Page 26 of Tyton: The Spider and the Dragonfly (Tyton #1)

Three doors, three possibilities that any of them could contain someone who would trip an alarm. Sesi handed Callie a stack of translucent pads. “Hold on to these,” she whispered. “I don’t want to fumble pulling them out of my pockets.” Callie nodded.

Sesi padded quickly to the first door and pressed her modified PalmInter to the Hexaline wall.

Thankfully they didn’t consider whatever was inside private enough to hang something on the inside to prevent this sort of spying.

Two men played cards while security displays scrolled lazily in the background.

Sesi swore under her breath. She disconnected and the viewing port disappeared. She moved to the room across the hall and created a new port. Thankfully, this one was only a janitorial closet.

The third door was the lab. Two women and one man were working. Talia should have taken care of the alarm system by now, but that would matter little if it was manually activated by any one of the employees.

Sesi came up with her plan. Security guards, one at a time, then the lab.

Distract, separate, eliminate. She held up two fingers and Callie handed her two pads.

“Into the janitorial closet, then knock something over.” Callie was about to ask a question, but Sesi pushed her into the closet and the door closed behind her.

Callie’s stomach fluttered at being manhandled. Dammit, stop. Not the time .

The closet looked like any other, full of chemicals, a SaniBot and the overpowering smell of wet boots and shower drain.

The SaniBot looked too stable to push over, so Callie swept her arm along the shelf of chemicals and knocked them on the ground.

As she did it, she realised that she probably should have read the labels in case any of them broke open.

Chloramine gas was not how she wanted to die.

Callie imagined her obituary. Promising young AI psych found dead in closet .

As she laughed quietly at her own joke, the door opened and a shocked security guard raised his gun at her moments before Sesi slit his throat and he collapsed on the floor.

Callie stifled a scream and wiped the blood from her eyes.

She knew that she was going to see some people die today, but hadn’t expected to be wearing them. She told herself this would get easier.

Sesi noticed her breathing. “That’s my girl,” she whispered. Panic turned into a hormonal flush and Callie thought she might lose her mind.

At least she didn’t blow the mission this time.

“Is there any in my mouth?” she asked.

Sesi shook her head and then disappeared to take care of the other guard. Callie picked her way around the bottles of chemicals on the floor.

She followed Sesi to the last door.

Sesi paused and chewed her lip. “How do you feel about killing?”

“Uh…” Callie stared blankly.

“It was a joke. I said I’d never make you. If Talia did her job, their heart rates shouldn’t be monitored by the system anymore and I can disable them through their strength amplifiers.”

“Why didn’t you do that with the other ones?” Callie hissed.

“Because if Talia botched something, there would be fifty security guards here right now.”

“And if you disable them and people start coming?” Callie asked.

“There’ll be two fewer security guards between us and the hatch. We’ll have about one minute before the rest get here. You stand in the doorway of the maintenance room. If you hear people coming up the stairwell, slip out the roof.”

“What about you?” Callie was picking at her nails again. Sesi noticed.

“Here.” Sesi handed Callie the ulu.

“Your mom’s knife? I don’t know how to use this?”

“No, but if it’s one or two, I can disable them and slip past. The knife won’t do me any good. If I’m lucky, I’ll be able to grab the tech on the way.”

“And if you aren’t lucky? What if fifty come?”

“You’ll have something to remember me by.” Sesi winked and disappeared into the lab. A moment later, she heard three bodies drop one by one. Callie ran on her tiptoes back to the maintenance room, still making far more noise than Sesi had on the roof. The door slid open and she crouched, waiting.

The electric hum of Hexaline lights accompanied the silence .

Callie turned the ulu over in her hands.

She practiced moving it through the air.

It seemed clumsy and awkward to her, but then again, she hadn’t ever used any sort of knife, let alone this one.

Somehow, Sesi made it seem graceful, like an extension of her hand.

Then she heard it. Two voices echoing in the stairwell. At least, she thought it was two. She couldn’t be sure. This was all so new to her. Callie’s heart pounded against her sternum. She took a step back and allowed the access room door to slide shut.

Sesi crouched, scanning the lab. Microscopes, high fidelity interfaces, spools of Auratomic wire. The Hexaline printer was currently working on something, but it wasn’t the tech she was looking for.

She read the labels on the cabinets. Wire dissolvers, printer part ordering numbers, large model interface – there. Sesi pulled the documents. Now to find the interface.

The box sat inconspicuously with the log files. It was a strangely modest place for something so dangerous, but Sesi was not a scientist and had no idea how they organised things. She would have had it on a pedestal in an Oronglass case with a beam of light shining on it from above.

No sooner had she picked up the interface than she heard the door slide open. Sesi crouched. The telltale heel-toe tread of a SecTac trained agent headed her direction. Sesi slowly raised her wrist to punch in the disabling sequence signal, but she fumbled the box and it fell with a clatter.

“Fuck.” She hissed. But she heard no other sound. Sesi turned her head as far as she dared.

“Sesi?”

A flash of panic hit her nervous system and she whirled around. What the fuck was Freckles doing here? Sesi stood and saw Callie, covered in blood, the security guard twitching at her feet. She picked up the box and ran. “Let’s go!” she commanded.

They bolted out the door and Sesi saw another one sprawled out in the middle of the hallway. “You killed two?”

“He was behind the other one. I had to kill him before I could kill the one who was going to kill you!” she hissed

They burst through the door of the maintenance room and Sesi pinned Callie against the wall with a kiss so ferocious she thought she might suffocate. Callie’s heart leaped into her throat and then she dissolved into the kiss. Sesi pushed off the wall.

“Shit” Sesi shook her head. “Sorry. That was a bad idea. Give me my knife back. I’ll give you one after I’ve shown you how to use it. You left a bit of a mess back there.”

Callie handed her back the ulu and followed her up the ladder to the hatch, unsure whether she would be able to walk.