She was looking around the room with some expression other than fear or nervousness. More like regret or loss, maybe.

Keats was good at reading expressions. Girls always told him he understood them. It had worked for him, that ability to actually pay attention to girls’ emotions. It seemed that looking at their faces occasionally, and not just at their breasts or bums or legs, worked wonders. Occasional glances at eyes and mouth and forehead, that was the ticket.

Which was not to say that he wasn’t aware of the curve of Plath’s breasts as she leaned over to take the Band-Aid.

The crèches slid into what looked very much like ancient CD drives.

“There are many unique aspects to the biot process,” Anya said. “Gene splicing, of course. The basics of that are well established. But intra-species splicing at these speeds is new and unique to McLure. And very closely guarded.”

“Why not get it out there?” Keats asked. “I mean, look, secrecy is the problem, isn’t it? If everyone just knew that this was possible …”

Similar looks from Dr. Violet and Vincent silenced him.

“It’s illegal,” Plath said. Not like she was guessing, or like she was just realizing it. But like this fact had long been known to her. “If the government ever learned that we … that they … were recombining DNA to make whole new life-forms? This place would be swarming with FBI, everyone involved would be in prison, and the company would be bankrupted.”

Keats started to ask something else, but a flicker, just a slight, unspoken no from Vincent stopped him.

What he’d been about to ask was this: Why doesn’t the other side, the bad guys, why don’t they tell the FBI?

But the answer was clear enough, when he thought about it. It was a pact of silence. Both sides had incriminating evidence on the other. If one side went public, so would the other. If that happened, both sides would be hauled off to prison. And the technology would die.

Except: no.

No, that was wrong, wasn’t it? It wouldn’t die. It would be taken over by the government, weaponized even more than it already was.

And what government could resist the opportunity to engage in a bit of nanowar with whatever enemies arose? Even if those enemies were their own people?

Keats noticed Plath watching him. She knew all this. She was watching the thoughts revealed on his face. Timing him. Wondering how long it would take for him to put it all together.

She seemed moderately impressed by what she saw.

And I just realized who you must be, too, Keats thought. Oh, my God: you’re the daughter. The surviving McLure.

He sat back in his chair. He’d been leering at a billionaire. That couldn’t possibly work out well.

Still. They were just a wall apart back at the … what was it supposed to be called? BZRK headquarters? That sounded a bit melodramatic for a dump above a greasy deli.

And she didn’t seem the snobbish—

Keats put his hand to his forehead. Suddenly the room was spinning. He put his other hand on his chair, afraid he was going to be tilted out of it.

“Do you have a bedpan or something?” Vincent asked Dr. Violet.

She nodded, stood up, drew two enamel kidney-shaped pans from a drawer, and handed one each to Keats and Plath.

Plath was actually the first to vomit.

Keats found that fairly revolting, but a small triumph. A very small triumph since he hurled ten seconds later.

The world was spinning around, and he was a scrap of nothing caught in a whirlpool.

“What you’re experiencing now is normal,” Vincent said.

It didn’t feel normal. Keats heaved again and this time missed the bowl. He fell forward. Vincent caught him before he could hit the floor.

Renfield stepped in to do the same for Plath, who was cursing in between retching sounds, a very unhappy-sounding girl.

“We call it childbirth,” Vincent said. His voice was matter-of-fact, calm, not like he was trying to soothe Noah’s panic but doing it, anyway. “It’s a kind of inside joke. Because what’s happening is that your biots are quickening. Becoming alive. You’re feeling the disorientation of being in your own bodies while simultaneously being somewhere else.”

Keats had a sudden flash of a dark, flat plain stretching out beyond view.

A flash of lightning.

A series of flashbulb pops. Pop!Pop!Pop!

An elephant. Crippled.

No, a spider. Legs forming. But as big as an elephant.

Forming as he watched. Writhing. Almost as if it was in pain. Crying out with the writhing of still-forming limbs since it lacked a mouth to scream.

Beams of brilliant green light.

A spray of mist.

And suddenly a different view. A close-up in a flash of grainy light: a second creature, like the first, jerky movements, legs that ended in lobster claws, thrashing.

Then, “Oh, God!” Plath cried. “I saw its face.”

She tried to bolt from her seat, but Renfield held her in place with hands on her shoulders.

“Biots often have a sort of eerie resemblance to the donor of their human DNA,” Dr. Violet said. “Each of you has two biots growing. You’re seeing one of them through the still-forming eyes of the other.”

“Okay, okay, I don’t …” Keats said, and then whatever he’d been about to say was blown away by an image in flashing strobe light of the monstrous spider, turning, turning, and oh, God, oh, God, he was seeing through both sets of eyes, seeing himself seeing himself seeing himself as a sort of vile spider with no, no, noooo! Eyes! Blue eyes like his own eyes, oh, God.