“So,” Vann said, again. “Do you want to remain silent? Do you want a lawyer?”

“You have the video,” Bell said, to Vann. He motioned up to me. “Your partner saw the attack. What would be the point?”

“To be clear, you’re waiving your right to silence and to an attorney,” Vann said. “I really need you to say ‘yes’ if that’s in fact what you want.”

“Yes,” Bell said. “It’s what I want. I intended to kill my sister, Cassandra Bell. That was my goal.”

“Well, that makes our lives a lot easier,” Vann said. “Thank you.”

“I’m not doing it for you,” Bell said. “I wanted people to know my sister is dangerous.”

“Is this covered in your suicide note?” Vann asked. “Because if it is, if it’s all the same we can just skip ahead to us taking you in and putting you in federal detention while you await sentencing.”

“Well, there is that one thing,” I said.

Vann snapped the fingers of her left hand. “That’s right. I did have one more question for you, Nicholas.”

“What is it?” Bell asked.

“How long are you going to keep this up?” Vann asked.

Bell looked at her uncertainly. “I don’t know what you mean by that.”

“I mean, how long are you going to keep pretending to be Nicholas Bell, Mr. Hubbard?” Vann asked. “I ask only because Shane and I have a bet going on here. Shane thinks you’re only going to keep this up until we get you into detention. After all, you do have a life and a multinational conglomerate to run, and now that you’ve confessed as Bell and admitted guilt, the hard part is done.”

“That’s right,” I said. “When the real Bell surfaces and backtracks in detention, no one will believe him. They’ll think he’s begun to regret his decision and is maybe hoping for some sort of psychiatric ruling.”

“That’s a fair call,” Vann said. “But I said no. You’ve come too far with this to half-ass it now. I think you’re committed to this all the way through the sentencing and housing. It’s only once the door slams shut on Bell in a six-by-nine cell that you’ll know for sure you’ve gotten away with it. So you have to stick with it, just like you’ve stuck with it this entire week. Yes, that means Accelerant doesn’t have you at the helm. But maybe when Bell’s asleep you can sneak out and leave a note saying you’re on vacation for a couple of weeks. They can get along without you.”

“Legal might have a problem,” I observed.

“They’ve got a lot of lawyers,” Vann said. “They can work around.”

“Neither of you are making any sense,” Bell said.

“He’s sticking with it,” I said.

“Well, he has to, right now,” Vann said. “But let’s mix things up. Mr. Bell, I have a picture for you.” Vann opened the manila folder, pulled a picture out of it, and slid the photo over to Nicholas Bell.

“Meet Camille Hammond,” she said, to him. “Twenty-three years old, and a resident of the Lady Bird Johnson Haden Care Facility in Occoquan, which is where the NIH stores Hadens with other severe brain disorders, who have no family or other means of support. More accurately, Camille was a resident, until Wednesday evening, when she died of a persistent pneumonial infection. Unfortunately common in people in her situation.”

Bell looked at the picture but said nothing.

“The NIH wasn’t too thrilled with us when we asked if we could borrow her for today’s festivities,” Vann continued. “But then, they also didn’t want to see Cassandra Bell brutally murdered by her own brother on the eve of the largest civil rights march on D.C. in a decade, either. So in the end they decided to help us.”

She leaned in across the table to Bell.

“So here’s the thing I want to know,” she said. “You came into that room to murder your sister. Someone you knew your entire life. I’m a little confused how you managed not to recognize that the woman you stabbed eight times was not the same woman that you had known for twenty years.”

Bell looked up and stayed silent.

“You know what, don’t answer that,” Vann said, and looked back to me. “Tell them to bring in Tony.”

I sent the message with my inside voice. A minute later Tony was in the room with us.

“Tony Wilton, Lucas Hubbard,” I said, by way of introduction. “Lucas Hubbard, Tony Wilton.”

“If it was a week ago, I’d say it was an honor to meet you,” Tony said, to Bell. “As it is, I can still say I admire your skill at coding.”

“Tony,” Vann said. “If you would be so kind as to catch up Mr. Hubbard on your latest adventures.”

“So, that thing you did where you downloaded code into the processor through the interpolator really was some genius-level work,” Tony said. “But it’s also really dangerous, because, well”—Tony gestured at Bell—“for obvious reasons. So last night I wrote a patch that would block that pathway, and the NIH, which can still dictate mandatory patching, put it at the top of their priority queue. Right around the time you entered Cassandra Bell’s apartment, it started going out to every Integrator in the United States. And after they’re patched, it’ll go into the general queue for Hadens, too. I mean, there’s no way that you could exploit it with a Haden like you do with an Integrator. But then we didn’t see this coming with the Integrators until you exploited it. Evil but brilliant. So we decided better safe than sorry.”

“I’m not understanding anything you’re telling me,” Bell said. “What is an interpolator?”

Tony looked over to me. “He’s really committed to this,” he said.

“What choice does he have?” I said. “If he drops out now, the real Nicholas Bell surfaces and spills everything.”

“Which reminds me,” Tony said, and turned back to Bell. “I’m sure you of all people are aware that patches to neural networks can be general or they can be tailored to be very, very specific. As in, a patch for one single neural network.”

Bell looked back at him, blankly.

“Okay, since you’re pretending not to understand any of this, I’ll make it really simple,” Tony said. “In addition to coding a very general patch last night, I also coded a very specific patch, for the neural network here.” Tony tapped the top of Bell’s head, lightly. “It does two things. One of them deals with control of the data stream.”

“Pay attention,” Vann said, to Bell. “This is good.”

“Usually during integration either the Integrator or the client is able to stop the data flow—if the client is done with the session or the Integrator’s had enough of the client,” Tony said. “Right now you’ve managed to disable Bell’s ability to kick you out of his head.”

“That doesn’t seem fair,” Vann said.

“Right,” Tony said. “So the patch I just had automatically downloaded into Bell’s network removes your ability to cut the data stream. You’ve got Bell trapped in his own head. And now I’ve got you trapped in the same place. Go ahead, try to cut it.”

“Oh, he’s not going to do that,” Vann said. “You’re bluffing to try to get him to leave Bell’s head.”

“Huh,” Tony said. “I hadn’t thought about that. Fair call.”

“He’ll find out soon enough,” I said. “He had Nicholas Bell trying to kill his sister.” I tapped my head. “I have it right here. When the door of that six-by-nine cell slams shut, he’ll be in there with Bell.”

“So that’s the first thing about the patch,” Tony said. “The second thing is something I think you’re going to really like.”

“Hold that thought,” Vann said. Tony silenced himself. Vann turned to Bell. “Anything to say yet, Mr. Hubbard?”

“I honestly don’t know what you are going on about,” Bell said, pleadingly. “I’m very confused.”

“Let’s aim for some clarity,” Vann said, and nodded to me. “Our next guests, please.”

Another minute, and May and Janis Sani came into the room. Vann got up to give May her seat. Janis stood behind her grandmother, hand lightly on her shoulder.

“This is him?” May asked, looking at Vann.