"You want me to feel sorry for a woman who betrayed her country? Betrayed her species? Betrayed you? Doc, in case you haven't noticed, it's because of that woman's actions that I've had to go chasing you through these alternate timelines. It's because of her that I've had to kill to put things right. You want me to feel sorry for her? h.e.l.l, Doc. I was glad as h.e.l.l when I killed her, and I'm twice as glad now."

"Stay calm, Craig," the A.I. cautioned.

"Go to h.e.l.l," Craig replied as he began trying to get to his feet. The attempt was pathetic, but there was nothing else he could do. He was blind with rage.

As Paine stood, wearing a smirk on his face as he watched Craig try to stand, a sound suddenly alerted both of them. Paine turned to see the silhouetted outline of four men; Craig's SOLO team members had arrived.

12.

"Of course, Doc, I'm gonna have to ask you to stay quiet," Paine said as his cybernetic arms moved with preternatural speed, driving the b.u.t.t of his rifle into Craig's mouth, splitting it open and causing him to nearly lose consciousness.

Paine turned away and strode toward the four SOLO members. "Friendlies," he said as he pressed a b.u.t.ton on the earpiece of his helmet, disarming his automatic firing program. Then he held his rifle up above his head and shouted out, "I'm a friendly!"

Commander Wilson trained his rifle on the approaching figure as it materialized from out of the yellow dust. "Identify yourself!"

"Colonel Paine, U.S. Air Force!" Paine shouted back. He stopped just a few meters from the four SOLO members.

"Colonel Paine?" Lieutenant Commander Weddell reacted with astonishment, "of Cannon Air Force Base, New Mexico?"

"That's correct," Paine replied, standing far enough away that the dust obscured the more disturbing details of his appearance.

"Holy...he's the C.O.," Wilson realized as he called Paine's name up on his HUD. "Sir!" he shouted immediately as he lowered his weapon and saluted his superior, causing the rest of the team to follow suit.

Paine saluted in return, holding the salute as he gazed at the four ghosts that stood before him. "It's not every day you get to salute true heroes," Paine observed.

"Sir?" Wilson replied.

"It is an honor to meet you, men-a d.a.m.n honor."

Paine slowly lowered his salute, and the SOLO members did likewise.

"Sir, permission to speak freely?" Wilson asked.

"I'm afraid I won't be able to grant you that permission," Paine replied, his voice filled with regret.

"Sir?" Wilson asked again as he peered through the dust. "Can I ask why you're here? How?"

Paine remained silent and unmoving.

Confused and terrified, Wilson stepped forward, daring the wrath of his superior after deciding answers were more important. By the second step, his mouth had fallen open. The crosshatch of stretch marks surrounding the ocular implants and the cybernetic prosthetics dumbfounded Wilson, and he froze in place.

Paine grimaced before lifting his rifle and aiming it. A short burst of gunfire later, and all of the SOLO members were dead-again.

"Craig? Craig?" the A.I. said. "You've been concussed, but the nans are already repairing the damage. You should feel completely better in a few minutes."

"The team...my team," Craig replied, dazed, his head swimming in waters of agony.

"I'm afraid Colonel Paine has already eliminated them," the A.I. answered.

As if on cue, Paine returned to the scene, dragging the decapitated body of Robbie the robot with him. He tossed it next to Craig, the heavy body hitting the ground with a percussive thud. "The suspended animation body bags-where are they?"

Craig turned on his side and pointed at a minute crevice in the small of the robot's back.

Paine drove his powerful fist into it, causing the flap to snap down and the body bags to tumble out. He retrieved one and then grabbed the foot of Craig's twin, pulling the body toward him. "I'm not a hypocrite, Doc. It's all about setting things right-setting things the way they were meant to be. I hope to h.e.l.l your ex-wife isn't able to bring you back in this universe, because if she does, there's a Colonel Paine in this universe that will have to come looking for you to fix all the damage you cause. I hope she chokes on a chicken bone and dies first, but it's not up to me," he explained as he finished putting Craig's twin into the bag. "It's not up to anyone outside of this universe. You understand?"

Craig watched as Paine sealed the bag, the open, vacant eyes the last thing he saw of his twin as they disappeared into the darkness.

"I am fortune's fool," he whispered.

13.

