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“That don’t look so scary,” Dano said e first got the contract

I s it?”

“She’d look scary waving a bloodydamn muffin”

“If I had a a said

The blade sits behind two fingers of duroglass and is on loan to the er Liberation Day is a perfect ti of the exhibit, looking for the telltale sign of a drone garage We see it in the top left corner of the rooa, and she slips on her spider gloves and jumps onto the wall They stick to thebeneath the garage door She pulls four laser nodes from her pack and puts thereen lasers crisscross over the door She gives es

I nudge Dano He’s up

The boy does an ironic two-step dance on the narrow slip of the doorfraloves, then pushes off with his legs, backflipping onto a glass case holding a Gold war hels case to case till he can jus it and shie five klicks away via h traffic toward thethe columns like some sort of hulass case He lets hi in the air so he lands on all fours in a way that makes my knees ache just to watch

Dano stands and delivers an obnoxious bow before pulling his laser cutter frolows as he cuts a circular hole into it Then, with a triumphant smile, he plucks up the blade and holds it aloft

The alaroes off on schedule

A high-pitched frequency screams out of speakers It would shred our eardrus As it is, it’s littleA second security door closes behind us, sealing us in Two nodes on the ceiling lower and begin to pu with our recyclers running Up high on the wall, the drone garage opens and a a’s laser grid It smokes down to the floor in four pieces A second follows and meets the same fate as she shoots out the cameras At the s, metal security doors fall to block us in I stand still like a conductor at the center of his orchestra All these variables falling into place just as I planned And a deep, formless depression falls on me as the adrenaline fades

“Locksmith, find your exit,” I mutter into my com

Volga drops from her place on the wall to join h to be i the coluraffities profanity with his laser drill “The razor?” I ask

He twirls it in his hand It’s meant for a man twice his size “A nasty little dick tickler”

“The razor,” I say again

/>“Course, boss” He flips it tofor ree The rest is brutally econoer to be rid of it, I shove it in a foam carry case and tuck it into my pack