The first new infiltrator arrived on a Sunday.
He called himself Reverend Mercy Mantis.
He wore a white suit, polished shoes and a gold circuit cross around his neck. He could preach for forty minutes without taking a sip of water and make every bug in the room believe he had spoken directly to them.
His first sermon filled a converted battery casing at the edge of town.
His second filled the street.
By the third week he announced the Faith-Based and Hood County Partnership.
“Faith,” he told the congregation, “must protect the body as well as the soul.”
Behind him stood coolers filled with silver injectors.
The circuit vaccine, he explained, would protect Hood County residents from viral corruption, unstable firmware and dangerous outside signals.
Doc Loxo asked to examine it.
The Reverend smiled.
“Doctor, sometimes faith has to move before paperwork catches up.”
What nobody in the congregation knew was that the vaccine had been designed in Gilden’s lab.
It did not protect the bugs from outside signals.
It made them easier to influence.
The second secret was kept in the church basement.
A metal box sat beneath a white cloth.
Inside was Deputy Hip Hoppity.
Or what remained of him.
Gilden’s recovery drones had found fragments in the Slop Yards before the toxic muck finished dissolving them. His memory core was damaged. His body was worse.
The Reverend removed the cloth.
Hoppity’s eyes opened.
For several seconds they glowed an empty blue.
Then one flickered red.
“Where’s Orb?”
Reverend Mercy Mantis smiled.
“Welcome back, Deputy.”