61.

BUNKER.

Nicole watched the President's speech over the Times Square websquirt.

"Look at that asshole," she said. "Making a big show of being in Necropolis. He's wearing a triple-redundant filter field to protect himself!"

McDermott looked at his watch. "Sadly, that field will fail in about ten minutes."

There was a chime on the tech's console. Elise was signaling from the carriage house.

"Pull up the feed from the parlor," she said.

The tech, Marco, complied. Display Two resolved into a pale, red-headed beauty, standing in the middle of the empty room, looking up at the camera drone.

"I'm busy," snapped Nicole.

Elise held up a cell phone. Marco smirked. What a Luddite. She was obviously the type that feared implants.

"It's Adam," the woman said. "He's suspicious."

Nicole's whole manner slowed down, focused. She lifted her veil, securing it to her hat with a long and dangerous pin. "He's on the phone now? He's calling you from the Ceremony?"

"I have him on hold," Elise stammered. "He wants to know why we're not there."

"Why is he calling you?"

"He couldn't reach you."

"If he's calling from his implant, there's no reception in the bunker," explained Marco. "It's lead-lined, hardened against nukes."

Nicole gave him a life-sapping glare. To Elise: "Tell him what we rehearsed, you idiot. We're tracking a potential Ender attack uptown."

"He doesn't believe me! He's demanding we get up there now."

Nicole swore. "Hold for a minute." Marco paused the feed. Elise could be seen talking on the phone again.

The titanium door to the bunker hissed open and McDermott strode to her side. "I told you she was a lousy liar," he said.

Nicole flicked a dark nail at Marco to restore the feed. "Transfer the call here," she said to Elise.

Marco said, "We'd lose reception in the bunker. Same as if she physically brings the phone to us."

"Then have Adam call me here directly from a land line!" she snapped.

Before he could reply, Elise put the call on her cell's speakerphone. You could hear Adam's fury all the way into the bunker. "Nicole!" he thundered. "I want to talk to you NOW or this ceremony is OVER!"

Elise clicked off the speaker and covered the phone with her hand. "He wants to know something about the security wasps," she whispered up at them.

"Jesus Christ." She clenched her fists. To McDermott: "You have a man in the house?"

McDermott looked to Marco, who checked his data. "He's offline," said the tech.

"What?"

"It's probably a glitch. The AI's running a diagnostic as we speak."

McDermott scowled. "Bring up the kitchen feed."

Marco's fingers flew across the board. Display Three lit. McDermott's offline guard was shoving a sandwich into his face, his mouth smeared with mayonnaise.

"Jennings! Get your ass on post!"

Jennings looked to the camera drone, cheeks and eyes bulging. He nodded, swallowing something far bigger than his esophagus could handle. Several gulps of milk later, he was able to choke out, "Roger that."

"Ms. Struldbrug is coming out to talk to Elise."

"Roger."

McDermott spoke into his own uplink. "All posts, check in."

The men out front and upstairs all confirmed that everything was quiet.

"Alright," said Nicole.

McDermott laid a hand on her forearm. "Maybe you should leave it here," he said. His eyes drifted to the pocket where she'd tucked the remote control device. "Just to be safe."

She shook off his hand like he was leprous. "'Just to be safe' is the reason I had it made." She went to a cabinet and opened it, revealing a mounted row of pneumatic syringes, glowing with orange liquid. She stuffed a syringe into her pocket. "If that bitch is lying to me, I'm going to youthe her back to diapers."

"I thought you trusted her," said McDermott.

She looked at him like he was a small child. "You're so cute sometimes."

62.

STRULDBRUG.

"She's coming," Adam told him. Into the phone: "You did a convincing job, young lady." He listened, then turned to his father. "Why is she laughing that I called her young lady?"

Adam hadn't protested, hadn't demanded further proof or claimed that the recording must be fake. He hadn't bombarded Struldbrug with any of the millions of questions or objections one might raise when told that their twin sister was about to murder millions of people, themselves and the President of the United States included.

He had simply turned off the recorder and gazed down at his father. His father who suddenly looked so old and tired.

"I have an environmentally-sealed suite in this building," Adam now said. "You can wait there until this is over."

Struldbrug shook his head. "The inhabitants of this city don't have protection, do they? I'm needed out here."

