"You bet your ass she found the cup."

"I'm surprised you still pray. After Flubby and the cup."

He shook his head. "Not the point."

"There's a point?"

"If you'd let me finish the story-yes, there is a point. Here it is: After she found the cup and before I knew she'd found it, she replaced it. She ordered a new cup and threw away the old one. One Saturday morning-I guess I'd been praying for about a month-I went to the cabinet to prove the prayer circle wrong about wasted prayer, and I saw it."

"The new cup," I said. Razor nodded. "But you didn't know your mom replaced it."

He threw his hands into the air. "It's a fucking miracle! What's cracked has been uncracked! The broken made whole! God exists! I nearly crapped my pants."

"The cup was healed," I said slowly.

His dark eyes dug deep into mine. His hand fell to my knee. A squeeze. Then a tap.

Yes.

70.

IN THE BATHROOM, the gush becomes a stream, the stream becomes a trickle, the trickle becomes an anemic dribble. The water slows and my heart quickens. My paranoia was getting the better of me. A decade passed while I waited for the water to be cut off: the go signal from Razor.

The hall outside is deserted. I already know that thanks to Claire's tracking device. I also know exactly where I'm going.

Stairs. One flight down. One last promise. I pause long enough on the landing to slip Jumbo's sidearm into the jacket pocket.

Then I slam through the door and hit the hall running. Straight ahead is the nurses' station. I sprint straight toward it. The nurse pops out of her chair.

"Take cover!" I shout. "It's going to blow!"

I swerve past the counter and race toward the swinging doors that lead to the ward.

"Hey!" she shouts. "You can't go back there!"

Any day now, Razor.

She hits the lockdown button on her desk. It doesn't matter. I hurtle into the doors at full speed and smash both off their hinges.

"Freeze!" she screams.

The entire length of the hallway remains; I won't make it. I've been enhanced, but I can't outrun a bullet. I skitter to a halt.

Razor, I'm serious. Now would be a very good time.

"Hands on your head! Now." Struggling to catch her breath. "Good job. Now walk toward me, backward. Slow. Very slow, or I swear to God I'll shoot you."

I obey, shuffling toward the sound of her voice. She orders me to stop. I stop. I'm still, but the mechanisms inside me aren't. Her position is fixed: I don't have to see her to know exactly where she's standing. The hub's dispatched the managers of my muscular and nervous systems to execute the directive when called upon. I won't have to think when the time comes. The hub will take over.

But I won't owe my life entirely to the 12th System: It was my idea to grab Jumbo's jacket.

And that reminds me: "Shoes," I murmur.

"What did you say?" Her voice is quivering.

"I need shoes. What size are you?"

"Huh?"

At the speed of light the hub's signal fires. My body doesn't move quite that fast, but double the speed that is probably necessary.

Right hand jams into Jumbo's baggy sleeve, where I slipped the ten-inch knife, pivot to the left, then throw.

And down she goes.

I pull the knife from her neck, slide the bloody blade back into the left sleeve of the jacket, and check out her shoes. A pair of those white, thick-soled nurse's shoes. A half size too big, but they'll work.

At the end of the hallway, I step into the last room on the right. It's dark, but my eyes have been enhanced: I can see her clearly in the bed, fast asleep. Or doped. I'll have to determine which.

"Teacup? It's me. Ringer."

The thick, dark lashes flutter. I'm so jacked up by this point, I swear I can hear the tiny hairs thrumming the air.

She whispers something without opening her eyes. Too soft for the unenhanced to hear, but the auditory bots transmit the information to the hub, which relays it to the inferior colliculus, the hearing center of my brain.

"You're dead."

"Not anymore. And neither are you."

71.

THE WINDOW BESIDE the bed jiggles in its frame. The floor quivers. Bright orange light floods the room, winks out, then an earsplitting roar and a fine mist of plaster floating down from the ceiling. The sequence repeats. Then again. Then again.

Razor's hit the magazine building.

"Teacup, we have to go." I slide one hand behind her head and lift gently.

"Go where?"

"As far as we can."

Bracing the back of her head with one hand, I hit her in the forehead with the heel of the other. The precise amount of force, no more, no less. Her body goes limp. I heave her out of the bed. Another blast as the ordnance in the magazine continues to detonate. I kick out the window. Bitter cold air crashes into the room. I sit on the sill facing the bed, cradling Teacup against my chest. My intent alerts the hub: I'm two stories above the ground. Reinforcements race to the bones and tendons in my feet, ankles, shins, knees, and pelvis.

We deploy.

I flip as we drop, like a cat falling off a countertop. We land safely, like a cat, except Teacup's head bounces up on impact and smacks me hard under the chin. In front of us the hospital. Behind us the blazing ammunition storehouse. And to our right, exactly where Razor said it would be, the black Dodge M882.

