ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-TWO MILLION YEARS, ROUNDED OFF.

The blood rushed from my face; I felt my heart fluttering.

WARNING: BLOOD PRESSURE DROPPING. COMPENSATING …

“I couldn’t … that’s impossible. Vanilla sway! ABE, wake me up.”

ROBERT EISENBRAUN IS AWAKE.

“Bullshit!” I was approaching a full state of panic. “This is a dream. Your analysis is simply part of that dream. Prove that I’m awake!”

CRYOGENIC PROCESS DROPS SUBJECT CORE BODY TEMPERATURE TO −33°F. ABE CANNOT FUNCTION IN HOST CORE TEMPERATURES FALLING BELOW 84.5°F. ABE IS FUNCTIONING, THEREFORE ROBERT EISENBRAUN IS AWAKE.

I dropped to my knees. Steady, Eisenbraun. ABE is functioning, but it’s only functioning within the dream, not inside your skull, which is still cryogenically frozen back in 2028.

Oscar reached out for me, sensing my distress.

Upon contact, I projected my thoughts to the cephaloped using the bio-chip. Oscar, I need to check the trap. Can you take us back to the fire cave?

*   *   *

We arrived at the redwood buttress twenty minutes later, Oscar taking a circuitous route to make sure we were alone. The sprung trap had begun with a snare that I had camouflaged in the spongy floor of the fire cave. The vine ran up the wall and through the ceiling through a hole in the buttress where its movement had triggered a weight—a teetering log, now hanging over the edge of the redwood limb. The result of my ABE-directed labor had fashioned a near-inescapable trap that had resulted in our adversary being pinned by its ensnared extremity to the roof of the cave.

The cave was now empty, but there had been a mighty struggle inside.

Animals caught in a hunter’s trap have been known to gnaw off a foot in order to survive. This one had cut itself loose from the snare using a blade.

The severed object lay in the shadows. Trembling, I picked it up and carried it outside to examine it in the light.

It was a human foot, severed at the ankle. The wound was cauterized, as if the blade that had sliced cleanly through flesh, sinew, and bone had been superheated.

It was a woman’s left foot.

I knew because it was Andria’s.

Sickened, I turned away from Oscar and retched, then found a patch of blue-green moss and laid down in it. Oscar had lost the equivalent of a foot, yet I had not lost my last meal over that … for the record, the squid’s missing appendage had already started growing back. But the thought of seeing Andria deformed … even if this was a dream–

“Wait a second … ABE, confirm an observation: The winged Andria Saxon we saw last night through Oscar’s eyes … she wasn’t missing a foot, was she?

OBSERVATION CONFIRMED. ANDRIA SAXON WAS NOT MISSING A FOOT.

“But this is Andria Saxon’s foot, correct?”

CORRECT.

“Explain.”

INSUFFICIENT DATA AVAILABLE TO FORMULATE A HYPOTHESIS.

“Thanks loads. Where the hell am I supposed to find more data?”