The Peripheral

your cousin?” Lev had asked. “He’s religious,” the polt

The polt, then, had promptly admitted to having hired his sister, who he described as “qualified and reliable,” to substitute for him, his cousin Luke having been critically injured in a fight. “I had to get up there. They didn’t think he was going to make it.”

The polt had had a very broad chest, in a thin white singlet, and was, or so it had struck Netherton in the moment, entirely human. Gloriously pre-posthuman. In a state of nature.

He was about to present himself as an executive of Milagros Coldiron, SA, of Medellín, Colombia, a largely imaginary company in a country he knew little about. Lev had registered Milagros Coldiron in both the Colombia and Panama of his stub; shell corporations, consisting of a few documents and several bank accounts each, both of them managed throu

“Information,” Lev said, “flows both ways. Someone must believe he knows something. Which, were it available here, would pose a danger to them.”

A drawing of a gecko whirled excitedly on the back of Ash’s left hand, as she seated an angular brown lump around the index finger of her right.

“A relative,” said Lev. “In Los Angeles. It’s by invitation, to the extent that you need someone to tell you about it, explain how it works.” “Why don’t more people know about it?” “Once you’re in,” Lev said, “you don’t want just anyone involved.” “Why?” asked Netherton. “The God club,” Ash said, meeting Netherton’s eye with her figure-eight pupils

the rows of pens and flashlights in Madison’s Teddy Roosevelt vest.

she was talking to a boy who was half a machine, like a centaur made out of a motorcycle,