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after yourself.”
    â€œIt’s a new species, all right. But not one that appears in nature.”
    â€œI don’t follow you.”
    â€œThis ant isn’t natural. This ant was engineered .”

5
    T he sun isn’t up yet and Hannah is pacing the hallway outside Ez Choi’s office in the faculty science building. Her boots echo on the cheap tile. Her phone is pressed tight to her ear—it’s only 5:30 A.M. here in Tucson, but it’s already 8:30 back on the East Coast.
    â€œPretend I’m dumb,” Hollis is saying. “In fact, don’t pretend, because when it comes to this sort of thing, I’m pretty goddamn stupid. You are telling me that our victim was killed by ants? And that these ants were made—genetically engineered, in fact—by persons unknown?”
    â€œI think so.”
    Silence on the other end. It goes on long enough that she’s about to continue, but then Hollis makes a sound: a long, nasal sigh. “God damn it.”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œMy gut had it right.”
    â€œI’m sorry?”
    â€œBringing you into this. I knew things didn’t add up. I checked my gut and my gut told me to find you in my contact list. When the going gets weird, the weird needs Hannah Stander.”
    This sticks Hannah with a swirl of complicated feelings. On the one hand, it’s good to be wanted. On the other hand, is that what she wants to be? Spooky Mulder? She tells herself: This is just part of the gig. It’s what you get when they introduce you as an FBI futurist.
    Hollis is saying: “Are you listening to me? Did I lose you?”
    â€œSorry, I think I dropped the signal there for a second,” she lies. “What were you saying?”
    â€œI asked how your bug friend knew the ants are a GMO.”
    â€œShe said she found genes—indicator genes, marker genes. Labs use them in genetic engineering to determine if a modification in a plant or animal was successful. If they’re still present after breeding, then that gene mod is viable.”
    â€œSo. The next question: Who did this?”
    â€œI don’t know. I don’t know how we’d even find out. The ants got there somehow. This was purposeful. Are we sure they’re what killed him?”
    â€œBlood tests suggest our victim died of shock—though whether from anaphylaxis or having his skin bitten off by tiny insects, I don’t know.”
    â€œIt’s officially a crime scene, then.”
    â€œLooks like murder.”
    Murder by genetically modified organism, she thinks. The future really is a door. And it looks like ruination is winning.

    Ez comes back with breakfast tacos—chorizo, egg, cheese. She sits at her desk, hunched over like a starving person, while Hannah picks at hers.
    Hannah’s too wound up to eat. Her mind races with a grim, disturbed excitement. She expected that any GMO angle in future crimes would be somewhat obvious: a murder over a seed patent, or someone modifying a bacterium to create a rampant superbug—some new strain of tuberculosis or cholera.
    This, though? Ants? Insects?
    It’s like Ez is reading her mind. Around a mouthful of breakfast taco she says, “You know, this shit is unprecedented.”
    â€œI was just thinking about that.”
    â€œThat’s a good thing.”
    Hannah arches an eyebrow. “How so?”
    A hard swallow and Ez explains: “This isn’t the work of oneperson. It’s not like some loony white guy who can go pick up an AK-47 at a gun show, or some foreign terrorist who cooks up an amateur bomb so he can duct tape it to his body and run up alongside a city bus. This takes resources. This takes infrastructure . Modifying organisms is a game of inches—you tweak little things here and there. But those ants? They’re a huge leap forward. Like I said, unprecedented . There’s hardly anybody out there with the money and the talent to do