Something of self returned, and at its core rested hate for the Legate. Thellant gazed across his apartment. He now sat against the wall, his back to the primary outlets to his computer system. He did not remember moving—he had been moved. Every part of him hurt badly, yet he was not breathing. From rips in his trousers grey vinelike growth had spread across the carpet, penetrated the floor, spread up the walls. Wherever there was a power outlet or optic port, it had bunched, then branched. Hairlike rootish tendrils spread from the larger branches, and wherever they lay it seemed someone had poured acid. One growth had reached his com console and branched out all over it. The console, screen, desk and even chair were gone, and now only Jain substructure outlined their shapes. But, when he thought about all the data he once securely stored there, he could sense it, feel its availability to him. And there was so much more he could know.

Millions of eyes and ears became available to him. Similar to the facility available to him through his aug, he could cast his perception out and away from him: corridors, parks, lidos, VR chambers and autofactories. He encompassed a vast area, but that was not all. Mobile sensory apparatus also came under his control, and it took him a moment to realize these were human beings absorbed into the growing structure like everything else—extensions of himself. They spread out from him, the vanguard of his growth. They armed themselves, those that could. It was preprogrammed: everything not himself, not Jain, was the enemy.

Then he found the gulf, a region previously occupied by his extended structure and now blacked out. Nearby he found a child, one side of her body burnt down to the bone, but muscles still capable of obeying the impulses of the mycelial structure inside her. He stood her up, walked her into this black area. Within minutes she moved through incinerated corridors to the edge of a well cut down through the arcology. The area below looked like the pit of hell; above curtains of smoke blew across open sky. Satellite strike. The AI must have acted drastically to destroy the centre of Jain growth. Thellant understood at once a basic growth pattern implicit in the Jain structure. It grew acentric precisely to avoid this. He, the core, lay not at its centre but right against one edge of the current spread. He must move before the AI realized its mistake. But how?