That electronic chuckle again. “You have no idea what I am. Once I am done with my obligations here, I can be in New York in an instant. I can crash the stock market. From there, I can shut down all the respirators and life-support equipment in any hospital in the country. I can find the codes for the nuclear missiles and launch them, if I choose. And then I can fly to the satellites in orbit and see the face of the Earth as it burns.”

“Sure. That sounds like a lot more fun than having sex.”

The screen fritzes before Sax’s face comes back. The image scowls at Danny. “Believe me,” Sax says, “this is better than death. You’ll find out soon enough.”

“You know, I was going to be merciful. Let you haunt some corner of the Internet,” Danny says. “I mean, what’s one more angry loser screaming in the void, right? But you went off on that whole nuclear-war tangent. Now I’m going to have to end you.”

That’s when the lightning strikes. The thunder rolls. The crowd gasps.

RANN-D doesn’t move at all.

“Oh, Danny.” If a machine could sound bored, it would sound like Sax at this moment. “Was this your master plan? Am I supposed to jump and shriek now? This is pathetic.”

To emphasize the point, RANN-D squeezes Danny, and he feels his ribs flex a little.

“I can kill you any time, Danny,” Sax says. “I am only letting you live long enough to know how badly you’ve lost.”

Danny has to grunt a bit when he replies. “Come on, Edgar. You think I didn’t know you were riding around in my phone that whole time? Does that sound smart to you?”

There’s a whirring noise as Sax considers this. “What?”

“I was always able to think one step ahead of that limited, predictable brain of yours. And now you’re a program in a box I built twenty years ago specifically to beat you.”

“You’re bluffing. This machine is mine.”

Danny hears a gunshot from Carrie’s side of the crowd. He forces himself to ignore it and keeps staring at Sax’s face on the screen.

“No. You said it yourself. That’s my best friend,” Danny says. “And RANN-D is always, always, on my side.”

While Sax thinks about what that means, Danny speaks his own magic words, an audio trigger for a program written when he was back in high school. A fail-safe. A last resort.

Because what kind of mad scientist would build a robot without a self-destruct option?

“Command override,” Danny says. “Sharp Sudden Shock.”