He could feel thousands of tiny rubber needles pressing, tickling, itching for him to twitch just a little.

He grabbed the second battery and pinched the nub with his free hand. It was awkward now with the twitcher glove on. But he didn’t want to take the glove off.

“How do I get them out?”

Burnofsky’s look was unreadable. Something deep and dark was going on there. Something big. Finally he said, “You just snap the glass pipette. See the one end the way it’s scored? Snap it off and just upend it on any surface. The inside of the pipette is specially coated so the nanobots can’t grip. They’ll slide right out. Takes about five seconds.”

Billy held a single pipette up to the light. There was a suggestion of faint blueness, nothing more.

“What’s better about these?” Billy asked.

“Well, Billy, those are special nanobots. Those are very special nanobots.” Burnofsky’s voice was a whisper again. “Why don’t you empty them out in your palm?”

Billy was past hesitation. Without needing to be told, he slipped the goggles into place.

He snapped the pipette with his teeth, spit out the end, and held it so the open end was against his ungloved palm.

Two dozen nanobots slid onto his hand.

The goggles lit up with screens. Twenty-four separate visuals. It was a magnificent jumble of imagery. Mostly what he saw was nanobots—nanobots looking at nanobots—the whole tumbling melee of spidery legs and spinning central wheels and seeking metallic eyes.

And he saw, for the first time, the world of the meat. The nanobots lay, stood, staggered around in what seemed like a deep ditch. Like a ditch where leaves had fallen and collected on the ground without any trees nearby.

Crossing the ditch were smaller cuts in the “ground,” the smaller lines of his palm. The ditch, wasn’t that what they called a lifeline or something? Wasn’t there something about your lifeline, long or short? Stupid, but it was weird being down there.

And the funny thing was that with the goggles on, it was almost impossible to think of himself as anywhere other than down there. That reality immediately took precedence over the macro world. Burnofsky was all but forgotten.

Superimposed over the various visual fields was a menu, glowing radioactive orange.

One choice was 1x1.

Another was Platoon.

Replay.

And one labeled SRN Rep.

Billy said, “One by one probably means play them individually. Okay, and Platoon …” He twitched a finger, the button showed a flare, and suddenly all twenty-four visual fields began to align, all looking in the same direction like a well-disciplined army on parade. There were secondary options—he could choose how many platoons of what number. There were subroutines being suggested.

“What does SRN Rep”mean?” Billy asked.

“Ah,” Burnofsky said dreamily, “That’s the best part. It means replicate. But I doubt you’re up for that.”

And here’s the thing: Billy knew Burnofsky was provoking him. He knew the man wanted him to push SRN Rep.

He just didn’t know why. Billy the Kid, who was always being underestimated, assumed the old dude wanted to see him humiliate himself. Like he couldn’t handle whatever replicate meant.

He did not guess that the old man had just decided to obliterate all life on the planet.

“Probably shouldn’t …,” Burnofsky said, letting it hang there.

Billy pressed SRN Rep.

To escape the Crystal City Hyatt was not easy. Bug Man was not there alone. AmericaStrong security occupied the rooms on either side. AmericaStrong agents regularly rotated in and out of the lobby, keeping an unobtrusive but constant watch on who came and went. Bug Man was a big asset to the Armstrong Fancy Gifts Corporation.

They had of course bugged his room. And he had, of course, found those bugs, disabled all but one and looped that last bug into a program that simply replayed audio from TV shows.

Jessica had dressed up and looked stunning. Bug Man …Well, he had done what he could. He was never going to be George Clooney, or who was that other dude all the girls liked?

“Let’s go see some sights,” Bug Man said. He took her hand. She looked at his hand holding hers and frowned as if she was trying to remember something.

“Things are going to be a bit strange,” he said. “For a while, at least.”

“Strange?” She didn’t know what he meant, but she was unsettled.

Suddenly he felt doubt. He had almost convinced himself that nothing would change. She would still adore him, but maybe be just a bit less servile. A bit more honest.

Instead she was looking at him as if he presented a baffling mystery.

What am I doing with him?

“That’s okay, that’s okay. It’s going to be okay.” He was doing what he hadn’t had to do since about three days into wiring Jessica: he was placating.

And his nanobots were still inside her. If things got too weird . . .

He had long since planned a way to evade the watchful eyes of the AmericaStrong watchdogs. He knew where the passage was to the room-service elevators. It went down to the kitchen and beneath that to the laundry.

Ten minutes later he was outside, holding Jessica’s hand, wishing he had a warmer coat. It was a short walk to the Marriott, where they could get a cab without being spotted.

Bug Man felt wild. Like a kid skipping out on school. He felt free. Even the cold wind accentuated his sense of having escaped something. And if Jessica’s hand was a little less confident in his, well, that was all right too, because he would win her over. He would make her …no, scratch that …he would convince her to love him.