all his struggle, all his pain—it had been anticipated, it was part ofthe plan. The Site put Will in danger, and then it saved him from it, each time the message getting stronger that Will shouldjust lie down, surrender, let it all happen.

The Oracle lived in constant anticipation of the next horrible thing the Site would do, mixed with the knowledge that if hehad just kept his mouth shut in the beginning, if he hadn’t become the Oracle, then it would never have happened. It was acontradiction he could not reconcile. The Site was in control, but yet, somehow, the choices all belonged to Will, from thestart. No one had forced him to do anything—but he’d done it all.

The causality of it escaped him. The why of his own existence completely incomprehensible and impossible to ignore.

She remembered Will drunkenly suggesting an idea to her, a way to subvert the Site’s plan, or at least do something good forthe world with the Oracle’s influence. She remembered her drunken, enthusiastic agreement. Him pulling out one of his burnerphones and fiddling with it for a while, laughing.

Her enthusiastic, clumsy pass, which Will, to his credit, deflected. More drinking, and finally not sleep but a span of darkness,unawareness, each in their own bed.

Now, morning, and Leigh was a desert.

She heard Will sit on the bed opposite her.

“Awake?” he said, his voice soft.

Leigh raised a hand off the sheets, not wanting to risk opening her eyes.

“I have a glass of water here, and a cup of room coffee,” Will said. “It’s terrible, tastes like chemicals and poison, butI can’t go out to get anything better. I had two Advils, too—I had to take one, I’m sorry, but the other’s next to the water,if you need it.”

“I do,” Leigh said.

She rolled onto her side, taking the water and ibuprofen first, drinking the whole glass. Then the coffee, and her first sipconfirmed Will’s description—chemicals and poison. But better than nothing.

“I need to get back on the road,” the Oracle said. “Are you coming with me?”

Leigh looked at him, just a man, and not just a man at all, trying to save the world.

“Yes,” she said. “You deserve my help. You deserve everyone’s help, but I want to be clear about something. There’s a . . .mercenary angle to this for me. I’m sorry that you’ve had to endure so much, but that’s not the only reason I want to stay.I want the rest of the story. For me.”

“Obviously,” Will said. “I’m not an idiot.”

Leigh braced herself and sat up, her head pulsing in time with her heartbeat.

“How do you keep going?” she asked. “If it were me, I might just . . . hide, I guess.”

Will closed his hands around his coffee cup, staring down into it.

“I could do that, but then I’d just be surrendering. At least this way I’m still making choices. I’m still trying. I’m stillme. The minute I stop, that ends. I’m just a tool for the Site. Maybe it’s an illusion, but it’s what I have.”

He glanced at the small table between the two beds, noticing a cell phone, facedown. He frowned.

“Do you remember me using that last night?” he said. “It’s one of my last phones.”

“Yeah,” Leigh said, “but I don’t remember what for.”

He picked it up, turning it over.

“Me neither. I need to get rid of it, but let me just see what I—”

Will swiped the phone’s screen. He stared at it, his frown deepening.

“Oh yeah,” he said. “That’s right.”

“What?” Leigh said. “What did you do?”

He turned the screen so Leigh could see it.

On it, a prediction, in the same format as all the others on the Site:

ON SEPTEMBER 4, 2022, THE GOVERNMENT OF CHINA WILL BE TOPPLED BY A REVOLUTION THAT STEMS FROM MORE THAN FIFTY YEARS OF PERSISTENT HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS.

“Whoa,” Leigh said. Her voice was hushed. “Is this real?”

“No,” the Oracle answered. “I made it up.”

Chapter 39

ON AUGUST 15, 2024, A BREAKTHROUGH IN STEM-CELL THERAPY WILL ALLOW COMPLETE REPAIR OF SPINAL-CORD-RELATED PARALYSIS.

Will tapped the screen, and the prediction went live to the Site. They were just crossing the border between Nebraska andColorado, finally off I-80. I-76 would take them to Denver, and then it would be I-70 for all but the very last leg of theirjourney.

He thumbed the phone off and performed the now-familiar ritual of removing the SIM card and battery, tossing the pieces outthe window as the car sped along the interstate.

Will adjusted his headphones slightly and tapped the volume control on the little MP3 player he’d bought at an Iowan travelplaza, a compromise that allowed Leigh to listen to the radio while she drove. He’d stocked it with songs ripped from thesmall set of CDs also available for purchase, mostly greatest hits collections. Right now, it was Prince, a bunch of the ’80sclassics. Will liked the tunes, but the real star for him was always the production. No one built an arrangement like Prince.

The Oracle notebook lay open on his lap, every page covered with his cramped handwriting in various colors.

The pattern had evolved past just the blue, red, yellow, and green he’d started with. He’d added a whole new run of shadesto deal with the effects of the false predictions he’d been putting up—purple, orange, turquoise. The prediction about Chinawas just the first. He’d been kicking around the idea ever since meeting Anthony Leuchten and realizing that the governmenthad planned to use the Oracle’s influence to affect world affairs.

Leigh’s reaction to this plan had started skeptical and shifted to hugely alarmed once she’d had a little time to think overthe implications. For one thing, she thought that trying to essentially trick China into improving human rights inside itsborders could backfire in any number of ways. She’d taken some Asian poli-sci courses in college and knew the country’s historymuch better than Will did. But it was done.

He’d put up several more false predictions since, although he’d discussed them with Leigh first. The idea was to run interferencepatterns across the Site’s plan, possibly disrupt it in some way. Barring that, just to

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