Chen yelled in pain, lashed out with one hand, knocking the injector away, out of Ling’s grasp, sending it flying through the air to land across the room. Then he was up on his feet, and his other hand came down, smacking Ling across the face, driving her backwards and off her feet, onto the carpet.

“Lights!” her father bellowed, and the house illuminated his bedroom. He had one hand on his neck, where the injector’s high-powered jet had penetrated his flesh. He looked at his daughter in horror, then pulled his hand away to look at it. It came away bloody.

“What have you done?” he yelled at her. “What have you done?”

Then his eyes scanned the room, and came to the injector. The ampule of silvery fluid, still half full, loaded into it.

Her father roared and came at Ling. She raised her hands to protect herself and he kicked her, hard.

Ling screamed in pain as his foot slammed into her midsection.

“You monster!” he said. Then he kicked her again.

Ling screamed louder. “No! No!”

Her father lifted his leg again, to kick her a third time, and now Ling could feel just a tiny bit of mind around him as the nanites bound to his neurons, exposed the innards of his brain to her.

Her father’s foot came at her and she reached out and twisted what she could feel in his mind. His foot slammed into her again but this time he stumbled, wobbled after he kicked her, as her thoughts pushed against the neurons of his motor cortex.

Ling screamed in pain. Tears were falling down her face freely. She had never hurt so bad before in her life. But she reached out and pushed on her father’s mind and now she could feel even more and he staggered backwards.

“No,” he said, trying to get his balance. “No.”

He tried to kick her a fourth time but this time she shoved with her mind against his, against the nanites latching onto the neurons of his motor control centers, and her father fell backwards instead, fell against the bed, his head cracking into one of the upright posts. Ling breathed hard, but her father stayed there, stunned by the blow to his skull and by the events in his brain. Already his eyes were going glassy, his mind going wild as more and more of the nanites latched onto his neurons and launched into the calibration phase.

Ling reached out, and clenched around the parts of his mind she could sense. She could feel his disorientation, his confusion at what the nanites were doing to him, his terror of her.

Good. Be afraid, little human.