Peter reached behind the phone, disconnected the keyboard, and wiped the keyboard jack with Kleenex. Still carrying the keyboard, he went back upstairs to check on Sandra. She was still unconscious, but she was also still alive. Peter, shaken to his very core, retrieved the tire iron. As he staggered out the door, he wiped the doorknob, then headed out to find his car. As he drove slowly away, he passed an ambulance, its sirens blaring, heading toward Sandra’s house.

Peter drove for kilometers, not really sure where he was going. Finally, before he killed himself or someone else through his carelessness, he pulled over and called Sarkar at work on his car phone.

“Peter!” said Sarkar. “I was just about to call you.”

“What is it?”

“The virus is ready.”

“Have you released it yet?”

“No. I want to test it first.”

“How?”

“I’ve got pristine versions of all three sims backed up on disk at Raheema’s office.” Sarkar’s wife worked only a few blocks from Mirror Image. “Fortunately, I use her place for off-site storage of backups. Otherwise that police raid would have turned them up. Anyway, for a test run, I want to mount versions on a fully isolated system and then release the virus.”

Peter nodded. “Thank God. I wanted to come see you anyway — I’ve got a device here that I can’t identify. I’ll be there in…” He paused, looked around, trying to figure out exactly where he was. Lawrence East. And that was Yonge Street up ahead. “I’ll be there in forty minutes.”

When Peter arrived, he showed Sarkar the gray plastic device that looked like an overstuffed, rigid wallet.

“Where did you get that?” asked Sarkar.

“From the hit man.”

“The hit man?”

Peter explained what had happened. Sarkar looked shaken. “You say you called the police?”

“No — an ambulance. But I’m sure the police are there by now, too.”

“Was she alive when you left?”

“Yes.”

“So, what is that thing?” said Sarkar, pointing at the device Peter had brought with him.

“A weapon of some sort, I think.”

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Sarkar.

“The guy called it a ‘beamer.’”

Sarkar’s jaw dropped. “Subhanallah!” he said. “A beamer…”

“You know what that is?”

Sarkar nodded. “I’ve read about them. Particle-beam weapons. They pump concentrated radiation into the body.” He exhaled. “Nasty. They’re banned in North America. Completely silent, and you can hold one inside a pocket and fire it from in there. Clothing, or even thin wooden doors, are transparent to it.”

“Christ,” said Peter.

“But you say the woman was alive?”

“She was breathing.”

“If she was shot with that, at the very least they’re going to have to carve hunks out of her to save what’s left. More likely, though, she’ll be dead in a day or two. If he had shot her in the brain, she would have died immediately.”

“Her gun wasn’t far from her. Maybe she’d been going for that when I came in.”

“Then he might not have had time to aim. Perhaps he hit her in the back — scramble the spinal cord and her legs would simply stop working.”

“And I smashed the window in before he could finish the job. God damn it,” said Peter. “God damn every bit of this. We’ve got to stop it.”

Sarkar nodded. “We can. I have my test all set up.” He gestured at a workstation in the center of the room. “This unit is completely isolated. I’ve removed all network connections, phone lines, modems, and cellular linkups. And I’ve loaded new copies of the three sims onto the workstation’s hard drive.”

“And the virus?” said Peter.

“Here.” Sarkar held up a black PCMCIA memory card, smaller than and almost as thin as a business card. He placed it into the workstation’s card slot.

Peter pulled up a chair next to the workstation. “To do the test properly,” said Sarkar, “we should really have these new sims running.”

Peter hesitated. The idea of activating new versions of.himself just so they could be killed was unsettling. But if it was necessary … “Do it,” said Peter.

Sarkar pressed some keys. “They’re alive,” he said.

“How can you tell?”

He pointed a bony finger at some data on the workstation’s screen. It was gibberish to Peter. “Here,” said Sarkar, realizing that. “Let me represent it in a different way.” He pushed some keys. Three lines started rolling across the screen. “That’s essentially a simulated EEG for each of the sims, converting their neural-net activity into something akin to brain waves.”

Peter pointed at each of the lines in turn. Violent spikes were appearing. “Look at that.”

Sarkar nodded. “Panic. They don’t know what’s going on. They’ve woken up blind, deaf, and utterly alone.”

“Those poor guys,” said Peter.

“Let me release the virus,” Sarkar said, touching a few keys. “Executing.”

“Exactly,” said Peter, shuddering.

The panicked EEGs continued for several minutes. “I don’t think it’s working,” said Peter.

“It takes time to check for the signature patterns,” said Sarkar. “Those sims are huge, after all. Just wait a — there.”

The middle of the three EEGs suddenly spiked violently up and down, and then—

Nothing. A straight line.

And then even the line disappeared, the source file erased.

“Jesus,” said Peter, very softly.

After several more minutes, the top line spiked in the same way, flatlined, and then disappeared.

“One left,” said Sarkar.

This one seemed to take longer than the other two — perhaps it was Control, the most complete simulacrum, the one that was a full copy of Peter, with no network connections broken. Peter watched the EEG line jump wildly, then die, then simply disappear, like a light going out.

“No soulwave escaping,” said Peter.

Sarkar shook his head.

Peter was more disturbed by all this than he’d expected to be.

Copies of himself.

Born.

Killed.

All in the space of a few moments.

He moved his chair across the room and leaned back in it, closing his eyes.

Sarkar set about reformatting the workstation’s hard drive to make sure all traces of the sims were gone. When he was done, he pushed the ejector button on the workstation’s card slot. The memory card with the virus popped out into his hand. He carried it over to the main computer console.

“I’ll send it out simultaneously over five different subnetworks,” said Sarkar. “It should be out there worldwide in less than a day.”

“Wait,” said Peter, sitting up. “Surely your virus could be modified to tell one sim from another?”

“Sure,” said Sarkar. “In fact, I’ve already written routines for that. There are certain key neural connections that I had to sever in making the modified sims; it’s easy enough to identify them based on those.”

“Well, then there’s no reason all three sims have to die. We could simply release a version of the virus that would kill whichever one is guilty.”

Sarkar considered. “I suppose we could first threaten all three of them with the broad version of the virus, in hopes that the guilty one would confess. After that, we could release a specific version aimed at the one guilty party. Surely you’d confess to save your brothers.”

“I— I don’t know,” said Peter. “I’m an only child — or was, until a short time ago. I honestly don’t know what I’d do.”

“I would do it,” said Sarkar. “In a minute, I would sacrifice myself for members of my family.”

“I have long suspected,” said Peter, absolutely seriously, “that you might be a better human being than I. But it’s worth a try.”

“It’ll take me about an hour to compile the three separate strains of virus,” said Sarkar.

“Okay,” said Peter. “As soon as you’re ready, I’ll summon the sims into a real-time conference.”