He didn’t even know how he recognized it—how he identified the light’s data with that of Kaine’s—but he knew immediately that they matched. Michael was looking at a representation of a Tangent that had broken apart from Kaine’s initial group, joined the rogue alliance that wanted to topple him and continue the original plan to ruthlessly, and without mercy, take over the human race. Michael hoped Kaine had meant it when he’d said that was no longer his own wish.

Michael pulled himself closer to the light in question. Or pulled it closer to him—impossible to tell what was actually happening. He reached inside the brilliant streak of light before him with his mind. The code was like clay, and he kneaded it, squeezed and pulled, all according to the guidance Kaine had sent him in that torrential flow. At some point, it was there for the taking. A connection so isolated and fragile, perfectly formed in front of him. It was there, like a thin toothpick, held between his virtual-within-virtual hands.

Michael pulled it apart into two pieces.

A long string of light winked out of existence, without even a flash to glorify its exit.

Michael turned, surprised to see a perfect view of the battle between Kaine’s Tangents raging outside the Hive. Somewhere within that chaos, a man dressed as a World War II soldier exploded in a fiery burst of pyrotechnics, leaving not even a trace.

Gone. Dead.

Michael had just murdered him.

4

His heart grew heavier with every light he extinguished. But he kept at it, not allowing himself to listen to his conscience. He didn’t have time for it. One by one, he pinpointed the rogue Tangents he’d been provided and initiated Kaine’s Reboot. The stored human intelligence was sent back into its own body and the renegade Tangent was drained out, eliminated. Killed.

Each time he broke another connection, Michael glanced behind him, looked for the fiery explosion that marked the demise of the Tangent. Slowly but surely, the tide of the vicious battle being fought outside the wall of the Hive was turning in favor of Kaine and his faithful.

Michael had eliminated twelve of the Tangents, had seen the burst of flames—and the nothingness that followed—of the latest victim, and was turning back to his work within the goop of the Code Pool when something slammed against the protective Bubble that Kaine had programmed around him. It was like a giant bird hitting a window, making a loud enough thump that Michael recoiled and sucked in a gasp of air. A black mass lay splattered against the invisible surface, an amoeba of darkness.

Then a mouth appeared, rimmed with teeth. It reminded Michael of the algae-eaters that suck the walls of an aquarium. That curtain of black around it left no doubt what had come for him.

A KillSim. One of those new daggers-for-teeth KillSims.