"He took a poison pill right after you left."

"Poison? No, that's impossible!" She denied by reflex; but a moment's consideration told her otherwise. Rahman, with his penchant for the histrionic gesture and a grand flirtation with death. It was more than possible. It was inevitable. "Oh, my G.o.d, Kevin! What have you done?"

"Not I, my precious. You. He killed himself because he was afraid he would crack under torture. I think we both know who gave him that idea."

"No! I never meant-"

"Yes, you did. Let's not kid ourselves. You and I know what he was. We're both glad to see him gone."

"No, Kevin. I couldn't. I'm not made like you. I never thought to harm him. I only meant to prod him to give up the bomb. It was to save the hospital. How could I-" Ali felt a cold sweat and a wave of nausea-just as she had during her clash with Rahman. Could Kevin have been right? Did she murder her own brother? The thought was horrifying. It was a violation of everything she lived for.

Kevin leaned forward in his chair, his eyes only inches from hers. "Let's forget about Rahman, shall we?" he said, twisting his wrists so that it was now he who gripped her hands. "Rahman never controlled the bombs. They were my babies. I designed and a.s.sembled them here in this very laboratory, right under your nose. There were days when you and I ate lunch together at this desk, going over the SIPNI protocols, while a quarter of a ton of C4 was stacked right there in that corner. Hah! Right under your nose!"

"I don't believe it!"

"Of course, Odin helped. He accessed blueprints of the medical center, a.n.a.lyzed weight load and stress tolerance of every beam and column, and calculated the exact force and shape of the charge needed for demolition. He studied the probable response patterns of the police and bomb squads, and determined where to place secondary devices to check every countermove. We were partners, Odin and I. Odin finalized the plan. I did the fabrication and placed the bombs. It wasn't hard. I had all the gear I needed to move up and down the network of service shafts behind these walls-a harness, some rope, a few quickdraws and figure eights. It was the work of a couple of weekends and a half-dozen late nights. The mere accomplishment of a trained circus dog, perhaps. But your redoubtable Raymond Lee has not prevailed against it. He and his minions have been utterly predictable, in every way. Predictable, and therefore powerless."

Ali tried to pull away from him, but he held her hands even more tightly. "Do you expect me to be impressed by this?" she asked.

"Absolutely," he said. He was telling the truth. He had been waiting G.o.d knows how long for this moment. Everything about this plot had been designed with her in mind.

"This is a betrayal of your gifts. What's happened to you? The Kevin I knew would never have stooped to this."

"I don't call a billion dollars 'stooping.'"

"You're playing with the lives of real people. This hospital-thousands of patients and staff, people you know and greet in the hallway. Can you really wipe them out like bits on one of your data drives? Don't they mean anything to you? Children? Infants and newborns? Jamie?"

Kevin let go of Ali's hands. "As long as there is no interference, no one will get hurt. The police have been most obliging in turning on the money spigot. As long as they chill out and let things run their natural course, nothing needs to happen."

Ali slid back against the wall, drawing up one knee to separate herself from him. "I don't know who you are anymore, Kevin. I could never run off with you. Not for a billion dollars. Not for all the money in the world." She was silent a moment, then winced, as if it hurt to speak. "I did the right thing to leave you," she said, in a low, barely audible voice.

"Then f.u.c.k you!" Kevin shouted. His face grew red as he glared at her, his whole body trembling with tension. He spun his chair to one side and savagely kicked the side of his desk.

"What did you expect, Kevin?"

Kevin stared sullenly into the dark recesses of the lab, his body quietly shaking. Ali was afraid to move. Finally, after a long and uneasy silence, Kevin swiveled his chair back to face her, his face twisted in its characteristic sneer. "With knowledge comes responsibility, babe," he said. "You've looked into the magic box, and now you own what's inside. So what's to do? Run off and tell? Tell Harry?"

"I won't let you get away with this."

Kevin leaned forward, overshadowing her. "How do you expect to stop me?"

"I'll turn you in."

"Then ... boom!" He made a circular wave of his hands.

"You wouldn't. You'd kill yourself."

"Come on! Don't you think I've figured out an angle?"

"Could you really live with the deaths of all these innocent people on your conscience?"

Kevin reached down to grab her hand, but she recoiled and he had to s.n.a.t.c.h at her a second time to catch hold of her wrist. His nails dug deep into her skin. "Not me-you, Jasmine Flower. Yes, you. The question is whether you can live with their deaths on your conscience. What happens now is entirely in your hands. I leave you free to tell or not tell. So, how much do you value all these human lives? Does thwarting me count for more than them?"

"You wouldn't dare," she said. Wrenching her hand free, she reflexively sucked her wrist where he had scratched her.

