“That’s what I’m saying, yeah. Your sister ID’d him, and we already know the respected neurosurgeon was using Brady Hartsfield as a lab rat.”

“But now Hartsfield’s dead,” Holly says. “Which leaves Babineau, who may also be dead.”

“Or not,” Hodges says. “There was blood in his car, but no body. Wouldn’t be the first time some doer tried to fake his own death.”

“I’ve got to check something on my computer,” Holly says. “If those free Zappits are getting a new program as of today, then maybe . . .” She hurries out.

Jerome begins, “I don’t understand how any of this can be, but—”

“Babineau will be able to tell us,” Hodges says. “If he’s still alive.”

“Yes, but wait a minute. Barb talked about hearing a voice, telling her all sorts of awful things. I didn’t hear any voice, and I sure don’t feel like offing myself.”

“Maybe you’re immune.”

“I’m not. That screen got me, Bill, I mean I was gone. I heard words in the little tune, and I think there were words in the blue flashes, too. Like subliminal messages. But . . . no voice.”

There could be all sorts of reasons for that, Hodges thinks, and just because Jerome didn’t hear the suicide voice, it doesn’t mean that most of the kids who got those free games won’t.

“Let’s say this repeater gadget was only turned on during the last fourteen hours,” Hodges says. “We know it can’t have been earlier than when I tried out Dinah’s game, or I would have seen the number-fish and the blue flashes. So here’s a question: can those demo screens be amped up even if the gadgets are off?”

“No way,” Jerome says. “They have to be turned on. But once they are . . .”

“It’s active!” Holly shouts. “That fracking zeetheend site is active!”

Jerome rushes to her desk in the outer office. Hodges follows more slowly.

Holly turns up the volume on her computer, and music fills the offices of Finders Keepers. Not “By the Beautiful Sea” this time, but “Don’t Fear the Reaper.” As it spools out—forty thousand men and women every day, another forty thousand coming every day—Hodges sees a candlelit funeral parlor and a coffin buried in flowers. Above it, smiling young men and women come and go, moving side to side, crisscrossing, fading, reappearing. Some of them wave; some flash the peace sign. Below the coffin is a series of messages in letters that swell and contract like a slowly beating heart.

AN END TO PAIN

AN END TO FEAR

NO MORE ANGER

NO MORE DOUBT

NO MORE STRUGGLE

PEACE

PEACE

PEACE

Then a stuttering series of blue flashes. Embedded in them are words. Or call them what they really are, Hodges thinks. Drops of poison.