“Bust through,” said Addy, her voice as resolute as a battlefield commander in the video games he once played. Video game? “I’ll help you run.”

  The blood rushed to his head. “Addy, if … it’s too late.”

  “Never too late. Can you meet me tonight at the Starbucks in the Farmers Market? Plan and plot your escape? Nine o’clock?”

  “Sure. That would be great.” His heart swelled.

  “By the way, I moved into the new place a couple of days ago.”

  “Oh, West Side?”

  “No. The Tiny House Complex next to CBS. I even got my favorite: Tiny House 61347, ground level—side yard too.”

  “Wow, that’s great.”

  “We’re practically neighbors. Nine o’clock? We’ll figure a way to get you out.”

  “Sure. Hey, remember that Starbucks card, the one you called singular?”

  Addy laughed. “Not the card. Singular was the word you were looking for.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Dr. Watson’s ‘one word.’ Singular means one, and it’s used all the time in the Sherlock Holmes stories.”

  Singular. Fuck, it had to be singular. “You’re a genius, Addy.”

  She laughed. “See you at Starbucks. Got to go.”

  The call ended. He shoved the phone in his pocket. Of course, it was singular. With Klaes’s ego, what else could it be? One more piece of the puzzle, and Addy back in the picture.

  He imagined the ideas swirling in Addy’s imagination for getting him out of his trap. Pole vault. Sleeping pills. Get shot out of a cannon. His brain defied remedy, reasonable or absurd.

  He slid the little white hand over Sent and the rectangular shade appeared. One click. Lift the shade. Lift the shade. She wanted him to complete his painting. She must have wanted him to know his father. Or did she? His vision blurred. But not this way. Even if it gained you the world, some boundaries should not be crossed. He slid the white hand to the stolid X and closed his mother’s file.

  As the day unfolded, a strange pressure built within his ribcage, expanding, unbearable. If his four outer walls were impassable, another set of walls weren’t. Opening a drawer, he gazed at the accumulated personal items, removed a folded Trader Joe’s shopping bag, and set it beside the chair. What would you take to heaven? What would you take to hell? He chose from the accumulation of five years—mints, a holiday scarf, a stain pen, hand sanitizer, nanoflossers, a compact umbrella— and dropped the items into the bag, setting it under the desk on the skateboard.

  As if the bell for an opening round, the lunch whistle blew, and Raphael stood up. He strode out of the cubicle and shouted, “I quit, Dreemont. You hear me? I quit!” The surrounding cubicles erupted in astonished chatter and then hushed.

  The immense quiet unnerved him. His hands trembled and his shoulders sank. The cubicle’s entrance had vanished. Four walls and no exit. Now, or no moment after. He folded his shaking hand into a fist and pounded his enclosure. “Quit, End Men, quit! Run out of here before you can’t!” The exit reappeared as if he’d awoken from a nightmare.

  At the sound of rapid, heavy footfalls, someone shouted, “Get out, Raphael!” Another voice repeated the warning, followed by a swarm of agitated questions.

  Dreemont appeared at the cubicle’s opening. Behind the supervisor stood another man. Atop the second man’s bruised and swollen head was a straw fedora, a little dented though unmistakable. The man with the battered face slipped around Dreemont and pushed out his lip, letting blood seep from the wound.

  “What the hell?” said Raphael, falling back, an icy current running up his spine.

  “Language,” scolded Dreemont, eyebrows raised. “I was coming by to introduce you to our newly appointed head of security, Tony Struat.”

  The name crawled into Raphael’s ears with the loathsome tread of some scaly and determined insect. Struat, amused eyes studying Raphael through steel-rimmed lenses, extended a hand. Raphael drew away from the long, calloused fingers, wriggling mechanically and—though it must have been in Raphael’s imagination—clicking.

  “Raphael, please accompany us?”

  “Didn’t you hear me? I quit!”

  The unshaken hand now jumped to Raphael’s shoulder, clamped, and jerked him forward.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-NINE

  Maglio’s office was a chilly environment under any circumstances, but today it was Arctic. With one final firm shove, Raphael lurched into the room.

