“Um, sorry, but did you hear me? Cars are hard to come by, and so are cleaning services. If you warned me, I would have put down a tarp or plastic.”

“I heard you. I won’t get blood on your seats,” she promised her driver. She gave one egg a stroke with the back of her thumb, her hands still holding a narrow drill and an articulated tool that was combination scalpel and forceps. The egg’s membrane was relatively fragile and thin enough that she could see the Select Omniphage as it shifted position and pressed against the surface, nuzzling her thumbnail.

“Besides,” she added. “Even if I did, I’m pretty experienced at cleaning up bloody messes.”

His laugh was nervous and unsure. She smiled.

She had to use her thumb to switch gears on the articulated forceps and get them to turn slightly on the y-axis, which meant leaving Om-nom to go back to sleep. The complex dilators had sub-prongs propped deeper in the wound, to pull the maille sheath and the artery it contained to one side.

It was like ten tools in one spot. Blood welled at the end of the surgical incision by her knee, and she had to move her arm, elbow almost touching the driver’s seat, so she could get the orientation needed to sweep that blood back into the wound with her pinkie. It obscured what she was working on, but she could work from memory.

The car drove over a bump. She pulled the scalpel and drill back a fraction.

“Sorry, I know you said to be careful, but there really wasn’t anywhere to go.”

“It’s fine, but give me advance warning next time. If you can,” she told him. She felt her way, reminding herself, with the tip of the scalpel whisking against metal, metal—

Chitin? When had she—

Right.

She’d forgotten that one. She would have been notified when the skin started bubbling and turning orange. L-ascorbic acid would build up in the next couple of months.

“Do me a favor,” she told him. I’d normally have my assistants handle this, but they scare people too much for me to bring them. And I don’t have a hand free to take notes.

“A favor?” The villain she’d hired as a driver gave her a look in the rear-view mirror, anxious.

“Remind me when we’re at our destination, I need to take out the patch job from four months ago.”

“Okay. I’ll try to remember.”

She’d broken her leg when she had been dumped into the alien Earth with the Wardens night staff, Jessica, and the class-S prisoners. The alterations she had made to muscle and the structures she’d implanted around the bone let her stand and walk with a broken leg, but she had still tended to it in an idle moment.