Connor grimaced as he moved into position. His pale skin had gone waxy. Sweat sheened his forehead. Welga resisted the urge to ask for his vitals next. They couldn’t do anything but wait for medical to come through the floor.

“I’m going out to retrieve the prote—or whatever they are. We’ll need answers.”

She ignored the resulting clamor and reloaded her weapons, one with regular bullets this time. The EMD caught her attention. It could neutralize everything out there, but their room lay in its range. It would disrupt all the vital-signs monitors in their bodies, including Jackson’s.

“Por Qué, assisted targeting on.” Her military hardware would come in handy here. It could use camera feeds to guide her aim.

“Ammanuel, grenades. Go right!”

They cracked the door enough to lob the last of their explosives and then slammed it shut. The inner surface bulged before healing back to flat. Welga yanked it open.

“Cover me!” she ordered.

She broke left. Masses of blox stuttered and twitched around her. Mechanical parts crunched underfoot. A large pile blocked her view of the prote. In her visual, their arm went limp. Goddamn it, you better not die now!

New bots appeared over the rubble to Ammanuel’s right. They exchanged fire. Ammanuel grunted.

“Agent Ammanuel is injured,” Por Qué announced in Welga’s ear.

“Minor,” they said on the team channel. “Ignore it.”

The sound of weapon fire filled the hallway. Welga moved the broken bot parts off the prote’s body, piling them up to create a low wall. Any protection was better than none. Microcams swarmed to get a good view. Welga swatted them away. The torso… Christ, what the hell was in there? She ripped away the remaining fabric. Intestines spilled out in pink and purple—as expected—but small clusters of what looked like blox writhed next to them. An intact metal object nestled next to a healthy lung. The odors of blood and smoke permeated the air.

A sharp pain tore through Welga’s left arm. She’d paid for her distraction with a bullet wound. She ducked and held her fingers against the attacker’s throat. With her other hand, she reached under the body, out of camera views, and palmed a sample of the blox. No need to advertise to the attackers that she had a piece of them.

She subvocalized as she placed it in a pocket, “Por Qué, seal that sample with some clothing material.”

Por Qué said, “I will seal it. Your tip jar has reached a new high mark. Your arm wound is superficial but needs attention. You should take a single topical juver.”

“If I had one, I would,” Welga subvocalized. Aloud, for all the world to hear, she said, “No pulse.”

“Ramírez, our drones are reporting unusual chemical signatures from the body,” Hassan said.

“Unusual how?”

“We’re waiting for analysis.”

Welga took a deep breath and grabbed the rib cage.