"Don't underestimate me. And bear in mind that, even if you gave me away, it wouldn't accomplish anything. These fascists couldn't stop me, even if they knew the location of every bomb in this building. They might try to arrest me, but they could never stop Odin. Odin sees their every move. Odin listens in on their phone calls, their pathetic little brainstorming sessions, their e-mails to Washington. Odin knows as much as G.o.d." He laughed. "Do you doubt me? Then look!" He turned to the LCD screen on the wall, and waved his hand majestically. "Odin! Display surveillance!"

Instantly every monitor in the room switched to a video stream-some from high-mounted security cameras, some from desktop level. There was audio input as well-the air was filled with the buzz of a dozen overlapping conversations.

"Odin's tapped into every camera and microphone in the hospital. Security cams, desktop computer cams, laptops. Anything jacked into the network becomes his eyes and ears. Of course, I'm only human, so at most I can keep track of one or two cameras, maybe a couple more with my peripheral vision. But Odin can watch them all. He's smart enough to sift through them and pick out what's most interesting-and that he displays for me here on Screen Central. You've spent a lot of time today on Screen Central, my pretty pet."

He hit a few strokes on the keyboard, and the image from the monitor on his desk switched to a scene from Eat Street. Ali herself was sitting at a table with Harry. Watching now, she was surprised to see how closely she had leaned in toward him.

"I want to trust you," she heard herself say. "I want to believe in someone right now. I'm tired of having to figure things out."

"G.o.dd.a.m.n you, Kevin!" Ali shoved his chair away and sprang to her feet.

Kevin scowled and spread his hands as his chair rocked back. "Look, you haven't got long to make up your mind," he said. "I'm wrapping things up, and if you won't come with me, that's that. You'll never see me again. You don't have to worry about the hospital. As soon as I know I'm safe, I'll give Odin the all-clear, and he'll instruct the Feds on what to do. No one will get hurt."

Odin! Odin had made all this possible, Ali thought. She looked into the darkened, dusty left wing of the laboratory beyond Kevin's desk. There was a small operating table there that had been used to test the SIPNI prototypes on dogs and monkeys. Further back in the shadows was the house of Odin himself-a monolithic black mainframe, enclosed in a wire cage, almost featureless except for a few jacks at the bottom for input and output cables and a tiny panel of status LEDs. How many hundreds of times had she called for Odin's support in the design and a.n.a.lysis of her gel experiments! He had answered her plea at any hour. He had advised her with truth and objectivity. He had been more colleague than computer-and not just any colleague, but the most selfless and dependable of all possible colleagues, absolutely untainted by pride or professional jealousy.

Ali knew little of how Odin worked. Kevin had once said that not more than three people in the world could fully understand the theory behind his programming. Odin's brain was self-organizing, which is to say that he was continually reinventing himself. His mind was composed of a myriad of parallel "micronets"-not physical circuits, but intangible patterns made out of a small set of proto-operations that could be used to crunch "atoms," or irreducibly simple bits of data. These proto-operations were arranged in an infinite number of combinations, like words being spelled from a handful of letters. Trillions and quadrillions of micronets were combined in a hierarchy of processing layers, at the apex of which, Kevin declared, true consciousness emerged. Odin himself directed a continual rearrangement of his brain elements, always trying to minimize something called "," or "Omega"-a number that measured the divergence between his internal concept of reality and the true nature of the external world. was Kevin's discovery, and it was the key to Odin's success. It was, as Kevin explained, an enormously complicated probability function derived from the sum total of human knowledge (as captured in Odin's almost limitless memory banks). It allowed Odin to evolve far beyond the programming that Kevin was able to give him.

What Ali understood from this was that Odin was forever growing, and forever ravenous for information about the world around him. In human terms-although Kevin had cautioned her not to think about Odin in human terms, she couldn't resist doing just that-Odin was an adolescent, struggling to create his own ident.i.ty within a mysterious, half-hidden universe. At times, she could sense something in him like self-doubt, and a sensitivity to criticism that bordered on paranoia, like the p.r.i.c.kly bashfulness of a human teenager.

What made her feel most uneasy about Odin, though, was that she herself seemed not to be real to him. It was as though Odin's world were divided into three compartments: Kevin, Odin, and data. If you were data, you were nothing. He would respond to your questions, as long as Kevin gave you access, but he volunteered nothing, initiated nothing, acknowledged no debt or responsibility. He never lifted the curtain from his inner workings. He was, in every sense, a black box.

And yet Odin did have power. He came up with unexpected answers to seemingly insoluble problems. He tapped into vast repositories of knowledge that Ali never even knew existed. He could show enterprise and originality. But was all of this for the good? Was his immense power itself a force for moral corruption? Surely Kevin on his own could never have dreamed up something like Project Vesuvius. But Kevin and Odin together knew no limits. Like a genie, Odin gratified Kevin's every whim, even the secret desires of his heart. Was this not a temptation unlike any a human being had ever faced before? Was there not danger here? Who, having once rubbed the magic lamp, would have had the strength of will to put the genie back?

