“It isn’t working. I can’t get it to work.”

“Use a second pin. Widen the hole.”

“I’m making a mess.” She looked at him, pleading, weak, wanting to get out, turn it off, walk away.

“Plath,” Nijinsky said.

She pulled out a second pin and slid it down precisely beside the first. Now she was hit with a second wave of memories. Not all of it was games.

Vincent, spanked by his father for cursing.

Vincent, a baby, so tiny those little hands reaching for his mother’s breast, vision all skewed with lurid flares and colors that looked like something from damaged film stock.

“There’s other stuff, other memories. His mother—”

“Do it, Plath, dammit, we are out of time,” Nijinsky said in a terse, angry voice that was his version of yelling.

With her biots working together she wedged the pins apart, and yes, now she had a hole opened into the depths of his brain. With a third limb she reached to widen the tear in the sac.

“Aaahhh!” She swore and jumped halfway out of her chair. “It broke, it broke, it broke!”

The sac had simply disappeared like a balloon that’s been popped. Acid flowed everywhere. Droplets splashed and burned in the cerebral spinal fluid, like the flowering of anti-aircraft fire in some old World War II movie. Some of it sank into the brain, burning, exploding cells, obliterating all it touched.

And some of it splashed onto her biot body, eating with insane intensity at her middle leg’s shoulder joint, causing that leg to flail wildly as if it had caught fire.

The new biot could feel pain.

“AaaaaAAAHHH!” she cried.

“Goddammit, get her out of there!” Keats yelled.

Some, maybe even most of the liquid flowed into the hole. Plath gritted her teeth and kept the pins apart even as she watched one of her claws melt and curl up like a burning scrap of paper.

“Jesus, it’s everywhere!”

“Are you hurt?” Nijinsky demanded.

“Yes, I’m hurt!”

The acid had splashed across both biots, she now saw. A tiny droplet was burning neatly through the carapace of the series three.

From the hole in Vincent’s brain rose a boiling mix of acid and melted flesh. It burned the brain cells and blew apart capillaries and frothed heavily like some awful parody of an undersea volcano.

“Dr Violet?” Nijinsky asked tersely.

“Nothing,” she answered promptly.

“It hurts like hell,” Plath yelled.

“It’s just in your head,” Nijinsky said.

“Of course it’s in her head,” Keats snapped. “Pain always is. Get her out of there!” When Nijinsky didn’t react immediately, Keats yelled, “Sadie! Get out of there.”

“It’s starting to melt the pins,” Plath reported, “And I am out of there, have to back away, Jesus!”

“Stay close enough to see,” Nijinsky ordered.

“Fuck you, Jin,” Keats snapped. “Sadie: get out.”

Plath motored both biots backward. She turned them to look one at the other, seeing through both sets of eyes at once. A leg fell, burned away, from her older biot.

The pain was intense but not worsening. Not like life-threatening pain. But pain, definitely pain.

She had pulled back a few meters m-sub.

The hole in Vincent’s brain was bubbling still, but like a dying fire. Whether the acid had maintained strength down to the target zone she couldn’t guess. But it had devastated an area that seemed at that scale as large as a small backyard.

The first lymphocytes were oozing along, heading toward damage. The earliest to reach the damaged area were burned by the acid and burst open like water balloons filled with oatmeal.

“I can’t reach the pins to pull them out,” Plath said. “The acid is eating at them, but they’re still there.”

“Okay, okay,” Nijinsky said at last. “Withdraw.”

Faint dawn was illuminating the stained-glass panels in the shallow dome atop the Stone Church one at a time. Anya had seen enough now to be sure that they did, indeed, illustrate the Ten Commandments.

Thou shalt not.

Thou shalt not lie, steal, covet, commit adultery, kill. The numbers were off a bit: Anya had learned her commandments in the Russian Orthodox church her grandfather attended. She had never been a believer, but she loved the old man, a disillusioned communist who nevertheless had remained a devout believer.

How has that worked out for you, Jehovah, the commandments and all?

Anya Violet touched Vincent’s face. He had become very still. His eyes were focused, no longer darting around. Focused with terrible intensity. But not on her. She felt invisible.

He was looking at something. Seeing something.

Nijinsky emerged from the hole beneath the altar. He crouched beside Anya. “Dr Violet. What are you seeing?”

“I’m not a psychiatrist.”

“What are you seeing?” Nijinsky pressed.

“He’s …he’s not moving. Not moving at all. He’s breathing. But his eyes, they are not moving. Not at all. His hands aren’t moving, his arms are just hanging.”

Nijinsky looked at Vincent. Vincent showed no sign of awareness. He was utterly still. Then, slowly, like a toppling redwood tree, he fell backward on the pew, then slid to the floor.

Nijinsky and Anya leapt. She touched his face. Nijinsky took his pulse.

“He’s alive,” Nijinsky said. “He’s alive.”