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This is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
HarperCollinsPublishers
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London SE1 9GF
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019
First published in the USA in 2019 by Bantam Books,
an imprint of Random House,
a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
Copyright © Dean Koontz 2019
Cover design layout © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019
Cover photographs © Stephen Carroll / Trevillion Images
Dean Koontz asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction.
The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books
Source ISBN: 9780008291396
Ebook Edition © December 2018 ISBN: 9780008291433
Version: 2019-05-22
To Gerda,
who is my Jane
In memory of Ruth Ebner, also known as Pepper, who was not just a faithful reader but also an advocate of my work and much loved by her many friends
Creating a neural [brain] lace is the thing that really matters for humanity to achieve symbiosis with machines.
—ELON MUSK
Ain’t it strange the way we’re ignorant
How we seek out bad advice
How we jigger it and figure it
Mistaking value for the price
—PAUL SIMON, “So Beautiful or So What?”
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
PART ONE: Sucker Punch
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
PART TWO: Bad Weather
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
PART THREE: Storm Troopers
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12