“It’s a component manufacturer for neural networks,” I said. “It’s a Chinese company. I called and no one answered. It’s the middle of the night over there right now.”

“They don’t have a U.S. office?” Vann asked.

“As far as I can tell that apartment was the U.S. office,” I said. “I have the L.A. office looking into that, too.”

“The L.A. office must love you right about now,” Vann said.

“I don’t think I’m their favorite person, no,” I said. “What have you been up to?”

“I cleared out some more of the Hadens from Metro’s holding pens,” Vann said. “Most of them took the ‘get the hell out of D.C.’ option, but there were a couple who didn’t and a couple who really needed to be prosecuted, so they’re all now guests of the federal government for the next few days. We’ll deal with them after the march. The Metro people tell me things are getting a little tense out there. Oh, and I shook up that Integrator.”

“Which one?” I asked. “Brenda Rees?”

“Yeah, her,” Vann said. “I called her up and identified myself and said that I would like her to come meet with me to answer a couple of questions. She asked why and I said we were following up on the Loudoun Pharma explosion. Then she asked why I’d want to talk to her about that, and I told her we were just following up on an anonymous tip.”

“We didn’t get any anonymous tip about her,” I said.

“No, but it made her nervous when I said it, which I thought was interesting.”

“Anyone would be nervous if you told them you were following up an anonymous tip about a bombing by talking to them,” I pointed out.

“What’s important is how they get nervous,” Vann said. “Rees got all quiet and then asked to meet this evening.”

“We bringing her here?” I asked.

“I gave her the address of a coffee shop I like in Georgetown,” Vann said. “Feels less formal, and will get her to relax and open up.”

“So first you make her paranoid and then you want her to feel comfortable,” I said. “You don’t need me to help you play ‘good cop, bad cop.’ You can do it all on your own.”

“This is the sort of thing your pal Trinh calls ‘sloppy,’” Vann said.

“I’m not sure she’s wrong,” I said.

“If it works she’s wrong.”

“That’s a dangerous philosophy,” I said. Vann shrugged.

A call popped up in my field of view. It was Tony. “You didn’t tell me I would be working in an actual morgue with an actual brain when I took this gig,” he said, after we got our greetings out of the way.

“I had to be circumspect until you were vetted,” I said. “Sorry.”

“It’s all right,” Tony said. “I’ve just never seen a real live brain before. Also I had to dial back my sense of smell pretty much down to zero.”

“Have you found anything?” I asked.

“I’ve found a lot of things,” Tony said. “I think maybe I should talk to you about them. And your partner too, probably.”

“Let’s meet,” I said.

“Not in the morgue,” Tony said. “I think I need to get away from all this meat.”

*   *   *

“Okay, here’s the first thing,” Tony said, and he popped up the image of Johnny Sani’s brain, still in its skull, peeking through the veil of tinsel that was the neural net. We were in the imaging lab: me, Vann, Tony, and Ramon Diaz, who seemed amused at Tony taking over his imaging console.

“It’s a brain,” Vann said. “And?”

“It’s not the brain I want you to look at,” Tony said. “It’s the neural network.”

“Okay,” Vann said. “What about it?”

“It’s totally unique,” Tony said.

“I thought every neural network was unique,” I said. “They adapt to the brain they’re in.”

“Right, but every model is the same before it’s installed,” Tony said. He pointed at my head. “The Raytheon in your head is the same as every other version of that model. Once it’s in your head the tendrils and receptors are placed in ways that will be unique to your brain. But it’s still the same hardware and the same initial software.”

Vann pointed at the network on the screen. “And you’re saying this one isn’t any of the current commercial models out there.”

“I’ll go further than that,” Tony said. “This doesn’t match any model ever created. All neural networks have to be submitted to the FDA for approval, or to the matching agency in other countries. All submitted designs are pooled into a single database for those agencies to use, and for people like me to use for reference. This design isn’t in the database.”

“So it’s a prototype,” Vann said.

“We don’t put prototypes into people’s brains,” Tony said. “Because they’re prototypes and they might kill you if they screw up. We model them extensively on computers and animals and specially cultivated brain tissue before they’re approved. By definition if it’s in someone’s brain, it’s a final design.” He pointed at the network. “This is a final design. But it’s not in the database.”

“Can we see the network without the blood and gore?” I asked.

Tony nodded. The image of Sani’s head was wiped away, replaced by a wire-frame representation of the network. “I didn’t have time to pretty up the model,” Tony said.

“That’s fine, it all looks like spaghetti to me,” I said.

“Then why did you want to see it?”

“So I didn’t have to look at someone’s head all opened up,” I said.

“Right,” Tony said. “Sorry.”

“You said this isn’t any version you’ve seen before,” Vann said.

“That’s right,” Tony said.

“Well, then, does it look similar to any you’ve seen before?” Vann asked. “Every car maker I know of has a ‘house look.’ The same thing might apply for neural networks.”

“I thought of that,” Tony said. “And what I see is that whoever made this took a lot of design choices from existing models. The default filament spread looks very much like a Santa Ana model, for example. But then the juncture architecture is pretty much a straight rip-off from Lucturn, which is the Accelerant company I was telling you about this morning, Chris.” He looked at me for acknowledgement. I gave it. “And there are lots of other little touches that come from other manufacturers past and present. Which maybe tells us something.”

“What is that?” Vann asked.

“I don’t think this is meant to be a commercial model network,” Tony said. “It’s a really good neural network. It’s really efficient and elegant, and just from the design I’m guessing that the brain-network interface is really clean.”

“But,” I said.

“But, that’s because this brain is a lot of best-of-breed architecture from other existing designs, designs which are patented to hell and gone,” Tony said. He waved at the image of the network. “If someone tried to put this design on the market, they’d get their asses sued by every other neural network manufacturer out there. This thing would be in litigation for years. There’s no possible way this would ever get to market. None. Whatsoever.”

“Does it matter if it’s a network for an Integrator?” I asked. “It’s such a tiny market, relative to the Haden market. You could argue that it doesn’t represent a commercial threat.”

“Not really,” Tony said. “There’s no real difference in the architecture of a Haden network and an Integrator network. The major difference is how they array in the brain, because Haden and Integrator brain structures are different, and in the software that runs the network.”

“So why make it?” Vann asked. “Why make a network you can’t sell?”

“That’s a good question,” Tony said. “Because the other thing about creating a neural network is that it’s not something you’re going to do in your spare time at home. The first functional neural network ever made cost a hundred billion dollars to research and develop. The costs have come way down since then, but it’s a relative thing. You have to pay for simulations and testing and modeling and manufacturing and everything else.” He waved at the network again. “So this will still have set someone back somewhere in the neighborhood of a billion dollars.”