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spoken Russian, but occasional fragments of English stuck in his eye. Theseus was one. Icarus another. Something about angels and asteroids flashed center stage for a moment and evaporated.
    More glyphs, more numbers: three parallel columns this time, rendered in red. Someone talking back.
    Out in the desert, the zombies stopped flickering.
    â€œHuh,” Slippers said, and raised a finger to his right temple. For the first time Brüks noticed an old-fashioned earbud there, an audio antique from the days before cortical inlays and bone conduction. Slippers inclined his head, listening; up on the wall a flurry of red and green turned the ongoing exchange into a Christmas celebration.
    Over on VEC/PRIME , orange and red icons downshifted to yellow. The chained vortex stopped thrashing on its pad and whirled smoothly at attention. Halfway to the horizon, the last vestiges of its older sibling dissipated in a luminous mist of settling dust.
    The desert rested quietly beneath an invisible thing in the sky.
    Just a few minutes ago, Dan Brüks had watched himself die out there. Or maybe escape in the nick of time. Something like him, anyway. Right up until that last moment when the maelstrom had chewed it up and spat it out. And right at that moment, the zombies had come—unglued …
    Assub, Slippers had said then. At least, that’s what Brüks had heard. Assub .
    Ass —hub?
    â€œA.S.?” he said aloud. Brother Slippers turned, raised an eyebrow.
    â€œA.S.,” Brüks repeated. “What’s it stand for?”
    â€œArtificial Stupidity. Grabs local surveillance archives to blend in. Chameleon response.”
    â€œBut why me? Why”—in the sky, invisible airships—“why anything ? Why not just cloak, like that thing up there?”
    â€œCan’t cloak thermal emissions without overheating,” Slippers told him. “Not for long at least, not if you’re an endotherm. Best you can do is make yourself look like something else. Dynamic mimicry.”
    Dymic.
    Brüks snorted, shook his head. “You’re not even Bicameral, are you?”
    Slippers smiled faintly. “You thought I was?”
    â€œIt’s a monastery. You spoke like…”
    Slippers shook his head. “Just visiting.”
    Acronyms. “You’re military,” Brüks guessed.
    â€œSomething like that.”
    â€œDan Brüks,” he said, extending a hand.
    The other man looked at it for a moment. Reached out his own. “Jim Moore. Welcome to the armistice.”
    â€œWhat just happened?”
    â€œThey came to terms. For the moment.”
    â€œThey?”
    â€œThe monks and the vampire.”
    â€œI thought those were zombies.”
    â€œ Those are.” Moore tapped the wall; a heat source appeared in the distance, a lone bright pinprick well behind the line. “ That isn’t. Zombies don’t do anything without someone pulling their strings. She’s coming in now.”
    â€œVampires,” Brüks said.
    â€œVam pire . Solitary op.” And then, almost as an afterthought, “Those things aren’t good in groups.”
    â€œI didn’t even know we let them out. I actually thought we were pretty scrupulous about keeping them, you know. Contained.”
    â€œSo did I.” Pale flickering light washed the color from Moore’s face. “Not quite sure what her story is.”
    â€œWhat’s she have against the Bicamerals?”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œWhy did she stop?”
    â€œEnemy of my enemy.”
    Brüks let that sink in. “You’re saying there’s a bigger enemy out there. A, a common threat.”
    â€œPotentially.”
    Out in the desert, that dimensionless point of heat had grown large enough to move on visible legs. It did not appear to be running, yet somehow crossed the desert far faster than any baseline was likely to walk.
    â€œSo I guess I can go