“You’re right,” I said. “I’m not sure that’s relevant.”

Maggie slapped the back of her hand into my chest. Ow. “Dummy, that’s what Ishango had been doing all these decades—playing simulation after simulation, over and over. And she has done a lot more than organize driving patterns. She has been growing increasingly self-aware and bending humans to her will. How? What and whom has she been experimenting on?”

I heard a rustle, stopped walking, and put my hand up, signaling Maggie to do the same.

“We shouldn’t be out here in the wild,” I said under my breath.

“It’s probably just a deer,” she whispered back.

“Even Bambi might be a killer here now,” I said, and turned around to walk quietly yet briskly back toward the house.

“The animals,” Maggie said. “Ishango has been experimenting on the animals.”

CHAPTER 39

Maggie

AMID A CACOPHONY of howling dogs in the kennels, I grabbed the plastic baggie off Mom’s office desk and took it into the exam room where the microscope was still out. This was after I saw her note: “I have a call in Woodside—a foal with thrush. I’ll be back late tonight.”

Ah, foals with thrush—a country vet’s work is never done. At least all these night calls were keeping her away from Bud Winkle.

Maybe Mom was relieved to make a relatively routine call after dealing with so many crazed animals. Over the previous day, frightened owners had dropped off five more hyper-aggressive dogs; that’s who was making the racket now. Mom was due to euthanize them all in the morning.

In the meantime, furious growls and barks aside, I was glad that Jordan and I had the place to ourselves.

Mr. Marsh had sent the baggie, which contained more stuff he’d found in the incinerator. Smart man that he is, he’d handed all this off to Mom after taking note of our interest in these objects. Inside were several small metal discs with thin wires extending out of them. They looked familiar; I thought I’d seen something like them when Jordan and I were scrolling through the files that he downloaded. Now Jordan was peering over my shoulder as I carefully shook the particles from the baggie onto the counter.

“What are those?” he asked.

“Would you want these inside your pets?”

“Nope. I wouldn’t want them inside me, either.”

“Hold on a sec.” I pulled out the laptop, reinserted the flash drive, and scanned the files until I hit one called PHASE II CEREBRAL CORTEX CONTROL IMPLANTS. That sounded right. It was dated October 13, 2008.

I opened it to find diagrams of discs similar to the ones on the counter, though each of these boasted more wire tendrils, like a dozen instead of four or five. The discs were labeled with weight and head-circumference-size ranges. The 2mm one was said to be the right dimensions for a medium-size dog.

“Well, that’s not creepy at all,” Jordan said.

“Let’s take a closer look at these babies,” I said, picking up one of the small discs from the counter. I cleaned it with compressed air, placed it onto a slide, and adjusted the microscope’s light to shine down on the metal piece rather than up from the bottom. I peered through the lens, focusing on the disc’s surface.