He turned his head around like a satellite dish looking for a signal, surveying the space he had to work with. He always looked so out of place in spaces like this, but even more so here, a cheap, shitty apartment in a bad neighborhood that didn’t even ask for credit checks. She had no furniture but that which her mother and abuelita had been willing to discard—a folding table for dining, a few folding chairs. No couch, but a beanbag chair and some extension cords. No TV, but a laptop. No décor, but a couple Virgin Mary votives on the counter that her aging abuelita had foisted upon her. The only real piece of furniture that was new in the place was her bed, a full-size Malm from IKEA.

Then his head stilled, and he approached her wall near the kitchenette, examining the fire alarm near the cabinet. He removed it, then pulled out what looked like a lens on a wire.

“What is that?” asked Cora.

“Surveillance.”

She shouldn’t have been surprised. Which of those fuckers had done this? Had it been Sol? Or was it one of the other agencies, and Sol didn’t even know?

“They will not have accurate surveillance of this location anymore.”

She gritted her teeth, trying not to get angry. If she got angry, it might leak into him and he might get irritated, and now was not the time. Why do I help these people?

“What’s the plan?”

“I first intend to implant monitors.”

“In . . . my brain?”

“In your brain.”

“Will I feel anything?”

“You will feel nothing.”

“Okay,” she said, taking a breath to reassure herself. “What do I need to do?”

“I need an elevated platform on which to examine you.”

Somehow, she felt a little bit of shame at the fact that she didn’t have anything lying around that might work as an operating table, just that folding table that was maybe large enough to change a toddler’s diaper. “I think only my bed is big enough.”

“It will do.”

He had her strip the bed of pillows and the top sheet and lie down on her back. To the human eye, his “workstation” was deceptively simple; most of the automation he used was inside his own head, his tools willed into existence from the microscopic drones that covered his entire body, flowed through him like blood. From his fingertips, he produced three drone lights that hung in the air a few feet over her. She’d seen him use the drone lights a few times when he was studying something, and they were among her favorite tricks in his arsenal. Since amygdalines were so much more sensitive to light than humans, his ideal working lights were soft and pleasant to her eyes. They hung in the air like marble-size suns, but the light was soft, like warm red fireflies.

He demonstrated what the monitors looked like to her, which were indeed so thin she could barely see them. Each looked like a human hair, but one that shone iridescent like an oil spill. He used the side of her temple to enter her head. The tips of the needles he used were so sharp that she didn’t even feel a pinprick.