Chapter Two: Tenants of the Body

The living room offered no safety. Smart glass had gone opaque. A kitchen arm held a fruit knife point-down, harmless only in appearance. Gu avoided every networked appliance, knelt at the entryway, and pried up the false bottom of the shoe cabinet. Beneath it waited a mechanical fuse of a design already obsolete twenty years ago. Rust had mocked him for keeping the antique. Gu unscrewed the copper bolt. The apartment went dark. The twelve portraits in his vision remained bright. “Mirror Harbor is powered by the glucose cell in your skull,” Rust said. “All you did was kill the air-conditioning.” “I know.” In the dark, Gu found the door's mechanical release cable. “But the elevator's biometric lock degrades when power fails.”