into that hole, pulled sideways, and brought in my left thumb, as well, squeezing it down into the opening, ripping it wider and wider. I thought if I could get at the internal components, I might be able to tear out something crucial. The artificial flesh was soft, and there was a layer of what felt like foam rubber beneath it—and beneath that, I could feel hard metal parts. I tried to get my whole hand in, tried to yank out whatever I could, but I was fading fast. My pulse was thundering so loudly in my ears I couldn’t hear anything else, just a thump-thump-thumping, over and over again, the thump-thump-thumping of . . .
Of footfalls! Someone was running this way, and—
And the scene lit up as flashlights came to bear on us.
“There they are!” said a high, mechanical voice that I recognized as belonging to the bootleg Pickover. “There they are!”
“NKPD!” shouted another voice I also recognized—a deep, Scottish brogue. “Let Lomax go!”
Joshua looked up. “Back off!” he shouted, in that female voice. “If you don’t, I’ll finish him.”
Through blurring vision, I saw Mac say, “If you kill him, you’ll go down for murder. You don’t want that.”
Joshua relaxed his grip a bit—not enough to let me escape, but enough to keep me alive as a hostage, at least a little while longer. I sucked in cold air, but my lungs still felt like they were on fire. In the illumination from the flashlights I could see Cassandra Wilkins’s face craning now to look at McCrae. As I’d said, most transfers didn’t show as much emotion as biologicals did, but it was clear that Joshua was panicking.
I was still on top. I thought if I waited until Joshua was distracted, I could yank free of his grip without him snapping my neck. “Let go of him,” Mac said firmly. It was hard to see him; he was the one holding the light source, after all, but I suddenly became aware that he was also holding a large disk. “Release his neck, or I’ll deactivate you for sure.”
Joshua practically had to roll his one good eye up into his head to see Mac, standing behind him. “You ever use one of those before?” he said. “No, I know you haven’t. I work in the transference business, and I know that technology just came out. The disruption isn’t instantaneous. Yes, you can kill me—but not before I kill Lomax.”
“You’re lying,” said McCrae. He handed his flashlight to Pickover, and brought the disk up in front of him, holding it vertically by its two U-shaped handles. “I’ve read the specs.”
“Are you willing to take that chance?” asked Joshua.
I could only arch my neck a bit; it was very hard for me to look up and see Mac, but he seemed to be frowning, and, after a second, he turned partially away. Pickover was standing behind him, and—
And suddenly an electric whine split the air, and Joshua was convulsing beneath me, and his hands were squeezing my throat even more tightly than before. The whine—a high, keening sound—must have been coming from the disruptor. I still had my hands inside Joshua’s chest and could feel his whole interior vibrating as his body continued to rack. I yanked my hands out and grabbed onto his arms, pulling with all my might. His hands popped free from my throat, and his whole female form was shaking rapidly. I rolled off him; the artificial body kept convulsing as the keening continued. I gasped for breath, and all I could think about for several moments was getting air into me.
After my head cleared a bit, I looked again at Joshua, who was still convulsing, and then I looked up at Mac, who was banging on the side of the disruptor disk. Now that he’d activated it, he apparently had no idea how to deactivate it. As I watched, he started to turn it over, presumably hoping there was some control he’d missed on the side he couldn’t see—and I realized that if he completed his move the disk would be aimed backward, in the direction of Pickover. Pickover clearly saw this, too: he was throwing his robot-like arms up, as if to shield his face—not that that could possibly do any good.
I tried to shout “No!,” but my voice was too raw and all that came out was a hoarse exhalation of breath, the sound of which was lost beneath the keening. In my peripheral vision,