  “Please have a seat,” said Maglio from behind his desk. Heavy hands clamped Raphael’s shoulders and sat him in a chair facing the CEO.

  Raphael caught his breath. “You can’t”—he reached across his chest and gripped Struat’s wrist to get the hand off him, but the fingers were unyielding—“hold me. Let me go, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Mr. Struat,” said Maglio, glancing over Raphael’s head.

  The weight lifted from his shoulders. Heartbeat at its limit, Raphael jumped up and walked toward the door, catching sight of Maisie in proximity.

  “We know about Jason Klaes,” said Maisie.

  “Then you don’t need me,” said Raphael, reaching the door. “Please open this.”

  “We also learned about your relationship with him.”

  Raphael’s entire body seemed to expand and contract with his pulse. “This is illegal.”

  “Did you know stealing corporate information is a felony?” asked Maglio.

  If his head wasn’t about to explode, Raphael would have laughed. If he had his board, he would have rammed it into the door. Instead, he swung toward Maglio. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding. Keeping possums out of the database? I know what my job was all about.”

  “How deep a hole are you going to dig for yourself?”

  “We’re a team,” said Maisie.

  “I’m leaving your team. I quit Norval.”

  Struat laughed, much longer than irony required.

  Raphael flicked the hair from his damp forehead. Christ, he may as well have come out of a shower. Feign worldliness. “This is getting boring.”

  “Yes, it is,” agreed Maisie.

  Maglio stood up. “I want Klaes’s Personality Plus without the imperfections. Something a little more sophisticated than what we’ve got.”

  “Can’t help you. I’m only an IT guy.”

  “With a connection to the genius who created it,” said Maisie.

  Raphael met Maglio’s eyes. “Jason Klaes is dead.”

  “But you receive messages from him, don’t you?” noted Maglio with a grin.

  The screen shot. Struat’s surveillance. Likely, his phone was tapped. Sure, they knew.

  “Ever chat about the crate?” asked Maglio.

  Raphael stiffened. “Crate?”

  “The Klaes crate your friend Lily Faraday is opening at the celebration.”

  “Not really …”

  “You don’t know what it contains?”

  Yes, Angie Murie, Klaes’s daughter. “No idea.”

  “Nothing of value. At the price of the damage done to Mr. Struat’s head, we established that.”

  “Tough motherfucker that Electrician.” Struat rubbed his swollen cheek.

  “You prevailed, Mr. Struat,” said Maglio, smiling broadly. “We checked it out in hopes, well, doesn’t matter. It’s a joke. We’re putting our chips on you to produce Personality Plus.”

  If it were Angie in the box, would they have held it back? “I can’t help you.”

  Maglio plucked a pen from its holder and tapped it on the desk. “Long before you came on board with Norval, I had Jason Klaes and his ideas in my sights. Years ago, Mr. Struat investigated our physicist’s background thoroughly.” Maglio stood up, held the pen as if a dart, and aimed it toward Raphael’s head. “Dr. Klaes’s interests went somewhat beyond quantum physics and AI. His entanglements included several searing affairs at the Harvey Hotel, an eccentric old dump that appealed to his sense of humor.”

  “Doesn’t interest me,” said Raphael.

  Maglio drew back his hand and flung the faux dart, which whizzed past Raphael’s head to strike the trunk of a potted palm—and stick.

  Struat clapped.

  “This might.” Maglio clasped his computer monitor and turned it around. Klaes’s face filled the screen. The photo might well have been taken in the days before he died. His face was creased with wrinkles and his beard was full and white. “Anyone you recognize?”

  Raphael glanced away. “Nope.”

  “Let’s try this then.” Maglio tapped his keyboard. A chyron appeared above Klaes’s face: Old Friends Are Golden, But an Old You Is Not. Klaes’s beard retracted, simultaneously turning from white to gray to black. As the beard retreated further, the laugh lines filled, the wrinkles smoothed, the loose skin tightened and glowed as if lit from the inside. Stay Young With Vanitum! flashed a message in gold letters. Where the beard had been was sturdy chin and sharp jawline, complemented by the narrow aquiline nose. In the monitor mirror—

  Go through the quantum looking glass, handsome.

