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Digital laughter swirled around her, flickering through the numbers like brush fire.

He scanned a promising file and cursed as it came up empty.

Li asked, feeling panicky.

Cohen said. The emphasis on he was slight but unmistakable. A reproach.

When he answered, Li could feel the unease in his voice even across the remote line.

He went on without waiting for a reply.

Cohen paused, sidetracked to search a dead-end directory.

Li couldn’t get her mind around this vision of how Cohen saw the Zed.

Cohen riffled through a new directory faster than Li could identify it, dropped it, moved on to the next one.

Cautiously, Li probed the network. She felt something, a dark, vaguely sentient presence. But it was confused, chaotic, diminished. As if the Zed had crept into some dark corner of the network to lick its wounds.

Li felt something come through the numbers. Something that was partly indecipherable AI emotion and partly a feeling she didn’t need anyone to explain to her: guilt.

Another long silence.

03:51:02.

Li checked their time and swallowed.

After a tense silence, Cohen said,

She twitched, nerves stretched to the breaking point.

04:01:00.

She looked around the corner, saw an empty passage and started forward. she asked.

A pulse of