"Separated from what? From yourself?"

Daniel nodded, then frowned in disgust. "Of course, the doctor at the psych ward told me that was just me disassociating from the horror of the event, but, Dee, it wasn't that."

"How can you be so sure?"

"Just before I ..." He fumbled for the right word, then settled on, "... attacked you, and just before I shot the Pope, I was LINKed."

"LINKed where?"

"Nowhere in particular, I think I was just taking a call."

"From whom?"

Daniel shook his head. "I don't remember."

"You said hello to the 'big guy,' that night we were together."

"Did I?" He looked genuinely puzzled. "Who the hell would that be?"

Considering Daniel's earlier assertion of being chosen, I feared suggesting what I suspected: that the big guy was either God or Satan. Instead, I said, "Probably whoever stole the tech from Jordan Institute. Letourneau? Mouse?"

"You and Mouse are the ones in phone contact, not me. And I think I'd remember a call from the presidential candidate."

"True." I rubbed the back of my neck and took a deep breath. "So, what happened after the phone call? You said you thought you were LINKed during the entire time?"

"It was the strangest thing, Dee. I could see everything I did. Hurting you ... shooting the Pope, but it felt like my consciousness was projected somewhere else. Somewhere surreal. I have the vaguest memories of it – a blank space, wide and open like the prairie, yet confined. I was certain I was on the LINK ... but not ... I exactly."

"Mouse.nest," I whispered.

"Sorry?" Daniel looked expectantly. "What did you say?"

Glancing into his green eyes, I decided to trust him. I took a deep breath. "What you're describing sounds like Mouse's hub."

"You've been there?"

I nodded.

He laughed out loud and clapped me on the back. "Ah, Dee. Good thing I'm crazy, because otherwise I'd suspect it's you who's gone off the deep end. I thought Mouse's hub was pure fiction."

"It's not. And, he's got angels there."

"LINK-angels?" He asked, and when I nodded, he said. "So, aren't the LINK-angels everywhere on the web?"

"That's just it," I explained. "Mouse.nest isn't on the net, it's under it."

"Now you do sound crazy," Daniel said with a smile.

"Yeah, it's amazing, kind of far-out, but Mouse's house exists inside the old hardware that's supporting the LINK. Seems Mouse built himself a cozy little nest inside the nodes, the hardware, deep in the walls of the LINK – just like a real mouse would."

Daniel's face grew serious. "No shit?"

"I always wondered how mouse.net got its power," I said, "He really is just a parallel operation."

"Cool." Danny nodded. "But what does this have to do with the LINK-angels?"

"I don't know yet, not one hundred percent, anyway. All I know is that I ran into Phanuel inside Mouse's house," I said.

"My God," Daniel whispered. "Do you think he's the one ..."

I shook my head. "I don't know. Mouse isn't really big enough for this; he doesn't have the tech. Not even all the nodes on the LINK are big enough to hold the code it would take to do all that. I mean, what you're suggesting is that someone took over your body, moving your consciousness out of it. No one knows how to separate the mind from the body ... or even if such a thing is possible."

Daniel shrugged. "What if what I felt was pure unadulterated emotion, something so strong it blotted out everything else and gave the impression of pushing me out?"

"I suppose if Jordan Institute had found the pain centers, maybe our emotions are constructed the same way ... or whoever stole the tech figured out some way to augment it. Still, it would take a lot of power."

"But the LINK-angels do exist. They can manipulate emotion. It's clearly possible, don't you think?" The way Daniel asked, it sounded more like a statement than a question. Inwardly, I smiled, his old cop-talk was coming back to him.

I shook my head. "Everyone says the LINK-angels are a miracle."

"You don't really believe that."

I swallowed a laugh. I didn't, but I still couldn't reconcile what I knew about tech with what the LINK-angels had done. Plus, I felt the need to play devil's advocate; I was enjoying the sense of our interplay too much.

"Let's say for the sake of argument they were miracles? You're the one who's born-again. Are you telling me you don't believe in the LINK-angels?"

"You know I never did. And, I'm not born-again. Chosen by God. Big distinction." Daniel frowned at me as if he were the one trying to gauge my sanity, instead of the other way around. "Okay, all I'm saying is that the experience I had felt similar."

He gave me a weary look, and I remembered what Dorshak had said about Daniel: "Daniel said the LINK-angels guided his hand." Daniel chose his words carefully, as if he'd had this kind of discussion before. "Can we agree that technology of the LINK-angels is similar to what I'm claiming happened, at least?"

I nodded. "Although Phanuel operated on the individual level, Gabriel was sort of a group emotional experience. If the LINK-angels' appearances aren't miracles, and, in fact, are human hacker genius, or the product of Jordan Institute's research – then it is technologically possible. But, who has that capability? Or that kind of firepower?"

"Government."

I sputtered out a laugh. "Government? Now you're telling me you think it's a government plot?" Daniel didn't even crack a smile at my teasing, so I continued, "This is all hypothetical since I still maintain all the nodes in the world couldn't pull it off, but why Would the government do it?"

"Letourneau clearly has motive," Daniel said grimly. With patient deliberation, he was building his case. Motive and opportunity, the standard requirements in any homicide.

"Letourneau isn't government yet – not until after the election anyway," I reminded him. "What about Mouse? He has the same access. And the angel in his hard drive could constitute evidence."

"True. Mouse could be working for Letourneau."

"Why would a Muslim work for the New Right?" I asked.

"Mouse is a terrible Muslim," Daniel reminded me. "He's far too interested in worldly goods."

I nodded. "He told me Letourneau stood for things he believed in – especially the LINK expansion."

"Makes sense. He wants to keep America out of Christendom, keep the LINK more chaotic, a hacker's paradise."

I started to nod. Then I stopped, suddenly conscious of what Daniel and I had been proposing. "Wait a minute. Letourneau? What made you suggest it might be Letouraeau?"

"Haven't you been listening to me, Dee? The LINK-angels. They were what made me kill the Pope."

"The LINK-angels, yes, that's what I thought. But no one has ever connected Letourneau to the LINK-angels." Besides Michael, I added silently. "Except that they say Letourneau's the Second Coming."

"I'm making the connection."

"Okay," I said, "let's hear it."

Daniel took a deep breath, and said, "God told me the LINK-angels were false prophets."

I blinked.

It was the kind of statement I expected the Reverend-Senator himself to make during a press conference, not my ex-partner. I stared at Daniel. He stared back. His face betrayed nothing but absolute seriousness. Of course, truth was, an angel told me the same damn thing.

"God didn't happen to give you any hard evidence by chance, did he?" I asked.

"God doesn't need evidence, Dee," Danny said, exasperated. "God is God, for Chrissake."

"True." I smiled. Despite myself, I was starting to enjoy this conversation. "But he's not being very considerate of his humble servant, is he? It would help our case a lot if he'd deigned to leave us something that would hold up in a court of law."

Danny smiled back, but shook his head. "Don't make light of all this, Dee. I'm serious. This sounds even crazier than anything else I've said – but an angel came to me in my cell. A real angel."