  Raphael stared at himself. He retreated from and advanced toward the stunning pixels, shaking his head no but hearing yes. Something passed through him like a net through water. There and not there.

  “At the Harvey, a child was conceived, but not into a happy family, not into those famously like units.”

  “Shut up,” cried Raphael, lunging toward Maglio.

  “Easy now,” said Struat, grabbing him from behind.

  “Poor Jayne Lennon,” said Maglio. “Seduced by a married man. Fucked and fucked over. Left to bring up the bastard on her own. While she settled into stone.”

  “It is sad,” said Maisie.

  He could not believe it. “What’s sad is this garbage you’ve made up.” He pointed at the monitor. “It’s just a digital trick. I’m not going for any of it.”

  Maglio moved some items on the desk and lifted a paper rectangle the size of a greeting card. He held it horizontally and then bent it a bit, so Raphael could see it was an old photo. “Jason Klaes acquired the beard in his late-twenties, and it grew and grew. There are few photos of him clean-shaven. Here is one when he was, oh, twenty-six. About your age.” Maglio held out the photo.

  It drew him in like a small fish hooked with heavy tackle.

  Raphael considered the photo of himself. No, not exactly. Raphael’s eyes were gray, Klaes’s hazel. The physicist’s forehead broader. The hair longer and lighter than his. The alteration was not significant. The jawline was identical to his. The cheekbones … Klaes stood before a black slate, a dense formula written with meticulous penmanship and bordered with a square. In one hand, he held a piece of chalk.

  Jason Klaes, the bearded rotted pumpkin who slid into the inferno, was his—the word slipped though his lips like a hot cinder melting through snow—father.

  The hoary trope, the pokey reveal: my father.

  Whose blood coats my blade! wondered the Greek—or should have.

  The room blurred, and a stupid tear trickled down his cheek. Was Maglio tittering? With the back of his hand Raphael wiped the drop away. Maglio was capable of this manipulation. Had they also altered the photo of the beardless face to convince Raphael of Klaes’s paternity? He searched his overheated brain for their motive. Did they think it would give them—through him—leverage over Klaes? But if Klaes was his father, he surely knew. Hey, Mr. Klaes, guess what? You’re my father. Now give Maglio what he wants. No fucking sense.

  Maglio pinned Raphael with his gaze. “Perhaps you remember the online recruitment advertisements that drew you to Norval? Did you think they were random?”

  One more body blow. Raphael swayed and lifted the board to his chest, but his hands were empty, his board left under his desk. Was he only imagining they were cackling?

  “I was betting on you,” said Maglio. “With the blood of your genius father, surely you could ferret out his secrets. We’ve invested enormous resources into Resurrection. Your discovery of the Personality Plus file was the last piece in the puzzle. Finally, we had the proper thing. The true algorithm for afterlife. It was a mean trick.” Maglio sighed and shook his head. “We have to take off the gloves. The father is beyond our reach, not the son. Mr. Struat knows the weakness of the flesh. Your flesh. Your pain. Klaes will bend to the screams of his son.”

  “You’re wrong,” said Raphael, gazing at all of them. “He’s code.”

  “Daddy code,” purred Maisie.

  Raphael felt the blood drain from his head. “You’ve bought your own sales pitch.”

  Maglio’s eyebrows lifted. “Because your presence is a threat to good order, bad for morale and worker self-esteem, for the near future, I ban you from the premises. Working from home, you will continue to wage battle against the rising Blank hoards. Your primary assignment—if you choose to take it, and you do—is getting the true Personality Plus for us.”

  Raphael scanned the smiling faces. “I’ve been turned down for a work-from-home permit. Sorry. Go fuck yourselves.”

  Maisie sighed. “Oh, Raphy, how crude. The rules can be bent now and then. I’m sure Geo can arrange for a permit.”

  Maglio winked.

  “I’m not yours. I’m not Geo’s.”

