“That’s enough,” Martin said, stepping toward them.

“Our DNA has been properly fortified to exist in both worlds,” Ambrose 47 said proudly, “and to absorb a truly spectacular amount of energy.”

“You’re a human being, Ambrose,” Martin said. “You’re my son.”

“If you’d like a moment alone to discuss this, I’d be happy to shimmer out,” Ambrose 47 said. “I’ll need your fleshbound body, of course, Ambrose.”

“Sure,” Ambrose said. “It’s in stasis alongside Martin’s.”

Ambrose 47 looked surprised. “At the Gen-Farm?”

Martin backhanded Ambrose 47 across the face.

Ambrose slapped his palms together.

*   *   *

Back in the hole with Len’s UniCorp security car, Ambrose kicked the dirt wall. He rode a wild surge of shame and anger. He felt like the most pathetic kind of Tetra Jack loser, one who gets beaten and humiliated by smarter players and keeps coming back for more punishment because, every time, he thinks he finally gets it. The Level Seven procedure had been Martin’s trump card, and he’d played it so well that Ambrose had practically begged to go under the laser.

He hopped into the car. The ceiling of the subterranean room slid open, revealing a perfect square of slate-colored northern dusk. He nosed up out of the ground and tore across the flatlands at the edge of the forest. In his anger, he pushed the car to full throttle. Pine trees blurred past. The sky was tinged with spectral claws of red and orange. To banish any unwanted visions, he thought of Mistletoe and wondered if she’d actually Friended the other Anna. He couldn’t help but picture the Profile data rippling beneath her skin like slimy parasitic worms.

He thought of what he was going to do if he found his father—Martin, he screamed at himself, slamming his hand through the glow of the dashboard controls—and hoped he’d have the guts to go through with it.

Then he blanked his mind and focused on the high-speed burn toward the lights of the agricultural district at the edge of the New England Expansion. He darkened the windshield to block the glow of tiered greenhouses cascading down the sides of atmoscrapers. At the perimeter traffic grid, he slid into the street-level flow, tucking in behind a row of bullet-shaped dairy transports. He let the automatic coordination shuffle him a few blocks closer to the center district, then he engaged the lifts and joined the upper-level grid. He cruised past long, grassy balconies dotted with clumps of sleeping cattle and pulled up alongside the old Gen-Farm’s roof pasture. He hadn’t been here since the day Len made him flick the marble over the edge.