“Good. I want the computer records and then I want it burned to the ground.”

Otto cleared his throat. “The Twins have been handling the distribution of the bottled water. We have to make sure that we can account for every copy of their distribution records. That’s paramount, Mr. Cyrus.”

“Then make it happen,” snapped Cyrus with such heat that even Otto took a half step backward. “Then destroy every stick and stone of that place.”

“What about the Twins?”

Cyrus leaned on the rail and stared down at the animals in the zoo for a long time, and Otto let him work it through. There were times when Cyrus could be handled and even pushed, and there were times when that was like reaching into a tiger’s mouth.

“Try to capture them both, Otto,” Cyrus said at last.

“And if we can’t?”

“Then bring me their heads, their hearts, and their hands. Leave the rest to rot.” His voice was barely a whisper.

A passenger pigeon landed on the rail inches from Cyrus’s hand. Cyrus reached for it and picked the bird up gently. The pigeon tilted its head and stared up at Cyrus with one ink black eye.

“We’re doing God’s work,” whispered Cyrus. “Man is such a polluted and corrupted animal. I’d hoped that Hecate and Paris would be the answer, the next step in the evolution from the trash that humanity has become to the ascended level where he needs to be in order to serve God’s will. I can see now that they are not all that I’d hoped.”

“I-”

Cyrus stopped him with a shake of his head. “No, let me talk, Otto. Let me say this.” He stroked the pigeon’s delicate neck. The bird did not struggle to escape but seemed to enjoy the contact. It cooed at Cyrus, who smiled faintly. “Do you know what makes me saddest, Otto?”

“No, Mr. Cyrus.”

“It’s that I don’t think the Twins would ever understand why we’re doing what we’re doing. They see things in terms of product and profit, and they’ve become mired in that mind-set. It actually matters to them; it actually motivates them. They have no grand schemes. Their highest aspirations to date have been to twist genetics in order to make themselves rich. I… I long ago lost my ability to communicate with them.”

“To be fair, sir, you play a role in that-”

“Yes, but they should have seen through it and glimpsed the higher purpose. Just as we glimpsed through the foolishness of politics and war making to see the divine beauty of eugenics. Clarity is a tool, Otto, just as perception is a test. The Twins were bred to have greater intelligence. Their IQs are on a par with Einstein, with da Vinci. With mine. But… where is their Theory of Relativity? Where is their masterpiece? You might say that they’ve done what no one else has done, that they’ve twisted DNA and turned it to their will, but I say, ‘So what?’ They were given the gift of higher intelligence by design. I started them on a higher level and they should have aspired to more than clever toys for rich fools. There’s no higher purpose in anything they’ve done, or anything they’ve imagined, and by that standard they are failures.”

“We could breed them,” offered Otto.

“Mm. Maybe. But that presents its own risks. No, Otto… I think we were both so enamored of their beauty and by their precociousness that we lost sight of our own plans for them. They are not the young gods of our dreams. Of my dreams.” He drew a breath and let out a long sigh. “If they are both taken, then we’ll harvest his sperm and her eggs and enough DNA to begin the next phase. If either or both are killed, then we’ll have to start with the DNA alone and hope that we can use it for gene therapy on the SAMs. I know this is vain, Otto, but we may not live long enough to see the true race of young gods become flesh. It may be two or three generations away, and it may be the SAMs alone who witness it.”

“I know,” said Otto, and he patted Cyrus on the shoulder.

“Of course,” said Cyrus with a flicker of his old mad delight, “at least we will be here to clear the way for the new gods. We will be here to see the mud people-the blacks and Jews and Gypsies and all of those disgusting mongrel races-wiped away. Not just reduced, but gone for good. We will live to see that!”

Otto glanced at his wristwatch. The numbers were matched to the Extinction Clock. He showed the numbers to Cyrus. “Die Vernichtungs Welle.”

The Extinction Wave.

Those words and the numbers on the clock worked a transformation in Cyrus, whose face changed in a heartbeat from clouds of sadness to a sunburst of great joy.

“Nothing can stop it now,” murmured Cyrus.

“Nothing,” agreed Otto.

Chapter Eighty-Four

The Hive

Sunday, August 29, 3:51 P.M.

Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 68 hours, 9 minutes E.S.T.

The hallway we followed was long and narrow, with doors only on the right-hand side. In one room we found another corpse. The victim was small and thin and had been partially devoured. The head was gone.

“Jesus,” said Bunny, “I hope that ain’t the Kid.”

“I think it’s a woman,” said Top. “Was a woman,” he corrected. “That ain’t our boy.”

Clustered around the body were more animal prints. They were scuffed, but it looked like there were two sizes of them. I pulled the door shut and we kept moving, following the blue line that was supposed to lead us to the Kid. Only I’d told the Kid to go hide, so we might be heading in the wrong direction and we had no way to get in touch with SAM and arrange a better rendezvous. I thought about the headless corpse and hoped Top was right.

We cleared all of the rooms and found no one who looked like a teenage kid. Three times guards came at us. Three times we put them down. And, luckily, we saw no more of those freaking dogs. Or whatever they were.

Suddenly I heard a harsh buzz in my ear and then a voice.

“The jamming stopped. Scanner’s up,” called Top. “Commlink’s back online.”

I switched to the command channel.

“Cowboy for Dugout, Cowboy for Dugout.”

Immediately Grace Courtland’s voice was in my ear. “Dugout here, Cowboy. Amazing on the line. Effing good to hear your voice!”

“Right back atcha.”

“Deacon here, too, Cowboy,” said Mr. Church. “Sit rep.”

I gave it to him in a few terse sentences.

“Medical team and full backup are inbound,” Church said. “Say fifteen minutes.”

“Haven’t found our local friend,” I said, “but contact is iminent. Tell arriving medical staff to watch for animals of unknown type. They look like dogs but are bigger than tigers. We took down two, but they are very-I repeat-very dangerous. This ain’t a petting zoo, so shoot on sight.”

“Roger that,” said Church, and in the background I heard Grace mutter, “Effing hell.” “Cowboy, we have additional intel for you. We put a lip-reader on that hunt video. Most of what we got was worthless, comments on the hunt, the weather, and the mosquitoes. But we hit gold on one conversation when the men in the video had stopped to take a drink from their canteens. We don’t yet understand what we got, but the content is alarming. Sending a transcript to your PDA now.”

“I’ll look later-”

“Unless you are under immediate fire, look now,” said Church.

“Roger that,” I said more calmly than I felt. I pulled my PDA from my pocket and hit some keys. The transcript came up right away. It was a snatch of a conversation between one of the unidentified Americans and Harold S. Sunderland, brother of the senator. It read:

NOTE FROM TRANSLATOR: The unnamed person was smoking a cigarette, which complicated the translation. Illegible and unclear words have been marked.

UNKNOWN AMERICAN: Where are you going to be during the Wave?

HAROLD SUNDERLAND: Shit. Anywhere but Africa.

UNKNOWN AMERICAN: [illegible]… not like it’ll happen overnight. [illegible]… months for the [illegible] to kill that many niggers.