The thought crossed his mind that these people might be working for them, so he added, “They’re incredibly deceptive. You may be working for them without knowing it.”

She looked down at the disk in her hand. Her complex face, wrinkled by the years of her life, took on an expression of irony.

“Mark, I built this device. This is my design. I wrote the program it contains. It was just finished a week ago.”

Was his god, then, not Dr. Turner, but old Doc Emma?

“Dr. Turner did me. You know—created.”

“He was a geneticist, not an artificial-intelligence expert. To his cost.”

Rarely in his life had Mark experienced fear like this. He was about to be destroyed by this foolish creature, he was absolutely certain of it.

She brought the disk up and he roared, he gnashed at her, he shook the net with all his might.

She stepped back and waited, arms folded. She said into a headpiece, “It’s triggering the survival subset. He’s been threatened with one of these.”

“It’s evil! It’s going to destroy me!”

“Mark, please don’t struggle. I know what I’m doing, honey.” She came toward him again, holding out the disk.

“Professor, please step back. Washington wants the control officers to take over.”

“Mark,” she said, “who do you love?”

He would tell her nothing of himself. He did not belong to her, he did not belong to anybody. He was free, he had rights, he—

She slapped it against his temple and he felt its electricity surge through him, a black annihilating wave. It was as if his soul itself were being wrung out of him, as dark an evil as could ever be.

In memory, Sarge laughed in his gentle way.

Linda watched, head cocked, arms folded.

His men came, all of them, their faces softened by the past, and one by one, snapped off salutes.

Gina whispered as she kissed his cheek, “Remember me.”

Doc Emma, or the hybrid in her skin, said in her rough, old voice, “Remember who you love. Who do you love, Mark?”

He refused to say her name.

“Let’s get it in motion,” the leader said. “We need to get this thing back to the lab.”

Mark ordered his arms to move, his hands to grasp, his legs to run. With every bit of determination he could muster, he commanded his body. But it was all absolutely and totally useless, and he could only watch as the grunting, struggling people who had captured him got him into a sky harness, then hooked it to cables that had dropped down from the helicopter.

He was breathing, but he could not manage to generate so much as a whisper to express the sorrow that was crushing his heart, the anger—no, white, blind rage—that was festering in him, that wanted to explode but could not explode.