“This was our first test of the process,” Agent Weber said, “initiated just yesterday. This man was a politician in the city of Berlin. One moment he was a popular moderate, running for prime minister, and this very morning he was claiming to be a piece of VirtNet programming. When the politician in question abducted this senior staff member, he began yelling to anyone who’d listen that Kaine, the…how did he say it…the ‘Lord of the Tangents,’ had ordered him to kill every person in the entire city, one by one, as a sign of what was to come. We saw this moment as the perfect chance to test our process. Watch what happens next.”

Michael watched Weber carefully, wondering if everyone else realized just how horrific her plan—the VNS’s plan—was. But she had a card up her sleeve. The general population didn’t know about the Hive—didn’t know that these people still had a chance at life. Yes, maybe the VNS had figured out a way to wipe out the invading Tangents by severing the Mortality Doctrine link.

But the humans would die, too.

Michael would die. And then Jackson Porter.

2

He turned his attention to the holographic image of the German street. The video had shifted back into motion. The struggle continued until the strange man stopped, then abruptly collapsed. The gun tumbled out of his hand, and his hold on the victim loosened until the hostage could scramble away. It was as if someone had snapped the politician’s spinal cord. He lay lifeless as a crowd gathered around him, staring down in awe. The image froze again, then vanished, and once more Agent Weber’s larger-than-life visage appeared above them.

“To our relief and delight,” she said, “the process we triggered worked to permanently sever the connection between the politician’s body and the Tangent’s consciousness by destroying the Tangent program in the VirtNet. As you could clearly see from the images shown just now, at least one human life was saved, and probably many more.”

Weber looked around the enormous chamber, her eyes flashing across Michael for just an instant, making a chill run down his back. He waited for her inevitable justification of the consequences.

“We came today to present these important findings. The VNS had planned to do further extensive testing of the process before implementing it on a grand scale. But today’s events have expedited our plans. We’ve decided it’s time to take action. We could have never expected our most wanted criminal to give himself over to us.”