“He does,” agreed Bug, “and they’re doing some damage. Weirdly, though, they’re not doing a lot of measurable harm to what Nikki calls the ‘true targets.’ Mind you, they could have left spyware, malware, and viruses inside Trojan horses that aren’t easy to find unless they’re activated. The real damage is kind of a smash-and-grab attitude toward the test targets. The ones they experiment on before hitting the true targets. Some of those groups were hit bad. Doctors Without Borders lost an entire year of Ebola field research. They removed dozens of key world heritage sites from the UNESCO mainframes. They blanked out the donor emails and contact information for the World Food Programme—you know, those guys who won the Nobel Prize a while ago. That’s vandalism for vandalism’s sake because none of that helps Kuga sell weapons and crap on the black market. These assholes are doing it because they can, and the bigger asshole paying their bills probably thinks it’s fun.”

“No argument,” said Church. “That vandalism is also hurting a lot of people.”

“Tell you the truth, boss, but that really pisses me off.”

Church had looked at him for a long moment. “Then perhaps you should direct that anger in useful directions.”

“What do you mean?”

Church smiled. Not a big smile, and certainly not a warm one. “I’m certain something will occur to you. Oh, and Bug?”

“Yeah?”

“Make it hurt.”

INTERLUDE 9

THE PAVILION

BLUE DIAMOND ELITE TRAINING CENTER

STEVENS COUNTY, WASHINGTON

FOUR MONTHS AGO

Eve sat on a chair and watched the nerd herd—her name for the technicians here at the Pavilion—finish their work on the Fixer.

The man, Spiro, was a volunteer, but they’d strapped him to a chair anyway, and the chair was bolted to the floor. Six armed guards stood around in a large circle, rifles in their hands, barrels pointed down but ready to snap up if things went south.

As they had several times before. The bloodstains were still there, somehow locked into the surface of the concrete floor. She idly wondered why they hadn’t used poured linoleum for the floor. Much easier to clean. Adam had taught her that.

And Daddy would have used a tarp. He was very neat and tidy. Always was. He could cut someone to pieces and not get a drop on him. He wasn’t like her. She liked getting bloody, but Eve understood that her appetites were not the same as Rafael Santoro’s. He was not crazy, and Eve was absolutely certain she was. She liked being crazy. There were clinical names for it, but who cared? When she and Adam were working their way through the convention circuits before Daddy recruited them, she’d become aware that her mind was wired entirely differently from anyone else’s. Except Adam’s, of course. They were two sides of the same coin.