“It’s an amazing design,” Marko said quietly.

Ty looked at him, frowning. “Ty thinks it may be the greatest work he has ever done, yes.” He looked back at me. “And this is only stage one. Stage two-but Ty knew he would be dead the moment the work was complete-the Droids were designed to be self-replicating, yes? So why need Ty once the plague has been released?” He smiled more fully and tapped his bald pate. “Ty built in the beacon. If Ty dies, or if Ty’s vital signs show any alarming changes, the Droids will shut down en masse and hibernate.” He nodded. “Ty is confident the encryption is unbreakable by any current means. So Ty is necessary, yes? Ty cannot be killed or harmed.”

I cocked my head. “Until everyone else is dead, at least.”

The smile vanished and he ducked his head. “Yes. Ty is not proud, Mr. Cates. Ty fears death.”

“Why is Cates special?” Hense demanded. “Why are the nanobots in his system putting out a special signal? Once the nanobots are in the wild, they will spread on their own, yes?”

Ty shook his head. “Ty does not know. Ty was given specific instructions, and they included an originator, a person to be initially infected, who would be the vector until the Droids inhabited the tipping point of subjects. The originator, it was specified, would not be affected by his own infection or anyone else’s. The suppression signal was a dirty hack, but in the time allowed it was the best Ty could do.” He looked at me. “Ty didn’t know it was going to be you, Mr. Cates, Ty swears.”

I smiled, showing him my bloody, broken grin. “Would it have made any difference, Ty?”

He looked down at the floor again. “No.” He looked up. “They were very angry when my little deception was discovered, Mr. Cates. But they could do nothing to me, you understand, except entomb me here. Fed, watered, and allowed to live. But imprisoned while the world died.”

“Who, Mr. Kieth?” Hense wanted to know. “Who hired- forced you to do this?”

Ty sighed. “The Monks.”

A thrill went through me. “Monks?”

Ty looked up. “Monks. I was offered employment and a hover was supplied to ferry me to my new employers for a meeting. It brought me here, to Paris, and I was met by a group of Monks. Only one spoke to me. He was… most persuasive.”

I thought of the distorted voices in Newark-Newark, another Ghost City ruled by the last dregs of the Monk population that had survived the SSF purge during the Monk Riots. Monks.

Hense looked at me. “Mr. Kieth,” she said, her dark, pupil-less eyes still on me. “Am I to understand that Monks of the former Electric Church forced you to do this? That they were coherent?”

“Yes.”

“Armed?”

Ty nodded, his nose wagging up and down. “Oh, yes.”

“Fuck,” Hense muttered, turning away and starting to pace.

I squinted at Ty, my brain working furiously. “Wait a second. Wait a fucking second.” I stepped forward and pressed my face onto the glass. “Ty, are you telling me that if you die, the whole fucking plague shuts down?”

Ty startled, staring back at me from an inch or two away. I could see the pores on his nose and the tiny, silky hairs growing out of it. “Yes, Mr. Cates.”

We looked at each other through the glass for a moment. I’d never particularly liked Ty Kieth-he was irritating and had never taken orders well-but he was very good at what he did and had always done his job. As far as I knew he had never betrayed me. I brought the gun up near my cheek. “Then I’m sorry, Ty,” I said slowly, something unfamiliar forming in my belly, acidic and heavy. “But I think we’re going to have to kill you. Fucking immediately.”

For a moment there was an almost perfect silence in the church as we all remained frozen, holding our breath. Inside me, the acid pellet burst and I felt tired and beaten. I didn’t want to kill Ty. Ty was harmless, under normal circumstances. The universe had made Ty a threat, and now I was supposed to just execute him? I was disgusted with everything-the cops, the world, even myself.

Ty’s eyes widened, and he tried to scamper back from the cube wall, tripping over himself and falling onto his ass, his skinny arms and legs moving anyway. He crawled in place for a moment and finally got some traction, pushing himself backward and knocking over some of his equipment. “Mr. Cates!” he sputtered. “Ty must protest!”

I looked away, ashamed. “Marko,” I said quietly. “Think you can cut into that cube?”

Marko blinked rapidly and turned to look at me. “Kill Ty Kieth? The man’s a genius. Are you, like, going to kill every genius you come across, Mr. Cates?”

I grabbed him by the shirt, pulling him in close, buttons popping. He let out a pained little grunt as I slammed him into my body, yanking him up so I could stare directly into his face. I put my gun to his temple, which was probably overkill for someone like Marko but I was in an overkill mood. I saw Gleason breathing in invisible monsters that set to work tearing and slicing at every cell of her body. I saw her burning. “Avery Cates, Genius Killer doesn’t have much a ring, Mr. Marko,” I said. “Can you get into that cube or not? Because if not, I don’t have much use for you.”

This time Marko’s eyes, buried in the midst of his hairy, sweaty face, went wide. I felt the breeze of Hense moving and spun and ducked in time to evade her hand. I moved Marko roughly around between the colonel and me. She still managed to get in close, her piece jabbed into my stomach.

“Mr. Marko is SSF, Mr. Cates,” she said evenly. “Release him.”

I didn’t move. If Ty’s death meant the end of the plague, I was suddenly no longer necessary to Colonel Hense, and that meant it was more than likely that Happling’s boots were going to be the last things I ever saw. “Colonel Hense, we have a deal, yes?”

She stared back for a moment. I knew she was thinking through the implications just as I had. Finally, she nodded curtly. “We have a deal, Mr. Cates.” Her eyes shifted to Marko, who was vibrating in my arms, putting out sweat like someone was pumping water into him and it was coming out his pores. “Can you get into that cube?”

“F-f-fucking hell,” Marko stuttered. “Maybe.”

“Try.” Hense looked at me again. “Let him go, Mr. Cates.”

I waited another second and then nodded, springing back from Marko, who almost fell on his ass, staggering to regain his balance. He stood for a moment rubbing his chest, and Hense swept her gun toward the cube in invitation. “Try, Mr. Marko. People are dying.”

“Get it open, Marko,” I said, “so we can kill him.”

Ty swept his bugged eyes from me to Hense to Marko and back again, his mouth open. Even in the darkness, I could tell he was about to say something to me, and I closed my eyes. I couldn’t look at Ty, even for Glee. I knew Ty. I’d killed people I’d known before, but I couldn’t look at him. Ty was fucking harmless. This wasn’t fair. This was against the rules. I was supposed to break the only rule everyone in my world respected: you don’t kill people who don’t deserve it. Most of the people I’d known stretched the definition of deserve until you could barely recognize it, but I didn’t. It was clear to me, and Ty simply didn’t deserve to die.

“I’m afraid I can’t let that happen, Avery.”

It wasn’t Ty’s voice, and it came from behind us. Both Hense and I whirled and crouched down, guns in our hands. I stared through the gloom and for a second I couldn’t move.

Standing just inside the rear of the church, his nickel-plated Roons in each hand, was Wa Belling.