In other words, by dividing my consciousness and focusing simultaneously on multiple stimuli, I could slow my perception of time. And the more I divided my consciousness, the slower time seemed to unfurl.
I wondered if I could linger in moments, let each second become a world unto itself. Back at Feld’s lab, I’d easily anticipated the physical movements of his guards, but that was nothing compared to this.
This had happened in the bathtub and been torture because I had no control. I couldn’t stop it. Now I could. It was as if I could actually slow time.
The sound coming through the curtained windows was different. Muffled. It was snowing.
I went to the French doors, stepped outside.
Letting my consciousness divide and divide and divide and divide until the snowflakes stood almost motionless. I watched one crawling through the air, just past the tip of my nose. And the cars were still, the people on the sidewalks eighty feet below barely moving, and a hyperjet just inching across the sky.
I blinked, reverting to a single consciousness.
The world at normal speed again.
And I knew: This is how Kara had dodged bullets.
And I also knew something else. Where before, I only had vague theories and educated guesses, in this moment, as the snow melted on my face, I had the clearest model in my mind of how my sister was going to release her upgrade.
I even knew where.
* * *
—
I slipped the needle into his vein so deftly he only stirred. After depressing the plunger, I placed a piece of tape over the needle, which was still embedded in his skin, then moved back to the chair.
The bedroom was dark, and the chair creaked under my weight as I settled into it.
I took a few deep breaths in the silence.
The seconds ticking past at half-speed, since I was concurrently in this space, but also thinking about my sister.
A black cat brushed against my legs, purring contentedly.
Edwin Rogers stirred, rolled over onto his side, and was still again.
There was only the sound of his soft snoring and the whisper of central air blowing heat through the vents and the purring.
My brain wanted to engage with twenty-nine distinct sources of sensory input, but I wouldn’t let it. The process of denial was still a conscious effort. Soon, I would adapt.
I was on the second floor of the director’s redbrick row house in Georgetown, four blocks from the Potomac.
It was 2:27 A.M.
Noisily, I cleared my throat. Edwin shifted under the covers. I cleared my throat again, louder this time. Edwin startled awake and sat up in bed, staring into the darkness.
“You didn’t dream that noise,” I said.
He lunged for his bedside table, pulling the drawer open.
“The gun isn’t there,” I said. “I’m holding it.”
Edwin looked in my direction. It was so dark in the room that I felt confident he could only see my general shape. I could see him perfectly.
“Who’s there?” he asked.
“Your former lab experiment.”
For a moment, Edwin was absolutely still. I saw him look down at his left forearm. Saw his hand touch the syringe I’d taped to his arm. Saw him observe the depressed plunger. He pulled the tape away and removed the needle from his vein.
“What did you inject into me?”
“We’ll talk about that later.”
“Are you out of your mind, Logan? If my wife—”
“I know she’s out of town.”
“I have security outside. How—”
“It doesn’t matter.”
I leaned forward, turned on the bedside table lamp.
Edwin stared at me in wide-eyed horror.
Before the upgrade, most humans were a complete mystery to me—like mountains enshrouded by clouds and mist. I knew they were there, but their true shape remained hidden. My ability to predict others’ behaviors—even my wife’s and daughter’s—had proved endlessly elusive. The first upgrade had cleared some of the mist away.
Now, as my second upgrade began to manifest, an interconnected network of previously invisible forces was revealing itself to me. I saw not only Edwin’s fear but all the pressures acting upon him to elicit that fear—his multiple, competing identities as a husband, father, grandfather, GPA director, law enforcement officer, mentor, friend, betrayer, scientist, and living, breathing organism who didn’t want to die.
It was like seeing the difference between the trees blowing in the wind and the wind coming long before the trees began to bend. And knowing exactly how much they would bend.
The distance between who I thought Edwin was and who he actually was had been narrowed. I had every memory of the man, every word I’d heard him speak, every reaction he’d made in my pre-upgrade years—all working to construct a near-flawless mental model of who he was in the moment and what he would do in the next. It wasn’t that I could actually read his mind. Just like I wasn’t actually slowing down time. None of these observations gave me exact information, but the impressions they imparted created a rich foundation for inference and deduction.
I saw into him.
The secret structure of his identity stood before me unobscured, unobstructed.
A mountain in full view, on a clear, autumn day.
There was no mystery anymore. He was trapped in an endless loop of his core desires, and they would undercut any impulse toward unpredictability.
He would act inevitably.
He would bend as the wind blew him.
I could see the wind.
And I could be the wind.
At this moment, he was thinking: I didn’t know what to do with you. I didn’t know how the upgrade would change you. I’m sorry.
And then he said: “I’m so sorry for everything. I treated you like a lab rat. Lied to your family.”
Smart. Getting out ahead of that.
“You were doing your job. I understand what your incentives were. The various pressures bearing down on you.” I looked at the .357 revolver I’d taken out of Edwin’s bedside table. “But please, never forget…I could’ve killed you tonight for what you did to me and to my family.”
He hemorrhaged relief.
I said, “The person who broke me out of your black site was my sister. She killed your contractors. My mother had upgraded her as well.”
“Why?”
“Because Miriam was dying. This upgrade was her magnum opus, and she knew she wouldn’t live long enough to see it through to completion. So she upgraded her two remaining children and left the final stages of the upgrade for us to complete. I didn’t want to go through with it. Kara did.”
As I told him everything, I watched his fear for his own safety become horror at what my sister was planning.
“So Glasgow was a test run?” Edwin asked.
I nodded.
“We just finished sequencing a few genomes of the dead.”
“Prionopathy,” I said.
“Yeah.” He sounded surprised that I knew that.
I said, “That’s the least of your problems. At this moment, my sister is purifying the virus. She’s weeks, maybe days, away from having a transmissible upgrade. Imagine Glasgow on a global scale.”
I watched the dread take up residence in Edwin’s eyes.
“How would she pull that off?” Edwin asked.
“Once deaths begin happening in mass numbers, governments will respond with lockdowns and closures. I know many countries are already working on anti-Scythe therapies. If I’m Kara, I need to make sure the upgrade is everywhere before these things happen. I’d need to infect a handful of willing carriers and then send them out, simultaneously, to the ends of the earth.”