hide out overnight, think things through. And indeed he came upon

a stone bridge that crossed the creek.

Trolls lived under bridges, at least in games. And when he slid

down the muddy embankment a troll is what he found. A man, large,

maybe a crazy street person, maybe not.

“Hey. You,” the man said. “This is my place. Get lost.” The man came closer. His rough, pendulous features brightened

with avarice as he saw the not-very-large boy. The rain was back, and

Billy was tired.

The man made a suggestion for just how Billy could pay for the

right to stay dry.

So Billy stuck a nine-millimeter pistol in his face and said, “Go

away.” It was getting to be a habit.

The phone chimed.

The man laughed, thinking the gun was a toy.

“Get over here and—”

The explosion lit up the bridge overhead. The bullet, aimed past

the man’s face, but not much past it, hit the water in the rain-swollen

creek.

“Jesus!” the man yelped.

“I already shot a bunch of people yesterday,” Billy said. “So I can

shoot you.”

Billy was alone when he read the text message.

Stay hidden. Help coming. Lear.

A few hundred miles north, in New York, Burnofsky watched the data flow on his screen.

Four Hydras had each made a copy of themselves.

Eight Hydras had each made a copy of themselves.

Sixteen Hydras had each made a copy of themselves.

Thirty-two . . .

Sixty-four . . .

One hundred and twenty-eight . . .

Each round took seven minutes. So in a little over half an hour, the four hydras had become more than a hundred.

256. 512. 1024. 2048. 4096. 8192. 16,384.

That was the number after a dozen cycles, requiring eighty-four minutes.

32,768. 65,536. 131,072. 262,144. 524,288. 1,048,576.

It had taken eighteen cycles, two hours and six minutes, for four hydras to become more than a million. And of course that meant at least twenty million MiniMites.

He had used a live mouse as building material. Burnofsky pulled up video of the mouse, at first indifferent, then agitated, then desperate as tail and legs and ears were chewed away by the hydras and their MiniMites.

When he sped the video up he could watch the whole sequence as the mouse’s back erupted, as it died, as it grew gruesomely smaller and smaller and nothing but a few bones and shreds of flesh and then all gone, all of it completely gone, replaced by a seething mass of bluetinged nanobots. They looked, he thought, like uncooked egg white, or the stuff that ran from a punctured eyeball.

Goo, he supposed, for lack of a better word.

The world would die in agony and panic. And of course Burnofsky would die as well, but last, he hoped. Last and best and floating on an opium cloud.

But not just yet.

NINE

Farid had never met anyone from Anonymous in the real world. The fact that he’d even been asked for a meeting was extraordinary, and it made him paranoid as hell.

Since the intrusion into the AFGC system he’d been jumpy. His family was supposedly immune to prosecution thanks to diplomatic immunity, but that immunity would be a pretty thin defense if the American security people came after him. They might not be able to snatch him off a street themselves—Americans were very devoted to the illusion of law—but the city was full of American allies with no such scruples. The Saudis, maybe, or the Israelis.

Now this request for a face-to-face from d0wnb1anki3. Blankie’s name carried some weight. Even so Farid had been sweating bullets sitting in the Starbucks on Connecticut Avenue. He was trying not to be too obvious in looking for the “black woman carrying a backpack decorated with a picture of Bob Marley.”

He waited until the appointed time. He waited until ten minutes after the appointed time. Jumpy from too much caffeine and too little sleep, he got up to grab a cigarette outside.

And there she was, just as described. An African American woman carrying a Bob Marley backpack. She was hurrying across the street, looking very much like a person late for an appointment.

Farid sucked hard on his cigarette, assuming he’d have to put it out in a few seconds. But in fact the woman walked right up to him, gave him a dubious look, made a V of her fingers, then a give-me gesture. Farid shook out a Marlboro for her.

He lit her cigarette with his Marilyn Monroe lighter, and she said, “Let’s walk.”

She did not give her name, and he didn’t ask. She led the way, south toward Dupont Circle. The sidewalk was busy—it always was—but they were walking slow, and Washingtonians—the most self-important people on Earth—were all rushing past them. Anyone following them at this slow pace would have been instantly obvious, so Farid looked around and convinced himself that things were cool.

“This is some very dangerous stuff,” the woman said.

“No shit.”

They walked on for a block past boutiques, crossing the street through the eternally impatient traffic.

“You need to wipe it all,” the woman said.

“What are you talking about?”

“Wipe it. Burn it. Bury it in a deep hole and then forget you ever saw it.”

Farid thought about that. He frowned. “Wait. What? We’re supposed to cover this up?”

The woman made a cynical face. “It’s Washington, kid. Coverups are what this city’s built on.”

Farid stopped. After a few steps, so did the woman.

“Yeah, but we aren’t about cover-ups. We’re about exposing the truth. I mean, this is profound stuff. This is craziness.”