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not one of them. But more of them are coming, and they’ll be here soon.”
    The engineer’s mouth moved, though no sound issued from him. With both trembling hands, he gestured so aimlessly that no sign he made conveyed the slightest meaning.
    “Pull yourself together, man. You’ve got to fight or die. There is no other choice. How many of you are in the building?”
    The engineer clutched one hand with the other, as if to still them both, and when at last he spoke, his voice was unexpectedly calm. “Four. There’s just four of us.”

chapter 6
    Jocko on the brink of greatness. In the study of the pretty little house he shared with Erika Five. Beyond the town limits of Rainbow Falls. Snow at the window.
    Sometimes Jocko sat on the swiveling desk chair in front of the computer. Sometimes knelt on it. Sometimes stood on it. Stood on it and danced. Danced hard enough to make the chair spin. His red-and-green hat with silver bells jingled merrily.
    Sometimes Jocko typed with his feet. Long ugly toes. Ugly but flexible and limber. Good toes for typing.
    His fingers were ugly, too. Everything about his body was ugly. Even his bizarre tongue with its three hairs.
    Jocko was a tumor.
    Well, he
started out
as a tumorlike lump in the biologically chaotic flesh of one of Victor’s New Race inNew Orleans. Then he became self-aware. A tumor with attitude. Hopes and dreams. And he grew fast. Later he burst out of that host body. Became something more than a tumor. Something better.
    He became a monster. Some people screamed when they saw Jocko. Others fainted. Birds dive-bombed him. Cats hissed and rats fled squeaking. Jocko was a very effective monster. Misshapen skull. Pale warty skin. Lipless slit of a mouth. Eerie yellow eyes, both too large for his head, one larger than the other.
    A monster was a more respectable thing to be than a mere tumor.
Nobody
liked a tumor. What was to like? But they wrote books about monsters. Made movies about them, too. People liked some monsters as much as they feared them.
    When you started out as a tumor with a brain, you had nowhere to go but up. Jocko was passionate about self-improvement. Although he had become a monster and harbored even greater aspirations, Jocko nevertheless remained humble. He never forgot where he came from. Once a tumor, always a tumor.
    Somewhat taller than a dwarf, Jocko secretly wished he were six foot two. And handsome. With hair on his head instead of on his tongue. In some dreams, Jocko was not himself. In dreams, he was a movie star. Often George Clooney. Sometimes Ashton Kutcher. Once he was Dakota Fanning and knew what it must be like to be loved by everyone. He wished that he really could be a handsome malemovie star. He didn’t care which one, except not Johnny Depp. Johnny Depp scared Jocko.
    The thought of Johnny Depp made Jocko’s hands shake badly. Ugly fingers stuttered across the keys, and gibberish appeared on the screen. He took his hands off the keyboard. Slow deep breaths. Easy. Calm. Johnny Depp was at least a thousand miles away from Rainbow Falls.
    Jocko wasn’t just typing on the computer. Wasn’t playing games. Wasn’t working on Excel spreadsheets. He was
hacking
. His online path wasn’t through a phone or a cable company, but through the satellite dish on the roof. Jocko was a total firewall-busting, code-breaking, backdoor-building Internet wildcatter who could drill out more data than Exxon drilled oil.
    That was why he wore the red-and-green hat with silver bells. His hacking hat. He had thirteen other hats. Hats for different occasions. Jocko loved hats.
    Deucalion—
monster of monsters, Victor’s first-made, mentor and maven, legend!
—had entrusted Jocko with an important task. Hack into the department of motor vehicles’ secured files. Find out who owned a blue-and-white truck with a certain license-plate number.
    Jocko was part of the team. Needed. Maybe a hero.
    In the past, Jocko had sometimes been a screwup. Washout.