For a few seconds he just let the pain wash over him. His knee. His shoulders. He could feel something stuck deep in his back, too. Maybe a shard of glass? Or some shrapnel from the start of the firefight? He had quite a few deep cuts. The trauma nanites in his circulatory system had clotted most of them, but the deeper ones still oozed blood. It was hard to tell just how injured he really was, since his body was also covered in blood and viscera from the jeep’s previous occupants.

Espere, he thought, how am I alive?

His brain gradually spun up to meet his body. Someone had shot that murderbeetle out of the air. But who? Reggie? Where would he have gotten a gun? And the man was British. He couldn’t shoot.

“Reggie?!” he shouted.

“Over here!” the Brit called back. He sounded weirdly cheerful, “I, erm, think we’ve made some friends.”

For the first time in his life, Manny found himself face-to-face with two post-humans.

The first appeared to be a lady. She was hunkered up in the branches of a tree and she cradled a very large gun in her arms. Most of her body sort of faded into the forest. She was only easy to see now because of her smile. The shine of her teeth was quite unlike anything he’d ever seen. They appeared to be made of some sort of strange, swirling-colored metal. Where a normal person would’ve had incisors she had long, curved fangs.

The other chromed was a Black man. He was of average height, with a muscular body and a wide build. His head was shaved and he had a plump, friendly face and round cheeks that accentuated his broad smile. He wore a red kilt and silver breastplate over his muscular chest. It gleamed in the afternoon sun. His only weapon appeared to be an enormous sledgehammer larger than Reggie’s entire body. He smiled and nodded at Manny. His whole body twitched as he stood there, as if a constant stream of electricity buzzed through him.

Reggie stood in front of the man. It looked like the journalist had run into the post-humans during his flight from the drone. He looked terrified, in the friendly sort of way only the British could manage.

“Hey…y’all,” Manny said. He wasn’t really sure how nomadic half-god warrior people preferred to be addressed. “Y’all” seemed a safe bet.

“Hey guy,” said the woman up in the tree.

“Sup,” said the kilted man.

“Um. Can we help you?” Manny asked.

The man chuckled. He had a deep, throaty laugh that bounced off the trees and seemed to get louder as it reverberated.

“Naw, buddy. You guys look pretty near death. I’ma guess you don’t have anything I want. Nice pajamas, though.” He pointed down to Manny’s blood-soaked and burned pajama bottoms. The fixer’s face turned red with embarrassment.