“What did you find?” We perched on the edge of our seat, drawing on the strength of her conviction.

“I suspected a pathogen of some kind. The way his health suddenly took a turn. The way Selamault’s sickness lingers. I wondered if perhaps she came in contact with the same thing. I didn’t have a clear picture of it. Then I found it. Well, I found something. A genetic artifact. I have Maya attempting to reconstruct it.”

“How long before you know anything definitive?”

“I don’t know. Maya, do you have an estimate?”

< … > Maya’s voice emulators crackled with something akin to static. A digital glitch.

“Maya?”

“It looks like some sort of … nanotech override.” We wound our way over to the workstation. “That would require a military-grade access key.”

As the words tumbled out of our mouth, the fashioned workstation began to dissolve into its component nanobots. Reduced to a scree resembling black sludge.

“That’s not…” We bent over to examine the remains more closely. We reached out to sample the pile.

“Wachiru, get back!” Amachi launched herself at us, tackling us about the chest and dragging us to the floor.

When we glanced over, the nanobots had formed a slither. Slithers were a hacker squad convention. They counterprogrammed nanobots to form a series of tendrils that whipped about. Clumps of it broke off, forming fist-sized balls that, once clear of the birthing mass, grew tiny appendages and skittered about the room with the scuttling of black spiders. The tendrils lashed about, sometimes attempting to burrow into flesh. The weaponized, self-replicating bots launched bits of itself, to travel through blood vessels to the heart or brain. Or a tendril would simply stiffen and jab a person in the heart or eye or anything else fleshy and exposed. Or infiltrate only to reassemble inside and blow up like a spiked puffer fish. Hacking nanobots’ protocols this way literally turned every aspect of our environment into a weapon, one whose method of attack depended on the imagination of the programmer.

“Maya, security protocols!” we yelled as we backed toward Amachi.

“It must be generating its own scattering field. It’s as if it created its own security net and we’re all invisible within it to Maya.” Amachi crouched low, her chakrams already in hand. The table offered little protection, though the muscles in her legs tensed as she poised to spring at any moment.

“How many of them do you count?”

“I lost track after six.” Clutching a chakram in each hand, Amachi’s breathing slowed, becoming measured and calm. With a quick whip of her arms, she sliced two of the spiders in half. They dropped to the ground and dissolved, the sludgy mass scooting to rejoin the birthing pile for reprogramming instructions.

Chancing another peek around the dividing wall, we shouted to her. “Do you have a pehla stick?”

“Only jelis are allowed to carry those.” Amachi ducked behind a cabinet.