Michael tried a more reasonable approach. “Kaine knows how to reverse the Mortality Doctrine. So does Helga. Their consciousness can stay alive, here or in the Hive. You don’t have to just go in there and kill them!”

The lid of the Coffin had completed its opening. Weber pulled down a privacy screen that had been installed above each device. It muffled her voice as she spoke.

“For a plan like this, we needed dramatics, Michael. If everyone returned to their bodies and there were no devastating consequences, people would forget. A year would go by, two, five, ten. They’d start saying that it wasn’t so bad, merely a bump in the road. If it happened again, we’d just get our loved ones back. Why, it’s all nothing but a switch of a program, they’d say. Who needs the VNS?” Something bumped the screen—an elbow, maybe—she was obviously undressing for her foray into the Coffin. “We can’t have that. We need death, irreversible death, and lots of it, but stopped by their saviors before it can become another holocaust. This way, they’ll never forget. Never.”

“You’re sick,” he whispered. Talking to her felt pointless.

He heard the hiss of the Coffin coming to life, its lid swinging shut. As it did, the privacy screen rolled back up into its slot in the ceiling of the balcony above her. By the time it lifted all the way, the Coffin was closed, its lights blinking with life.

2

Michael sat in a chair, the two guards facing him. He couldn’t even distinguish between the two of them. They were like caricatures, all buzz cuts and square jaws and army fatigues. No one spoke. They just sat there, staring at the floor, the hum of a thousand Coffins vibrating in the air, making Michael tired.

What was he going to do? Michael sat and thought about Weber. He wondered what she meant to do with all these people in the Sleep. Was she going to destroy the Hive in one fell swoop, mass murder at its easiest and finest?

He sat up a little straighter. Shockingly, he hadn’t really thought of himself during all this. All her talk about how they needed him, how she’d programmed him…but he was in a human body, a Tangent himself. If she really planned to eliminate all the Tangents out there…

No, that couldn’t be part of the plan. At least, not yet. Weber needed Tangent-controlled humans. She’d said that she had her own Tangents in place around the world and had invited those world leaders who hadn’t bowed to the VNS yet to the Coffins today under some pretext—so that she could possess them as well. He wondered if she’d personally programmed all these coded demons.