“How do you feel?”

Tina flexed her back and felt it spread, the new nanomachines adding muscle fiber and synthetic armor lacing as she did so. Or at least, that’s what Doc had explained was going on anyway. “It tingles.”

“It’ll be like that for a couple of days.”

They were on the roof of a two-story building, overlooking a busy side street of São Paulo’s downtown. Blue LED lights and holograms cast an eerie glow over the expensive cars and limos cruising below.

Tina rested her hands atop the concrete bannister lining the roof’s perimeter and scanned the handful of restaurants and bars on the opposite block. Doc stood on the bannister itself, bringing him equal to her height.

“I’ll add the cost to your debt,” Doc said with a grin. “But don’t worry. Depending on how good you do on this job, you could be breaking even sooner than you think.”

“Screw the debt. I’m doing this because I want to. Blowing up a starship sounds a hell of a lot more interesting than what I’ve been doing for the last five years.”

Doc let out a laugh. “I hope you’re ready for it. To be honest, I didn’t come in here with much of a plan. And that was before I had to replace two of my best guys with an eight-foot tall white girl.”

She chuckled and hoped he was joking—but something told her he wasn’t. Running with Doc was going to be interesting, that’s for sure.

“What are we doing up here, anyway?” He folded his arms. “We’re on a timeline, you know.”

“Don’t worry, this won’t take long.”

Below, Tina finally saw what she’d been waiting for: a bald man with a thin, salt-and-pepper mustache exiting one of the bars, flanked by two goons in ugly brown suits.

“I’ll be right back,” she said, and leapt up onto the bannister.

Doc looked up at her. “Where you going?”

Tina flashed him a grin as she prepared to drop down.

“To kick a bag of garbage into a wall.”