"Sharkie? You up? How d'you feel?

My mental gears were still trying to churn through sludge, and it took me a couple seconds to answer.

"Better...yeah, better, I think." I blinked a couple times, trying to get my eyes to focus, and I felt a tug on my forehead. Reaching up, I gently brushed my hands over it and felt a line of stitches.

"Yeah, Lag got you zipped up. There, and on your calf." Looking at him, I noticed his jacket was off and a fresh bandage wrapped his arm.

I tried to sit up but my head immediately started spinning. It was the same queasy, vertiginous feeling of waking up still drunk, the room tumbling around you. I laid back down real quick.

Walker made a pitying frown. "That tape ain't no joke, is it?"

I kept my head as still as possible when I replied. "Frankly, it fuckin' sucks."

"Heh." He cracked a smile. "It oughta wear off in half an hour or so. 'Til then, Doc said we can sit tight.

"Nice of him." Staring up at the ceiling as I was, I couldn't see Doc Laggard, but the clinking and clanking coming from behind Walker suggested he was cleaning up. "So what did he find?"

He perked up. "Medically? You're doin' great, hon. The worst of it was your side, and as it turned out it didn't poke a hole in your guts like he thought it might've. Everything else...well, seemed about as routine as combat injuries get." He scritched at his face, rough with stubble. "He said the stitches pulled together nice, you don't bleed too awful much...in fact he said somethin' about how you'd make a great training dummy. So if you ever get fed up workin' for me, you got somethin' to fall back on!" He laughed, cackling like he always did at his own jokes.

I rolled my eyes, though the effect was rather diminished by being stuck on my back. "Great. That's just what every girl wants to hear." I let him finish before continuing. "So how'd that meeting with the Blues go? Besides you almost getting killed."

"Better than I'd thought it would, to be honest. Before I even got there our slicers tipped me off about a call from a Blue grunt to his underboss. This guy was flippin' out, crying, scared'er than a rat in a tunnel sump. Said somebody rolled up to where he 'n’ his boys were squattin', knocked him out, killed the rest of 'em like stompin' roaches and just as messy." He flashed a sardonic grin, blinding in the bright surgery. "Sound familiar?"

"Damn, so it worked?" It had been cruel of me to use Tosh that way, but he was better off than his friends.

"Ha! Worked? I think you gave the poor kid a complex! Scared 'im straight! He was talkin' like you were a damn menschenjaeger!"

I raised an eyebrow at that. So far as I knew a meschenjaeger was some kind of ultimate badass, eleven-out-of-ten dangerous, someone you didn't fuck with unless you were interested in an especially messy suicide. I didn't feel like one, but maybe-

Walker must have figured what I was thinking. "You ain't one, of course. Don't get a bigger head about it. Complacency gets you killed quicker'n anything in our line of work."

"I wasn't-"

"Oh, come on. I was young once too. Spent plenty of time feelin' like Big Billy Badass afore people got sick of it and decided to play dentist." He clinked his silver teeth together. "So I know you were just thinkin' 'Hey, I must be pretty hardcore.'"

I averted my eyes. "...Maybe a little."

"Yeah, I figured. I'm tellin' you, stay humble, stay wary, stay careful as a nine-fingered bomb tech. These chompers weren't cheap."

It was good advice, and I decided to take it seriously. Sawada'd said similar things to me multiple times. "I will, Walker, I will. What about the freakin' meeting, though?"

"Well, damn. Look at me ramblin' on like an idiot. Well, we got there, me an' Boss Moses's make-way man Cwyr Smith. Met up with a couple of Blue overbosses. Mikey and, what was it...Paolo. They-"

"Wait," I broke in. "You said Mikey. He a white guy, buzzed hair, heat nanopath?"

"Yeah, he was! How the hell'd you know that?" He didn't seem suspicious, just curious.

I let out a bark of laughter. "He's why I lost my old job." I told Walker about meeting Mikey at Dag's shop.

"I'll be damned. So he's only got himself to blame. That's fuckin' hilarious." Rather than laugh, he just shook his head in wonderment. "Him and his boy did not seem happy. I'll tell you this, Sharkie, I'll just tell you this: you ain't been the only one pushin' back. The Bones've taken back just about everything the Blues grabbed when they started this shitshow, and that puts us in a real good negotiating position, see? We look strong and fair. So we made 'em a very reasonable offer."

