Instead of nuking the Simba, someone in the military must have found a way to put the bots to sleep, so they’d stop deconstructing the tank, then had sealed the tank and buried it to keep it safe until scientists learned how to kill the little suckers. Mateo had discovered how to kill the PRC nanos all on his own. He had discovered the Simba and its history. He knew I, or someone I transitioned, could likely survive being infested with PRC nanobots during a rescue mission.
He had used me to get himself a war machine to rescue his . . . his what? Evelyn had been his second in command. They had probably been a lot more than that.
Mateo had sent me into the infected Simba to start it up. Had made sure we’d have an antigravity device big enough to power up the Simba and zap the nanobots on site. He now had the Simba, earthmovers to free it, and two portable Antigravity Grabbers. Mythrallhad done that. On his own.
“What have you done?” I whispered to Mateo.
“What I have to, to rescue Evelyn and kill the queen.”
“You could have asked,” I whispered.
“You never askedme,” he said.
“You didn’t have a brain to ask,” I said.
I was infected all over again. My nanobots would have to fight the pure PRC mech-nanos I picked up in the Simba. Mine would probably win, but I’d need a med-bay in less than seventy-two hours.
Jagger opened the truck door, stepped up high, sat, and cradled me on his lap. When Gretchen tried to help, he accepted a wound kit and sent her on her way. “Gloves,” I snapped. Jagger was already pulling on a pair over his armored hands. Gently, he cleaned my wound. “Don’t touch your face,” I said.
“Copy that,” he said.
My heart thundered. I wanted to smash something. Mateo had . . . Mateo had betrayed me.
“I remember the moment I first saw you,” Jagger murmured, “sitting there in that silly getup, grime under your nails. That awful orange nail polish chipped and dirty.” He dabbed my wound, dropping bloody cloths into the empty wound kit. A lot of bloody cloths.
He pressed my scalp, trying to stanch the blood, the stuff on the cloths stinging like dozens of bees. “During the war, I saw the vid of you, twelve years old, crawling toward a Mama-Bot like a soldier under barbed wire. It took an hour for you to climb to a tiny hatch midway up her side.” He dropped the gloves and cloths into the medkit and sealed it. His free arm went around my middle and he pulled me closer, murmuring into my ear. “You paused and looked back at the ridge where your chapter hid. You said something. No one ever knew what.”
“I love you, Pops,” I whispered, repeating what I had said that day. “That’s why I was doing it. That was all that mattered.”
“You were weak, a skinny little thing. And yet your father sent you to the Mama-Bot and directed you to the one hatch we thought you might be able to get in.”
“You say we. How were you involved?”
“I was fighting in the Battle of Mobile at the time. We had killed a Mama-Bot the week before. It took a nuke to kill it. We had spotted the hatch, but no one wanted to risk the nanobots. . . .” His voice trailed off. “Your own father sent you into harm’s way. Knowing you would come into contact with the PRC mech-nanobots.”
I tried to get a deep breath and murmured, “Pliable mode.” The suit went limp. I could breathe again. “Yeah. He did. So what? Can we talk about this later?”
“I recognized you the moment I saw you. And I knew that somehow, even with the mech-nanobots, you had survived. For years. You looked tough enough to take me. I’ve never met a woman who might be able to take me in a fair fight.”
“There are no fair fights,” I whispered.
“No. There aren’t. So . . . how?”
“I was stung. By bicolors.”
Jagger went still. His arm tightened around me.
“The male ants swarmed me just outside of a little town, eight weeks before my thirteenth birthday, near the end of the first year of the war. They bit off parts of me, stung me full of poison. Then the queen stung me and deposited me full of DNA-based bio-nanobots.”
“People swarmed by bicolors die,” he said. “Horribly. I’ve seen it.” In the background, people moved, a fire danced high. Closer, the pump made a steadyerp-sloshsound, as if it were throwing up. Spy jumped into my lap, sniffed the bloody cloths in the wound kit, and leaped away.
“Three humans survived being stung by a queen,” I said. “Clarisse Warhammer, me, and a guy. The bio-nanobots attacked me on the genetic level, the way they were designed to do with the ants. They fixed what was wrong with me in the transition, then made alterations they thought I needed to survive. I lived, somehow. I became faster and stronger than pure human.
“And then in the Mama-Bot, I killed some puffers, and a lot of their mech-nanobots got into a cut. My bicolor ant bio-nanobots attacked the new invaders and went to war inside me. I was immediately sick. I was dying and I knew it. But while the nanobots fought it out inside me, I found the Mama-Bot’s AI and set a small nuke. I got out. My ant-nanos altered the mech-nanos, and I survived my second transition. It sucked. I remember every feverish, aching, puking moment.
“I was a preadolescent and wasn’t able to spread the nanos yet. I was safe for a little while. And the world was safe from me.”
“There are all kinds of nanobots,” Jagger said.
