Darkness Rising (Dark Angels 2)

I wondered if they were legit or black market, then decided I really didn’t want to know. “This nanowire you’re supposedly fitting—care to explain just what that involves?”

“Ah,” he said, his expression becoming decidedly smug. “These things are real gems.”

He walked over to a storage shelf on the far side of the room and picked up what looked to be a small plastic container. “This,” he said, holding it out so I could see, “is the very latest development in nano-technology. Not even the Directorate has these little beauties yet.”

The little beauties in question were no bigger than a pin head and copper in color. “And they’re going to stop vampires from invading my mind?” I demanded. “It’s not that I don’t believe you, it’s just that they don’t look powerful enough to stop an inquisitive gnat, let alone a vampire with any real telepathic ability.”

He laughed softly. “Trust me, these work. I got them hot off the military supply chain.”

“I do not want to know that,” I said. “Just install the things, then hit me with the price.”

He did the latter first, and I just about fell off my chair. Still, we’d said price was no object, and if they actually worked, then it would be worth it.

He handed me the container, then headed for the small kitchen tucked into the corner of the room. He retrieved a weird-looking syringe-type device from a drawer and then came back.

“You keep syringes with your knives?” I asked, eyeing the massive thing dubiously. “I really don’t want to know where you’re going to insert that.”

“Nowhere interesting, unfortunately,” he said wryly. “One microcell goes into your right heel, the other into your left ear.”

“You are not shoving something that large into my ear!”

“Don’t be a baby. Both Ilianna and Tao lived through it. You will, too.”

“Well, I hope you’ve at least sterilized the needle,” I muttered, almost mutinously. I hated needles nearly as much as I hated spiders.

“Of course. Now take your right shoe off and give me your foot.”

I blew out a breath and did as he asked. He took a tube of cream out of his sweater pocket and rubbed some of it on my heel, then pulled on some gloves. After a minute, he hit a button on the syringe and plucked out one of the microcells; a second later the thing was in my heel. I didn’t even feel it.

“See,” he said, grinning up at me. “All that worry for nothing.”

“You haven’t gotten to my ear yet,” I grouched, more for the sake of it than anything else.

He repeated the process on my ear, then said, “That’s it.”

I put my shoe back on. “So how is it supposed to work?”

He held up his hand and looked at his watch. After a couple of minutes, he dropped his hand. “Okay,” he said. “The microcells have now been warmed by your body and will have started doing their job. However, it’ll take twenty-four hours before they’re working at full capacity.”

I frowned. “But how are they supposed to work when they’re not even connected?”

I knew the basics of nanowires—like cells, they were powered by the heat of the body. But for the wires to be active, both ends had to be connected, so that a circuit was formed. They also gave off an extremely faint electronic tingle when in use, whereas these things didn’t.

“Think of these as yin and yang—constantly interacting, yet never existing in absolute stasis.”

I blinked. “That made a whole lot of sense.” Not.

He grinned. “Okay, simpler terms. They are polar or contradictory forces that interact once put in a certain environment. In this case, the body. Once they are fully activated, the push–pull of their interaction provides a shield that is ten times stronger than any wire ever created.”

“Whoa,” I said, stunned. While even that might not be enough to stop the likes of Hunter, it would stop the majority of vampires out there. And surely something that strong would at least hamper Hunter. “How can something so tiny be that strong?”

“Science these days is amazing,” he said, sounding like a kid peering though a candy store window. “Trust me, you won’t believe some of the things both the military and private research labs are developing right now.”

“Well, given your love of acquiring such objects, I daresay we’ll see them sooner rather than later.”

“I’d love to agree, but I do have to be cautious. Or rather my sources do. We wouldn’t want to start any nasty investigations, would we?”

“No, we wouldn’t.”