I turned toward him a little, the spinning not quite so bad. "And?"

"Oh, they said "We gotta think about it, and talk to the Generals, and Commander Canra, and this and that. And then they bounced."

"So nothing got done."

He smiled slyly. "Maybe on the surface. Really though, it was just to show 'em that we're willing to negotiate, but not to roll over for 'em. They're gonna be thinkin' real hard now, like, 'Do we keep pokin' a sleepy pergato in the eye, or do we cut our losses and jump outta the pen while we can?'"

I gave him a confused frown. "Seems like you already got their answer."

"How's that?"

"Oh, I don't know. The fact that they shot the shit outta your vic and tried to kill you seems pretty cut and dried to me, though."

"That's the thing, though." He looked into the distance, thinking. "I'm not sure if it was them. Well, it was Blues shot us up, of course, but I don't know if it was the Blues."

"You aren't making-Oh. Wait, you think the guys that ambushed you were, like...rogue, or something?"

He nodded. "Quick on the uptake, aren'tcha? Mikey and Paolo, man...seemed like they weren't on the same page. Lots of pissed-off whisperin' to each other at the meeting. And then just little things about this ambush. The timing. Only bringin' one or two heavies. And the whole thing just seemed-"

"Yep!" came a shout from the Doc. "Holy shit! Wow!" He'd finished cleaning and had been staring intently at the medical palmslate, but now he looked up at Walker and I. "You guys are gonna want to see this." He power-walked over, palmslate in hand.

"Did you leave somethin' in there, Doc?" Walker asked. He gave me an annoying little wink. Man, I hoped he didn't get hurt bad as I did, but if it happened I was going to bust the hell out of him.

"No, no, no. I haven't done that since that thing with the earpiece." I almost asked before deciding I'd rather not know. "Someone else might have, though." He gave me a serious look.

I felt queasy and it wasn't just the 'thetic this time. "What, exactly, does that mean?"

"Okay. So you remember how the scanner was playing up, earlier? Well, it wasn't. Check this shit out." He showed me the screen of the slate, where I saw a transparent scan of a horrendously shattered leg. "This is what normal human bone looks like on the scanner. Well, normal bone after it's wrecked a three hundred horse jetbike. Look at all that nice calcium apatite, huh? And this"-he continued before I could get a word in-"is your bone." It was my leg, but rather than showing up as cloudy outlines, the bones were opaque white, so solid they made it hard to read the image around them. "It's denser than normal bone, more opaque to the scanner waves. Made of something totally different!"

I frowned. Like I said before, I wasn't totally shocked to hear I wasn't a hundred percent normal. Hell, I knew I wasn't normal. But having it laid out right in front of me was still disconcerting. Beside me, Walker was glancing back and forth between me and the slate, looking nonplussed.

Doc took our silence as his cue to continue. "At first I thought the scanner was fucked up, or you'd been drinking medical cesium or something. But then I went to sew up your forehead, and this shit's gonna really blow your mind." He swiped on the slate and showed us again. It was the cut on my forehead, given to me by one of Rossignol's earthshaking punches. The skin was torn and bleeding at the edges, and in the middle was-black. Something smooth and blue-black as a Praetor's armor plates. "That should be white in the middle, you know? If it was normal bone, it would be. But whatever you got, Sharkie-it's not normal."

I finally found my voice. "So what is it, then, Doc? Come on!"

He deflated a little. He'd obviously been having fun with the drama of it all. "I don't have the hardware to tell exactly. But according to my laser spectro, you got mainly tungsten, structured carbon, and titanium, plus some alloy steel and ceramic. Traces of iridium, bismuth, and, if I'm reading this thing right, a tiny little percentage of stable element 115. Which is impossible! And it's all mixed together...well, somehow! That should be impossible too!" He looked back and forth at the two of us, grinning wildly. "There are chemists and materiallurgists that would eat their own kids for a look at this shit, Sharkie! You're a scientific marvel!"

