NETFEED/OBITUARY: Robert Wells, Founder of TMX

(visual: Wells at Telemorphix "torchlight rally" company meeting)

VO: Robert Wells, techology pioneer and one of the world's richest men, died of a heart attack yesterday. Wells, the founder of the Telemorphix Corporation, was one hundred and eleven years old.

(visual: Owen Tanabe, Wells' executive assistant)

TANABE: "He went out the way he would have wanted—at the office, plugged into the net, working right up until the last moment on ways to improve human life. Even though he's gone, all of us will be feeling the impact of Bob Wells' personal vision for years to come. . . ."

He was laughing, laughing out loud. He couldn't help it. His heart was aflame with exhilaration, his thoughts swirling like smoke and sparks. He was as alive as he had ever been—it was like the last moment of the hunt, drawn out by some hallucinatory distortion of time into an hours-long orgasm.

The chorus in his head had reached a crescendo. Camera in close. Face flushed but coldly handsome. The winner. Unstoppable.

All his enemies inside the network were at his fingertips now, hopelessly trapped—the blind woman, Jongleur, the Sulaweyo bitch, even the operating system itself. They cowered before him. He was the destroyer, the beast, the devil-devil man. He was a god.

And outside the network. . . ?

Pull back to reveal his enemies at his feet. Long shot. Only one standing.

Dread looked down at the two bodies on the floor of the loft. Dulcie lay silent in a tangle of arms and legs like a puppet with its strings slashed, blood pooling around her. The policewoman was still moving, but only a little, her head twitching in time with her swift, jerky breathing, bright red arterial blood frothing on her lips. He frowned. Even in the flaring majesty of the moment he remembered his mantra against overconfidence.

Dread muted his inner music, then bent and rolled the policewoman onto her side. She gave a little whistling grunt but otherwise did not respond, even when he wiggled the handle of the knife in her back. A shame to leave her unattended in the last moments, but he had bigger game afoot. She wasn't his type, anyway—he didn't like them stocky. He reached down into her overcoat, found the holstered Glock, and pulled it out. He put the barrel against the policewoman's head, then remembered that even after he returned to the network her final moments would be recorded on the loft's surveillance cameras.

Why waste a slow death? he thought. Dulcie's end had turned out to be a bit disappointingly swift, after all.

He considered briefly, then ejected the bullets from the policewoman's gun and Dulcie's snapped-together pistol and tucked both weapons into the pockets of his robe. He reached back into the woman's breast pocket and found her police pad. Sorry, sweetness, no calls. He ground it under his heel until he heard components shatter, then kicked it across the room.

No sense in putting temptation in the way of a dying woman, he thought cheerfully. Women just couldn't resist temptation—pretty things, bright colors, false hopes. They were like animals that way.

He climbed back onto the coma bed and frowned at the blood he was smearing on the purity of the white surfaces. Can't be helped. Fix it in editing. Then again, maybe it would be a nice effect. . . ? He ran a quick check to make sure the cameras would pick up everything that happened in the loft, and that he himself would have a view of it even when he was back on the network. Confident, cocky, lazy, dead, right? Not this boy.

Dread brought his music back up, a swell of triumphant strings and kettledrums. The chorus came in again, hundreds of voices singing in the bones of his skull as he dropped back into the universe he had conquered.

Paul could only stare at the spot where Felix Jongleur had stood a moment before. One second the ancient man had been there, then he had simply vanished—pop, like a soap bubble.

T4b was the first to speak. He sounded lost, younger than Paul had ever heard him. "Old Grail-knocker . . . won, him? Just . . . over? All over?"

Sam Fredericks was crying. Beside her, Orlando Gardiner put a muscular barbarian arm around her shoulder. "I knew it!" she said for the fourth or fifth time. "So impacted—we were all so stupid! He was just waiting!"

Paul could only nod in stunned agreement. I should have seen it coming—should have known a device like that lighter would be worth something to someone—to Jongleur. But he had let himself be lulled by Jongleur's unusual volubility, his surrender of secrets. The old man had acted like someone without hope. Paul had recognized the feeling, and so he had believed it.

"We may have only moments," Martine said softly.

"It's in God's hands," said Bonita Mae Simpkins. "We don't know what He has planned."

It is out of our hands, Martine replied, that is the one certain thing."

Florimel stood. "No. I cannot believe that. I will not give up my life, my daughter's life, without a fight."

"Who are you going to fight?" Paul's own misery made it difficult even to speak. "We underestimated him. Now he's gone. And even if something keeps him from shutting down the system, what about that?" He pointed to the dome of clouds, the silhouette of Dread moving along the edge like a shadow-puppet demon. "What about him?"

"Where has the boy gone?" asked Nandi. "Sellars' boy. He was frightened. He ran."

Orlando pointed. "Over there."

Paul could see Cho-Cho crouched on the rim of the Well, a small shadow against the flickering lights. "I'll get him," he said heavily. He knew what it was to be lost and confused. We should face it together, as Martine said.

"Something is happening." Martine Desroubins' face tightened in concentration. Paul hesitated, but then turned to go after the boy.

The end, he thought. The end is happening, that's all.

The weakening glare of the Well made him think of Ava as she had last appeared, suffering, fighting hopelessly against the inevitable. I'm sorry, he told her memory. Whatever you were, whoever, it doesn't matter. You risked everything for me—lost everything. And I failed you.

The boy was on all fours, shuddering. When Paul touched him he scrambled back along the edge, making Paul fear he might tumble into the Well.

But what difference does it make, really? Still, he put out his hand. "It's all right, lad. It's all right. I'm one of the good guys." And that's a laugh, isn't it?

"He here," the boy said.

"No, he's gone. The man is gone."

"He not! He in my head, verdad!"

Paul paused, his hand still stretched toward the boy. "What are you talking about?"

"El viejo! Sellars! He in my head—I can hear him!" The boy backed a little farther along the rim of the pit, keeping well out of Paul's reach. "It hurts!"

My God, Paul thought. Just don't scare him into falling. He squatted down, then extended his hand again. "We can help you. Please come back." What if he falls? What if he falls and we never find out? "What is Sellars saying to you?"

"Don't know! Can't understand—it hurts my head! He want . . . he want . . . want you to listen. . . ." The boy began to cry, then rubbed his face angrily as if to push the tears back into the ducts. "Leave me alone, m'entiendes?" It was hard to tell who he was shouting at.

Paul risked turning away for a moment so he could wave to some of his companions to come and help, but he could not tell if anyone had seen him. "Cho-Cho—that's your name, right? Come back with me. That man who tried to hurt you is gone. Sellars can tell us how to get out of here—how we can all get out of here. You want that, don't you?"