WAKING UP intermittently over the next few hours, Craig only remembered hazy clips of his journey in Purist custody from the post-human facility at Mount Andromeda to the dark, circular room in which he now found himself. He remembered being roughly dragged off the Planck platform, and he remembered someone sticking his neck with a needle. After that, it was a whirlwind. The cold wind stirred him briefly as he wheeled through the darkness on some sort of stretcher, his wrists and ankles cuffed so he couldn't move. They were on a tarmac, the sound of a jet engine from a transport nearly deafening. After that, he remembered being taken out of a shuttle bus, the stretcher roughly thudding onto the ground. For the briefest of moments, Craig saw what appeared to be the underbelly of a gray dome, so high and sprawling that it seemed like the sky had suddenly sprouted fluorescent lighting.

And now, here he was, finally able to keep his eyes open. He was still cuffed to a bed, both his wrists and ankles secured, and the bed was inclined at a twenty-degree angle.

"You are in a military facility within Endurance Bio-Dome in the former city of Seattle, Washington," the A.I. said in his usual calm and informative manner. "It is one of 431 super bio-domes constructed to shelter large populations from the worst effects of the nuclear winter."

Craig tried to reply, but only a groan emanated from him.

"They've been giving you Diprivan, a general anesthetic. They're trying to bring you out from under it now, and I'm attempting to augment the process by releasing endorphins. You should be feeling much better in a few moments."

The A.I. was right as, moments later, Craig was feeling oddly aware and confident. "What's happening? Why are we here?"

"I haven't been able to see much with you unconscious, but I have been able to hear snippets of conversations from time to time. From what I have gathered, they have brought in an expert who is leading the effort to remove the nan.o.bots that house my mother program from your person."

"How long was I out?"

"Nine hours and thirty minutes. We've been in Endurance Bio-Dome for at least four hours and eleven minutes, though I cannot be sure what time we entered because you were unconscious. Thus, obviously, your eyes were shut."

"Good enough," Craig replied.

"It's amazing," a familiar voice said from behind Craig. "You're talking to it right now, aren't you?"

"Who's there?" Craig asked, surprised.

"You may not remember me," the voice replied, "but I remember you."

The woman to whom the voice belonged stepped out from behind Craig and crossed in front of him with a slight smile painted across her lips, revealing her still beautiful, if no longer perfectly white teeth.

"Daniella?" Craig exhaled, astonished.

Daniella's smile broadened. "You remember."

14.

"You're the expert they're using to carve up my brain?" Craig reacted in disbelief.

"What? No," Daniella replied, shaking her head. "I'm here to help you."

"If you're working for them, you're not here to help me," Craig replied.

"Whoa! Hold on there, cowboy," Daniella responded with indignation. "I'm here to help you. Every member of my team is here to help you. If we didn't have your best interest at heart, we'd just toss you into an industrial-sized blender and stick the goo that comes out into a centrifuge until we separate the nan.o.bots. We could do that, you know. I'm not just being glib."

"Nice."

"But we obviously aren't going that route," Daniella added in exasperation. "We're here to help you. Everyone here is filled with human compa.s.sion. Don't worry. No matter how long it takes, we'll get you back to normal."

"What gives you the right to say what's normal?" Craig retorted.

Daniella was taken aback, her head tilting backward, as though she'd been tapped on the chin. "Uh, normal isn't having an artificial intelligence stuck in your brain, cowboy," she replied.

"There shouldn't be a line," Craig answered before turning his face from her and examining the room. For the most part, it was barren, dark, and circular, with one door on Craig's left.

"There's a guard stationed outside at all times-a super soldier, I'm afraid," the A.I. noted.

"If there's no line," Daniella continued, "then how are we to know who's human and who's not?"

"An expert in nanotechnology is concerned that augmentation will lead to a blurring of the line between human and machine?" Craig observed.

Daniella paused for a moment, her eyebrows knitted. This was not what she had been expecting from Craig. She'd been expecting him to lavish her with praise, that he'd be thrilled that she was there to remove the A.I. infestation from his body. She'd a.s.sumed he'd think of it as a cancer, something eating away at his soul and killing him.

"Why are you helping them?" Craig suddenly asked, turning to her and staring hard into her eyes.

"Them? Craig, we're on the same team-or at least we were."

"That's right," Craig nodded. "We were. I think you should take a real hard look at your teammates and ask yourself if you're playing on the right side."

15.

