Patrick waited for a reaction—a laugh, a cheer, encouragement, anything—but Zero remained silent behind his shields, while Romy frowned and seemed to be miles away.

“I won’t even take the customary thirty or forty percent,” he added. “I’ll settle for one point.” Plus expenses, of course. He could handle one percent of a zillion—last him the rest of his life and then some.

Still no reaction from either of them. He felt like a singer with a dead mike.

Finally Zero stirred, lacing his gloved fingers and popping the knuckles. “All fine and good, Patrick, but your scenario is missing one crucial element: You need proof.”

“Oh. Yeah. Right.”

No arguing with that: no pregnant sim, no case.

“And we can’t offer five million for a tip.”

“No,” Patrick said, “but maybe you can intercept that tip.”

“How do you propose I do that?”

“Obviously you’ve got a line into the heart of SimGen.”

He noticed Zero stiffen into a wary pose. “Obviously?”

“Sure. How else could you come by all this inside information. I don’t know if it’s a person or a bug, and I don’t want to know. What I’m saying is, if we can intercept the crucial tip, or even get it at the same time SimGen does, maybe we can reach this sim—”

“She’s got a name: Meerm.”

“See? You even know her name. So if we can use the tip to reach her before SimGen does, we’re golden.”

Zero shook his head. “I doubt that’s possible. All tips will be directed to Luca Portero, and he’s not the type to share information, even with the Sinclairs.”

“Well…,” Patrick said slowly, discarding a new idea immediately, but voicing it just to get a rise out of Romy. “He does have the hots for Romy…”

“Don’t even think about it,” she snapped.

“Joke, Romy.” At least she’d been listening. “Are you okay?”

She shook her head. “Not really. Something about this bothers me. How can a sim and a human cross-fertilize? Sims have twenty-two chromosome pairs and humans have twenty-three. Somewhere along the line they’re not going to match up, and a pair of chromosomes is going to be left hanging.”

“Not necessarily,” Zero said. “Look at the mule. Its father is a donkey, which has thirty-one pairs and its mother is a horse, which has thirty-two, though both are members of the genusEquus . Mules have been around for ages with no problems from the dangling chromosomes, other than the fact that they’re usually sterile.”

Romy’s frown deepened. “Then this baby, if it’s ever born, will probably be sterile too.”

“We’ll have to see. We’re in uncharted territory here.”

“So a mule,” Patrick said, “is the offspring of a male donkey and a female horse. What if it’s the other way around?”

“That’s a less common combination, but then you get something called a hinny. They look like mules but tend to be smaller because most donkeys are smaller than horses.”

“Where do all these fascinating tidbits of animal husbandry leave us?” Patrick said.

“With the realization that, given a fertile sim, a human-sim hybrid is a very real possibility.”

“I keep thinking about that baby,” Romy said. “What’s going to happen to it? Who’ll take care of it? And being neither sim nor human, what place will it have in the world?”

Zero’s tone softened. “Until we find Meerm I suggest you put off worrying about the baby. Given your nature, I know that won’t be easy, but your own safety should be at the top of your list right now. You won’t be able to help that baby if anything happens to you.”

Patrick felt the muscles between his shoulder blades tighten. “What do you mean, ‘happens’?”

He sighed. “You haven’t heard the whole story yet.”

“What are you holding back?”

“Nothing. I never had a chance to finish. Your war dance got us off track.”

Romy eyed Zero. “There’s a poor, frightened sim whore out there pregnant by a human degenerate. Isn’t that enough?”

“I never mentioned a whore, sim or otherwise.”

“I just assumed…”

Zero looked at Romy. “You might want to sit down.”

“Oh, no.” She stood blinking for a few heartbeats, then retreated two steps and dropped into the chair by the wall. “Do I want to hear this?”

“Probably not, but you need to.”

Zero then went on to explain who was behind the SLA and the reasons for its atrocities. Patrick listened, but all the while his eyes were fixed on Romy. He watched her initial disbelief give way to unwilling acceptance of a horrifying truth. Her expression was slack by the time Zero finished. He wanted to step to her side and slip his arms around her, but thought better of it. Jostle her now and she might explode.

Patrick too was shocked. To think that just two weeks ago in front of the burned-out ruins of the Bronx globulin farm, Romy had introduced him to the engineer of all this death and destruction.

“There’s got to be some way we can nail Portero for this,” Patrick said.

“Don’t count on it. He’s a pro, a very careful one.”

“That doesn’t mean we can’t manufacture some evidence.”

“No,” Zero said, shaking his head. “Too dangerous.”

Romy finally spoke, her voice barely above a whisper. “I…I’d always figured Portero for a snake. But…I never dreamed…I mean, executing three humans and twelve sims…just to cover his tracks.”

“And those are just the ones we know about. You two might have been added to list if we hadn’t intervened when Patrick’s car was knocked off the road.”

“That was him?” Patrick said, turning toward Romy. “You mean I was standing two feet away from the guy who tried to kill me and I didn’t know it?”

“Not him directly,” Zero said. “But he planned it.”

“Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

He shrugged. “No one said, ‘Let’s not tell Patrick.’ When it happened, we still weren’t sure of you. And after you came on board, it simply never came up.”

“Just as well, I guess,” he said. “If I’d known I might have opened my big yap and given something away.”

“Which brings me back to what I was saying before,” Zero said. “Watch your backs. You and Romy have put yourselves on the wrong side of Manassas Ventures. Manassas is connected to SimGen and therefore, by extension, to Luca Portero. We’ve known he was ruthless, we just didn’t know until nowhow ruthless. There’s nothing this man won’t do, so please be careful. I’ll do whatever I can to back you up, but the organization can do only so much.”

Patrick turned to Romy. “Maybe we should move in together.”

She rolled her eyes. “Not that again.”

“For mutual protection, of course.”

“Of course.”

“Not such a bad idea, actually,” Zero said. “I know I’d rest easier, but I’ll leave that up to you two.”

Zero, I think I love you, Patrick thought.

But Romy didn’t appear to be buying. “Let’s worry about Meerm,” she said. “How do we find her first?”

“Why don’t we try thinking like a sim?” Patrick said, hating to leave the subject of cohabitation. “If I were a lost and frightened sim, where would I hide?”

“With other sims,” Zero said. “The trouble is, if she’s hiding from humans she’s not exactly going to come out and announce herself.”

Patrick had a thought. “How about my roomie? Is there some way Tome can help sniff her out? You know, set a sim to find a sim?”

Zero pointed at him. “Now that’s an idea.”

“As long as it doesn’t put him in any danger,” Patrick added. He’d grown fond of that old sim, and the possibility of anything happening to him put a twist in his gut. “I don’t want him hurt.”

“None of us do,” Zero said. “Let’s sit down and see where we can take that. Meanwhile, I’ve appealed to a higher power for help.”

“You’ve been praying?” Romy said.

“No, I meant that in a more literal sense. I was speaking of the Reverend’s satellite.”

2

SUSSEX COUNTY, NJ

“Watch this,” Sinclair-1 said the moment Luca stepped into the darkened office. The sun was down but only a corner floor lamp was lit.