I shrugged and stood up. “Shall we?”

“All right. But if you lie or hold back anything that could hurt Lex, I’ll kick your skinny ass.” He got to his feet. “And then I’ll tell Mom.”

Lex sat in a wheelchair, wearing a purple princess nightgown. A trio of New Millennium medical staff examined her leg, while her mother hovered next to the chair.

Lex’s brown hair partially hid a circular white patch the size of a quarter stuck to the side of her neck. A single LED on the edge of the patch glowed green, indicating that her vitals were within normal range.

The monitor patch was one of my accomplishments . . . sort of. It had come from an article in Medical Science Today about the future of diagnostic medicine. The author had described her vision for the next generation of medical monitoring tools, from a disposable monitoring patch with a wireless transmitter to a diagnostic capsule capable of providing a full-body scan from the inside. I’d contacted her the next day with a contract allowing us to use libriomancy to create those tools, and granting us the rights to use them in our work at New Millennium. Within a week of the magazine’s publication, we’d created twenty-four sets.

“Uncle Isaac!” Lex beamed and waved.

“Hi kiddo,” I said. “Long time no see. How are you feeling?”

“We’re fine,” her mother answered. Angie tended to be a quiet woman, always listening and assessing. Right now, she looked like she was assessing the best way to dispose of my body if I said or did anything to harm her daughter. “New Millennium has taken very good care of us.”

“It’s amazing.” That was Jennifer Simpkin, an orthopedic surgeon from Reno who’d been working and consulting for us part-time. She returned her reflex hammer to the pocket of her lab coat and stood to shake my hand. “The new leg is as healthy as the original. Healthier, in some respects. There’s no scarring where it joins the older skin and tissue. Blood flow, reflexes, everything is flawless.”

A younger woman I didn’t recognize glanced up, spotted Smudge, and jumped to position herself between Lex and me. “Sir, you can’t bring a spider in here.”

“Would it help if I told you he was self-sterilizing?”

“It’s all right,” said Dr. Simpkin. “Lex has no open wounds or sutures to worry about, and most hunting spiders are better than some people about grooming and cleanliness.” She typed something into her tablet computer. “I’ve been validating the readouts from the diagnostic patch, and they’ve been accurate within about two percent. If New Millennium can mass produce them, the applications are mind-blowing. Continual glucose tracking for diabetics, monitoring infants overnight to prevent SIDS—have you tested to see if they can distinguish fetal life signs from those of the mother?”