What the fuck?

The blood brought forth all of Welga’s old combat instincts. She fired sticky pellets at the attacker until they toppled. Dark patches blossomed all over the enemy’s black suit. When their body stopped twitching, Welga approached. She hauled them off Jackson. Crimson stained the gray silk, but their client’s chest still rose and fell.

She scooped Jackson under the arms and dragged her away from the attack site. Ammanuel sprinted toward them, the elevator cleared at last.

“Cover me!” Welga ordered.

Ammanuel moved ahead of them. Gunfire from Connor continued in an erratic staccato.

“Boss, we need a room,” Welga subvocalized.

“Third door on your right,” Hassan replied.

It opened as they neared. She laid Jackson down gently, then yanked open her field kit.

“Por Qué, request access to Jackson’s vitals,” she said.

Ammanuel knelt on Jackson’s other side. They stanched the two wounds with pads as Welga rummaged for anything useful, like anticoagulants or topical juvers. Nothing. They were shields, not soldiers, and the kits had superficial crap like antibiotic ointment and bandages. Her display showed an alert from the medical team on its way to them. The juvers in her pocket were pills. Would they act fast enough to help? She slipped an internal wound-healer under Jackson’s tongue. Then, grasping at a stupid but desperate idea, she popped two of the pink surface-healers in her mouth, chewed them up, and spit them directly into Briella’s wound. Microcams swarmed at eye level, trying to get a close-up of her face, she guessed.

“Back off,” she said, glaring at them.

“Agent Troit is wounded,” Por Qué informed Welga.

Ammanuel moved to look after their teammate.

“Stay with Jackson,” Welga snapped at them.

The room was secure according to intel, but this job had gone so far sideways that she didn’t trust their information. She peered into the hallway. Both elevator cars stood with the doors locked open. Empty.

“Troit, retreat,” she ordered. “I’ll cover from here.”

They gave up real estate to the bots as Connor moved back, but the room’s door would provide a defensible bottleneck.

“Inside,” Welga said to Connor.

She lobbed two sticky grenades into the crowd of approaching machines and slammed the door. That should buy them a few minutes. Whoever backed this had serious money, and it sure as hell wasn’t Purity Now.

A ten-centimeter gash ran across Connor’s left side. Welga couldn’t tell how deep, but Hassan would’ve flagged Connor’s health if it were in danger.

“Por Qué, set my shirt to basic.”

She tied the beige cloth over absorbent pads from Connor’s kit. She could see white around his irises. Pain or fear? Either way, he’d never experienced true combat before.

“Take all your juvers and two pain pills,” Welga said, extracting his pillbox from a pocket and pressing it into his hand.