Jack remembered that. To test herself, she’d thrust a knife blade into her hand. To everyone’s relief, the wound had closed instantly.

Glaeken was nodding. “Yes, that makes sense.”

“You know what this means, don’t you?” Weezy said, looking around at them. “Rasalom has been watching us, clocking and tracking our movements.”

Something tightened in Jack’s chest. He didn’t like the idea of anyone tracking him, especially Rasalom.

“Maybe not yours or mine,” he said. “But obviously the Lady’s-especially the Lady-and probably Glaeken’s too.”

Weezy turned back to the Lady. “Is there a way we can hide you?”

“I cannot hide. The purpose of my existence is to proclaim this world’s sentience.”

“Hide you from Rasalom, not the Ally.”

“I don’t think there’s a way to do that,” Glaeken said.

The Lady thought a moment. “There might be. I am not always aware of what the One and the Otherness are doing. Perhaps there is a way to keep them unaware of what I am doing. I shall consult the noosphere.”

“Consult?” Weezy said. “But you’re a part of it.”

“Not anymore. I am still its creation, but no longer its appendage, no longer directly fed by it. I must reconnect regularly now.”

She closed her eyes and stood still and silent. Utterly. She didn’t need to breathe and did so only to speak.

Bill stared at her, then at the three of them. “At the request of my new friend here,” he said, gesturing to Glaeken, “who’s some fifteen thousand years old, I’m patching up a man with no identity who got wounded protecting a woman who’s not really a woman, or at least not a human woman, and is even older than my friend, and for whom the Internet was crashed in an attempt to kill her. What happened to the world I used to know-or thought I knew? I’ve gone through bizarre, life-changing experiences, but they take a backseat to what I’ve seen and heard the past couple of weeks.”