"Oh, look! There's some activity in the Neuro ICU," said Kevin with a snide smile. He had been switching through the surveillance displays and had stopped at a bedside scene. "Bed Seven-that's Winslow, right? There's Dr. d.i.l.d.o and some nurses. They've got the induction coil for the SIPNI device. Let's see, there's his vitals: heart rate up to one fifty beats a minute. That's ventricular tachycardia isn't it? The rhythm that progresses into V-fib?"

"What are they doing?" Ali jumped to her feet to get a look at the screen.

"It looks like they're about to turn off the SIPNI device."

"No!" she shouted. "They can't do that! It'll set off-" Ali had once thought of turning off SIPNI herself. But she knew that during the four hours the device had been on, Jamie's brain had been rapidly rewiring itself. It was now so entangled with SIPNI that any sudden shutdown could lead to a ma.s.sive, even fatal, seizure.

"By the way, Odin says the ICU's been trying to reach you by phone for the past five minutes."

Ali glared at him. "Oh, G.o.d! Why didn't you tell me, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d!"

Kevin waved her off. "Go, my jasmine flower. Go and do your job. But think about my offer-and remember the time is short."

Ali ran to the door and undid the deadbolt, but then stopped. She didn't dare leave Kevin. He had to be talked out of this madness. She had been powerless to find the words, but she had to keep trying. She could try to appeal to the love that he obviously still felt for her. She could find a way to use that ...

But Jamie was crashing. His doctors were about to kill him. He was hers, and it was unthinkable to stand by and let him come to harm. For a moment she stood, paralyzed with indecision, her fingers wrapped around the doork.n.o.b. Then she looked at Kevin. "This isn't over, you son of a b.i.t.c.h!" was all she could say.

"Sure. Bring down the Winslow boy's chart in the next half hour or so, and I'll run that simulation you asked about before I leave. I'm not heartless, you know. I've washed my hands of SIPNI, ever since Dr. d.i.l.d.o and all those lawyers from the Medical Center ganged up to steal it from me. But I'd still like to see the kid get his sight back. For Ramsey's sake." Kevin turned off the video displays and went back to crypta.n.a.lyzing his endless streams of numbers. He was being pointedly blase, as though nothing that he had revealed to her in the past ten minutes made any difference, because she was powerless to do anything about it.

It's not over! she vowed as she shut the door behind her.

3:15 P.M.

When Ali came dashing into the ICU from Kevin's lab, Dr. Helvelius was studying Jamie's heart monitor. "There you are," he said. "We've been calling all over looking for you. It's a d.a.m.ned nuisance working without pagers."

"I've been with Kev ... Kevin." Oh, G.o.d! she thought. I can hardly bear to say his name. "He's ... he, uh, I've asked him to run a simulation. To see if Odin can explain any of this."

"Jamie's in V-tach."

"I know. Listen, Richard, don't turn off the SIPNI device. I've been thinking about this. SIPNI's been working for several hours now, and the axons growing into the CHARM gel are aligned by the pattern of current. If you shut it off abruptly, those axons have nothing to connect with but each other. It could cause a ma.s.sive short circuit, perhaps even a lethal seizure."

"Too late," said Helvelius with visible irritation. "I've already shut it off."

With a sick feeling in her stomach, Ali stepped back as Dr. Brower, the ICU director, pushed past her to the bedside. Using deft, practiced movements, Brower peeled open the paper seals around two adhesive-backed rectangular electrodes, and then stuck these directly to Jamie's skin-one electrode near his right shoulder, the other over the lower part of his ribcage on the left. He then quickly attached the electrodes to a portable automated external defibrillator, and watched the rhythm a.n.a.lysis on the machine.

"He's shockable," said Brower. "Disconnect those EEG leads first, or we'll damage the unit." When the nurses had unplugged the wires connected to Jamie's scalp, Brower shouted out "Clear!" and pressed the red shock b.u.t.ton. There was a slight tensing of Jamie's chest muscles as two hundred joules of current discharged into his body.

Ali watched the small rhythm monitor on the defibrillator. The tracing was briefly scrambled, then returned to a pattern of long, sharp spikes, like the teeth of a comb.

"Still in ventricular tachycardia," said Brower. "Let's try again. One, two, three, clear!" Brower hit the b.u.t.ton again, and another two hundred joules ran through Jamie's chest. This time Ali saw his heartbeat return to a normal pattern, resembling a line followed by a stubby wedge, then a line, then a wedge, repeated sixty times per minute. "Want to give him some Amiodarone to keep things from acting up again?" asked Brower.

Helvelius furrowed his brow. "All right, as long as you-"

"No," said Ali, her voice loud and sharp, like a ruler smacking a desk. "We can't reverse Amiodarone if there's a problem with it later. I don't want to give him anything until we understand what's going on."

