You’ll be fine, she wanted to say. The world knew their personal relationship—that was one reason their fans loved them—but she wouldn’t betray his fear.

“Bots detected outside the door,” Por Qué said.

“Goddamn it,” Welga said. “Ammanuel, you cover the room. I’ll take the bots.”

“Jackson’s pulse is weak,” Connor announced on the team channel.

“Where the hell is the med team?” Welga spat.

Hassan replied, “They’re blocked. Elevators are locked down. We’re checking an emergency stairwell. Ramírez, the sooner you get the hallway clear of bots, the sooner they can get through.”

They won’t make it in time. Welga kept the words to herself. She had watched people bleed out in Marrakech, in Mali, at a botched operation on a Chicago tour boat. She remembered them all, in detail.

Her muscles trembled with rage and zips. Stupid not to be suspicious of the unusually inept civilian, but people didn’t commit protest attacks except for exfactors, and they wore costumes. In North Africa, she would’ve flagged any human activity. The al-Muwahhidun empire in Maghreb shunned all bots and WAIs, but no other country shared the caliph’s biases. Was there a connection between them and Jackson’s attacker? She needed a better look at the body.

“The medical team is one floor below,” Hassan said. “They’re cutting through. The only stair access is at the wrong end of the hallway.” He spoke like this was still a regular extraction, that Briella Jackson would survive.

The floor vibrated.

“Ammanuel, switch,” Welga said. She tossed a fresh handful of microcams into the hallway.

They took her place at the door.

“What’s on your mind?” Connor said. He knew her too well.

Welga scanned the feeds from her swarm. Jittery blox littered the hallway floor, some managing to self-assemble into dysfunctional monstrosities. New bots kept coming, rolling over their fallen mates with the determination of ants going for syrup. Jackson’s mysterious human attacker lay half-buried, struggling to crawl out of the mess. Not dead, then.

She expanded the view. The person’s arm reached outward. From biceps to elbow, the sticky pellet had blown off the skin, but instead of muscle and tissue, a mass of metal writhed. A human with blox in them? What the hell? Nobody knew how to integrate smart-matter with wetware. What am I really seeing?

“We need to capture our enemy alive,” Welga said over the team channel. “Por Qué, show me Jackson’s vitals.”

The numbers on her display looked lousy. Juvers had slowed some of the bleeding, but if the medical team didn’t arrive in the next few minutes, their client would be dead. Protesters didn’t go for kills, not these days. Bad form, bad publicity. So who were they really up against?

“Troit, sit with Jackson and cover the room.”