"There's another fallback job, I guess," I said weakly.

"You didn't know any of this?" Walker asked me, voice low.

I shook my head. "No. I mean, I always suspected, but...I don't remember anything from before I was thirteen or so, Walker. Anything could've happened."

Walker frowned, his fists clenching and releasing. "So you're telling me," he said to Laggard, "that some black-science corpo-lab sociopaths sliced up a kid and changed out her fuckin' bones?"

"Well, that's the other funny thing. There's no scarring, no lesions, no evidence of any healing at all. Even high-end reconstructive nano will leave telltales. They just grew there like normal bones." He threw out his hands in an exaggerated shrug. "And before you ask, no! I don't know how that's possible! As soon as I saw you yesterday, Sharkie, I just knew you were gonna be fun to be around..."

"What the fuck..." I mumbled, head in my hands. I'd thought I might be some kind of experiment, made unnaturally big and strong, but this was way more out there than anything I'd imagined. "Why do I have to be so Kingsdamn weird?"

Walker gave me a tentative pat on the shoulder. "If it makes you feel better, hon, you seem fine to me. Made of tungsten or not."

"And, as far as my instruments can tell, in all other respects you're just an exceptionally fit young woman. Plus, that tungsten probably saved you a broken wrist," said the Doc. "Anything that could dent this stuff would've absolutely wasted regular bones."

They were right. Self-pity wasn't a good look, and no matter what I was made of I was still me. And like Doc said, it has been pretty useful. Not that I could help being curious. I raised my head.

"Thanks, Walker." I turned to Laggard. "You have any idea who could have done something like...this?" I waved vaguely at myself. "Yakkorp? Ulver Biosys?"

"To be honest, I haven't even heard rumors about something like this. I got nothin'."

"Figures." I sighed. "Not like it matters. They obviously didn't get what they wanted, or I'd still be locked in a lab.

Doc rubbed his chin. "If you like, I could show your scans to some colleagues of mine, do some asking around..."

"Don't, please." I didn't have a concrete reason to say no, but this felt too personal to just show it off to strangers.

"Suuuure thing." He punched a few keys on the slate. "And deleted. I wouldn't get nearly as much business if I couldn't keep secrets," he said with a lazy smile.

Walker nodded a little at that, which I took as an endorsement. "Sounds good, Doc. Thanks for the patch job."

"Sure thing, Sharkie. Be careful with that CySkin-or don't, I gotta keep the lights on somehow!" I wasn't even sure if he was kidding.

Realizing something, I looked to Walker. “I’d appreciate it if you kept this to yourself, too-”

“Ain’t no worries on that front, little miss. The reason my crew’s so small is ‘cause we run on trust. I ain’t gonna walk around spewing secrets. In fact, Doc should’ve kicked me out afore he told you.” He shot a glare at Doc Laggard, who shrugged. “And this ain’t the kind of thing I’d tell people willy-nilly anyway. This is significant intel, dangerous intel.”

I nodded. “Thank you, Clyde.”

He narrowed his eyes at me.

“Whoof, yeah, that sounded weird. I’ll stick with Walker.”

"The world thanks you.” His slab buzzed and he checked it. “Ride's here. You mind if we borrow yonder gurney, Lag?" he said, nodding at Monta's still-sleeping form.

Doc raised an eyebrow "Really? After last time? Fine, but it's your last chance."

"I won't let those jackasses take it racing again. Now c'mon and help me get it upstairs."

I spoke up. "Walker, I can-"

"What you can do is watch," he said firmly. "You're all fucked up, and you carried 'im far enough tonight already. Right, Lag?"

Doc's eyes darted between us. "Oh! Oh, yeah. No heavy lifting, right." He looked at me through his bangs. "Most people ignore the doctor's advice, of course, but you've been pretty surprising so far."

So after they gave me a bit of privacy to get dressed, I got to watch as they awkwardly manhandled Monta's folding stretcher up the stairs. How chivalrous of them. We made it through the storefront without knocking down any shelves. The one customer in there, a guy with dreadlocks and an overlarge hoodie, watched us with dull surprise as we passed by.

