The intact bots needed no such tricks against her organic body. Regular bullets flew at Welga, sending plaster flying from the column that shielded her. The protesters would pay for that damage. Idiots. Using cheap bot hardware would dig into their earnings.

Welga’s muscles vibrated every time she darted out to fire at the turrets. A bullet grazed her arm. Another passed through her left side. She stumbled and recovered. The juvers in her system knitted her skin. The pills also did something internally so she wouldn’t bleed out. She didn’t care how so long as it kept her in the fight.

With each new wound, her tip jar balance increased. Each bot she took out earned her more, too. Connor never left his jar up during a fight—he said he found it distracting—but it gave Welga a fierce joy to watch the coin flow in.

She and Ammanuel shot through the final attack bot at the same time. Piles of writhing metal littered the driveway. Blood stained the white plaster columns. Cleaner bots emerged from a shed on the far side, deeming the danger over. Welga agreed.

“Clear to move the client,” she subvocalized on the team channel.

Connor escorted Jackson from the car through the doors. She and Ammanuel followed. As soon they registered the fight over, the offers flooded in: video editing, special effects packages, custom soundtracks. For an especially good fight, Welga would spend the coin to get her feeds turned into a coherent narrative. Not everyone had the time to watch live, and they would tip well for an entertaining product, but this one hadn’t come close to being worth the cost.

“Ignore all,” Welga subvocalized to Por Qué.

The building’s WAI unlocked the doors into the lobby and sent directions for a room adjacent to Jackson’s meeting. Connor stood guard in the hallway with three other shields, none from Platinum. Welga expanded his and Jackson’s feeds in her visual while sitting for her medical with Ammanuel.

Two medic-bots and a human supervisor entered to examine them. Por Qué displayed the exchange of information with Welga’s medic-bot. Welga skimmed it—a request for delivery of her vital signals, which Por Qué provided—then shifted her attention to her tips. Once a month, she transferred some coin to her parents’ account. With Papa’s health deteriorating, he had reduced his gigs. The extra money from Welga meant he could keep the house repaired against Phoenix’s brutal sandstorms.

The medic-bot clamped her arm and injected the usual comedown cocktail: a flush to dissolve any pill-based microelectronics, microbials to boost healing, and minerals to replace those she’d used up. It applied a local anesthetic around the bullet wound and used two of its arms to immobilize her torso.

“Please stay still,” the medic-bot said in American-accented English, having identified Welga’s place of origin.