And miracle of miracles, it worked. Her burned, broken, ruined body died, but the pattern of her brain, the precise wiring of her hundred billion neurons and the hundred trillion synaptic connections between them, was captured, simulated, and run. She awoke as software running on the massive cluster beneath Jiao Tong University. She was angry, grieving, but alive. More alive and more aware than ever.

Breathe.

Then the dementia had crept in as her uploaded brain drifted into states less and less like those of a biological brain. Even with all her work to update the models, she’d still missed something. Deep in the math that simulated flesh-and-blood neurons and synapses, something was wrong. In the ion channel relaxation models, maybe, or the long-range electric field modeling, or the gene expression code, or any of a hundred other places. Somewhere in the software, things were happening differently than they did in real human brains.

Just like in all the previous uploads.

Over time those differences compounded. She’d started slipping and changing and losing sight of what was real and not real and who she was and wasn’t–

goddess

and what she wanted–

burn them all

and what she didn’t want and how long she’d been the way she was–

forever

and why they couldn’t.

just.

understand.

breathe.

Shu laughed at that, laughed as well as a being without lungs or mouth or flesh of any kind can laugh.

How do I breathe without lungs?

The clone, she’d begged them. My clone.

Just a drooling idiot body grown for spare parts, but it had provided what she needed: input from a real flesh-and-blood brain. Nanowires carried its neural signals into her mind, where she amplified them, used them to correct her own inner firing patterns, and bit by bit,

breathe.

they stabilized her.

Now that body was gone. Dead. She was so very very alone, and she could feel the dementia sneaking up on her again

Fire. Burning. Cleansing.

…and Su-Yong Shu was more frightened than she’d ever been.

Surely her masters would see the risk.

Surely.

Rangan Shankari stirred in his cell. Restraints now.

They’d busted down his door in the middle of the night weeks ago, taken him away in cuffs and thrown him into this cell. Something had gone wrong back then. Something had soured in the ERD’s deal with Kade and his trip to Bangkok. Rangan wished he knew what or why. He wished he knew what had happened to his friends. Did his family even know where he was? Did anyone?

This was what was left of his life, he’d realized. No career in science. No more hacking on Nexus with Kade and Ilya. No more living the rock star life as DJ Axon at clubs and parties. No more girls. Nothing but this cell.