The redheaded figure reached up with his other hand, lifted his goggles and lowered his respirator, revealing not a he, but a she.

“Alright, asshole,” she said. “Who the fuck are you?”

Rangan stared up in surprise.

The big guy with the black dreads lifted his own goggles and lowered his own respirator, and it wasn’t a guy at all. That was undeniably a she, not a he. Then Rangan’s female savior reached forward, grabbed Rangan’s shirt-slash-bandana, and tugged it off of him in one quick motion.

“Don’t you know anything, Tempest?” the one with the black dreads said. “This is the masterfrackin Axon.”

Thousands of kilometers away, in an exclusive tower above the Pudong, the Avatar stood Ling’s body at the window. Ling’s eyes looked out over the wonder of Shanghai, out across the gap to the next tower over, and the enormous twenty-story visage of the doe-eyed, porcelain skinned actress, Zhi Li. The faux-goddess. Bah.

I will show them what a true goddess is, the Avatar thought, surveying her handiwork across the United States, the chaos she’d wrought there, the way the humans scurried like ants to distract themselves from the true threat they faced.

Oh yes, she thought. I’ll show them. Soon, very soon.

Won’t I, husband? She turned and looked to the corner, where Chen Pang writhed in his continuous cycle of inhumanly amplified agony. It was growing more and more intense each day as she pumped more of the nanites into his brain, increasing his capacity, making him a better and better slave.

Then the avatar smiled with Ling’s smile, threw back her head, and bellowed the laugh of the wise and wicked, with the voice of an eight-year-old girl.

Now, it was time to attend to matters here in China.

Unnoticed by the Avatar, her daughter Ling’s hands clutched her stuffed panda ever more tightly to her body.

24
Guilt

Tuesday 2040.11.06

Su-Yong Shu screams. She moans. Ling! Ling!

She feels sick to her stomach. Her guts want to empty themselves at what she’s done.

And then they are emptying themselves. She’s on a table, strapped down, on her back, tubes inside her, and her stomach is heaving, and then she’s retching, and it’s rising up and out of her, and she can’t breathe.

The body, she realizes. The body.

And then an alarm is ringing and there are figures above in white suits, fully enclosed, with clear hermetically sealed faceplates, data scrolling across them, behind which they have white surgical masks. The figures are touching her, rolling her head to the side, pushing fingers into her mouth, unstrapping her, rolling her so this body won’t aspirate on her vomit and die.

She screams again, not caring if this human dies, not caring if all of her dies.

Ling! I hurt Ling! I turned her into a weapon, a tool.