Paine entered his quarters, shut the door behind him, and immediately doubled over in agony. It was not hyperbole to say his stomach felt as though he'd swallowed barbed wire for breakfast. An implacable nausea had settled over him, but he knew vomiting wouldn't help; only blood would come up anyway. No, he needed to bear his burden.

He turned to his desk and swiped his hand over the OLED touchscreen, activating his holo-projectors. The Presidential Seal hovered in front of him, the seal of the ruler of the world. Paine grimaced while he stood waiting, staring into the seal and all that it meant. The Latin E pluribus unum was still inscribed on it, just as it had been when an earlier version was the Presidential Seal of the United States of America: "Out of many, one." It seemed so much more meaningful now, in the era of the one-world state.

As Paine became uncharacteristically lost in his thoughts, President Morgan's image suddenly appeared in holographic form before him. "Mr. President," Paine said in greeting as he saluted.

"Colonel Paine," Morgan replied, saluting in return. He was an older gentleman, now in his late sixties, and his head was bald, despite the many cures for baldness that had been developed. His face was worn with lines, especially surrounding his eyes and lips. The wrinkles were different on him, however, than the lines that crisscrossed the faces of his citizens. His lines were smile lines, cheerful and grandfatherly. The lines that dotted the faces of most people in the post WWIII world were unnatural deformities, caused by the fallout that continued to surround the globe. By comparison, Morgan looked healthy-too healthy. "Let me offer you my congratulations. I've been kept abreast of your mission. You've done a man's job for your country and your species, sir."

"Thank you, Mr. President," Paine replied.

"I almost couldn't believe it when I read your initial report. The post-human technology was even more advanced than we'd previously believed. What were they called? Plack platforms or something?"

"Planck, sir. Yes, Mr. President."

"Advanced stuff," Morgan observed. "Dangerous. You did the right thing by trying to undo the damage done by that post-human in the other universes. I want you to know that I stand by you in that 100 percent. You'll be immune to any subsequent attempts to indict you for your actions, rest a.s.sured."

Paine tried not to grin-the idea of immunity seemed so absurd to him now. "Mr. President, it wasn't exactly a post-human who was running around in those alternate universes."

"I read the report, Colonel. One of your former men, wasn't it?"

"Not only that, sir, but he's a former American hero. He's been a p.a.w.n in this all along, used by the post-humans. When this is over, sir, and the artificial intelligence has been removed from his body, I'd like to recommend that he receive the same immunity that you are kindly offering me."

"That's quite an endors.e.m.e.nt of this fellow, Colonel Paine, especially considering everything he's put you through."

Paine took a moment to consider his next words. "He's been misguided-you might even say brainwashed-but his actions always have n.o.ble intentions. I believe, if he knew the consequences for his actions, he'd understand."

"Speaking of n.o.ble," Morgan replied, "standing up for this man and risking your life to bring him back home is one of the n.o.blest acts I have ever witnessed. You'll receive the Medal of Freedom for this."

"Thank you, sir. That's very kind of you, sir. I'm honored."

Morgan's tone suddenly shifted. "However, in regard to this Craig Emilson, I'm afraid protecting him can no longer be our highest priority."

"Sir?"

"I've just read the most recent evaluation of the artificial intelligence extraction project. According to the project leader, it may take weeks or even a month to extract the A.I., and even then, there is no guarantee that Emilson will survive the procedure."

Colonel Paine sighed. "I hadn't read the report."

"No, you couldn't have. It was written specifically for me-hot off the presses, so to speak. Evidently, the project leader expects that the A.I. will be able to execute evasive maneuvers to prolong the process, playing hide-and-seek inside the poor man's body. She thinks there may be ways to isolate it, but attempts at keeping Emilson alive increase the chances that the A.I.'s mother program may be damaged. It is a risk we simply can't take to spare the life of one man, Colonel, no matter how heroic he might be."

"Can we give her some time-"

"Time is unfortunately a luxury we cannot afford," Morgan replied. "You know the score, Colonel. That A.I. is the most valuable ent.i.ty in the world. It can be the answer to all of our problems. Every moment that it eludes us is another moment for another A.I.- a hostile A.I.-to emerge unchallenged. Keeping Emilson alive means gambling with the safety of our entire species and, Colonel, you know me well enough to know I won't take that gamble."

"I do, Mr. President. I understand."