Working Stiff

“Tell me.”

“No!”

“Condition Sapphire. Tell me!” He’d raised his voice, shouting it in her face, and she felt all the tension, all the anger, all the hate she’d pushed down for days now suddenly boil up to the surface.

Bryn surged up out of the chair and screamed back, “Go to hell, you son of a—” The truth hit her in a cold rush, and she paused, staring into his eyes. “Oh,” she said, in a much calmer voice. “Oh.”

McCallister smiled—a real, relieved smile. “Manny,” he said, “you are a genius.”

“Is that news? I thought you knew that when you promised to pay me—let’s see—two hundred and twenty- five thousand dollars. To start.” Even Manny was smiling—or at least, he looked like he was tempted.

“Try it again!” Bryn said, and grabbed McCallister’s hands. She squeezed hard. “We have to make sure! Come on; order me.”

“Kiss me,” he said, still smiling.”

Maybe it was the smile that did it, but she felt a wild and uncontrollable impulse to follow that order. Bryn froze, stared at him a stricken second, and then said, “Something else.”

The glow in his eyes faded, and so did the smile. For a second he’d seemed … so different. Almost human. But now … now it was just business again. “Walk to the corner,” he said. “That’s an order.”

She didn’t move. And didn’t feel any impulse to, either. What she did feel was a corresponding need to slap him.

“Manny, if this stuff is supposed to counter that protocol thing, I think it works,” she said, and sat back down in her leather chair. “So maybe it’s a good time to explain to me what you just did to me.”

“I didn’t so much reprogram the nanites as chemically inhibit some of their functions,” Manny said. “I’ve been working on turning off specific design features of the proprietary drug ever since Pat made it available to me for study, more than year ago; I’ve also been working to develop a protocol-free version. That one’s a little tricky, but I thought the counteragent would work in the meantime. It’s got a toxic side effect that would kill most people, but for someone like you, taking Returné, that doesn’t matter. The nanites will clean up the mess. Does make you a little loopy, though.”

“It’s toxic?”

“Not so you’d really notice.”

McCallister stepped in, fortunately. “We had to address your vulnerability to the protocols, especially Condition Sapphire. I thought you wanted that as much as we did,” McCallister said. He seemed to have recovered his composure nicely; she couldn’t see even a trace of emotion left in him now. “If you can be ordered to talk about anything and everything, you’re useless to me as any kind of asset. Before I could tell you anything of note, I had to be sure the protocols wouldn’t trigger if Harte ordered it.”

Well, that just warmed her with the blanket of his concern. Or not. “So now I can lie about things.”

“Just like you normally would.”

Bryn stared at him with calm, level intensity until he looked away.

“Yeah, maybe we should sit down and have some coffee,” Manny said. “You’ll be good for about a week before you need another dose of the inhibitor.”

“Great,” she muttered. “More needles.”

McCallister gave her a look. “Would you rather lose your free will on command?”

“No. But I’d rather do it without puncturing any more veins.” She eyed Manny as he bent down, expertly slipping the needle out of her arm as he applied the cotton pad and bandage to stop the bleeding. He glanced up and gave her an awkward half smile. “Thank you, I guess.”

He shrugged. “I don’t get paid in thanks.” But there was a glow in his eyes; he was pleased. “You start feeling faint or strange, you yell for me or Pansy. Loudly. None of this hero crap.” He glanced aside at McCallister. “She stays put for a minimum of four hours before I let you walk out with her. Give me the syringe.”

“No,” McCallister said.

“She needs her shot.”

“And she’ll get it. From me.” McCallister met Bryn’s eyes briefly, then looked back at his friend. “It has to be that way. The syringes have sensors embedded all over the surface, and they’re coded to two users—a primary and a backup. For Bryn, that’s me and Joe Fideli. If anyone else, including Bryn, tries to administer them, the nanites inside self-destruct and become inert. Useless. It’s a security measure to prevent theft.”

Manny stared at him and slowly shook his head. “And here I thought I was the paranoid one.”

“You are,” McCallister said. “But you’re just one person. Multiply it by an incredibly greedy corporation and you get some idea what we’re up against.”

He reached in his coat pocket and pulled out the syringe container; it looked exactly like a silver cigar tube, and he unscrewed it and removed the contents. Great. Another stick. Bryn didn’t look at him as he walked over, took her bared arm, and punched the sharp chisel point into her skin. It was over in seconds, and it didn’t hurt too much, though the lingering afterburn of the injection was annoying.

The two men were watching her with great interest. She frowned at them and said, “What?”

“We’re waiting to see if there’s any kind of unplanned reaction,” Manny explained. “There’s an outside possibility that the nanites could try to resist the secondary agent. That would be … bad.”

“How bad?”

“Oh, you know. Decomposition.” He shrugged. “Probably won’t happen.”

Bryn decided she was going to hate Manny Glickman. Forever. She waited tensely, trying to be alert for any sensations that didn’t belong and trying not to overreact and invent them at the same time. Her two not very compassionate observers sat and waited as the minutes ticked by.

She got permission for a bathroom break at the two-hour mark, and on the way back ran into Pansy, who was coming out of the kitchen carrying a tray loaded down with sandwiches, tea, coffee, and a stack of magazines. “Here,” she said, and handed it to Bryn. “No sense in your being stuck in there without anything to do. There’s a sudoku uzzle book in there, too. And a pen.”

“Not a pencil?”

Pansy winked. “Around here, we do them in ink.”

“Of course you do. Um … thanks. For even thinking about it.”

“That’s why I’m here. To remind Manny to be human every once in a while. You’ve got your work cut out with Pat, though. I’m not sure someone didn’t replace his blood with antifreeze some time ago.”

“I don’t care what’s running through his veins. He’s not my boyfriend.”

“I know that,” Pansy said calmly. “I just meant as a colleague. Of course.”

She so very didn‘t, but Bryn let it go. She headed for the observation room, where McCallister silently rose from his chair and held the door open as she brought the tray in. “Pansy made us lunch,” she said.

“Of course,” McCallister said. “She’s always the practical one.”

“Ooh, peanut butter,” Manny said.

“I rest my case.” McCallister grabbed a sandwich from the tray—probably not peanut butter, Bryn guessed; he’d probably had enough of that at her apartment—and poured himself a cup of coffee. “You feeling all right?”

“You don’t think I’d tell you if I had any doubts? I’m scared to death!”

“Point taken. Coffee?”

“God, yes.” She grabbed a cup and held it while he poured, doctored it with sugar and cream to her satisfaction, and stood there with him downing caffeine. It almost felt … friendly. “I feel fine, just to make it clear.”

“I’m glad.”

“Yeah, I can tell you’re overwhelmed.” She blew on the surface of her coffee, watching him through half- closed eyes as he took a bite of sandwich. “You don’t really work for Pharmadene, do you?”

“Of course I do. Want to see my pay stubs?”

“That’s the most interesting pickup line I’ve heard this week, but no, I don’t think so. You may get paid by Pharmadene, but you don’t work for them. You’ve got another agenda. And maybe another boss.”