"He'll live," Berto said. His head was buried in his hands when he said it, so it was muffled and distorted, but Kat had been waiting hours for precisely those two words. She heard him fine. She also heard the unspoken For now.
"What," she asked for the first time since they'd snatched Josh from the jaws of death, "is wrong? And don't tell me it's the sucky generator, 'cause it's not."
"It's not," Berto agreed, heavy with exhaustion. He straightened - a little - in the passenger seat and put his glasses back on. "Well, not totally. How much do you know about the Max probes?"
"Just what I was briefed on when I got this assignment." Not a whole heck of a lot, in other words. But Kat had a) not been interested in the jargon and b) not happy to have partners, so her curiosity had been at a low point.
Berto sighed and settled into the deadly serious, earnest expression that always presaged a lecture. "Okay. At first, the nanoprobes were developed for machines only. Two models came out of that program: one that could go stealth, and one that could change surface appearance."
She thought of the Hawks and Shadows in N-Tek's secret vehicle fleet, and tried to pretend that she didn't desperately miss them. "So... invisible jets and color-change cars?"
"Believe it or not, the invisible jets were easier." A quick flash of humor, then more seriousness. "Eventually, N-Tek decided to design nanoprobes that could interface with biological systems. After a few years they had a model that worked pretty much all the time. Then they tried to see how much information they could pack into each probe."
She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. Sitting here, staring into the darkened parking lot through the fat-cow van's windshield, was not what she needed. She needed to be doing. Things always sorted themselves out better when she was in motion. "A lot?"
"Too much. It turned out that energy demands went up exponentially with every mode they added, and they added everything they could think of. That's why they called the whole bio-model line 'Maximum'." He ticked each mode off on his fingers as he named them: "Dormant, stealth, active - that's like the color-change - and a new one for biologics they called 'turbo'. They also seriously upgraded the functional capability of the active mode."
Her headache was trying to upgrade to migraine, and untangling Berto's techie-speak was not helping. "English."
"They made it so the host could do more stuff."
At the other end of the van, sprawled across the couch and out cold, a host to nanoprobes had come down just on this side of life. "The host. That's nice and clinical," she said, sharper than she intended. But that host was her friend, and she was angry at the whole world.
Berto, bless his genius heart, understood and took no offense. "They couldn't get enough energy to the probes," he said, picking up as if she hadn't spoken at all. "No matter what it was, the probes burned through it in a matter of hours, sometimes less, and especially when all the modes were accessed. And when the energy got down too low, the probes became - unpredictable."
She decided she didn't like that word when it was said in that tone.
"Further development of the 'Maximum' probes was put on hold while research was conducted to see if the energy problem was insurmountable. That's why they brought me onboard. I was working on a form of exotic energy in another area of the R&D labs, but I had nanotech expertise."
And he was the smartest guy on the face of the planet, at least in her opinion, but obviously that didn't count for much on some issues. "You couldn't figure out a solution either, huh."
"Transphasic energy works better than anything else, but it's not a permanent solution. I knew that when I recommended it to Jefferson..." He looked down the corridor at Josh, then turned back to Kat with hushed urgency. "He's gotta have the generator, Kat. The nanoprobes are destabilizing faster than anyone could have expected. If he doesn't get a full charge - soon - he's going to die."
And that did it. She was his bodyguard, after all; his body's continued good health was ultimately her responsibility. So she was going to take responsibility. Enough of this "sitting around" garbage - she was going to plan, she was going to prep, she was going to act. Her daily message to Jeff would be, A little trouble, nothing big. Going to stay low for a couple of days. Lies and lies. She wouldn't be in Orlando tomorrow - or Florida, for that matter.
"Time to get proactive," she said out loud, smacking the steering wheel. "Berto, I hate to ask you, but hack Jefferson's files. I want a name. I want someone we can cut a deal with."
Thirty minutes later, she had her plans together. She had a name. She had an address. She had a midnight red-eye flight. And she had a solemn promise that Joshua McGrath would be alive when she got back.
"You'd better be," she muttered at his sleeping form, sprawled out on the couch with little grace. He was gonna wake up with a nasty crick in his neck in the morning - if he even woke up.
Some ghost of maternal feeling stirred, and she ran her fingers across his too-chill forehead, light and quick. Her best friend. A half of her family.
She was so going to save his annoying Boy Scout hero life.