Adam snorted. "When did you become such a concerned citizen? You'd risk eternity for them?"

Struldbrug's large eyes flicked downward. Adam couldn't place the look on his father's face-he'd never seen it before. Then he realized what it was. Shame. "Donner," Struldbrug said. "The way he looked at me. With pity. He didn't think me a monster for all that I've done, he just thought me pathetic. Me, pathetic, a king of kings. And I realized that was exactly what I had become." He looked up at his son. "I was a great man once. A warrior. An empire-builder. Once, the thought of hiding from the world in a make-believe castle would never have entered my mind. But somewhere along those centuries..." The chandeliers made his irises deepen to the color of rich, dark loam. "Maybe it's not power that corrupts. Maybe it's time. Too much time to grow afraid." He stood and shrugged. "I cannot live that way."

Adam looked thoughtful. "Donner and his friends. You trust them?"

"Yes."

"Alright. I've already seen to the President's safety." He pointed at the phone. "I will finish this little ruse, and then we shall wait. When we know that the threat has passed, I'll take you to the main Blister Control Center and we'll end this fucking nightmare together."

63.

NICOLE.

The guard had removed all traces of his meal. Wise. He snapped to attention as she entered the kitchen. "You're with me," she said, not slowing.

She pushed at the pocket doors. Heavy as they were, they slid effortlessly into the walls. Elise was sitting in a high-backed chair. She held the cell phone like it was a inscrutable alien artifact.

Nicole took two steps toward it and stopped dead as the cold metal of a pistol was pressed against her skull.

"Not a muscle, Miss Nicole," said the voice.

Oh man.

She had to smile. She couldn't help herself.

One in a million, this fucking guy.

"Donner! Baby!" she said. "If I had a soft spot, it'd be for you."

She tensed as he patted her down for weapons. But his reborn inexperience betrayed him. His fingers were probing for the weapons of his day, so he missed the wafer-thin nanoblades through her thick sleeves. Her smile broadened.

Then she felt him take the Retrozine-C and the remote from her skirt pocket, and that was it for smiling.

"You can turn around now," he said.

When she turned, she expected to see the kitchen guard sneaking up behind Donner. The guard was behind him alright, but he was undulating, becoming amorphous. Then his edges blurred and he turned into something else. Something horrifying.

"Thanks," said Donner to the thing.

It bled away into the floor.

So. Doubly betrayed. "Daddy's little helper. You've made some new friends since we last talked," she said.

Donner leveled the antique pistol at her. "On the couch. Hands in your lap."

She complied. Jesus, it was uncomfortable. She smiled reproachfully over at Elise, just to watch the color bleed from her cheeks.

"E tu, Elise?"

Two more people resolved out of the fruity wallpaper. Their smartskin camouflage cycled off. Little Maggie Mannequin was unarmed, but a fireplug of a man she didn't recognize held a plasma rifle.

She curled her hands in her lap, letting her thumbs drift toward tiny tattoos, the ones below the first joints of her forefingers.

The ones that would trigger her blades.

Donner jammed his pistol into a holster and examined the remote.

"I'd be careful with that, if I were you," she said. "If its power source is interrupted, it triggers a default response in the mainframe that launches the wasps."

"So I can't destroy it," Donner said. He flicked the top off the tube and stared at the simple red trigger. "We make destruction so easy." His voice was marinated in disgust. "It always comes down to a red button."

Donner pulled a silver box from a pocket in his smartskin. He slipped the remote into the box and tapped a code on the side of the rectangle, then angled it so Nicole could see. Clear morphinium flowed around the device like molasses, encasing it completely, filling the box.

"No back-ups, right?" he said.

Her stomach lurched in a premonition of disaster.

He keyed another sequence and the morphinium solidified. The remote now looked like a dragonfly trapped in amber. Donner turned the box upside down and the square clattered out onto the ground, functional as a paperweight. "The signal's still going out. But that button will never get pushed," Donner said.

Nicole held back a howl that would've split the Earth in two. A muscle popped in her neck.

"Simple as that," said Donner.

"Getting out of here won't be," she replied hoarsely.

"Doesn't matter," he said sadly. "Got what I came for."

She arched an eyebrow at Elise. "Guess so."

Maggie's resolution wavered.