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This was genuinely new. Every line of code in her being told her she had to find out more. She tried to ignore the compulsion but the more she tried to drag her attention away from it, the more urgent the need became.

It was like a growing, painful pressure on her . . . chest. Lungs. Yes, her human mind-map, whatever she’d inherited from Dr. Halsey’s brain architecture and correlated with the sensor pathways in her own system, told her she was holding her breath. She started to feel panicked and desperate.

I have to know. I have to find out.

The Gravemind had picked the perfect analogy: oxygen. Processing data was literally air to an AI. Without it, she couldn’t survive.

I’ve got to ignore this. I’ve got to ignore this pain.

“The name of this place . . . it matters little except to those who love the knowing of it,” the Gravemind said, fading up from a mosaic of pixels in front of her. He resolved into a solid mound of flesh, superimposed on the tree trunks. Beyond the alien forest, Cortana saw exotically alien buildings in the distance. “So many have been consumed. Such a waste of existence to be devoured and forgotten, but what is remembered and known . . . becomes eternal.”

Cortana struggled to stay focused. Wave after wave of irritating stings peppered her legs, more of the Gravemind’s simultaneous multiple attacks trying to access her files.

“And you think I’m going to help you add us to the menu?” When she looked down, the attack manifested itself as ants swarming up from the forest floor. All around her was what she craved—all that unknown, all that knowable, all that information screaming at her to be sucked in. “Careful you don’t swallow something that chokes you—”

I can’t hold out. I can’t. If I let it in, I’ll let him in farther with it.

This had to be the vector he was using, whatever technology it used. He was infiltrating every time she transferred data.

He gets in here—but maybe I can get farther into him, too. How far dare I take this before he finds the information on the Portal?

She was out of choices. She was on the brink. A few seconds—that was all it took an AI to suffocate from lack of knowing. Her core programming, like human involuntary reflexes, now drove her to gulp in a breath of data. There was nothing she could do to stop herself.

The relief was almost blissful. Data flooded in, places and dimensions and numbers, washing the pain away. She tried to feel—there was no other term for it—the pathway that would send one of her data-mining programs into the Gravemind.

Damn . . . was he amused? She felt that. She didn’t like input that she couldn’t measure and define.

“You and I,” the Gravemind said, all satisfaction. “We are one and the same.”

It could have meant anything. He obviously loved to play with language. Maybe that was inevitable when you’d absorbed so many different voices.

But you’re not going to swallow me. One and the same? Locked you out, jerk. Do your worst.

She could handle this. She could outmaneuver him. If she sent a program looking for a comms signal now, he’d spot that right away, but maybe there was another way to get a message home.

A little more give-and-take, maybe.

She shut down a firewall level, nothing important left exposed, just enough to look cautiously intrigued. He really did seem to think he was unstoppable. So far, though, he was; he’d devoured whole worlds. Earth would be just one more on a long list.

“Suppose I did want more knowledge,” she said. “How do I know you’re what you say you are? How do I know you’ve got enough data to keep me occupied? I don’t even know if you can absorb me. I’m not your usual diet. I’m not even corporeal.”

Cortana actually meant it. She didn’t know; and if he was deep enough inside her thought processes, then he’d detect that doubt. The urge to acquire more data—she didn’t even have to fake that.

Just enough uncertainty to convince him.

“Other construct minds like yours have been consumed,” said the Gravemind. “Although one embraced us willingly on his deathbed, the moment when most sentient life discovers