I was halfway through the last verse when the luminescent artificial life-form made its way quickly back up the tunnel to confront me.

“Creator, any chance that souped-up chassis of yours can play music? I’m only asking because it sort of resembles a jukebox.”

“Proceed to the genetics lab if you wish to see Andria Saxon.”

“What if she’s too busy to see me?”

“Andria Saxon awaits your presence.”

“I dunno. Twelve million years is a long time. How does she look? I bet her breath smells. Have you reinvented toothpaste?”

“Proceed down the corridor if you wish to see Andria Saxon alive.”

That last ominous warning stole the wind from my sails. “Why don’t you lead the way, only slow down, I’m not as young as I used to be.”

Hovering in silence and then proceeding at a pace that matched my own, GOLEM led me through the corridor to a brightly lit, gymnasium-size chamber. The sphere bloomed its six arachnid legs before entering, its antigravitational field no doubt a threat to the delicate equipment inside.

The walls of the genetics lab were incandescent, its floor space framed by a four-foot-wide gutter—I surmised for quick disposal of body parts. A central row of surgical tables occupied the length of the room, each island of evil equipped with a pair of surgical appendages anchored on swiveling pedestals. A cryogenic storage unit and refrigerated shelves held an assortment of petri dishes, test tubes, and flasks, containers of reagents, a UV workstation, incubators for heating and cooling test samples, centrifuges, pipettes, electrophoresis systems, a spectrophotometer, scales, glassware, a camera system for the visualization of DNA, and a machine ABE identified as a sequence analyzer.

And then I saw Andria.

She was submerged in an eight-foot-tall, four-foot-wide acrylic cylinder filled with a clear blue liquid, her mottled flesh sporting rows of dime-size black electrodes. She was hairless and naked—a specimen kept alive in a tortured vegetative state so that her master could extract and harvest stands of DNA from her body.

“Andria, open your eyes. You have a guest.”

Her eyes flashed open at the machine’s motherly tone.

“Andria, come out and say hello to your fiancé.”

A ceiling-anchored winch activated, drawing Andria’s limp body out of the tank from a gruesome pair of six-inch hooks embedded beneath her shoulder blades. As I watched, helpless, the dripping blue body flopped in a disjointed pile of jellylike flesh onto the floor.

“Andria, Robert Eisenbraun hasn’t held you in over twelve million years. Do you wish to embrace him?”

Tears poured from my eyes as the cable retracted, dragging Andria into an upright posture, her head flopping on her chest, her bare feet sliding on the floor beneath her.

“You sadistic bitch.”

“Andria has a message for Robert Eisenbraun. Would you like to hear it?”

Before I could respond, I heard it … a gurgling rasp. “Ike.”

I felt my heart clench. “Andie?”

“Ike … kill me.”