  Whistling, Maglio crossed the room and yanked the pen from the potted palm. “True, I don’t have title to you, de jure; de facto, if you know your Latin, is my claim. All your data has been entombed at the highest level of entombment. You’re in Supermax. Even Klaes can’t get to it.”

  Raphael straightened. “Oh sure, the digital genius who has created everything you need, can’t even pick open a data file.”

  Maglio looked out from under his eyes. “Not one he invented himself.”

  “You’re full of shit.” Maglio’s hooded gaze didn’t waver. So this too was true. His father may as well have built Norval himself. He breathed hard, but he could get no air. “What makes you think I won’t run?” asked Raphael.

  “You’re welcome to try.” Maglio walked to the desk and tapped the pen on the wood. “What were the lyrics to the song of my youth? Let’s see … ‘Wander Paris along the Champs Elysse, sail the South Pacific in a Bermuda sloop, climb a snowy mountain when it’s ten degrees.’ But don’t forget, when you’re back in town, your ass is mine.”

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY

  After leaving the meeting with Maglio and friends, Raphael went home, powered up his laptop, and using an anonymous VPN sent out a message through a dozen social media sites. The message was simple: I got your clue. I know where you are. You can come out now. Fulfill your promise.

  Message sent, Raphael skated to the Art Museum and climbed the grassy slope that bordered the adjacent Fossil Museum.

  He lay on the grass and closed his eyes. The sun beat red on his eyelids and the earth warmed his back. He remembered the days when he sat on this very slope with his mom and listened to her reassurances that all would be well. All would be well. Her voice in his ear, his hand nestled in hers, and her fragrance in the air; he fell asleep. He may have been aware at some level of the sun sinking and the ground cooling, but it was not until the rhythms of someone chanting penetrated his brain did he awaken and realize it was late afternoon. Glancing toward the sound, he saw at the base of the grassy decline a young woman in a white skirt and purple leotard. Sitting cross-legged, she swayed and nodded her head as she slurred a passage from which Raphael extracted a few lines that sounded familiar. He rose, rubbed his knuckles across his eyes, and plodded down to her as she repeated them; chantlike but garbled, from which he drew, “Work, perfect, Earth, sleeps.” His memory filled in the gaps.

  And when all the work is done

  And, when as a perfect toy, Earth—

  Sleeps up the living, again.

  Pharmacopeia?

  The hairs on his neck stood up. The second stanza of the poem concluding Klaes’s biography, with one word changed, “wakes up” to “sleeps,” and another added: “Pharmacopeia.”

  “Excuse me. Where did you hear that?”

  She glanced up. “What? Huh?”

  “Your chant.”

  She shrugged and spread her legs. In the lap of her skirt was a nest of pills. She sorted through the various-colored capsules, looking up at him as if following the climb of a tower. “Go away, creep-freak.”

  He laughed. “I’m just a weirdo.”

  She drew up a white pill from the nest and held it before her face as if candling an egg. Frowning she dropped it back and probed the hoard as she repeated her chant.

  “What does that mean?” Raphael asked.

  The girl tilted her head up. Pencil-point pupils floated in the center of glistening brown irises.

  “His way.”

  “Whose way?”

  “In heaven, the fentanyl flows free and there’s a big rock cocaine mountain.” She stuck her fingers in the nest, digging through her pills until she drew up a large multicolored capsule with a tiny conelike attachment. “Oh, my sweet savior, Lord Fan Belt.”

  “What the hell are you saying?”

  “Lord Fan Belt’s challenge,” she murmured. She shoved the pill in her mouth and looked toward the sky. “Ride the unicorn.”

  “Spit it out!”

  She swallowed. “Coming my savior, my Lord Fan Belt.”

  “I can’t let …” He dropped to his knees and clutched her jaw. He felt the bone beneath the cool, sticky skin. Her lips darkened to blue. “Spit it out!”

  Already her eyes had frozen, and her torso bent to her legs like a tree uprooted.

  “Help!” he shouted. “She’s overdosed!”

  From the dwindling museum crowd, visitors ran toward them.

  “Narcan! We need Narcan!”

  The converging people reached into their pockets and purses and drew out their cell phones. They turned on their cameras, jostled for angles, and clicked away.