The first thing he noticed was that the lab stank. After the carefully calibrated series of smells he’d experienced in Unison, the underground tunnel smelled wet—earthy and a little sour. The second thing he noticed was Ivor’s pronounced limp, which was definitely new.

“What happened? Where’s Mistletoe?” He looked around—no girl, no scoot. “And where’s your brother?”

Ivor sank into a battered green armchair that he’d pulled in front of the pre-Unison keyboards. The goat-dog trotted over and curled up at his feet, horned head resting on furry paws.

“How was your preliminary investigation?” Ivor asked.

“Something happened in there.… I can’t describe it. My father was everywhere, or pieces of him were. It was like he was part of the infrastructure, part of the fabric, which is impossible, I know. But … I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Daddy’s very upset with you, Ambrose.

He shuddered. Ivor said “Hmm,” as if Ambrose had just described a particularly fine lunch he’d had. Something was wrong in this place, too. He turned to look at the front of the lab, the stacks of pre-Unison machinery, the iron door at the far end. The scoot was definitely gone.

He turned to face Ivor, half expecting his white hair to have turned sandy, his bulbous, misshapen nose to have become a perfectly sculpted triangle. But Ivor was still Ivor. Ambrose watched as he rubbed his shin through the folds of his gray robe.

“What happened to your leg?”

The goat-dog whimpered. Ivor winced. “An accident, while you were away.”

Suddenly, Ambrose felt a simultaneous twinge of closeness and repulsion. It was a familiar feeling from his childhood, a deeply conflicted emotion that he’d never been fully able to understand. But it meant only one thing: his brother was nearby. He could practically smell the extrastrength BetterMint.

Ambrose stepped toward the old man. “What did you do, you lying—”

“It’s not his fault, little brother.” Len appeared in an open doorway to the right, next to an upended, dissected gasoline car. He stepped into the lab, flanked by eight burly Security Associates in black UniCorp jackets, stunners at their hips, assault disruptors slung across their backs.

Len’s eyes flicked to his brother’s bandaged hands and back up to his face.

“It’s time to come home.”

9

WATCHMAKER

“MISTLETOE!”

Ma buh! She slunk farther into the shadowy doorway of Jiri’s junk shop. Of all the moments to be recognized by one of her stupid neighbors, this had to be the worst.

“Hey, Mistletoe!”

The fat little boy was called Shampoo because of the noise he made when he sneezed. Eight or nine years old, he didn’t seem to have parents. He was allergic to pretty much everything, and his face was covered in curious Dalmation smudges of permanent dirt. Sometimes Mistletoe slipped him leftovers from Dita’s house.

She watched the boy waddle through subcanopy foot traffic. She couldn’t let him corner her in the doorway—whoever was inside could open the door at any moment—so she eased along the front of the shop beneath the cluttered window. A quick glance inside revealed the bouncing flashlight beam. She wondered if the burglar had heard Shampoo yelling her name.