We left Doc at his store, then rolled Monta down the alley. Despite the late hour it was no less crowded than it had been yesterday afternoon. Maybe even more. Our weird little procession took a few minutes to get back out onto Hsieh. The ride Walker'd called was an honest-to-Kings armored truck, covered in crudely welded steel plates with slits for windows and absolutely studded with lights. As we arrived the driver's window hinged open, revealing a face I recognized: It was one of the Holy Bones who'd shown up to Grayson's after I cleared the Blues out, the woman with the axe on her belt. She had a hard face, crows-feet bracketing her eyes, but it lit up in a grin when she saw Walker.

"Man, so you did make it out alive! Thought you were losing your touch for a while there, Fehu boy."

"Nice to see you too, Marie," said Walker, returning her smile. "So you're still rattlin' around! I'm surprised every day I don't see 'em stackin' your cairn."

"I'm only a year older than you, jackass. Now getcher deader loaded up and hop in."

"He's just sleepin', 'Rie. Don't bounce him around too much." Against Walker's insistence, I helped him lift Monta into the cargo area.

"You take shotgun, Sharkie. More headroom." My, he was being polite tonight. I did as he said and yanked the door shut with a clang.

Our driver looked me up and down, then stuck out her hand. "Marie. Seen you at Grayson's the other night. Rem's bones, you're big." Her accent was like Walker's but less pronounced.

I shook. "Sharkie. Thanks for letting me know."

"Shit, you probably get that a lot. Must get pretty annoying."

"She can't help it, Sharkie." said Walker from the backseat. "Her mind's been goin' for years. She'll try to think something and just blurt it out instead."

"Oh, go to hell," Marie muttered. "Guess they never learn you your manners over in Fehu pit."

"Typical Ansuz dustlicker. You're just jealous."

"Of what? Talkin' weird? A couple of sheet metal shacks and-"

Maybe under different circumstances I'd be interested in learning about the different quarries and their rivalries. Not under these.

"I hate to interrupt, but I just had the shit beat out of me on half a night's sleep and I'd really like to go to bed before morning. I can always drive if you want to keep shooting the shit, or-"

"Yeah, c'mon, Marie! Some of us got places to be!" Walker winked at me and Marie gave both of us a dirty look.

"Yeah, yeah." She threw the truck into gear and gently clutched it into traffic, muttering under her breath. "Why couldn't they send the rookie to do this? I ain't a chauffeur..."

I dozed on the ride, only woken when the truck jerked to a stop. I squinted through the slit window and saw we were out front of my stacks. I turned to Marie as I got out, a smile on my face. "Thanks for the ride. I don't know how you put up with this guy," I said jokingly, jerking a thumb at Walker. "I've known him seventy-two hours and I've spent most of 'em saving his ass."

"Did I mention I was grateful for your help, Sharkie?" came the voice from the backseat. "'Cause if I didn't, well, I am."

She showed me a sardonic smile, a couple of her teeth inlaid with gold runes. "Oh, he ain't so bad. S'like a kid. Let him have his toys and he don't throw too many tantrums."

"Just so y'all know, you're wastin' your time. I'm too busy sending important messages to listen to your bullshit. But c'mere quick, Sharkie." His window hinged up and I went over.

He stuck his head out. "Seriously, girl. Thank you. This was some above and beyond shit you done tonight. The kind of stuff I don't forget."

I met his gaze. I actually felt proud of myself. A little conflicted, but still proud. Whatever I'd done tonight, I'd done it to defend my friend.

"I'd do it again if I had to, Walker. You've done right by me." I smiled, a real one. "Just, uh, return the favor if I ever need it, maybe?"

"You have my word," he said seriously. "And you also got my word I ain't gonna ask you for anything for at least a week. These past couple days've been a damn horrorshow."

Getting a few more full nights of sleep would be nice for sure. I could finally finish the new Deya book, too-

"Oh. And I'm gonna throw you a fat stack of deng for this too, don't you worry."

"No complaints about any of that, man. Just be careful on your way home, right?"

He cracked a grin at that. "For sure. Now get to bed, huh? Young people need their sleep."

I threw him and Marie a wave as the truck snarled away, got a quick shower, and took his advice with extreme prejudice.