Squatting beside the injured teen, Annebél pumped with her right arm to charge up the kinetic battery attached to the smart bandage that stabilized blood fluid circulation beneath the patch after she removed the two pieces of shrapnel lodged in the teen's ribcage.

"You got a name?" She asked.

A cocktail of anesthetics, both local and systemic, administered from the smart bandage, induced in the youth a tranquil disposition. An upgrade from the pale shock condition he was in when she got there.

"Andes."

"Cool name." Annebél complimented.

"Our mom is a bit of a nature lover."

"Fucking hippie is what she is," Gertrod interjected.

Annebél detected no malice in his tone. It even came across as good-natured.

She sized them up. Gertrod appeared about twenty. Andes, maybe sixteen. The third crew member, who stayed quiet and on guard after Annebél told him he could retrieve his gun and guard the door into the pump house, she guessed to be eighteen.

"So, you are all brothers?"

"Yeah, this is our neighborhood. We live above our mom's shop over there. She's the herbalist in the strip back that way."

Annebél chuckled. "I guess you weren't kidding about her being a hippie."

"Wait until you get the chance to see her communicate with the plants. It is unreal how she can coax them into advantageous chemical formulation."

Annebél nodded along. She had heard of the art associated with the Bolivian Institute of Agrarian Studies called Ka'ay Jeguaka—herbal alchemy based on frequency pattern manipulation and biochemical fusion.

The sound of feet approaching turned all of their heads. Tasìa's pair of Veronica's smacked against the gridded floorboard.

She overheard the conversation.

"Does your mother carry anything naturally speedy that can keep me up another twenty-four hours and dump neurotoxin buildup from my brain?"

"Most definitely," Gertrod nodded.

"Well, alright then. Scouting about, I noticed a lot of interesting things…" As Tasìa said this, Annebél gave her a curious smile as if to ask, Did you pilfer anything?

Tasìa ignored the accusation as she continued. "It seems curious that the Vida Escondida Autonomous Authority would allow the Al-Majhul to run around down here with vital systems in operation. It appears they live down here."

Gertrod shook his head and chortled.

"You are not going to believe it, but they are contracted to maintain the pump house and keep the detritus pools vacuumed of impurities and to keep them linked with one another to flow in sync. The chief of waste management operations calls them 'pool boys'."

Tasìa was flabbergasted.

"You can't just treat those things like you would actual people."

At the pump house entrance came a voice that spoke for the first time.

"Why not?" The middle brother asked in a tone more curious than challenging.

Though Tasìa felt flummoxed by the question on an ethical level, the words came quickly to her lips.

"They are schemers lurking in the shadows."

"Maybe they are afraid and have reason to be afraid."

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"Lodi," Gertrod called out. "Señora del Alma-Gris doesn't know you well enough for you to spout off on that conspiracy."

Annebél licked at her lips. "Lodi? That's an incredibly good name."

Tasìa scrunched up her face. Why is Annebél concerned about names? Is she with child? It would have to be either Sachmilli's or Raúl's.

Annebél laughed at the sight of her.

"What's up with you? You look like you just swallowed a hornet."

"Are you pregnant?"

Annebél began to laugh hysterically.

"No. Just no!"

Tasìa let it go. She was ready to and needed to change the subject.

"Hey. I reached Elise. We had a three-way call with Sachmilli. You'll be happy to know no beef emerged between them. Elise is aware of the dragon, and she says she wants to data-breach it. Aside from the broken wing, Mel is fine.

"We do our part and clear the pump house, and they will take it from there so we can be on our way once we collect Matzi. Sound cool?"

Annebél nodded with an agreeable smile, "Sure. How did she take the news of Fiona?"

"She never veered into emotional encumbrance even once. Just stayed professional and detached the entire conversation. She even told me not to let up our guard. She said, 'Fiona is the queen of deadman switches. I almost got killed twice searching her premises after she abandoned it.' That's a direct quote from Elise."

