"Ah, God. It's everywhere!" he softly wails.

"I don't think I can walk," I tell Claire.

"Then I'll make you crawl," she snarls. "I should just leave you like this. It's so perfectly metaphorical."

They haul me two doors down and into the shower room. Big Recruit is coughing and gagging and Claire is bitching and I'm apologizing while she strips off the jumpsuit and throws it at Jumbo Recruit, telling him to wait outside. "Don't lean on me. Lean on the wall," she orders harshly. My knees are buckling. I hang on to the shower curtain to keep upright; I haven't used my legs in a month.

With one hand locked around my left arm, Claire pushes me under the water, bending at the waist to stay dry. The spray is icy. She didn't bother to adjust the temperature. The slap of cold water against my body is like an alarm going off, snapping me from a long winter's hibernation, and I reach up and grab the showerhead pipe coming from the wall and tell Claire I think I've got it; I think I can stand; she can let go.

"Are you sure?" she asks, holding on.

"Pretty sure."

I wrench the pipe downward with all the force I have. The pipe breaks off at the joint with a metallic squeal and the cold water gushes out in a ropey snarl. Left arm up, slipping through Claire's fingers, then I've got her by the wrist and I swing my body toward her, rotating my hips to maximize the blow, and slam the jagged edge of the broken pipe into her neck.

I wasn't sure I could break a steel pipe with my bare hands, but I was pretty sure.

I have been enhanced.

67.

CLAIRE STAGGERS AWAY, blood pouring from the two-inch puncture wound in her neck. The fact that I didn't drop her doesn't surprise me; I'd assumed she would be enhanced, too, but I'd hoped to get lucky and sever her carotid artery. She fumbles in the pocket of her lab coat for the kill switch. I anticipated that. I toss the broken pipe away, grab the bolted-in shower rod, break it from its brackets and smash one end into the side of her head.

The impact barely rocks her. In a millisecond, faster than my eyes can follow the motion, she has the end of the rod in her grip. I let go in half a millisecond, so when she yanks there's nothing holding the other end, and she stumbles back into the wall, hitting with enough force to crack the tiles. I barrel toward her. She swings the rod toward my head, but I anticipated that, too-counted on it, when I rehearsed this in the thousand silent hours beneath the constant glow.

I grab the other end of the rod as it arcs toward me, first with my right hand, then with the left, hands shoulder-width apart, and power the rod into her neck, spreading my legs for the balance and leverage necessary to crush her windpipe.

Our faces are inches apart. I'm close enough to smell the cyanide breath trickling out of her parted lips.

Her hands are on either side of mine, pushing back while I push forward. The floor is slick; I'm barefoot, she isn't; I'm going to lose the advantage before she blacks out. I have to drop her-fast.

I slide my foot to the inside of her ankle and kick out. Perfect: She falls to the floor and I follow her down.

She lands on her back. I land on her stomach. I clamp my knees tightly against her sides and shove the rod down hard into her neck.

Then the door behind us flies open and Jumbo Recruit lumbers in, gun drawn, shouting incoherently. Three minutes in and the light in Claire's eyes is fading, but it's not all the way out, and I know I have to take a risk. I don't like risk, never did; I just learned to accept it. Some things you can choose and some you can't, like Sullivan's Crucifix Soldier, like Teacup, like going back for Zombie and Nugget because not going back meant there's no value to anything anymore, not life, not time, not promises.

And I have a promise to keep.

Jumbo's gun: The 12th System locks in on it and thousands of microscopic droids go to work augmenting the muscles, tendons, and nerves in my hands, eyes, and brain to neutralize the threat. In a microsecond, objective identified, information processed, method determined.

Jumbo doesn't have a prayer.

The attack happens faster than his unenhanced brain can process it. I doubt he even sees the curtain rod whizzing toward his hand. The gun flies across the room. He goes one way-for the gun-while I go the other-for the toilet.

The tank lid is solid ceramic. And heavy. I could kill him; I don't. But I smack him hard enough in the back of head to put him out for a long time.

