A dart hit the back wall a half centimeter from his head. Jagger went for his weapon.
“Don’t,” Mateo said through the speakers. Jagger went still, eyes burning with rage.
I took back the Hand-Held and tilted my head to the dart.
“I was never in danger.”
“So, you lured me in here. You were never in danger from me,” Jagger stated, “but I’m in danger from Matt and the internal defensive systems.”
“I let you in to keep you safe from the crawlers. But if you sent Harlan to me, dead and covered with bicolors, then yeah.”
“And if I didn’t?”
“Then . . . I have a really bad feeling that the Angels are heading this way. Probably tonight.”
Jagger might wonder why the MS Angels wanted to kill Heather-whatever-her-name-was. My lies were in danger of falling apart. Scrambling, I said something that made sense. “They must want some of the tech here, or the weapons.”
“You have weapons?”
“A few,” I said. “Some of the boss’s scrap is military scrap.”
My mind zinged from one thought to another. If the Angels had gotten their hands on a Chinese Crawler, and on Harlan, maybe they planted the bicolors on Harlan’s body. Figured they’d swarm me, kill me, so they could take the junkyard and its goodies. Two birds with one Tesla. The Angels were crazy enough.
“Matt,” I said, “update.”
“Remote Viewing Aircraft have been aloft for hours. Sending one to the access road and one to reconnoiter the property. Vids to your main screen. Also searching outlying cameras.”
“Nothing,” I said, as the ARVACs’ cameras took up the entire left half of the big screen. The road in both directions was empty. “What about a remote attack? An ARVAC of their own.”
Jagger said, “If your weapons are important enough to warrant all the things you say they’ve done, then they’d want to see the whites of your eyes.”
“Up close and personal,” I said. “Yeah. Okay. Still. Matt?”
“Status quo,” he said. “Wait. At the extreme edge of sensor range, I’m picking up . . . something.”
I nodded, my eyes on the screens. “You can relax, Jagger,” I said, pushing a little through my nanobots that were entering his bloodstream and nervous system. When nothing happened, I pushed harder.
Jagger shook his head, blinking. He lifted the brown glass bottle as if trying to see inside. “I’m . . . feeling weird. I shouldn’ be feeling ’is way.” He tried to stand and didn’t make it. “Wha’ you do to me?” He thought I’d poisoned him. Instead, his temperature was going up and the transition nanos were reaching a critical mass.
Mateo said. “I confirm activity at fifteen klicks. And the Puffers are suddenly all converging on the office.”
Jagger cursed and nearly dropped the bottle.
“Whada fu—?”
His hands clenched hard. His eyes fluttered closed and he slumped over the table.
I leaped to my feet, kicked off my house shoes, and punched open the armor bay that Mateo had moved out of theSunStarand installed in the office. The narrow niche unlocked with a soft suckingwhooshand I stepped onto the mounting pedestal, my feet perfectly centered in the outline. Turning my back to the armor suit, I sucked in a deep breath as Gomez took over the armor AI and began counting down. I closed my mouth and eyes and held utterly motionless, hands down and out to my sides, fingers spread.
“Initiating female auto-donning,” Gomez said.
The armor positioning arm went around my waist, pulling me against the torso segment. My head rocked forward and back. The armor sections began snapping over my body, interlocking, repositioning against muscles and joints, expanding and contracting to fit me perfectly. Across my middle, down my legs, down my arms.
I suppressed the desire to fight it as the helmet and the face piece locked over me. Claustrophobia, memories from my own piece of hell, stabbed into me like knives. I forced myself to hold. Hold.Holdutterly still. The breathing tube slid between my lips and against my cheek and blew stale air into my mouth. I blew out that first puff with a relieved breath. Inhaled slowly on the second. Again. Again. I opened my eyes, looking out into the office through the suit’s visual screen and sensors, seeing what the office really was, what it could really do. Pops’ last gift to me, when he was dying and had figured out that I needed to leave the OMW. The glove sectionals encased my fingers. The armored boots snapped shut.
“Prepare for peripheral nerve engagement, left hand,” Gomez said.
I swore, as miniscule needles, finer than acupuncture needles, pierced into my palms.
