The triple-coiled ion lifts engaged, and the car shot up out of its underground parking space, perfectly timing its jump to seamlessly enter the lowest traffic flow. Ambrose slid down in his seat as the car joined the earliest stage of the Fleshbound Parade. This would be the perfect opportunity to sleep, if only his body were capable of doing so. He closed his eyes and rubbed his aching temples. Maybe if he just cleared his mind, he could drift away for a minute or two. Maybe he could even learn to simulate the effects of sleep, perform his own sort of calibration to keep himself sane.

His hands stopped when they felt the wires. A dozen of them, maybe more, snaking out from the skin of his face and curling down to his lap. He bolted upright and gasped, “Reflection.”

The window glass became a mirror. He stared at himself, pale and drawn, hands clutching the sides of his face.

There weren’t any wires. His face was made of normal human flesh.

The car jumped to an upper traffic flow. He was headed north, blazing through the New England Expansion. He sat upright, taking deep, measured breaths, trying to maintain control over his wayward mind. He was haunted by the thought that his time was running out; if he didn’t find a way to calibrate, the procedure would turn him into a drooling, paranoid lunatic. It would be worse than dying, because any rare moment of lucidity could remind him of the sane person he used to be. Fleeting memories of a blue pigtail, a subcanopy adventure, a friend from another life.

He diminished the mirror and looked out the window to distract himself, the scene a series of jumpy flashes, soaked in radiant morning light.

Glittering tops of half-submerged luxury apartment domes in Providence Harbor.

The massive green-sided atmoscraper of the Boston Heights Fenway Sports Conglomerate headquarters.

The Maine Corridor’s impossibly winding but sparse traffic flow.

Finally, he was cruising alone near the Canadian border, leaving the northern outskirts of ESC—ancient concrete warehouses huddled beneath squat ten-story apartment buildings—to sputter out sadly in his wake. The security car slowed alongside a dense pine forest, then swung a hard left down a tree-lined path. Spiny branches clawed at the windows as the trail narrowed and disappeared.

The car stopped in a small clearing, where it signaled and linked to some hidden receiver. A hole opened up in the earth. The car eased inside and set down gently. Ambrose crawled out and stretched. Above him, the ground closed. A dim light blinked on.

He was inside a subterranean room made of packed dirt. Gnarled roots snaked along the walls. A ragged green armchair slumped in the corner.