Page 44 of The Delivery

“No.” Mr. Man arches backward, flexing his lumbar. “I would not.”

“We’d like you to get back into the prism,” Mark says. His tone is tough, but Rebecca can sense the fear beneath it, and she knows that Mr. Man can as well.

Mr. Man stops stretching, statue still. He seems like something carved from wood, a totem pole.

Rebecca’s muscles are tight enough to cramp. Her calves, hip flexors, the side of her neck—everything aches. She feels coiled, ready to flee if Mr. Man springs at them, which it seems he will at any moment. Menace rolls off him, tangible enough to choke on. She cannot find enough oxygen, can’t manage to draw in a full breath.

When Mr. Man speaks, his voice comes as a lifeless monotone: “I have more to take care of for you.”

A scream shatters the silence—Maddy. A deep, pained cry of anguish.

Rebecca’s body moves before her brain catches up. She is running up the hall, bare feet pounding the tiles, Mark behind her.

She bursts into Maddy’s bedroom and sees Maddy backed all the way to the toy bin rack, her finger shoved in her mouth. She stares wild-eyed at “Bao-Bao,” who sits in the middle of the foam play area, marble eyed and innocent. The Lego giraffe lies in pieces, trampled.

“He bit me,” Maddy shrieks. “He bit my finger.”

The cries shuddering out of her are unadulterated, pure sorrow. She cannot comprehend that this has happened to her.

Rebecca moves to her, arms spread, but Maddy closes her eyes and stamps her feet; touch will send her further into the abyss. Her headphones have fallen around her neck.

On her knees, Rebecca makes soothing noises, and finally Maddy relents and tumbles into her, arms thrown weakly around her neck, hot face pressed to her cheek.

“I don’t know why he bit me,” she says. “I don’t know what I did.”

“You didn’t do anything, Maddysaurus. You didn’t do anything at all.”

Maddy pulls away, points at the rabbit. “Get him out of here,” she says angrily. “Get him gone.”

Rebecca scoops up the bunny. Mark is still in the doorway, breathing hard. He steps backward, peers down the hall.

Mr. Man. They have forgotten about Mr. Man.

“We’ll take care of Bao-Bao,” Rebecca tells Maddy. “You put Mr. Giraffe back together.”

Maddy screws a fist into her eye socket like a much younger child than she is. She nods.

Holding not-Bao-Bao tight to her chest, Rebecca hurries down the hall with Mark.

In the nursery, the prism lid is lifted.

The casket is empty.

And Mr. Man is nowhere to be seen.

Chapter 32

When Derek is this pissed off at the world, he requires garage time. He is not a fan of the so-called man caves permeating the cultural conversation. He doesn’t need a cave. The whole house is—should be—his castle.

Given the less-than-buoyant stock performance and the underbidders nibbling away at his client base, he wonders how long he will be able to keep the house, or at least the toys he has accumulated. Like the lineup of vintage Porsches in the detached five-car garage he built along the south side of their lot. That’s the thing with the tech sector—it’s a constant battle to stay relevant, to maximize for efficiency and cost, to keep a quarter step ahead of the competition. A thoroughbred race with everyone riding tech that’s smarter and more powerful than the humans who are allegedly steering it.

Derek’s ire about the performance dip lands disproportionately on Mark, even though Mark is clearly the most talented of the chief product officers—maybe because Mark is the most talented. Derek expects more from him, just as he expects the most out of himself. It doesn’t have to do with the fact that Alexa tried to make out with him once, or that Mark is stalwart in a way that Derek slightly envies.

The jungle of e-news is not for sissies. When it comes to content optimization, it’s a wolf-eat-wolf world, a constantly changing, algorithmically powered process of evolutionary selection. Miss a step, and you’re extinct.

And they’ve been missing a lot of steps lately.

That’s why Derek needs to be out here to clear his head, away from the laptop that keeps him tethered to disappointing Nasdaq news and the endless complications of keeping a public company on track. Away from Alexa, too, and her incessant needs and drives. She is in the bedroom right now, enjoying their recharged N0RM LLC unit, and he is happy to let her satiate what she needs satiated so he can be out here working out what he needs to work out. That is one of the best benefits of the unit. It allows them to see to their individual needs more completely.