Welga attempted to brush the water from her leggings. Smart-fabric dried fast, but too much liquid would fry its ability to transform. “Me being clumsy?”

He sent his next message via encrypted channel, in text: Bullshit. You’re never clumsy. And your arm jerked. It’s obvious in the top-down feed.

She sent her reply the same way: It’s nothing.

And how do you know that? he wrote back. Tremors are a classic side effect, and you’re coming off a brand-new, superfast zip.

Zips don’t have side effects anymore, remember?

That was what the designers had said about flow, too. Those final days of her mother’s life, watching Mama waste away, unable to swallow—Welga shuddered at the memory. Her mother had died from flow, not zips, but worry gnawed at her.

“This is the fourth time you’ve had a muscle spasm correlated with post-pill usage in the past two weeks,” Por Qué said.

Welga repressed a growl. She sent a reply to Connor. I have three months left on my contract. If it happens again after that, I’ll publicize my data. In the meantime, I’m not wasting my coin on a specialist.

That’s a long time to leave a pill-related symptom unreported. Connor’s expression softened. His fingertips twitched as he generated more text. I haven’t had to worry about you getting hurt in years. Don’t make me start again.

Christ, his look reminded her of her father’s in the weeks before Mama passed. His guilt trip was a shitty tactic, but his concern was genuine. While she’d been with ATAI and MARSOC, he’d been at a JIA desk watching over her and her squad, helping them find targets, routes, and enemies. It couldn’t have been easy.

Fine, I’ll send it to Nithya, she conceded. She’ll look at it for free, and if she thinks I need to take it seriously, then I’ll go further.

Welga’s sister-in-law designed juvers, not zips, but she was an expert-rated biogeneticist. Whether she’d give Welga any real input didn’t matter, as long as it kept Connor and Por Qué from nagging her.

“Por Qué, send my muscle spasm data to Nithya Balachandran,” she subvocalized, “with a note that she can make it low priority.”