The Grandmaster’s skin glistened like an oil slick, the sunlight shattering off it in rainbow shades. Peering into the Net, Jayjay saw way too many orphids on the guy. Normal surfaces had one or two orphids per square millimeter, but the Grandmaster’s skin looked to be carrying a density a billion times that high. That’s why he looked like a diffraction grating. He was covered with rows of quantum-computing molecules. Diseased orphids.

“Stay back,” warned Jayjay.

The iridescent colors on the Grandmaster’s skin were forming double scrolls like beans or curled-up fetuses, the rotating spirals nestling within each other.

“Nanomachines all over him,” exclaimed Kittie. “Like nants! Run!” She took off further down the block, stopping at the end to stare back at them.

“Come on,” said Thuy, tugging at Jayjay. She rubbed her hands together as if shedding invisible nanomachines.

“It’s okay,” said Jayjay. A dense, twinkling haze had gathered around the Grandmaster’s corpse. “The orphidnet has an immune system. That shiny fog is a trillion healthy orphids attacking the sick ones on his skin. Orphids are designed to attack runaway nanomachines, remember? One of the main reasons Ond Lutter released the orphids was because he wanted to block another wave of nants.”

Thuy took off anyway.

Jayjay and Sonic stayed and watched the rainbow sheen fade from the Grandmaster’s body as the massed cloud of orphids consumed the rogue nanomachines. “Poor Flash,” said Sonic.

A warm breeze struck their faces; in the orphidnet a thirty-foot-high figure was standing over them. A Hibraner! He was a youngish-looking guy, dressed in red jeans and a yellow shirt with red cubes printed on it. His long hair was gathered into a topknot. Moving incredibly slowly, the glowing humanoid form reached down and cupped his flickering hands about the corpse, as if taking the measure of the situation. By degrees he turned his head to stare down the block after Thuy. And then, in a single twinkling jump, he hopped a hundred feet to stand by Thuy, bending down as if to talk with her.

“An angel!” screamed a fat woman on the sidewalk. “An angel come to carry the dead man’s soul away!”

“Damn,” said one of the cops, a mustached guy not much older than Jayjay. “That’s the third time this week.”

“Third time for which part?” asked Jayjay. “Cancerous nanomachines and a Hibraner showing up?”

“Like that, yeah.”

“What does it mean?” asked Sonic.

“You’re the kiqqies,” said the cop. “You tell me. I’m just a mule who goes to work instead of lying around stoned all day.”

“We’re getting into recovery,” said Jayjay.

“Sure you are.” The cop tossed a body bag onto Grandmaster Green Flash. Moving on its own, the black piezoplastic enveloped the corpse.