“I’m surprised there’s not more security,” Jonas notes. “Metal detectors, that sort of thing.”

Kobayashi chuckles. “It wouldn’t do much good to stage a robbery here. The lightest component of the SLA weighs seven thousand tons. No, the only things here to steal, I’m afraid, are ideas.”

“What about security cameras?”

Kobayashi wrinkles his brow. “We had to take them out. The electronics were wreaking all manner of havoc with the equipment.” Then suspicion worms its way back into his tone. “Why so many questions about our security?”

Jonas’s hand lashes out, and Eva holds Kobayashi steady as Jonas presses the cloth to the scientist’s mouth. Kobayashi’s eyes roll back to white courtesy of the chloroform Jonas cooked up in the kitchen of his rental apartment. He slumps, and they ease him down to the steel floor.

“No reason,” Jonas answers.

Two minutes later, Jonas and Eva are heading along the catwalk toward the Upper Inner Ring. The tunnel is fronted by an enclosed structure that looks to be the size of a small room. Jonas fears its door is locked and hopes the key ring he lifted off the unconscious Dr. Kobayashi contains the requisite key.

“How long will he be out?” Eva asks.

“Ten minutes, assuming the universe doesn’t have any more surprises for me. You’ll have some explaining to do once I’m gone.”

“Oh, I’ve got that covered,” she says, her voice light. “I was your hostage.”

Jonas nods at the simplicity of that and asks himself why he hadn’t thought of it. They arrive at the Inner Ring’s entrance, and it’s unlocked. Kobayashi hadn’t been kidding about the Spire’s lax security. Jonas heaves open the steel door and heads inside.

He’s moving with such urgency that he doesn’t see the men standing there, side by side. Reflections. Twins. Their faces identical in every respect, save that one’s beard is trimmed back to a goatee. One wears khaki combat fatigues, the other black wool and Kevlar. Both wear tether bracelets.

Both look like Macon.

Jonas feels his stomach bottom out with the horrible understanding that Victor has sent them, each from a different universe. The energy required, the sheer effort, is almost beyond calculation. Such is the intensity of Victor’s vendetta.

Jonas commands his body to move—turn, lock the door behind them, figure out another way into the SLA—but his feet are rooted. Every artery crackles with adrenaline, but he’s frozen. Vulnerable. Trapped.

“Dr. Cullen,” one says.

Jonas feels Eva tense behind him. A short gasp escapes her lips.

“We’re here with a message,” the other Macon intones. “Turn around. Leave. Never come back. Do that, and he’ll let you live.”

Jonas stands his ground.

“He’s avoided killing you up until now,” the first Macon says. “This is about karma for him. His version of it, at least. And he hasn’t wanted to put your death on his ledger.”

How considerate, Jonas thinks, wholly uninterested in the moral calculations of a malignant narcissist.

“But he will,” the second Macon adds. “If that’s what it takes to stop you. So . . . leave. Final warning.”

Jonas opens his mouth to speak, but he has to strain to keep fear from seeping into his voice. “This isn’t your concern. I know Victor is paying you, and probably paying you well. But this is between him and me. Now . . . step aside.”

The two Macons don’t confer. They don’t glance toward each other or engage in any other form of silent communication. They just charge toward Jonas in unison, their faces expressionless, betraying no anger or affect of any kind. This is just a job to them, Jonas notes. Killing him will produce no more emotion than taking out the trash.

Without warning, a thunderclap echoes in the chamber. The Macon in Kevlar staggers back as the one in khakis surges toward Jonas . . . and past him. Jonas spins toward him just in time to see the man’s head snap back in a grotesque replay of Macon’s demise back in Switzerland. This time, though, the entire base of his skull explodes and pulls Macon backward like a string.

Then Jonas notices Eva with a gun in her hand. It’s a Glock, just like the one the original Macon once gave him. She holds it in a two-handed grip, her stance wide. She’s had training—that much is clear. Her expression holds a steely-eyed confidence as she pulls the trigger again, and Jonas watches the top of the Glock trombone back and forth as it spits out a shell casing, which pinwheels away.

The next shot strikes the other Macon in the center of his forehead. He collapses next to his doppelgänger, instantly dead. The two Macons share the same vacant stare.

Eva lowers the gun. “Are you okay?”

Eva shoulders past him toward the entrance of the Inner Ring. “C’mon,” she says. “Someone might have heard those shots. We have to keep moving.”

As he follows her into the Inner Ring, his power of speech returns. “You brought a gun?”

“I bought a gun,” she corrects him, “after you told me about the mad scientist—literally, a very mad scientist—and his mercenary. It wasn’t easy, but I figured it’d be worth the trouble.”

“Wasn’t easy? Japan’s gun laws are among the most stringent in the world.”

“Your world maybe.”

Jonas looks back at the pair of Macons. “You killed those men—”

“From what you’ve told me, there are millions of others where those two came from.”

“What I mean is . . . where’d you learn to shoot a gun?”

“My husband taught me. He wanted me to be safe.” Her voice grows distant. “I don’t really want to talk about him right now.”

They walk in silence, following the curve of the tunnel, skulking in haste for what seems like half a mile before the tunnel’s curve reveals the presence of two security guards. Both men in their early thirties. Both armed.

Jonas’s adrenaline spikes. One of the guards reaches for his sidearm while the other keys his walkie-talkie’s shoulder microphone.

“Roku-Gōki kara chūō e. Sekushon san-hachi ni shin’nyū-sha ni-mei. Otome,” he reports in rapid-fire Japanese.

Eva throws Jonas a panicked look. What do we do? Shooting the Macons was one thing, but the cold-blooded murder of two security guards doing their duty is quite another. Before Jonas can answer, the guard with the sidearm points it straight at Eva.

“Anata no buki o otose,” he orders.

Eva doesn’t seem to understand whether he wants her to put her hands up, get down on the floor, put her gun down, or some combination of the three.

“Anata no buki o otose,” he repeats, only louder. As if lack of volume is the only reason she can’t understand him. He takes a mighty step forward and slaps the gun out of her hand. It clatters to the floor, and he kicks it down the length of the tunnel, back in the direction where Jonas and Eva came from.

Meanwhile, his partner spins Jonas around, pressing him against the tunnel wall. The armed guard does the same with Eva.

“Wait. I can explain,” Jonas says, but the protestation sounds pathetic.

“Ashi o hiroge. Buki o motte imasu ka?”

The guard with the walkie-talkie begins frisking Jonas. His partner confiscates Eva’s purse. Both maneuvers are executed with more violence than seems necessary.

The armed guard tears through the contents of Eva’s purse, producing a small black Moleskine notebook. He rifles through the pages, finding them all covered in Jonas’s baroque equations and crude schematic drawings of the tether’s inner workings. “Kore wa nan da,” he demands. Tell me what this is.

Jonas asked Eva to bring the notebook “just in case,” a stopgap to buttress the formulae inked on his arms. Belt and suspenders. Now, though, the calculations and sketches look like the ramblings of a madman, the plans of a would-be bomber.