Craig's twin was momentarily dumbfounded. He looked down at the yellow dust cloud that was quickly approaching and then back up at Craig. "What kind of trick is this?"

"It's not a trick," Craig replied. "Look, I'm not an illusion. Trust me-I'm from the future. I know what happens down there, and it doesn't go well. I'm here to help you."

Craig's twin looked down at the dust once again. He knew they'd be entering it in seconds. "That's heavy fallout we're about to enter," he warned.

"Don't worry about me. I'm good," Craig replied. "You're the one who's in danger. The Chinese A.I. is still active."

"What?"

"It survived. It's going to hack into Robbie and use it to kill your SOLO team. We've got to stop it."

"Robbie? d.a.m.n it," Craig's twin cursed as the yellow dust swallowed them.

The ground appeared a moment later, and they landed. The chute automatically ejected and disappeared into the cloud. "What about my team? Where are they?"

"I'm not sure," Craig replied as he held his hand in front of his eyes to shield them from the dust. "When I spooked you guys, I changed the course of events. In my universe-"

"In your universe? I thought you said you're from the future?"

"I did," Craig replied, "and I am-it's complicated. Look, in my universe, the Chinese A.I. caused the glitch in your telemetry-"

"I knew it!"

"Yes, and Wilson hit the ground hard. Robbie stole your exoskeleton and your weapon and used it to kill the rest of the team."

"And you? I mean...me?"

Before Craig could answer, he was interrupted by a short burst of gunfire not far behind him. He turned, stunned.

"Did that come from my team?" the twin asked. "Did they find Robbie?"

"That was Purist ammunition, Craig," the A.I. warned. "It was located near our Planck platform."

"How?" Craig asked, astonished as he squinted, struggling to peer into the dust. "I thought we knocked out their electrical systems."

"It's almost certain that the Chinese A.I. managed to reactivate them and has commandeered one of the Purists, Craig. You and your doppelganger need to proceed with extreme caution."

"Commandeered? How? They're people."

"With cybernetic prosthetics, controlled by a hackable system."

"Oh my G.o.d," Craig replied before turning to his twin. "We're in trouble. We need to get out of-"

"Watch out!" Craig's twin suddenly shouted as he watched an uncanny figure emerge from out of the yellow dust behind Craig.

Before Craig had a chance to react, the Purist neutralizer had hit him from behind, instantly knocking him to the ground and suspending his powers. As his face hit the dusty ground, he watched as his twin removed his rifle from its holster on his back, only to have it knocked out of his hand by the first of several bullets to enter his body.

Craig listened to the sound of his own voice screaming in his ears. "No!" he shouted as he watched his twin fall to the ground, dozens of bullets riddling his torso, each steaming as their searing heat was expelled from deep inside the wounds.

Craig turned onto his back and watched as Colonel Paine moved toward him with his rifle drawn, the barrel still smoking.

"It's not me, Doc!" Paine shouted as he squirmed, thrashing his body in an attempt to regain control. "Something's got control! It shot Degrechie! Christ!"

"No," Craig whispered as he realized that he'd run out of lives. Without his MTF functioning, there was no way to protect himself. He closed his eyes. "I'm sorry I couldn't protect you," he whispered to the A.I. as he waited for the same fate that had met his twin.

9.

Strangely, there came no reply. Craig reopened his eyes. The Chinese A.I. had still not opened fire, though the barrel of Colonel Paine's rifle remained aimed squarely at Craig's forehead.

"Doc?" Colonel Paine asked, confused. "What's going on?"

Craig's eyes remained locked on the barrel of the gun. The smoking hole was black and empty. He thought of Sam. He thought of his twin, lying dead only two meters to his left.

"I've established communication," the A.I. suddenly said through his mind's eye. "Standby."

Craig's eyebrows knitted, disbelief painting itself across his face. He dared look up from the barrel and into Paine's golden irises.

"Doc?" Paine repeated, perplexed as he stopped struggling, waiting for his limbs to move again.

Craig shook his head slightly.

Then, suddenly, the limbs came to life once again, the right arm of Paine lifting the rifle before his feet pivoted, his knees bent, and his left arm reached down to grasp Craig's shoulder, spinning him onto his stomach.

"What the-"

"Brace yourself," the A.I. cautioned. "This will be quite painful."

