Who could have guessed that the first victim would be none other than Lisa Carver? It was wonderful, and a little disappointing at the same time. Wonderful because there was a delicious poetic justice about it. The woman who’d destroyed his company—and who had effectively destroyed him in the process—was the day’s debut casualty. But disappointing, too, because Lisa would not live long enough to see the scale of his retribution.

It wasn’t enough that she die. He had hoped for her to experience a fraction of the humiliation he’d endured. She could die later.

Whatever. If Lisa Carver had to die, she could not have gone out more splendidly. Her leg hacked off, her body trapped inside one of her Arrivals as it spun like a top before the world’s assembled media.

You couldn’t buy that kind of publicity.

He had not known, once he’d downloaded the virus into the Arrival network, just how quickly the results would be evident. Turned out to be pretty goddamn instantaneous. It wasn’t even lunch yet and Carver was dead. Other Arrivals were starting to mobilize on their own. He’d caught a glimpse of them moving out of the community center parking lot.

Kyle could only guess where Arrival’s share price would be by the close of the market. It had been soaring that morning—there had been considerable early buzz about today’s news event and the Garrett Island press conference—but Kyle was betting anyone holding Arrival shares would be dumping them as fast as they could the moment they heard about what had happened here. They might even halt trading on the company if it went into a total free fall.

It had only been moments since Lisa’s leg had hit the pavement but news of the catastrophe was already trending on Twitter. Kyle had slipped around the corner of the community center to call up the app on his phone and he smiled broadly when he saw how quickly the story was getting out there. There was already a hashtag that suggested the company’s end was near: #latearrival.

CNN had posted a Breaking News item on its app, but details were sketchy. There was a few seconds of blurry video of Carver’s Arrival spinning around in circles, a sentence or two about how a demonstration of the company’s autonomous vehicle had gone horribly wrong. More details were promised as they became available.

Kyle dropped the phone back into his coat pocket and peered around the corner.

Beyond the entry off the highway to the community center, a red-and-white Garrett Island fire engine, lights flashing, was barreling up the road. The wail of its siren had been audible for the last couple of minutes, but now everyone could see it coming.