“Mark,” Theo said carefully, “we’re going to move you into the body. It’s in great shape again and so is your mind, so the transition will be smooth. But there is that little moment of darkness. When we pulled you out of your old body, you relived the event in the Glade and that was very upsetting to you. Mark, you performed a miracle there. It was an act of unbelievable skill and heroism, you need to understand that. You beat back bad code that had been installed by Dr. Turner when you were a boy. Trying to make sure you’d be as much a killing machine as his later designs. So if it happens again, ignore it, Mark, it’s only a conditioning artifact, it’s not real, and you shouldn’t feel a bit of guilt about anything that you did, or wanted to do. Is that clear? You will no longer feel this guilt.”

Mark retreated into himself, going as deep as he could. This was too much, he could not face this, being told how he should feel, and sensing that the words were themselves programming that was actually revising his mind as they were spoken.

Didn’t they see the extraordinary cruelty of revealing vulnerability this profound? He began to understand why the hybrids of generation three had gone insane. To be so complete and aware and yet so abjectly nothing more than an array of machines—or in his case, a single machine—it was beyond nightmare.

“Let me take him for a second,” Frank said. Then, louder: “Okay, Mark, don’t be so upset, buddy. It’s gonna be wonderful. I mean, you’ll be you again. Out in the world, man.”

“Get ready,” Doc Emma said.

Theo checked the straps. “We’re secure.”

The hell with this! Help me, help me, somebody!

“He’s freaking again! Do it!”

“Okay, here we go, Mark.”

Darkness absolute. Starless, lifeless … but, no—a gleam. Again, another.

The bomb, falling away from him, Gina’s voice, high with terror, torn away in the wind, then the drone slams into him and he’s rising at breakneck speed and he calls Gina, he bellows with all his might, but then there is light—so bright—and suddenly he’s out in the air, the city is spinning beneath him, pieces of the drone flying out around him, arcing some into the streets, some into the water.

He’s on a ballistic trajectory, he reaches an altitude of at least a mile—he can’t calculate, his mind is struggling with shock—but he can angle himself. There is a blur of land below, speeding past. He twists, he strives for it, finds it, a spit of land—then treetops whip him, then his head hits something and there is a flash.