Another click. The exoskeleton stretched its legs back and forced hers apart, a meter off the floor.

—the reces—oh God—it's got all those lethal recessives, they start to express and the whole genotype—it collapses...

Achilles laid something hard and dry and room-temperature across the back of her right thigh. "Anything? Or should I just get started back here?"

"It self-destructs!" she blurted. "It dies off! Past some critical density..."

"Mmmm."

She couldn't tell if that had been the answer he was looking for. It made sense. As if sense would matter in this godforsaken—

"So why hasn't it died off?" he asked curiously.

"It—it—it hasn't hit the threshold yet. You keep burning it before it gets enough of a foothold."

No sound or motion for an eternity.

"Not bad," Achilles said finally.

Relief crashed through her like a wave. Some inner voice berated her for it, reminded her that she was still captive and Achilles Desjardins could change the rules whenever he pleased, but she ignored it and savored the tiny reprieve.

"So it is a counteragent," she babbled. "I was right all along. It's programmed to outcompete ßehemoth and then take itself out of the picture."

From somewhere behind her shoulder, the sense of a trap snapping shut.

"You've never heard the term relict population, then?" The weight lifted from her thigh. "You think a bug that hid for four billion years wouldn't be able to find some little corner, somewhere, where Seppuku couldn't get at it? One's all it would take, you know. One's all it took the first time. And then Seppuku takes itself out of the picture, as you say, and ßehemoth comes back stronger than ever. What does Seppuku do then, I wonder? Rise from the grave?"

"But wh—"

"Sloppy thinking, Alice. Really sloppy."

Smack.

Something drew a stinging line across her legs. Taka cried out; the inner voice sneered told you so.

"Please," she whimpered.

"Back of the class, cunt." Something cold tickled her vulva. A faint rasping sound carried over her shoulder, like the sound of a fingernail on sandpaper.

"I can see why pine furniture used to be so cheap," Desjardins remarked. "You get all these splinters..."

She stared hard at the tiled floor, the fish-to-bird transition, focused on that indefinable moment when background and foreground merged. She tried to lose herself in the exercise. She tried to think of nothing but the pattern.

She couldn't escape the thought that Achilles had designed the floor for exactly that purpose.

Splice

She was safe. She was home. She was deep in the familiar abyss, water pressing down with the comforting weight of mountains, no light to betray her presence to the hunters overhead. No sound but her own heartbeat. No breath.

No breath...