I glanced over to Tayla, who was wiping blood from her threep with a towel the EMTs had given her. “She’s not fine,” Tayla said. “She’s got a bullet in her shoulder. It looks like it missed anything major but she’s still on the way to the hospital. I would take her to Howard so I could look after her myself, but Georgetown is closer. I’ll go with her there. I know some people. She’ll get looked after.”

“Thank you, Tayla,” I said.

“I didn’t want to see that movie anyway,” she said.

“What should I do?” Tony asked.

“I need you to go back and look at that software some more,” I said.

“Why?”

“Remember when you said that you didn’t think that software could work on a different neural network?”

“Yeah,” Tony said.

“I have a pretty good idea you were wrong about that,” I said. “Get back to the morgue. I’m sending you something.”

“You’re kidding,” Tony said, when he realized what I was saying.

“I wish I were,” I said.

“Shane,” Vann said.

I turned to my partner.

She pointed. “Your back is cracked.”

“It stopped a bullet,” I said. “I’m fine. I’ll get the panel replaced tomorrow.”

“Thank you.”

“You owe me.”

Vann smiled at that. “Rees,” she said.

“Dead.”

“How.”

“Grenade.”

“The fuck,” Vann said.

“I don’t think she was herself,” I said.

“You think she was like Sani.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I do. And there’s another thing. Before she died, I think she was telling me that the night Loudoun Pharma went up she wasn’t integrated with Samuel Schwartz the whole time she was at my dad’s dinner party. She was his cover while he went off and did something else.”

“Loudoun Pharma,” Vann said.

“Maybe,” I said.

“You’re going up against a corporate lawyer on that one,” Vann said. “Good luck with that.”

“I’m on it.”

“Your housemates,” Vann said.

“What about them,” I asked.

“If Rees was integrated…”

“Then whoever was riding her saw them.”

“I’ll call in your address,” Vann said. “We’ll get agents over there.”

“Add some for yourself,” I said. “You were the one she took a shot at.”

“I was the only one she took a shot at,” Vann said.

It took me a second to get what she was saying. “Oh, shit,” I said, and disconnected.

*   *   *

“Whoa,” Jerry Riggs said, startled, as I sat up in the Kamen Zephyr. “Jesus, kid. You have to warn me when you do that. That threep hasn’t moved the whole time I’ve been here.”

“Jerry,” I said. “You have to go. Now.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m pretty sure someone’s coming to kill me,” I said.

Jerry laughed at this, and then stopped. “You’re actually serious,” he said.

“Jerry,” I said. “Please. Get the fuck out, already.”

Jerry gawked at me, set down the book he was reading, and walked quickly to the door.

I looked at myself in my cradle, peaceful. Then I headed out the door myself.

Mom and Dad were in the kitchen, having a private dinner with the help gone for the day. They both looked up at me as I came in.

“Chris,” Dad said.

“What happened to your 660?” Mom asked, looking at my threep.

The lights went out.

“Get out of the house,” I whispered to them. “Do it now.” The Zephyr had a night-vision option. I switched it on and looked around. I reached out and picked a knife out of the butcher block. After a moment I reached out and took a heavy iron skillet off the hook it was hanging from. Prepared either way.

I reached my room as someone was opening the sliding glass door that led to my room’s front patio. The man was stocky, short, and stepped through with his handgun pointed down and in front of him. He spotted the constellation of lights that surrounded my cradle, powered by backup batteries that would last for twelve hours. The lights would give him more than enough illumination to put a bullet into my brain. He stepped through, back mostly to me, and raised his handgun. He looked thoroughly professional.

Except that he didn’t check his six.

Or his seven, more accurately, which is where I came in at him from, swinging the skillet directly into his head.

He went down, gun firing two shots. The first bullet punched a hole in my cradle. There was a searing pain in my side as small chunks of the cradle drove themselves into my flesh. The second shot went wide, up and over the cradle to connect with the sliding door that led to my room’s back patio. It shattered.

I got the shooter with the pan but not as solidly as I could have. He kicked out a leg and jammed it into my knee. If I were in a human body, I would have gone down screaming. As it was I lost my balance and fell, dropping the skillet.

I fell and he rose, lining up another shot. I took the knife I still had in my hand and jammed it hard into the top of his boot. He screamed and leaped back, grabbing at the knife to remove it.

I jumped up to push him further off balance and he wheeled the gun up at me, firing.

I felt the bullet enter my threep on my left waist, tearing down through the leg. A maintenance alert immediately popped into my field of view, telling me that I had entirely lost control of my left leg. I knew that because I fell face-first onto the room tiles, cracking the faceplate of the Zephyr as I did so.

I rolled and looked up to see the man leaning up against the doorframe of my room, keeping his weight off his injured foot, lining up his shot. The knife was still in his foot and the skillet was behind me. There was no way I was going to stop him in time.

“Hey!” my father said, and the man turned just in time to take a shotgun blast in the side.

The shotgun blast took me by surprise, but probably less than it surprised my assassin. He flew straight out of the doorframe, spinning, landing facedown less than a foot from me. He didn’t groan or breathe.

He was dead.

“Chris!” Dad’s voice.

“I’m all right,” I called back. “Both of me. One more than the other.” I gathered my useless leg up behind me and sat up.

Mom ran up, flashlight in hand, flashing it in my eyes, blinding me. I dialed my eyes back to normal mode. “Throw me the flashlight,” I said.

She did. I ran it up and down the assassin. There was a gaping hole where a few of his ribs used to be. Dad got him at pretty close range.

“Is he dead?” Mom asked.

“He’s dead,” I said.

“You sure?”

“Pretty sure,” I said.

“Jesus,” Dad said. “I just killed a man.”

“Yeah, you did,” I said. I aimed my flashlight over at Dad. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I think you just ended your Senate run.”

Dad didn’t have anything to say to that. I think he might have been a little bit in shock.

I took the body and rolled it over. Whoever it was, he was young, dark-haired, and dark-eyed.

“Who is he?” Dad asked.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Why would someone want to kill you?” Mom asked.

“I’m an FBI agent,” I said.

“It’s your third day on the job!”

“Fourth,” I said. I was feeling a little punchy myself. I’d had a long day. “Mom. Dad. I need you to do something for me. When the police come, the story needs to be that this was a house robbery gone wrong. Tell Jerry that’s the story too.”

“He’s in your room,” Dad said. “Your threep has been shot.”

“I came home for dinner with you two,” I said. “We heard noises. I insisted on taking point because I’m the FBI agent.”

Dad looked dubious. “Come on, Dad,” I said. “You’re one of the most famous men on the damn planet. I think you can sell that story.”

“Why do you need us to tell this story?” Mom asked.

I looked over at the dead man in the room. “Because I need the person who did this to believe I don’t know what he’s up to.”

“Chris,” Mom said. “The man who did this is dead.”

“That’s exactly what I want him to think,” I said.