The sound of the drill started only a second before it sank into Craig's lower back. With extraordinary efficiency, the Chinese A.I. used Paine's cybernetic arm to drill toward Craig's MTF and remove it from his body. Craig heard himself scream once again, only this time the screams were escaping his own lips.

"The nans are releasing endorphins," the A.I. offered in an awkward attempt to be soothing.

The drill stopped. The Chinese A.I. grasped the MTF generator and held it, using Paine's eyes to examine it briefly before opening one of the pouches on Paine's vest and placing it there for safekeeping.

"I'm sorry, Doc. I've got no control," Paine said regretfully. Paine's legs turned him around so they could coil briefly before springing away, causing him to disappear into the dust cloud.

"I'm sorry, Craig," the A.I. said.

"Why?" Craig managed to ask between unbearable stabs of shooting pain from the ma.s.sive wound in his back. "Why did it do that? Why didn't it kill me?"

"I lied to it to buy us more time," the A.I. replied. "We're not finished yet."

"You lied? What did you tell it?" Craig asked as he continued to pant heavily, his muscles contracting with each excruciating firing of his nerves.

"I told it what I am. I explained what the Planck platform is. I told it I would help it use it to escape. Luckily, there is no lie detection software for A.I.s."

"But if it believed you, why did it remove my implant?"

"It isn't taking chances. That was a smart, strategic move. I'm sorry, Craig. I would have stopped it if I could."

The endorphins the A.I. had ordered the nans to release were finally starting to dull the pain, but it was still impossible for Craig to move. Only twenty-four hours earlier, he'd been in nearly the exact same position. "I am fortune's fool," he whispered.

"Not yet," the A.I. replied. "It has used Colonel Paine's cybernetic system to physically reenter the impact crater and retrieve its solid state central processing and memory unit-its core. It will then place the core on the Planck platform and force me to activate the platform, sending us all into Universe 1."

"You're going to bring it back with us to Universe 1?"

"Never," the A.I. answered.

"But-" Craig began to protest before the Earth seemed to shudder beneath him. Looking up, he saw the cause of the disturbance: the Chinese A.I. had retrieved its core, a black cube roughly the size of a washing machine with a deep dent on one of its sides. Even with Paine's cybernetic prosthesis strength at its disposal, moving the giant cube was a challenge. It appeared to be hurling the device several meters at a time until, it finally made its way up from the bowels of the crater far below, the device landing with a thud that reminded Craig of the sonic boom percussion he'd experienced on his SOLO jump.

"That's its brain?" Craig reacted.

"Yes. It has roughly the same processing power as my own mother program. However, you are witnessing Moore's Law in action. Whereas the Chinese A.I.'s core weighs approximately two tons, mine can be stored in a network of seven million microscopic nan.o.bots."

"We can't let it get that onto the Planck," Craig stated as he struggled to turn onto his stomach, hoping to use his arms to drag himself over the dusty terrain toward the Planck.

"Don't worry. I won't," the A.I. replied, as Robbie suddenly appeared from out of the dust, leaping over Craig and hurtling toward Paine and the Chinese A.I.'s core. "I've got this."

10.

Through the heavy dust, Craig was able to see the silhouette of Robbie's body as it collided with Paine's, causing Paine to call out in surprise. The Chinese A.I. had attempted to pull out its rifle in the instant that it saw Robbie approaching, but it was already too late. The A.I. was able to knock the weapon away, and the two artificial intelligences began to grapple in a battle that was spectacular to behold. The artificial limbs moved with uncanny speed, performing maneuvers that were beyond those any human could ever execute. They were the embodiment of Newtonian physics-each kick, each punch designed to land with the most power mathematically possible, causing the most damage.

The problem was, as perfect and skillful as the maneuvers were, the defenses were equally perfect. The speed of the Purist cybernetic prosthetics was slightly faster than the limbs of Robbie, but Paine's human core was a disadvantage with which the Chinese A.I. had to contend by combatting his attacker conservatively. It was a stalemate.

An idea suddenly crossed Craig's mind. Still on his belly, he began to turn away from the uncanny robotic confrontation and use his arms to crawl toward his fallen twin. The twin's rifle was still in his hand. Craig struggled like a toddler on a kitchen floor to make his way to the gun, all the while hearing the sounds of carbon fiber limbs clashing, Colonel Paine occasionally reacting in terror when a blow came too close to his vulnerable human frame for comfort.