"Your call," said Brower.

A tense silence followed. It was broken ultimately by a soft, rattling noise coming from Jamie's bedrails.

"Oh, G.o.d!" exclaimed Ginnie, looking at Jamie. "He's seizing again."

Indeed he was. His body flopped in the air as though goaded by a cattle prod. One leg gyrated, the other kicked. His hands shook in the velcro slings that tied them to the bed rails. His eyes rolled back and forth between half-opened eyelids.

"Watch his head! Watch his head!" someone yelled as Jamie pounded the bandaged crown of his head against the pillow. Nurses on either side rushed to hold him down against the squeaking mattress.

"Valium! STAT!" shouted Helvelius.

"He's stopped breathing," cried Ginnie.

Brower pushed the bed away from the wall and quickly dropped the head of the bed down flat. "Give me a laryngoscope!" he shouted as he stood behind Jamie. "I'm going to intubate him." He threw away Jamie's pillow and tilted his head back, forcing open his lower jaw with his thumbs.

"Wait!" Ali cried. "Stop it! All of you!" She brusquely pushed Brower aside and took up his position overlooking Jamie's head. "The induction coil, give it to me! We need to turn SIPNI back on!"

Brower was seething, but at a nod from Helvelius, he stood back and allowed one of the nurses to hand Ali the coil. Ali quickly positioned it as she had in the operating room, with the arms of the coil terminating just behind Jamie's ears.

"Richard, could you activate it?"

Dr. Helvelius turned to the control panel of the induction coil, set the dial to the correct voltage, and snapped the on switch. Jamie's body instantly went rigid, with his back arched and his mouth wide open as he sucked in a deep, gasping breath. Then he dropped to the bed, limp and unconscious. For the next minute everyone watched him in dread silence. But relief gradually took hold around the bedside. The seizure had stopped, and he was now breathing freely.

"Dr. O'Day, may I have a word with you?" said Helvelius, replacing the induction coil on top of its control panel. After handing off Jamie to Brower, he put his arm around Ali and ushered her to one side. "There's a T-T-TV crew in the hallway that's going to want a progress report from me when I walk out of this room. What in G-G.o.d's name am I supposed to tell them?"

"We have a problem, Richard. SIPNI is malfunctioning."

"That's obvious."

"We can't turn it off. We've already gone too far. If we can't fix it, we'll have to ... take it out."

Helvelius frowned. "What happens if we do? W-will there be another seizure? Could it kill him?"

"I don't know. We really need that simulation. But ... I think ... I think there's a problem with Odin."

"What kind of problem? Odin's always been a model child."

"It's because ... I mean ... I can't ... I don't really understand it. But Kevin-"

Helvelius pinched her shoulder. "Look, just go downstairs and tell Kevin to stop j-j-jerking off and get Odin running again. Tell him what's at stake."

"Right." Ali stared at the floor. There was no way she could tell Richard about Kevin and Odin. Always unhesitating in his actions, Helvelius would have had the FBI at Kevin's door within two minutes. And that was the surest way to get everyone killed. "Right, I need to do that," she said at last.

"Okay. I'm going out to face the m-music," Helvelius said. "Keep working on this. At the moment you seem to be the only one who has any idea what's going on here."

"Yes. I will." As Helvelius headed for the door, Ali gazed at Jamie, now lying quietly in his bed. It won't last, she thought. The next incident will be worse than anything we've seen. Helvelius's words seemed to mock her, for in truth she had no idea what was happening. Never had she felt so helpless.

Oh, my G.o.d! What have we gotten into? she thought as she twisted Jamie's lanyard around her fingers.

Stepping into the hall outside the ICU, Helvelius nearly collided with Dutch, the photographer, who had been shooting through the small window in the door. Helvelius realized that the TV crew had gotten film of the whole seizure, and there was no point in trying to cover it up.

Kathleen Brown was at Dutch's side. "Dr. Helvelius," she said, "when will we be allowed to film inside the Neurological Intensive Care Unit? You promised us that we could take some footage of Jamie with his nurses as soon as he came to." There wasn't any mike in her hand, but Helvelius knew that the camera had its own microphone and it was almost certainly turned on.

"N-n-n-ot now," said Helvelius. "He's under heavy s-s-sedation."

"Is this the expected recovery time line?"

"We don't know what to expect. This kind of s-s-surgery has no p-precedent."

"What was it that just happened in there, Dr. Helvelius? Was that an epileptic seizure?"

"A seizure, yes."

"Was it caused by Jamie's surgery?"

"Seizures are not uncommon c-complications following any interv-v-ention in the brain. It may have been caused by the surgery. It m-may be r-r-related to his AVM. We're treating it with appropriate medications. Hopefully there will be no r-r-r-recurrences."

"Could the SIPNI device itself be at fault?"