He was still breathing. That was something.

The Easter egg clicked softly. A faint, almost subsonic hum emanated from somewhere nearby—either a ground-effect field, or the static of nerves misfiring in his own cochleae.

It couldn't be neuroinduction. A botfly would never even get off the ground carrying coils that heavy. Neuromuscular block of some kind, he realized. It gassed me.

It gassed us...

He willed his head to turn. It lay like a ten-kilogram rock on the pillow, defying him. He couldn't move his eyes. He couldn't even blink.

He could hear Sandra beside him, though, breathing fast and shallow. She too was awake.

"Went right back to sleep, I see," the botfly remarked in a familiar voice. "Didn't lose a wink over it, did you?"

Desjardins...?

"It's okay, though," the machine went on. "Turns out you were right. Here, let me give you a hand..."

The botfly tilted nose-down and descended until it was literally nuzzling Sawyer's cheek. It nosed him gently, like a hungry pet pestering its master for food. Sawyer's head lolled sideways on the pillow, stared past the edge of the bed to the crib against the far wall, barely visible in the gloom.

Oh God, what—

This couldn't be happening. Achilles Desjardins was a 'lawbreaker, and 'lawbreakers—they simply didn't do this sort of thing. They couldn't. Nobody had ever admitted it officially, of course, but Sawyer was connected, he knew the scoop. There were—restraints, right down at the biochemical level. To keep 'lawbreakers from misusing their power, to keep them from doing exactly what—

The robot floated across the bedroom. It came to rest about a meter over the crib. The thin crescent of a rotating lens glinted on its belly, focusing.

"Kayla, isn't it?" the botfly murmured. "Seven months, three days, fourteen hours. I say, Dr. Sawyer. Your genes must be very special, to justify bringing a child into such a shitty world. I bet it pissed off the neighbors something awful. How'd you get around the pop-control statutes?"

Please, Sawyer thought. Don't hurt her. I'm sorry. I—

"You know, I bet you cheated," the machine mused. "I bet this pissy little larva shouldn't even be here. Ah well. Like I said before, you were right. About real people. They really do die all the time."

Please. Oh dear God give me strength, let me move, at least give me strength enough to beg—

Bright as the sun, a fiery proboscis licked down through the darkness and set Kayla alight.

The botfly turned and regarded Trevor Sawyer through a dark cyclopean eye, while his child screamed and blackened.

"Why, there goes one now," it remarked.

"For Mandelbrot," Desjardins whispered. "In memory."