1

I’m going insane!

Not at all, Kate, cooed the soft, sexless voice in her head. Quite the opposite.

Somehow, perhaps as a way for her mind to escape the horror of her situation, Kate had fallen asleep last night. Or perhaps the Unity had made her sleep. This morning she’d been awakened by the sound of a door closing.

For one glittering, hopeful moment, she’d cradled the possibility that last night might have been a dream, a nightmare even more horrific than participating in Fielding’s murder. But then, despite her desire to sleep in, her body rose from the bed.

Kate had screamed, a ragged wail of terror and anguish that remained trapped inside her skull as her body walked to the kitchen where she found a note from Jack.

Since then she’d been seated here on the edge of the fold-out bed, staring at the wall for what seemed like hours. Hours of nothing.

Hardly ‘nothing,’ Kate. With each passing moment you are becoming incrementally further integrated into the Unity.

Even her thoughts weren’t her own.

You’re lying. I don’t feel any different from last night.

We don’t lie. We don’t have to.

Kate had reins on the panic that had suffused her since awakening, but the sick cold horror of her plight was a throbbing undertone through her consciousness, steadily interrupted by blasts of helpless frustration.

She had to call NIH and CDC, had to impress upon them the urgent need for a solution, had to tell them about Jack and the antibodies he undoubtedly carried.

She tried to reach for the phone but her hand refused to obey.

No. No calls to government health agencies. That would be counterproductive.

All she could do was sit. She was desperate for something, anything to distract her, even for a moment.

Can I at least read a magazine or paper or watch the news on TV?

What for?

How about to find out what’s going on in the world?

What is happening out there does not matter.

Keep on thinking that way. I like it. Because that world out there is going to bring you down.

We think not. The history of “that world out there” begins a new chapter tonight.

Tonight? The utter confidence resonating through the voice troubled her. What happens tonight?

Something wonderful. We had to wait for The One Who was Jeanette to be fully integrated, and then for the bonds of unity to mature. Tonight, finally, it will be possible.

But what?

You are not yet ready to know. When you are further integrated you will understand.

Another of your inevitabilities?

Yes! The Great Leap that will make the Great Inevitability possible.

Kate didn’t like the sound of that. Tell me.

When you are ready. Right now you will watch as we remove a threat to the Great Inevitability.

Oh, no. Did they mean Jack?

Yes. Your brother. We must do what you would not.

No! Please!

Watch.

Jack’s TV room slowly faded from view…

…and Kate is walking along a New York street. She’s crossing an avenue; somehow she knows it’s Amsterdam. And then with a start she recognizes Jack walking three-quarters of a block ahead. She’s behind him; the sun is locked above the rain-laden clouds, but she knows he’s heading west.

Jack stops at a corner and swivels, looking around. As he turns toward Kate she makes a quick turn to the right, stepping between two cars and crossing the street, keeping her face averted from Jack as she moves. Only this isn’t Kate’s body; the arm that swings into view isn’t hers—too scrawny, too old looking.

Kate gasps because suddenly she’s watching Jack again, but from a greater distance and an entirely different angle—looking at his back. Somehow she’s shifted almost 180 degrees, and a distance of two blocks, instantaneously.

Then with a shock she realizes what’s happened. The Unity is following Jack and has shifted its viewpoint from one member to another. She’s in a man’s body now—can tell from the hairy wrist protruding from the jacket sleeve before her—and watching through the side window of a double-parked car as Jack turns her way and continues his trek.

No! Leave him alone!

We cannot. He is even more of a threat than Dr. Fielding. We regretted killing the doctor; he, at least, was a potential host. Not so your brother. There is no place for him in our future.

Viral ethics…anyone who won’t help increase their numbers is disposable.

Please. I beg you.

We need peace for the Great Leap. To achieve it we need time for the eight of us to be together, isolated, undisturbed. Your brother is bent on disrupting us, fragmenting us. We cannot allow that.

She has to stop this!

Frantic, Kate tries to rise to her feet but her legs won’t respond. She has to warn Jack, but even if she can reach the phone, how will she contact him? She’s seen a cell phone and beeper on his dresser during her stay, but she doesn’t know the numbers.

As the Unity—the perfect surveillance machine, each component in constant contact with all others, covering all possible routes—ranges around Jack in cars and on foot, Kate screams her frustration and bangs intangible fists against the walls of her flesh prison, all to no avail. She is a ghost in her own machine.