Wilkes’s two biots did the same.

“Three to one,” Wilkes said. Then, “Why does that thing look familiar?” And then, “Fuck!”

Keats was already on his feet. He raced up the stairs, and without bothering to knock, opened the door to Anya and Vincent’s room.

Anya was asleep.

Vincent was not.

Down in the meat Wilkes stood beside Keats. Now she and Billy both joined him in the macro, staring at Vincent, who looked at them calmly.

“You,” Keats said.

Vincent didn’t answer. Anya rolled over and opened her eyes.

“Billy,” Keats said. “Go get Plath.”

A message lit up Burnofsky’s phone, but he had muted it so there was no chime.

It’s Bug. Bad shit happening. Crazy bitch I think is Lear. Going to kill me and the whole damn world.

Ninety seconds later, a second message.

Are u there? Talk to me! I’m not playing.

Sixty seconds later:

Fuck! Do NOT call back. I’m using her phone. Can’t wait. I’ll try again later.

Bug Man had barely erased the messages and slid the phone back onto Lystra’s nightstand when the alarm on that phone went off. Zeeet! Zeeet! Zeeet!

Bug Man leapt for the door, eased himself out even as Lystra stirred and reached blindly for the phone.

By the time she emerged he was wrapped in a blanket on the couch doing a very poor job of faking sleep.

“Get up,” Lystra said, and pushed his foot. “It’s time.”

He pretended to yawn. “Wha—? Time for what?”

She grabbed a piece of glass fruit from a bowl on the nearby table. She hefted it in her hand, judging the weight. Then she swung it hard and fast, smashing it into Bug Man’s left eye.

“AHHH!”

Her free hand was on his throat, he could feel the pressure tightening. He squirmed but did not lash out at her, did not try to hit her. She took the glass fruit—it may have been a peach—and stuffed it brutally into his mouth.

Bug Man tasted blood. She pushed harder, harder until his front teeth began to splinter. He cried out, a muffled, frantic sound, and suddenly she spun away and tossed the now-bloody fruit back in its bowl.

“Who did you text?” she asked in a conversational tone.

“Whanh?” He couldn’t make sounds right, and spit splinters of teeth out onto the blanket. Tears filled his eyes, the pain but more the shock of the attack.

He felt with his tongue around the new architecture of his mouth.

“Who did you text, Buggy, come on,” Lystra said. “Was it some girl?”

He seized on the idea. “Nuffing, jush shome girl back home. Jush my girlfrien’.”

“Yeah, don’t do that again,” she said. “Now I have to password-protect my phone, and I hate that. It slows me down. Turn on the TV, go online to Vatican City feed.”

He couldn’t see to find the remote. Wouldn’t have had any idea where to find a Vatican feed if he had, and in the end Lystra, making disparaging sounds, did it herself.