Suarez jumped onto the sleigh’s surface and pointed her gun directly down at the driver’s head. “It would be a pain in the ass to haul your dead body out of that cockpit.”

The driver saw the logic of that, held up his hands, and piled out onto the ground.

“Good choice,” Suarez said, and shot him in the foot.

She slammed the canopy closed and cranked the throttle, sending ice crystals and grit flying.

Across the compound she saw the chopper pulling away, rising toward the level of the ice above.

“Yeah, you just go that way, and I’ll go the other,” she said, and sent the sleigh hurtling toward the ramp, cannon firing at anything that crossed her path.

Babbington had grown tired of being bullied. He had run off across the ice, but when he saw O’Dell abandon the sleigh and jump in beside Tanner, he’d run back. The sleigh was warm at least. He had barely made it before the chills came on so hard that for the next twenty minutes he just shook while waiting for the cockpit heater to thaw his bones.

And then, he had shot the other sleigh.

Babbington’s thoughts had been less about needing to kill Tanner than they were about not wanting to yet again be forced out into the killing cold.

His first salvo blew the engine apart.

His second tore Tanner in half. The shock of that moment froze Babbington in a very different way. He pushed away from the controls and just in front of him the helicopter, bristling with weapons, rose like an avenging god.

Cold was not worse than being blown apart. Babbington threw back the canopy to wave his arms, show his face, anything to keep the helicopter from firing, but the dragonfly-looking monster still swept toward him, nose down.

Cannon fire ripped the ice, swept by, and now Babbington was warm enough. He ran from the sleigh, ran in panic across the ice toward the ramp, waving his arms.

Suarez shot up the ramp, then swerved madly as a boy in a bathrobe came pelting down. It was perhaps the most improbable thing she had ever seen. She backed the engines, shoved brakes into gravel, threw back her canopy, and yelled, “Who the hell are you supposed to be?”

The boy, wild-eyed, dove into the cockpit beside her.

“Yeah, okay,” Suarez said. “Just don’t talk.” She hit the throttle and Bug Man, facedown in the seat, twisted like an eel to get back upright.

The sleigh topped the crest and shot directly beneath the helicopter.

“Oh, that’s not good,” Suarez said.

“It’ after ush!” Bug Man yelled.

The chainsaw roar of the chopper’s cannon opened up, blowing a hole in the canopy, sending plastic shards everywhere. Suarez hauled the sleigh sharply left. Looked at her left hand. A two-inch piece of plastic protruded from the back of it. Her tendons were cut, her fingers slack.

Suarez pushed the throttle to full speed and said, “Hey, kid!”

“Wha? Wha? Wha?”

“Ever play video games?”

“What?”

“See that thing right there, kinda looks like a game controller? Well, that’s our weapons system.”

“She’s in my eye!” Lear yelled. “She’s in my eye!”

The doctor did not understand. Stillers did. “I’ll get some of our twitchers!”

Lear’s head was almost clear now, but now sheer, blind rage was clouding her thoughts. She’d been bluffed! The McLure girl hadn’t had biots in her brain, but they were sure on their way there now. Still time to stop them, maybe. Somehow.

Had to be. Otherwise …

The nanobots could survive, the whole thing would be ruined—had to win this, had to stay alive and win this. The Twins were dead, they couldn’t defeat her—dead, impossible!

“Don’t kill,” Plath groaned to herself. “Wire.”

But Plath’s own body was in spasm now, convulsing. She could no longer feel her face. Her hands blue before her, frozen to the ice.

P3 stabbed a needle into brain tissue, didn’t matter where, spooled wire from its spider spinnerets as it ran, and stabbed a second pin.

“Toast!” Lear yelled.

“What? Why are you yelling toast?” the doctor asked.

Another pin, another wire and Lear felt an overwhelming urge to bite her lip.

Now P2 was in the act, stabbing and spooling, stabbing and spooling.

“She’s wiring me! She’s wiring me!” Lear cried.

When she wasn’t stabbing pins and running wire, Plath was simply slicing through neurons and axons, plowing the soft pinkish-gray tissue.

“No!” Lear shouted. “No. No! Grah! Grah!”

Plath felt a strange warmth creeping over her. Not real, she knew. Illusion. The body shutting down. Shutting down, conserving blood warmth in her core, saying farewell to limbs.

If I didn’t love you, Noah, why am I thinking of you now, now at the end?

She no longer felt the pain of her knee. Numb. Her arm still ached, but it was so very far away.

I loved that you loved me, Noah.

But still enough consciousness to stab and spool and stab again.

I loved making love to you.

“Grah, I, grah, yeah,” Lear said, straining to be understood.

“She’s having a stroke,” the doctor said. “Look! Her left pupil is blown!”

Lear no longer saw the doctor. She saw her mother, her mother, the whore had actually slapped her across the face when she’d seen her daughter’s disapproving gaze, a red welt and a sting and a humiliation.

Slap me? Slap me? SLAP ME?