I throw open the door, shove Teacup into the passenger seat, jump behind the wheel, and take off across the parking lot, cutting hard to the left to make the turn north toward the airfield. A siren screams. Floodlights blare. In the rearview mirrors, emergency vehicles race toward the burning magazine. The fire brigade will have a hard time of it since someone has shut down the pumping station.

Another hard left, and now straight ahead are the hulking bodies of the Black Hawks, glistening like the bodies of black beetles in the harsh light of the floods. I grip the wheel hard and take a deep breath. This is the trickiest part. If Razor couldn't kidnap a pilot, we're all screwed.

A hundred yards away, I see someone jump from one of the choppers' holds. He's wearing a heavy parka and toting an assault rifle. His face is partially obscured by the hood, but I'd know that smile anywhere.

I hop from the M882.

And Razor says, "Hi."

"Where's the pilot?" I ask.

He jerks his head toward the cockpit. "I got mine. Where's yours?"

I pull Teacup from the truck and jump inside the chopper. A guy wearing nothing but a drab green T-shirt and a matching pair of boxer shorts sits behind the controls. Razor slides into the copilot seat beside him.

"Fire her up, Lieutenant Bob." Razor grins at the pilot. "Oh. Manners. Ringer, Lieutenant Bob. Lieutenant Bob, Ringer."

"There's no way this is going to work," Lieutenant Bob says. "They'll come after us hard."

"Yeah? What's this?" Razor holds up a mass of tangled electrical wire.

The pilot shakes his head. So cold, his lips are turning blue. "I don't know."

"Neither do I, but I'm guessing they're very important for the proper operation of a helicopter."

"You don't understand . . ."

Razor leans toward him and all his playfulness is gone. His deep-set eyes burn as if backlit and the coiled force I sensed from the beginning springs free with such ferocity, I actually flinch.

"Listen to me, you alien sonofabitch, you fire this mother-effing stick buddy up ASAP or I'm-"

The pilot shoves his hands into his lap and stares straight ahead. After getting one into the chopper undetected, my biggest concern was getting a pilot to cooperate. I lean forward, grab Bob by the wrist, and bend his pinky finger backward.

"I'll break it," I promise him.

"Go ahead!"

I break it. His teeth clamp down on his bottom lip. His legs jerk. His eyes swim with tears. That shouldn't happen. I press my fingers against the back of his neck, then turn to Razor.

"He's implanted. He isn't one of them."

"Yeah, well, who the hell are you?" the pilot squeals.

I pull the tracking device from my pocket. There's the hospital and the magazine surrounded by a swarm of green dots. And there are three dots glowing on the airstrip.

"You cut yours out," I say to Razor.

He's nodding. "And left it under my pillow. That was the plan. Or was that the plan? Shit, Ringer, wasn't that the plan?" A little panicky.

I drop the knife into my hand. "Hold him."

Razor understands immediately. He grabs Lieutenant Bob and puts him in a headlock. Bob doesn't put up much resistance. I worry now that he might go into shock. If he does, it's over.

There isn't much light and Razor can't hold him perfectly still, so I tell Bob to chill or I might sever his spinal cord, adding paralysis to the problem of a broken finger. I pull out the pellet, toss it onto the tarmac, yank Bob's head back, and whisper in his ear, "I'm not the enemy and I haven't gone Dorothy. I'm just like you-"

"Only better," Razor finishes. He glances through the window and says, "Uh, Ringer . . ."

I see them: The glow of headlights expanding like a pair of stars going supernova. "They're coming, and when they get here, they will kill us," I tell Bob. "You too. They won't believe you and they will kill you."

Bob stares into my face, tears of pain streaming down his.

"You have to trust me," I say.

"Or she'll break another finger," Razor adds.

A deep, shuddering breath, shaking uncontrollably, cradling his wounded hand, blood trickling down his neck and soaking into the collar of his T-shirt. "It's hopeless," he whispers. "They'll just shoot us down."

On impulse, I reach forward and press my hand against his cheek. He doesn't recoil. He becomes very still. I don't understand why I touched him or what's happening now that I am, but I feel something opening inside me, like a bud spreading its delicate petals toward the sun. I'm freezing cold. My neck is on fire. And the little finger on my right hand throbs to the beat of my heart. The pain brings tears to my eyes. His pain.

"Ringer!" Razor barks. "What the hell are you doing?"

I pour my warmth into the man I touch. I douse the fire. I caress the pain. I soothe his fear. His breath evens out. His body relaxes.

"Bob, we really have to go," I tell him.

And two minutes later, we do.

72.