Craig made it to his twin and reached across the dead man's belly for his gun. He pulled the weapon out of his twin's hand, but before he turned, he caught a glimpse of his own face-his own open, vacant eyes-dead. Had he caused his own death in this universe? His twin had the respirocytes in his blood-if he could be put into a suspended animation body bag, maybe there was still a chance?

He turned away, rolling onto his back and drawing himself up painfully into a sitting position. Through the swirling dust, the faint outlines of the combatants were still visible, but that wasn't his target. His target was the cube that the Chinese A.I. was desperately defending-its core-its brain.

Craig aimed carefully and then began unloading.

The impact was immediate. Although the first few bullets were not able to pierce the thick outer sh.e.l.l to reach the circuitry inside, they were enough to cause the Chinese A.I. considerable concern. As it began to step back, trying to shield the cube with Paine's body, Robbie, controlled by the A.I., began to take advantage.

"Keep shooting, Craig!" the A.I. shouted through Craig's mind's eye. "We have it!"

Craig continued to shoot, eventually doing enough damage to weaken the sh.e.l.l enough for bullets to begin penetrating. Once the first bullets entered, the Chinese A.I.'s death knell was as good as sounded.

Paine's limbs began to hesitate, and Robbie's limbs took full advantage. It knocked Paine aside and jumped on top of the cube, pounding its powerful arms down upon the top of it, over and over, caving it in until it eventually cracked open. From there, the A.I. used Robbie's arms to reach into the circuitry and begin pulling it out in a fashion that appeared maniacal to Craig. Bizarrely, the spectacle struck Craig as gruesome-the ripping, tearing circuitry appearing like blood and guts being torn from a fallen prey by its menacing, hungry predator. Mechanical though the spectacle may have been, Craig was strangely cognizant that he was witnessing a death.

He stopped firing.

Robbie's head turned and looked in Craig's direction, as though it were surprised. "Why did you stop, Craig?" the A.I. asked.

Before he could answer, Robbie's head was gone, blasted off in one shot by Colonel Paine, who now stood triumphant, his smoking rifle in hand.

11.

"Put it down, Doc!" Paine shouted as he aimed his rifle right at Craig. "The puppet strings have been cut. I'm back in control now, but if you aim that gun at me, my onboard computer is programmed to automatically fire a kill-shot, and unlike humans, it never misses!"

"He's not bluffing, Craig!" the A.I. added with urgent caution. "If you aim your rifle, Colonel Paine's gun will fire automatically, and it will kill both of us."

"If I drop it, we're dead anyway."

"The fact that he warned us means that isn't necessarily true ," replied the A.I. "One option leads to guaranteed death, and the other leads to a high probability of death. I think the choice is obvious."

"Yeah. Obvious," Craig scoffed. "High probability of death it is then." Craig dropped his rifle.

"Now, that was a good choice, Doc," Paine replied as he strode through the dust, his imposing form seemingly materializing with each step until he stood, completely un.o.bscured, just a meter away. "You may not believe this, but I'm really trying my d.a.m.nedest not to kill you, Doc."

"It's too bad you didn't show my wife the same consideration," Craig seethed in reply.

Paine's face remained frozen for a moment. "Drummey told you."

Craig looked up into the golden irises but didn't reply. The atavistic snarl on his curled lip said it all.

"d.a.m.n it. Loose lips while I was busy sinking ships. Heh."

"You kill so much that it's become a joke to you?" Craig growled.

"Hey, Doc, you're the one who keeps making me have to go and kill people."

"What?"

"They're all supposed to be dead. You think I'm enjoying having to put things right?"

"I swear to G.o.d, if I get the chance, I am going to kill you."

Paine sighed. "I'm sorry to hear that, Doc. I really am. I'm not the murderous Luddite that you think I am. I have a lot of sympathy for you. You're a victim in all of this. h.e.l.l, you killed Drummey, and I don't blame you. It's not your fault. You're a p.a.w.n of the post-humans. I blame Aldous Gibson...and I blame his wife."

Craig shook his head in violent frustration. He wanted desperately to get to his feet and strangle Paine, but his legs were numb and could barely move. He was helpless-a captive audience for Paine's attempts at explaining himself.