"Who are you?" Paul asked. "Why do you talk to Ava—to Avialle? What do you want from her?"

"Want . . . want . . . safe. Avialle safe." It spoke with a strange, aphasic slur. Pity would have pulled at him, except something about the shambling, inhuman voice also scared him to death.

"And who are you?"

"Lost." It moaned, a strange staticky roar. "Lost boy."

"Lost . . . where? Where are you?"

For a long moment there was only silence as the image of Ava rippled away, replaced by unevenly shimmering bars of light. "Well," it replied at last. "Down in the black, in the black black black." The moan came again, a stutter of harsh sound. "Down in the black well."

All the hairs on Paul's body stood upright. He knew he was awake—every quivering nerve told him so—but the conversation had the terrible downhill feel of a nightmare.

He searched desperately for something to build on. "You want to keep Ava . . . keep Avialle safe, is that right? Safe from what?"

"Jongleur."

"But he's her father! What would he do to her. . . ?"

"Not father!" the thing groaned. "Not father!"

"What are you talking about?" The family resemblance was plain, although what was hawklike and cruel in the pictures Paul had seen of Felix Jongleur was softened and sweetened in the daughter. "I don't understand. . . ."

"Eating the children," the voice moaned. "Jongleur. Grail. Help them. Too much pain. And. . . ." The bars of light began to flicker more rapidly, until they nearly became a solid burst of radiance. Paul found himself staring helplessly. "All the children. . . ."

The light strobed even faster, a white rush so bright that as he stared even the walls of his room fell away. Then somehow he was toppling forward into the light, into a brilliance that had no ending, and the haunted voice was all around him, powerful and lost.

"The Grail. Eating the children. So many. . . ! Hurting them!"

His senses were afire with sensation, but he was helpless. He could do nothing as the light streamed over him, through him, scorched into his eyes and turned his brain to a knob of clear crystal. Faces began to appear, children's faces, but it was no simple stream of images: he knew these children, felt their lives and stories even as they flew past him like a flock of sparrows caught up in a hurricane wind. Hundreds of tiny spirits flowed through him, then thousands, each one a node of painful darkness in the sea of shining light, each one precious, each one doomed. Then, out of the whirling darkness, a new shape began to form—a great silvery cylinder floating in a vault of black emptiness.

"The Grail," the voice said again, imploring, mourning. "For Jongleur. Eating them. Ad Aeternum. Forever."

Paul found his voice, though he had no lungs to drive the air, no throat in which to form the scream.

"Stop! I don't want to see any more!"

But it did not stop. He was lost in a storm of suffering.

He woke up on the carpet with the true light of morning streaming through the window. His head felt like something rotten that had been imperfectly balanced on top of his neck. Even an extra-strong cup of coffee and a small handful of painblockers did nothing to make him feel more human. He was miserable.

He was also terrified.

There was no explanation for what he had experienced. He did not insult himself by pretending it might have been a bad dream—the details were too sharp, his waking position on the floor in front of the wallscreen too telltale. But there was no simple way of understanding. The thing that had contacted him was no ordinary hacker, that was laughably clear. He didn't believe in ghosts, especially ghosts who appeared on wallscreens. So what did that leave?

Paul sat by the window with shaking hands. Below, he could see one of the corporation's hovercrafts arriving at the esplanade just below the tower, the ship's cheerful white-and-blue paint at odds with his own current viewpoint—that the ferry was basically a larger version of Charon's boat, conveying passengers to a Hades in which Paul was already a resident.

He roused himself. The sight had given him a longing to be somewhere else, anywhere else. He could not spend another day inside the great black building. He needed to move, to get out. Maybe then he could think properly.

As he dressed he felt a pang of worry and sorrow for Ava. If he simply disappeared, even just for the morning, she would be frightened. He was reluctant to ride all the way up to her house, frightened that he would never be able to pull himself away from her, so he called and left a message with one of Finney's many assistants. "Mr. Jonas has business to take care of because his mother in England has died. He will be out for the day. Please ask Miss Jongleur to study her geometry and read two more chapters of Emma. Lessons will resume as usual tomorrow." Hanging up, he felt the same sort of guilt he had experienced as a child skiving off school.

I have to get out, he told himself. Just for a while.

Walking from the elevator across the huge atrium lobby to the front doors, Paul could not resist looking around to see if someone was following him.

But isn't that just what you aren't supposed to do when you leave Hades? What was that from, the Orpheus legend? That you weren't supposed to look back?

Whatever the case, he was not being followed by either weeping ghosts or dark-suited security personnel, although the vast lobby was so full of people it was hard to tell for certain. The wash of commingled voices echoing from the marble walls and down the crystalline, pyramidal ceiling was like the roar of an ocean, like the rush of childish faces that had invaded his sleep now made into sound.

He paused for a moment in the plaza before the front doors to look up at the tower, a mountain-high finger of warped black glass, a million darkly translucent plates trussed and polished. If this was indeed the gate of the netherworld, what kind of fool was he even to think about coming back? He had planned a day's research trip, since he was afraid to access the larger net from within the J Corporation matrix, but what was there to draw him back at all? A doomed girl? It would take someone with a lot more power in the world than Paul Jonas to break her free from that cage. Something called the Grail, some threat to the world's children? Surely he could do much more from the outside, perhaps as a secret informant to some serious investigative journalists, than he could ever manage under constant surveillance.

Should I just take off? Just go? For God's sake, what job is worth this madness, this kind of paranoia?

"There's something wrong with your badge," the woman said. He could see the ferry's gangplank just the other side of the security-glass air-lock door, but the door itself did not open.

"What do you mean?"

The young woman frowned at the symbols dancing on the inside of her goggles. "It's not cleared for departure from the island, sir. I'm afraid you'll have to step out."

"My badge isn't cleared?" He stared at her, then back at the gangplank, only a few meters away. "Then keep the damn thing."

"You'll have to step out, sir. There's a security hold on it. You can speak to my supervisor."

Before a half-dozen sharp words were out of his mouth, the security guards—exactly the sort that he had half-expected to be following him through the tower lobby—had escorted him to a quiet office for, as they put it, a quiet chat.

It was at least a little solace that afterward he was allowed to walk back out of the departure area and back to the tower by himself. Security hadn't been ordered to do anything to him, not even detain him, as long as he stayed on the island. A little solace, but not much.