Anya typed it in. Instantly the computer monitor lit up with links and photos.
“I’ve seen her before.” Wilkes frowned, then snapped her fingers. “Nijinsky. She was there when Jin died.”
“Lear. She’s thirtysomething, born in Bogalusa, Louisiana. Parents not listed. Schools, nope. That’s about it except for later business stuff. She owns a lot of medical testing labs.”
“That would make sense,” Anya said.
Vincent, seemingly exhausted by his earlier conversation, remained silent.
“That’s probably how she met my father. And it’s how she got DNA samples.”
“She will have millions of them,” Anya said.
Plath looked at the best photograph of Lystra Reid. What was there in that pretty face to betray the existence of an evil, disturbed mind? Nothing. The eyes were clear, the expression open, the mouth smiling.
Plath remembered what Stern had told her. That Lear had used burner phones but without masking the callback number. One had been purchased in Tierra del Fuego. The other in New Zealand, she could not recall the city. But both had been connected to Antarctica.
“Search ‘Lystra Reid’ and Antarctica,” she told Anya.
That earned a raised eyebrow, but the search caused a long, slow exhale. Lystra Reid had purchased a company called Cathexis.
“Pull up any articles on Cathexis Inc.,” Plath instructed.
The four of them read silently. Wilkes moved her lips. Plath felt a new pang as just for a moment she thought to turn, look over her shoulder, and ask Noah what he thought.
But there was no Noah. No Noah, no Nijinsky, no Mr. Stern, and only a partial Vincent.
“Who has had any medical testing done in the last ten years?” Plath asked.
But Vincent shook his head. “Irrelevant. If we’ve had biots made, we’re in her database.”
“I have not had biots made,” Anya said. “But I have been tested at one of her labs.”
“So we are all vulnerable. It’s possible that at any moment—”
“Great,” Wilkes said. “Fine. Let me go nuts. I’ll fit right in.”
Plath looked to Vincent. “What will she do next?”
Vincent thought about it, eyes dark beneath his brow, mouth a grim line. “Her goal is instability. What else could it be? With her skills and her resources, if all she wanted was the whole world dead, she could have grown smallpox or anthrax in a lab somewhere. And she has nanotechnology. Why have us use biots to fight the Armstrongs? She had the upper hand all along. She could have used a lot less effort and simply obtained a sample of their DNA, grown biots for them, and inflicted biot madness.”
“Okay, why didn’t she?” Plath asked.
“Because she’s a gamer,” Vincent said with more confidence than he felt. “She wants to win, yes, but first she wants to play. We were Level One.”
“Then we’re in Level Two now.” Plath nodded. “Now she drives the whole world crazy. Watches it. Shows up in person to enjoy Jin’s death. Probably other events as well. She’s enjoying all that.”
“Sick bitch,” Wilkes muttered.
“She brought me back, made me a part of it again. Why?”
Vincent shrugged. “Because you’re her avatar. She wants you to go on playing. Bluebooking.”
“What?”
“It’s an old gaming expression. It’s when a player keeps a journal of the game, but from the POV of the avatar.”
“You are smart and rich and pretty,” Anya suggested. “Just as she is. And alone. As she must be.”
“Lear sent me to recruit you,” Vincent reminded her.
“And when I was enjoying the island too much, she forced me back into the game. She even left clues for me to find that would link her to Antarctica.”
“Machines do not work well at very cold temperatures,” Anya said. “And nanobots are machines.”
“Okay, so Antarctica because—”
“Because if the gray goo has been unleashed, it will have a hard time penetrating hundreds of miles of subzero temperatures. It’s the safest place on the planet if you’re worried about that.”
Vincent nodded agreement. This was the most engaged Plath had seen him in a long while. Was he ready to take command again? No. This is my game now.
“Antarctica is also a place to ride out whatever shitstorm she’s unleashed,” Wilkes offered. “It’s as far away as you can get without being on the moon.”
“So she camps there,” Vincent said. “Safe from the goo. And safe from the consequences of her own game.”
“She camps. She waits. Why?”
“For Level Two to play out. So she can be there for Level Three.”
“And what is Level Three?”
Vincent shook his head slowly. “Only Lear knows that. It’s her game.”
“And we can’t beat her by playing her game,” Plath concluded. “We can only pull the power cord.”
“The power cord is south of here,” Wilkes said.
“She will expect that,” Vincent said.
“Expect it? I have a feeling it’s what she wants,” Plath said.
TWENTY-NINE
From New York to Tierra del Fuego was a bit over six thousand five hundred miles, which at a speed of four hundred eighty knots took eleven hours. It was not a pleasant flight for Bug Man. But he was lucky. The rest of the world was faring much worse.