“But someone found a way around this,” Vann said.

“I think so.”

“How.”

“The code I’m looking at plays with the Integrator’s proprioceptive sense,” Tony said. “It gives the Integrator the sense they can’t perceive their own body.”

“It paralyzes them,” Tayla said. She had clearly not turned off her hearing.

“No,” Tony said. “See, that’s the sneaky part. You don’t want to paralyze the Integrator, because then the client can’t use the body. What you want to do is rob the Integrator of any sense of their body while at the same time leaving the body receptive to input. The Integrator has lost control of the body, but the body is ready to be used.”

“The Integrator experiences lock in,” I said.

“Exactly,” Tony said. “They go Haden. But unlike us”—Tony motioned to the three of us, excluding Vann—“the body is good to go.”

“But if the Integrator is locked in, then the body isn’t good to go,” I said. “You said it yourself. They need to be there to assist.”

“That’s the other sneaky part,” Tony said. “In addition to locking in the Integrator, the code fools the brain into thinking the signal from the client is also the signal from the Integrator. So when the client says ‘Raise the arm,’ what the body hears is both the client and the Integrator saying it. And it raises the arm. Or moves the leg. Or chews the food.”

“Or jumps out of the airplane without a parachute,” Vann said.

“Or that,” Tony agreed.

“You said it also wipes out the memory,” Vann said.

“Yeah,” Tony said. “Although maybe it’s not accurate to say it wipes it out. What it does is inhibit the Integrator brain from forming long-term memories of what the client is doing. Everything exists in short-term memory only. As soon as the client disengages, everything the client was doing with the Integrator body is flushed from the brain.”

“It feels like lost time,” I said.

“But not for the client,” Vann said.

“Probably not,” Tony said. “Assuming the client’s brain is working normally, memories will be recorded normally as well.”

“So the client can do whatever they want and the Integrator won’t remember it,” Tayla said.

“Right,” Tony said. “But here’s the really fucked-up thing. The Integrator won’t remember any of it—but while it’s happening? The Integrator feels it. The code isn’t suppressing the Integrator consciousness. It doesn’t have to because it’s cut off proprioception and is dumping the consciousness into the short-term memory buffer. Writing code to suppress Integrator consciousness would just be a waste of time. So for every second the client has the Integrator locked in—”

“The Integrator feels like she’s drowning,” Vann said.

“Yeah,” Tony said. “Or that feeling you get when you’re dreaming and you can’t move. Or, well, being a Haden.”

“How does this relate to the hardware?” Vann asked.

“It relates very well,” Tony said. “The hardware is optimized to the software, not the other way around. The network has a dense concentration of filaments accessing the dorsal spinocerebellar tract, for example. That’s the part of the brain that handles conscious proprioception. Once you know the software, the hardware design makes perfect sense. This is a purpose-built network.”

“Designed to take over someone’s brain,” Vann said.

“Pretty much,” Tony said.

At the end of the alley I saw a familiar face. “I think I see Brenda Rees,” I said. I waved until she saw me. She smiled, waved back, and started walking toward us.

“And we have to get going if we want to catch our movie,” Tayla said, to Tony.

“Last question,” Vann said. “Any way this software can work on a network that’s not this one?”

“You mean on a different Integrator,” Tony said.

“That’s right,” Vann said.

“Long answer or short answer?” Tony said. Tayla groaned.

“Short answer.”

“Seems unlikely,” Tony said.

Brenda Rees reached into her handbag, pulled out a gun, and aimed it at Vann.

I yelled “Gun!” and pulled Vann down at the same time, covering her body with my threep. One bullet cracked my back panel and another pinged off my arm. I felt an excruciating pain with both and immediately turned off my pain perception. The patio of Alexander’s erupted in screams and panic. I grabbed my stunner and wheeled up to return fire. Rees was taking off down the alley with the panicked crowd.

“Oh, fuck,” Vann said. I looked down to see her bleeding from the shoulder. Tayla was already there, applying pressure.

Vann looked up at me. “The fuck you doing, Shane?” she said. “Get her.”

“Tayla,” I said.

“I got this,” she said, not looking up from Vann’s shoulder.

I ran after Rees.

Rees had run left onto Thirty-third Street. As I got onto Thirty-third I saw her go left again onto M. There was the sound of another gunshot, followed by screams. I turned the corner and was nearly knocked over by people running. I went into the street to avoid them and saw Rees halfway down the block, scanning for me.

I didn’t have a shot. There were still too many people around. I ran straight to her instead.

She saw me when I was about twenty feet from her, managed to raise her gun and take a shot at me. It either missed or nicked me in a way that I didn’t feel at the time. I barreled into her and knocked her into a wall, taking a chunk of her leg out as it jammed into a fire hose coupling. Her gun flew away.

My momentum smashed me into the wall a fraction of a second later. I let go of Rees. She scrambled away, limping out into the street, reaching for something else in her handbag. I trained my stunner on her and prepared to fire.

And then held fire when she turned and I saw the grenade in her hand, pin pulled.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I said.

Rees smiled, limped farther out into the street, and released the lever.

Then her face changed.

She looked confused for a second, and then saw what she had in her hands.

She screamed, dropped the grenade, and turned to run away from it. I ducked my head in against the wall and waited for the detonation.

It punched me into the wall.

Fragments from the grenade embedded into the wall above me and jammed into the glass storefronts all around me.

I looked up and around to see if there were any casualties. The only people I saw were running away too quickly to have been wounded.

I looked over to Rees.

The grenade had taken off her legs.

I went over to her and was amazed she was still alive, looking down at her body. Her left arm was a mangle. Her right arm pawed at her leg.

She saw me. “I can’t hear anything,” she said to me, shakily. “I can’t hear. Help me.”

“I’m right here,” I said, even though she couldn’t hear me. I took her right hand and held it.

She started to cry. “I didn’t want this to happen,” she said. “I didn’t choose this.”

“It’s all right,” I said. On my inside voice I was calling 911.

She stopped looking at the mess of her legs and looked at me. “You,” she said. “I remember you. Dinner. I remember.”

I nodded, to let her know I remembered her too.

“He wasn’t there the whole time,” she said. “I was there the whole time. I was. I was. But not him. He wasn’t. He wasn’t. He.”

She stopped talking. I held her until she died.

Five minutes later I looked up to see Detective Trinh looking down at me, gun drawn, two other cops behind her, both aiming at my head.

“Don’t you start,” I said.

“You want to explain this to me, Agent Shane?” Trinh said.

“It’s complicated,” I said.

“I have time.”

“I’m not sure I do.”

She motioned to Rees with her gun. “Who is that?” she said.

“For your purposes, her name is ‘Property of the FBI,’” I said.

*   *   *

I got back to Alexander’s and found Vann on a stretcher, oxygen mask on her face, EMTs prepping her for travel. “I’m fine,” she said.