Jumbo falls down. Claire rises up. I sling the lid toward her head. Her arm rises to block the projectile. My enriched hearing picks up the sound of a bone snapping from the collision. The silver device in her hand clatters to the floor. She dives for it as I step forward. I slam one foot on her outstretched hand and with the other kick the device to the other side of the room.

Done.

And she knows it. She looks past the barrel of the gun leveled at her face-beyond the tiny hole filled with immense nothingness-into my eyes, and hers are kind again and her voice is soft again, the bitch.

"Marika . . ."

No. Marika was slow, weak, sentimental, dimwitted. Marika was a little girl clinging to rainbow fingers, helplessly watching the time wind down, teetering on the razor's edge of the bottomless abyss, exposed behind her fortress walls by promises she could never keep. But I will keep her final promise to Claire, the beast who stripped her naked and baptized her in the cold water that still roars in the broken shower. I will keep Marika's promise. Marika is dead, and I will keep her promise.

"My name is Ringer."

I pull the trigger.

68.

JUMBO SHOULD HAVE a knife on him. Standard issue for all recruits. I kneel beside his unconscious body, slip the knife from its sheath, and carefully cut out the pellet embedded near the spinal cord at the base of his skull. I slip it between my cheek and gums.

Now mine. No pain when I cut it out, and only a small amount of blood trickles from the incision. Bots to deaden sensation. Bots to repair damage. That's why Claire didn't die when I rammed a broken pipe into her neck and why, after the initial gush, the bleeding quickly stopped.

Also why, after six weeks flat on my back with very little food and a burst of intense physical activity, I'm not even out of breath.

I insert the tiny pellet from my neck into Jumbo's. Track me now, Commander Asshole.

Fresh jumpsuit from the stack under the sink. Shoes: Claire's feet are too small; Jumbo's much too large. I'll work on shoes later. The big kid's leather jacket might come in handy, though. The jacket hangs on me like a blanket, but I like the extra room in the sleeves.

There's something I'm forgetting. I glance around the small room. The kill switch, that's it. The screen got cracked in the melee, but the device still works. A number glows above the flashing green button. My number. I swipe my thumb over the display and the screen fills with numbers, hundreds of sequences representing every recruit on the base. I swipe again to return to my number, tap on it, and a map pops up showing my implant's precise location. I zoom out and the screen fills with tiny, glowing green dots: the location of every implanted soldier in the entire base. Jackpot.

And checkmate. With a swipe of my thumb and a tap of my finger, I can highlight all the numbers. The button on the bottom of the device will light up. A final tap and every recruit neutralized, gone. I can practically stroll out.

I can-if I'm willing to step over several hundred corpses of innocent human beings, kids who are no less victims than I am, whose sole crime is the sin of hope. If the wage of sin is death, then virtue is a vice now: A defenseless, starving child lost in a wheat field is given shelter. A wounded soldier cries out for help behind a row of beer coolers. A little girl shot by mistake is delivered to her enemies in order to save her.

And I don't know which is more inhuman: the alien beings that created this new world or the human being who considers, if only for an instant, pressing the green button.

Three large clumps of stationary dots hover on the right side of the screen: the sleeping. A dozen isolated individuals on the periphery: sentries. Two in the middle: mine in Jumbo's neck, his in my mouth. Another three or four very close, on the same floor: the sick and injured. One floor down, the ICU, where only one green sphere glows. So: barracks, observation posts, hospital. A couple of the sentry dots are manning the magazine building. I won't have to guess which two. I'll know in a few minutes.

Come on, Razor, let's go. I've got one last promise to keep.

Watching the gusher pour from the broken pipe.

69.

"DO YOU PRAY?" Razor asked me after an exhausting night of chaseball, while he packed up the game board and pieces.

I shook my head. "Do you?"

"Damn right I do." Nodding his head emphatically. "No atheists in foxholes."

"My father was one."

"A foxhole?"

"An atheist."

"I know that, Ringer."

"How did you know my father was an atheist?"

"I didn't."

"Then why did you ask if he was a foxhole?"

