Neil pressed open the door so that he could carry Frankie into the polished gloom. Thomas felt a reassuring hand fall on his shoulder as he passed. There was a faint prick against the nape of his neck. Thomas turned, too exhausted to be alarmed, let alone startled. He simply looked at the monster who was his best friend. His knees cracked like wax. Frankie slid from his arms. Everything swayed, dust bunnies dancing about a vast existential broom.

'Ah, Goodbook,' the shadow said. 'You should know by now. No matter what the rule…'

The world collapsed into milk and watercolor.

'I go sideways.'

'The central nervous system of homo sapiens,' Neil was saying (though just when he had started saying this Thomas couldn't recall), 'isn't like the heart or the stomach. It isn't a distinct organ with discrete functions. So much of our brains' structure is determined by other brains. In a certain sense, there's only one brain, Goodbook, sprawled across the face of the planet, busily rewiring itself into a key that will unlock the universe. One central nervous system with eight billion synapses.'

Thomas was bolted to some kind of apparatus, almost upright. Something held his head immobile—profoundly immobile. There was no play of skin or hair against restraints. It was as though his skull had been screwed or welded into a building's architecture. Looking up, he could see some kind of metallic rim beyond his brow, but nothing more. The room before him was spare and spacious: cinder-block walls painted white, an unfinished ceiling above glaring fluorescent lights. From the surrounding angles he could tell he occupied the center of the room, but he could see nothing behind him. Cases had been stacked in a corner to his right, next to a fat-wheeled dolly. Two tables filled the space immediately before him, crowded with flat-screens, keyboards, and several devices he could not recognize. Wearing sandals and shorts, Neil had turned to hunch over an open case. Tubes glinted from dark foam slots.

Neil walked up to him, holding a syringe upright in a latex-sheathed hand. 'And right now, my friend, you and I are the only synapse that matters.' He leaned forward and Thomas felt a brittle prick in his jugular. Neil rubbed the spot with a cottonball. He winked. 'A little something to quicken your recovery from the anesthetic.'

'Frankie…' Thomas croaked. It seemed the only language he knew.

The handsome face darkened. 'There's been a small change in plan, Goodbook.'

'Frankie!' Thomas screamed. He began spitting and straining against the vice that held him.

Neil's look silenced him. It was something without limbs or prehensile appendages, something belonging to a snake soul, as unreachable as a grinning Nazi commandant or a glaring Hutu machete-man.

'There's no need to worry.'

'Wuh-worry?' Thomas cried, tears spilling from his eyes. 'What-the-fuck-do—'