Page 39 of Star Defenders (My Alien Mates 2)

I nodded. He was probably right, but if human blood could do anything…

The door slid shut behind us.

Mazic held a small hand scanner and a long needle. "We can't risk the suction machine," she said.

I wasn't sure we could risk the needle or scanner, but we had little choice at this point.

Mazic crouched beside Danec and waved the scanner over his middle. "I'll be guessing here and we'll have to work fast."

She slid the needle into his middle and drew back blood and hopefully bots. She smeared a few drops on a microscope slide and handed it to me.

I slid it under the microscope and put my eye to it.

"What the fuck?"

11

"What is it?"Zarex asked.

Before I could answer, I took another long look. "I've never seen anything like it." For some reason I had expected to see a microbe, like a virus particle. What I saw instead was a robot—no, an android—in microscopic detail. I would almost swear they looked back at me.

"So long, sucker." I undid the vial containing my blood and let a drop fall onto the slide. I closed the vial and put my eye back to the microscope. At first, I didn't think anything was going to happen. Then the nanobot jerked and tiny limbs stretched out before they retracted and it fell over and lay still.

"Yawned, stretched and fell asleep," I muttered.

"Not just its programming then," Zarex said.

I jumped. I hadn't realised he'd moved and his face was right beside mine.

"I suppose not." I gave him a watery smile and moved aside to let him look.

"Here's another." Mazic shoved a slide toward me. "Try the pilot's blood."

I slid out the first slide and repeated the experiment. As with mine, the nanobot became dormant with Brinley's blood.

"Let's try with Danec's," I said. I was well aware we were running out of time. Even as the doctor inserted the needle, he twitched violently.

She handed me a vial with only a few drops.

I smeared some on a slide and checked it before I added it to one with nanobots. No point in adding them if they were already there.

As I expected, they didn't fall dormant when they were doused in Danec's blood. If anything, they became more animated, like a child splashing around in water on a hot day.

Just for shits and giggles, I added some of my own blood. The response was slower this time, but they eventually shut down like the others.

"This is great," I said, "but we don't know if adding human blood to Freytauri bloodstreams might kill them."

"I'm not sure we have a choice," Zarex said.

I looked to Mazic, who nodded.

"It's never been done that I'm aware of, but if we can make the bots dormant, I can extract them."

I nodded. "All right then." I handed the vials of human blood to Mazic and took the scanner she held out to me.

"Show me where and I'll inject him," she said.

I licked my lips and held the scanner over Danec's middle. For all we knew, they could be all over his system, but we had to start somewhere.

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