"I didn't. It was a freaking-" He smiled. "Oh, I get it. I know what you're doing. The disturbing thing to me is why. Like you're not trying to be funny but trying to prove how superior you are. Or think you are. You're not either. Funny or superior. Why don't you pray?"

"I don't like putting God on the spot."

He picked up the queen and examined her face. "You ever checked her out? She is one scary-looking she-bitch."

"I think she looks regal."

"She looks like my third-grade teacher, a lot of man and very little wo."

"What?"

"You know: heavy on the male, light on the fe."

"She's just fierce. A warrior queen."

"My third-grade teacher?" He studied my face. Waiting. Waiting. "Sorry, tried that joke once. Epic fail." He placed the piece in the box. "My grandma belonged to a prayer circle. You know what a prayer circle is?"

"Yes."

"Really? I thought you were an atheist."

"My father was an atheist. And why couldn't an atheist know what a prayer circle is? Religious people know about evolution."

"I know what it is. I've got it," he said thoughtfully, dark, intense eyes still on my face. "You were, like, five or six and some relative remarked in a very positive way what a serious little girl you were, and from then on, you thought seriousness was attractive."

"What happened in the prayer circle?" Attempting to get him back on track.

"Ha! So you don't know what it is!" He set the box down and scooched farther onto the bed. His butt now touching my thigh. I eased my leg away. Subtly, I hoped. "I'll tell you what happened. My grandma's dog got sick. One of those purse dogs that bites everybody and lives about twenty-five years, biting people. So her petition had to do with God saving that mean little dog so it could bite more people. And half the old ladies in her group agreed and half didn't, I'm not sure why, I mean a God who doesn't like dogs wouldn't be God, but anyway, there was this big debate about wasted prayer, which became an argument about if there could be such a thing as wasted prayer, which turned into a fight about the Holocaust. So in five minutes it went from a nippy old purse dog to the Holocaust."

"So what happened? Did they pray for the dog?"

"No, they prayed for the souls of the Holocaust. Then the next day the dog died." And now he was nodding thoughtfully. "Grandma prayed for him. Prayed every night. Told all us grandkids to pray, too. So I prayed for a dog that terrorized and hated me and gave me this." He swung his leg onto the bed and pulled up his pants to expose his calf. "See the scar?"

I shook my head. "No."

"Well, it's there." He pushed down the pants leg but kept his foot on the bed. "So after it died, I said to Grandma, 'I prayed really hard and Flubby still died. Does God hate me?'"

"What did she say?"

"Some BS about God wanting Flubby in heaven, which was impossible for my six-year-old brain to process. There are nippy old purse dogs in heaven? Isn't heaven supposed to be a nice place? It bothered me for a long time. Like, every night, while I said my prayers, I couldn't help but wonder if I even wanted to go to heaven and spend eternity with Flubby. So I decided he must be in hell. Otherwise, theology falls apart."

He wrapped his long arms around his upraised knee, where he rested his chin and stared into space. He was back in a time when a little boy's questions about prayer and God and heaven still mattered.

"I broke a cup once," he went on. "Playing around in Mom's china cabinet, part of her wedding set, this dainty little cup from a tea set. Didn't totally break it. Dropped it on the floor and it cracked."

"The floor?"

"No, not the floor. The cu-" His eyes widened in shock. "Did you just make the same . . . ?"

I shook my head. He pointed his finger at me. "Naw, I caught you! A moment of lighthearted levity from Ringer the warrior queen!"

"I joke all the time."

"Right. But they're so subtle that only smart people get them."

"The cup," I prodded him.

"So I've cracked Mom's precious china. I put it back in the cabinet, turning its cracked side toward the back so maybe she won't notice, even though I know it's only a matter of time before she does and I'm dead meat. Know where I turn for help?"

I didn't have to think hard. I knew where the story was going. "God."

"God. I prayed for God to keep Mom away from that cup. Like, for the rest of her life. Or at least until I moved away to college. Then I prayed that he could heal the cup. He's God, right? He can heal people-what's a tiny freaking made-in-China cup? That was the optimal solution and that's what he's all about, optimal solutions."

"She found the cup."