Page 35 of Redstone
He steepled his fingers underneath his chin and thought for a moment. “We’re going to have to adhere to the original timeline,though. We can’t afford to leave Kyle and Magpie in there any longer than we absolutely must.”
“I know. Not to mention the shit that’s going down with Robbie and Wyl.”
Sigurd frowned. “To what are you referring?”
Garrett shrugged. “Oh, just your average, everyday sexual harassment with a side of death threats. They’ll probably be all right, but it’s not safe for them either.”
Sigurd sighed. “It’s not safe for anyone, it seems.”
Garrett nodded grimly. “You have no idea how right you are.”
“What does that mean?”
“Let’s just say … that Berengaria has a good reason to isolate herself and suggested that similar measures might be a good idea for my family.”
“Your father is used to being in the line of fire. He’s taken appropriate precautions for himself and his family.”
“I’m not sure whatappropriateconsists of anymore,” Garrett mused. “I think even my own Death Star might not be enough at this point.” He shook his head and moved on before Sigurd could ask him what a Death Star was. “Anyway, I’ll get the changes underway on my end if you do the same on yours. I think we’ll have to make sure our people are talking, so that’ll be on Hummingbird to initiate. You’ve got the security upgrades for Cody ready to go?”
“Of course.”
“Good.” That was enough to ease some of the tension from Garrett’s face. “He and his friends are looking forward to coming back.”
“I’ll meet them and Grennson’s parents at the port myself.”
“Thank you.” He closed the comm feed, and Sigurd took a moment to sit back and let the new information find its way into the tapestry of his mind, new threads brightening here and there as others dimmed. The overall picture was changing shape, moreof a chimera now than ever before. Positively controlling for all the variables was going to be next to impossible.
He would work on rethreading some of the bigger issues later. Right now, he needed to talk to Hummingbird.
***
Wyl sat back with a satisfied sigh and inspected the glory that was his robot. In less than two days, he had taken ZeeBee from an underperforming guard bot to the complex protective machine that it was right now. It had been two days of mostly not sleeping and very little eating, but given that Robbie had been going nonstop since he got there thanks to “shift enhancement” by management—which was another way of sayinghazing—Wyl hadn’t been neglecting him.
The best thing about ZeeBee’s modifications was that they were completely inert unless it was Wyl or Robbie giving the commands. And the commands themselves were nonstandard, so no one would be the wiser if Wyl had anything to say about it.
Wyl took a sip of espresso and cleared his throat. “ZeeBee, show me your pretty eyes.” The green eyestrip brightened for a moment, indicating that the mini recording device Wyl had installed there was active. “Five-second recap, project.”
“Command accepted.” A hologram of the previous five seconds of recording appeared two feet in front of Wyl, showing himself lounging back in his chair and swiveling side to side a bit.
“Well done, delete and reset.”
“Command accepted.”
Now to test his more exciting new functionalities. Wyl grinned and put his cup down. “ZeeBee, show me your pretty hands!”
ZeeBee’s arms lifted into the air, and a slot hidden in the side of each of them popped open. The right one extended a micro-laser, a spare battery, and a knife that looked like an old-school scalpel. The left one had a single-use Regen injector, a tourniquet, and a painkiller.
“Well done, reset.”
“Command accepted.” The tools secreted themselves away again, and the robot lowered its arms.
“ZeeBee, show me your dance moves!”
The robot’s head began to spin in a circle. “Alert, alert! Sound the alarm!” A piercing yowl began to radiate from the robot’s speaker.
“Well done, reset!” The sound stopped abruptly.
“Command accepted.”
