Maelstrom

Almost experimentally, he crossed into the living room and depolarized the tanglethreads. They slipped to the floor like overcooked pasta.

For good measure, he pulled a lightstick from his pocket and struck it; light flared in the gutted room. Desjardins blinked over shrinking pupils and gingerly explored the bruise on his cheek.

"They already know, big man. They were the ones who patched me through in the first place. I gave them the rest of the night off."

"Sort of a chaser for Guilt Trip. Makes things easier to live with."

"Absolution," she whispered.

I was not gonna let those stumpfucks win.

He found her in the undarkness of her old bedroom.

The front hall receded in front of her, barren and unfurnished; its walls glistened strangely, as if freshly lacquered.

She walked north to Queen and turned east, her feet following their own innate path beneath the dim streetlights. No one and nothing accosted her. Eastbourne Manor continued to rot undemolished, although someone had swept away the cardboard prefabs in the past twenty years.

That whole nanotech thing was such a debacle…"

Set up breach after breach, sealing each with extreme and unfettered prejudice.

Time's the catch, of course. Genes are slow: a thousand generations to learn some optimal-foraging trick that a real brain could pick up in five minutes.