She was floating over the symbol she had created, and watching the ghost of a barracuda, a shadow formed of ink, a decoy-self to fool the predating eye, warp and dissolve into shapelessness.

She felt a surge of fear.

This is what happens when intelligence at this level is matched with this kind of natural ability. Mimicry that is near-perfect.

And then another thought—one she knew to be true: It is already everywhere, and we never see it.

Ha could hear nothing but the roar of her blood, the sound of her accelerated breathing in her respirator.

Fear.

The decoy-self the octopus had inked was already formless, elasticating into a mucus-drift of strands.

My fear, yes. But its fear, as well. Fear, in that eye.

“Are you sure you are all right? I pick up an enormous spike in your respiration and pulse rate.”

Fear, inked into the water. Fear, in the motion of its fleeing.

Tap: Yes.

Fear: Will we drive it away from its hunting grounds, again? Murder its children, again?

“I think you should surface. I don’t like these levels.”

Tap: Yes.

Fear: How have the monsters learned to speak?

Chapter 30

When you cut into its mass, one human brain looks much like another. The regional connectomes, determined by genetics, vary little across normal individuals, connecting brain regions and neuron types in similar ways.

But looking closer, we find a map of human individuality. In the tangled paths and alleys of every brain’s neuronal connectome are contained all the traces of a past—memory, written in the winding.

—Dr. Arnkatla Mínervudóttir-Chan, Building Minds

30

“DO YOU KNOW WHY YOU ARE HERE?”

Rustem looked around. The place looked nothing like a police station. The lighting was low, the atmosphere hushed. External light came weakly into the space through arched, frosted windows high in the wall. There were wooden tables here and there under pools of light. There were people working at terminals who, judging by their clothing, at least, came from the widest number of backgrounds he had seen gathered in a single place. Among them was a man in stained yellow rain-proof overalls, bearded, poring over a screen at a far table. Across from him was a young woman, a student, maybe, perusing what looked like a stack of paper books printed long before she was born. A bald, gray man in janitor’s coveralls and wearing a name tag was snoozing at another table. Two middle-aged women in immaculate business suits were locked in a game of ifranjiah, their dice clattering.