'Not until you writhe in the fires of hell! Then your agon—!'

AGONY? YOU MEAN LIKE THIS?

Spit exploded from Jackie's mouth. He went rigid, bent back like a coat-hanger, then fell thrashing onto the floor. Feces and urine darkened his shift. His shriek was choked into gagging by vomit.

Jackie went slack. 'You sum'bitch,' he sobbed. 'You sum'bitch.'

CALL ON HIM.

Jackie curled into a fetal position. 'Pleasssse!' he hissed.

HIM. CALL ON HIM.

'Pleaaasse, Gawwd!' he bawled.'PLEEAAASSSE!'

A moment of grovelling silence, then the evangelist jumped, as though surprised by someone tapping his shoulder. He glanced around wildly, then slowly turned his face in the direction of the camera's light. He wiped his nose along his forearm, oblivious to shit smeared across it.

DO YOU SEE?

'H-how?' the trembling lips asked. 'H-ho-how is this possible?'

IS IT GOD?

The face crumpled then went blank. 'Y-yessss!' he gasped. 'I can't see… but I feeeel him… here… so very close…'

HOW CAN YOU BE CERTAIN?

'This is beyond your puny questions… beyond…'

The evangelist's face floated across the screen, greasy and bloated in the glaring light. Surgical steel gleamed. Blood trailed from the screws. His expression had become plaintive in a wheedling, ingratiating way that Thomas found difficult to look at. Plaintive and joyous.

'I knew it… I always knew it!'

A deep shuddering gasp. Fluttering eyelids. A voice capsized by rapture.

'Sweet Jeeeesusss! Haaaw, praise-praise-praise

'Bullshit,' Gerard murmured, only to be silenced by Agent Atta's fierce scowl.

'Forgive me… Haaaw, please-pleas—'

'It just, goes on like this,' Thomas said over the cooing preacher. 'On and on, until the BD runs out.'

'—I didn't mean to… Nooooo… Nooooooooo…'

The air had become unbreathably thick.

'That can't be real,' Gerard said after a moment. He sounded frightened.

'What can't be real?' Thomas asked.

'He can't make somebody see God.'

Thomas shrugged. 'Why not? That's the whole point: experience, all experience, is simply a matter of neural circuitry. Why not religious experience? In fact, these experiences are pretty pedestrian for neuroscientists—among the first to be artificially stimulated.'

Gerard looked unconvinced. No, not unconvinced, unwilling. He had been able to shrug off what had happened to Powski and Halasz, but not this. He must be born again, Thomas realized, the proud owner of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

But if revelation were simply a matter of wiring…

'It's gotta be some kind of trick,' Gerard said. 'Are you telling me he could do that to you, me, anyone,'

Thomas nodded. A frantic edge had crept into the agent's tone.

'Easy, Gerard,' Atta said. 'As far as his argument goes, our only concern—our one and only concern—is how we can use it to stop the lunatic bastard. Copy?'