The door opened, and we tried to whip ourselves into fighting form but failed miserably. This was one way they’d never tried to subdue us — with laughter. Akila immediately got to her feet, ears back, head lowered. She looked pretty scary, but all I could do was try to swallow my giggles.

Gozen stood in the doorway, watching us with his glowing blue eyes. “You will not find the rest of the day amusing,” he said. “Follow me. The auction is about to begin. As is the hurricane.”

Fang and I looked at each other with “huh?” faces. What hurricane?

“Question,” I said, raising a finger. “What auction are we talking about? And did you just say hurricane?”

Gozen had turned toward the door, and now he turned back. “The Uber-Director is auctioning you off to the highest bidder. He expects you to bring a great deal of money.”

“I’m flattered,” I said. “What are we being sold for?”

“Whatever they want.”

Okay, that wouldn’t end well.

“And the hurricane?” I asked. Wasn’t the end of hurricane season, like, November? How could there be a hurricane now?

“There is a Category four hurricane about to make a direct hit on Miami,” Gozen intoned. I wondered if worry had been programmed into him, and decided probably not. It would just get in the way.

“Uh-huh,” I said. “Does anyone seem, um, concerned about that? Category four is one of the big ones, right?”

“The city has been evacuated,” Gozen told us.

“But not us?”

“No.” He opened the door and gestured to it.

Fang went first, the others falling into line behind him, me bringing up the rear. I was almost out the door when my gaze fell on the bowl of freaking birdseed, and I cracked up all over again.

Chapter 65

65

CONSIDERING I’M NOT the world’s youngest executive, I sure have been in a lot of corporate conference rooms. They’re all pretty much the same: big plate glass windows; huge table, usually rectangular or oblong; large potted plants; thick carpet; rolley chairs.

This one had a wall of flat TV screens, and something that I’d never seen before: a transparent person, with his organs and stuff in clear Plexiglas boxes, and his head attached to one by an almost-bare spinal cord. He was sitting — or stacked, more accurately — in a customized wheelchair.

He saw all of us staring at him, and wheeled silently over the carpet toward us.

“I am the Uber-Director,” he said, his voice a lot like Gozen’s: with human but slightly odd inflections, and also a barely detectable mechanical quality. Looking closer, I saw that his guts and stuff were surrounded by and connected to machine parts — hoses, pumps, electronic things. And yes, it was totally as gross as it sounds. If I hadn’t already seen a million incredibly gross things in my life, I would have barfed right there.