The tunnel stretched ahead, a throat of concrete and weeping pipes, vibrating with the low-frequency hum of a dying god. Ahead, the memory-collector had reconstructed itself. It was no longer a human-shaped entity; it had fused with the ceiling, a pulsating nest of blackened, twitching fiber-optic cables that hung down like the tentacles of a deep-sea predator. It was the terminal point of the Nursery, the place where the "deleted" were unspooled into raw, meaningless static.
"It knows we”re here," Rusty whispered. His voice was a flat, lethal blade. He shifted his weight, his coat swirling around him, the silver watch in his hand spinning with a frantic, metallic clicking. "It is drawing every spare watt of power from the district grid to facilitate the final purge. The air itself is bec