Annebél grimaced and shuffled from foot to foot. Her eyes pointed to the pump house entrance.

"Hey, before we go in there, one last thing. I know some things about that friend of yours from the IMCQ you are probably going to be seeing soon."

Tasìa snarled.

"Felicité? She's not a friend."

"Yeah, well. When she was released into Elise's custody. The two of them had a brief, hot, and torrid romance. Luna Claro cut it off after her bosses got wind of it and told her to cut it out."

Tasìa's lips pursed up, quizzical.

"Elise's bosses? Who bosses Elise? How do you know this?"

Annebél smiled like she was about to lay out a surprise and was enjoying it.

"Elise Luna Claro belongs to the same organization your handsome hunk of American flesh does, mon petit démon. Felicité is in her custody because that terrorist, who you allege is not a friend, happens to be a very specific type of Manifested that organization is dedicated towards hunting down as an extreme danger to the Quadra. They hope to use her to crack open a conspiracy involving the Europa incident—Manifested astronauts that were thought killed but have been slipping back to Earth.

"So, once Paz is no longer of use to them, she'll be dispensed with. Elise violated the rule of not getting too attached."

She thought of Sylvia, the Serbian assassin, and Felicité's obsession with that one task that she kept asking Tasìa to perform:

After the Argentinian finally got her giggles and catcalls out of her system, enthusiastically, Felicité yelped out, "Okay, that was fun. Ciao! Oh,Tasìa, don't forget, you'll be in Asunción soon, right?"

Tasìa answered, "Did you get my data? It certainly looks that way."

"Be sure to make an appointment with the Human Rights Commission."

"Don't you worry; I haven't forgotten."

Felicité wasn't just trying to set her up. Somehow, it really was her one way out of jeopardy. Did the Human Rights Commission perform rescue services for Manifested?

Official Salvage policy was to quarantine the Manifested; though the Salvage denied there existed specially conditioned ones like the Amongst Us that caused a stir of paranoia a generation ago, different Manifested types existed and were treated with different status: some were hunted, and some were neither hunted nor quarantined but acted as state-sponsored operatives.

What's the difference between them that this is the case?

Now that Andes was stabilized, Annebél stood up and picked up her guns.

She turned back to Tasìa.

"You're lost in thought again. What's banging around up there?"

Tasìa shrugged. "I'm just trying to make sense of things."

Annebél nodded along.

"Determining who needs to be shot can get complicated."

Tasìa chortled to that.

"Hey. Speaking of hunks, how is the dance studio coming?"

"Raúl has the Asunción ladies lined up outside the hall to join. What does Villa Marròn know about what the in thing is in dance styles? I'm just glad to see him doing something he loves again. But --"

Annebél stopped herself in mid-speech and pointed towards Lodi.

Tasìa turned and asked him, "Did you just see something?"

He affirmed with a nod.

"I spotted movement."

"Okay. Keep your head down, low and steady."

As she listened to an instruction video, Tasìa smacked a switch-out clip into the 50-Split underchamber. It plucked the thermite mine out of the currently readied drone and replaced it with a sensor probe.

"Lodi, take my PA and set up a hologram display between us. Annebél, cover for Lodi."

When the display was in position, Tasìa shot the probe into the open doorway. Turning cameotic as soon as it hit air, the invisible-to-the-natural-eye probe zigzagged through five large pump equipment-filled rooms and circled around until it attached to the ceiling of the largest one.

Lodi looked up from the PalmEx display.

"I read six Al-Majhul in fixed positions ready to ambush us, but no sign of either Fiona or Matzi."

"Did the Al-Majhul see the probe?"

"Their breathing and heartbeats remain unchanged." He answered.

"Excellent, but I am not entirely sure that means anything with these creatures."

Lodi's eyes squinched up.

"What does that mean? The gray light."

He punched in a close-up on the display focused in on a set of six door panels on the furthest wall inside the pump house.

A fucking administrative daemon, Tasìa thought.

She shook her head.

"Nothing good is what that means."