Also awake was Michael Fisher. In the main, Michael viewed sleep as a waste of time. It was just another case of the body’s unreasonable demands upon the mind, and his dreams, when he cared to remember them, all seemed to be lightly retooled versions of his waking state—full of circuits and breakers and relays, a thousand problems to be solved, and he would awaken feeling less restored than rudely shot forward in time, with no discernible accomplishments to show for these lost hours.

But that was not the case tonight. Tonight, Michael Fisher was as awake as he’d ever been in his life. The contents of the chip, having disgorged itself into the mainframe—a veritable flood of data—was nothing less than a rewriting of the world. It was this new understanding that had inspired the risk Michael was now taking, running an antenna up to the top of the Wall. He’d started on the roof of the Lighthouse, connecting a twenty-meter spool of eight-gauge uninsulated copper wire to the antenna they’d stuffed up the chimney, months ago. Two more spools had gotten him to the base of the Wall. That was it for the copper he could spare. For the remainder he had decided to use an insulated high-voltage cable he would have to strip by hand. The trick now would be getting it up to the top of the Wall without being seen by the Watch. Having retrieved two more spools from the shed, he stood in the pocket of shadow underneath one of the supporting struts, weighing his options. The closest ladder, twenty meters to his left, led straight up to Platform Nine; there was no way he could climb this unnoticed. There was a second ladder situated midway between Platforms Eight and Seven, which would be ideal—except for the runners, who sometimes used it as a shortcut between Seven and Ten, it had very little traffic—but he didn’t have enough cable to reach that far.

That left only one option. Take a spool up the far ladder, move down the catwalk until he was suspended over the cutout, anchor the end of the wire, drop it to the ground below, and descend once more to connect the second wire to the first. All without anyone seeing him.

Michael knelt in the dirt, removed his wire cutters from the old canvas rucksack he used as a toolbag, and set to work, pulling the cable from its spool and stripping the plastic conduit away. At the same time he was listening for the clanging footsteps above his head that would signify a runner going through. By the time the wire was stripped and spooled back up, he’d heard the runners move through twice; he was reasonably certain he’d have a few minutes before the next one came. Depositing everything into the rucksack, he hurried to the ladder, took a deep breath, and began to ascend.