“Me and Ambrose.” Her heart pounded. Her mind reeled.

Magnus stopped walking and regarded her with weary kindness. “Yes. That’s right. The sender wanted us to build them … build you, that is.”

She managed a faint “Who?”

“Ivor and I believe the sender is something close to us—that is, biologically close to human—but from another place entirely. Think of the universe as a great mansion with millions of rooms. Most of the time, the rooms on one end of the mansion are completely shut off from the rooms on the other end. But sometimes a tiny trapdoor opens, and something manages to sneak through. We believe the transmission was something like this and that Unison acted as the trapdoor.”

Mistletoe’s mouth was dry and sticky. She kept telling herself, I am talking to the man who made me. It didn’t seem real. She felt like it was something she was supposed to find out many years from now, and that the world had made a huge mistake by giving up its secrets so soon.

“Why am I here, then?” Her voice was suddenly hoarse. “What did you make me for?”

Magnus’s smile faded to the thinnest, hardest line yet. He touched her gently on the shoulder. This time, she didn’t pull away. He opened his mouth and hesitated, glancing at his brother, who had appeared next to them wiping his hands on a bloodstained rag.

“We haven’t the faintest idea,” Ivor said, his monotone coated in bitterness. “Martin decided we knew too much about his precious secret project and had our UniCorp Admin privileges revoked. Then our employment was terminated. We figured it was only a matter of time before he had our throats cut, so we became ghosts. The reason for your existence is as much a mystery to us as it is to you.” He lifted a slender hand to point back at the wire trunk. “But not for much longer.”

The wires at the backside of the trunk were parted like curtains. Inside stood Ambrose, palms flipped up and suspended by small hammocks made of thin silver fibers that disappeared up the center of the trunk. His hands were bandaged. All around him, externalized information danced in the air. Ambrose stared out unblinking from the pulsing, strobing bursts of color at the source of the signal. He was standing on his own, but his eyes were glassy and unseeing.

Mistletoe turned back to Ivor, who was now holding a police stunner baton like the one Red had used in the streets of Little Saigon. Behind him, Magnus studied the floor.

“We’re going to have to ask you to join him, Anna,” Ivor said.

“That’s not my friending name!” she screamed.

The deep rumbling of the Scourge drowned her out.

6

IN UNISON

NEW USER.

Ambrose focused on these two words like they were a cherished memory. Anticipation burned hot and sweet within him. He loved Unison, despite the circumstances. He would always love Unison. It wasn’t tedious to build a new Account from scratch; it was wonderful. The throbbing in his palms where Ivor had rebooted his receptor implants dulled to a slight ache.