As the flock scuttled upstairs, I sank to my knees and crawled to a window. Despite Gazzy’s repeated pleas that we get a pair of night-vision goggles, we do see excellently in the dark. So it wasn’t hard for me to focus on the leader in front, the one calling my name.

What I saw was like ice water being poured down my back.

I looked at Fang, who was crouched in the living room’s darkness, waiting.

“But he’s… dead,” I said, my voice hollow. “I mean, dead again.”

Fang’s face was grim. “They just made it look like that to freak you out.”

I nodded slowly. “They succeeded.”

The head robot-soldier had been enhanced, its outer covering made to look more human. Made to look exactly like Ari, my half brother, who I’d killed once, saw killed once, and had buried not that long ago.

23

MY FIRST THOUGHT was Jeb. He’d created the first Ari — maybe he’d had enough DNA left to create another one. Then I thought about how distraught Jeb had seemed at Ari’s funeral.

I took another look.

There were slight differences. The curve of his eyebrows, the wave of his hair. Maybe it wasn’t really Ari’s genes. Just a similar thing made to freak me out, like Fang said.

“So where are these guys from?” Fang asked quietly, crouching next to me on the floor. “They were in Mexico City. Now they’re here. What do they want?”

“They want me — us — to quit working for the CSM,” I said. “Remember when I came back with my new, ventilated wing? They did it — they took me to a guy called Mr. Chu. Short, I think he’s Chinese, major bee up his butt. Mr. Chu told me he’d find a way to make me stop working for the CSM. He said he represented a bunch of super-powerful businessmen.”

“And your response was…”

“Unsatisfactory, I guess.” I peeped through the window again: The things had moved closer. They were about twenty yards from the house. The leader was still out front, and I sensed he was about to mispronounce my name again.

“And you didn’t tell anyone because…” Fang had that too-patient tone in his voice that let me know that he knew that I knew that he knew that I’d screwed up.

“I wanted to do some research,” I said too defensively, which let him know that I knew that he knew that I may have conceivably perhaps not chosen the best possible route in this particular instance. “Later I mentioned it to the Jebster, and he went pale like someone had sucked all the blood out of his head.” Okay, I guess that’s a gross image. But still. “And then he convincingly said, ‘Gee, no, haven’t heard of him.’ As if I’d had my brain removed and I might believe that.”