“He changed the game. But I’m changing it more. I’m changing it all,” Lear boasted. “I’m creating whole new species, yeah, to take over. I mean, you know, thanks to your dad, who was a genius. Yeah. By the way, condolences on his death, he was a great man.”

Plath’s mask almost dropped then. Almost. “Yes, he was.”

“But we used his techniques and played around, and now we have three very interesting species. Macro, not micro. We’ll breed them up, yeah, and then release them when the time is right. One of them can’t metabolize anything but pork and human meat. Hah! Later, at the next level, yeah.”

“But how are you going to watch what happens? I mean …” She waved a hand at the YouTube video. “How much longer is Google going to work?”

“Oh, don’t worry. The satellites will work independently for a long time. And we’ll start placing cameras here and there, when the time is right.”

“You’ve thought of everything,” Plath said.

Lear smiled, a shark’s smile this time. “You don’t really think I’m buying any of this, do you?”

“Sorry?”

“This bad-girl act. This Sadie McLure, indifferent to suffering. You tried to stop Caligula. I know. I spoke to my father before he died. That was kind of a drag. He was very useful, the old man. I was never going to bring him here, no, no, but it would have been fun watching him deal with the world I’m creating. He would have been an interesting player in the game.”

Plath put her drink down again. Her hand was shaking. Lear saw it.

“The world you’re creating?”

But Lear wasn’t playing along anymore. “How much longer do you think you have to live, Sadie?”

Plath did not answer.

“Two ways forward for you, Sadie. The usual choice: death or madness. We have some decent twitchers here, and we could easily wire you up. Or I could be disappointed that you would just walk in here and think you could lie to me.” Lear raised the pistol on her lap and leveled it at Plath.

The muzzle looked huge. What a cliché, some corner of Plath’s mind thought. That’s what everyone who has ever stared down the wrong end of a gun thinks: oh, it’s big.

“Go ahead,” Plath said.

“You don’t think I will?” Lear stood up and let the down vest slide to the floor. The sheer tunic revealed shadows of the tattoo horrors beneath. Lear pointed to a spot on her belly, right where an appendix scar would be. “Right here, yeah. That’s where I would tattoo your face. Maybe then you’ll talk to me, yeah? They speak the truth, the tattoos do. Yeah.”

“I believe you’ll kill me,” Plath said. “You’re a mass murderer. Before you’re done you’ll kill more people than Genghis or Hitler. You’re a sick, twisted, crazy woman playing an insane game. So yeah, I think you’ll kill me.”

Lear cocked her head, all the while keeping the gun aimed. “Don’t you want to beg?”

Plath forced a smile of her own. A peace had descended over her. It was like what Noah had described to her, the eerie feeling of detachment and fearlessness that could come in the midst of a very challenging game. It would be over in minutes.

“I’m not afraid to die,” she said. “So long as I take you with me, you foul, fucked-up psychopath.”

“Hah!” Lear said. And then, the wheels began to turn in her head. Plath could see her retracing her steps. “You never touched me. Yeah, you never touched me.”

“No,” Plath said. “But you took my gun. As I knew you would.”

Lear swallowed. She glanced at Bug Man, as if he would or could help.

“You know the anterior cerebral artery?” Plath asked. “Don’t be embarrassed if you don’t. I never would have, if some sick creature had not dragged me into her little BZRK game. But now, hey, I know a fair amount. Like I know that the anterior cerebral artery feeds blood to the frontal lobes. Which is where your consciousness lives.”

“You’re bluffing.”

“Three biots, Lear. Each has a nice, long spike buried in that artery. There’s blood leaking, but just a few cells, nothing fatal. It takes pressure to hold them in place. I think you may have high blood pressure, because it’s a little like holding a Champagne cork in. If I keep up the pressure, leave the spikes in, well, eventually the clotting factor will seal the damage. But if I let the spikes out … which is what will happen if my biots are suddenly no longer being controlled … there will be a sudden spurt of blood. The pressure of cells forcing their way out of the holes will actually widen the holes. And since all the spikes are close together, the whole area will probably tear wide open. I know these things because of my own aneurysm. Useful.”

Lear lowered the pistol and squeezed the trigger. The bang rattled the glassware.

Plath felt a terrible blow, like a crowbar against her knee. The pain was immediate. Blood gushed from the wound. Bits of white bone stuck like teeth from ripped skin.

Plath fell to her other knee and shrieked in pain.

“See, little Sadie girl, there are other ways. I don’t have to kill you. I can just keep hurting you. How does it feel? Does it hurt? It’s weird, yeah, but people who can face the idea of dying can’t always face the idea of suffering, yeah?”

The pain was beyond belief, beyond anything Plath had ever felt before.

“See, honey, I’m not afraid to die, either. I’m afraid to fail. I’d rather die than lose the game, yeah, my game, my goddamned game!”