Touch and Go by Mary Amato

Author:Mary Amato [Amato, Mary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Holiday House
Published: 2022-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

10.0

The botmaker’s first task, to take photos of the technician, had gone well, but this second task was going to be much more dangerous. As soon as lights were out, he began.

After signaling to the prisoner next door with their chant, Mehk opened the vent and removed the mirror fragment, the gum, and the data chip from the digital camera. Then he opened up his gheet, slipped the data chip inside, and tucked his gheet under his bem. The sensor-blocking coating on his gheet would keep the chip from being detected by his PEER. Once again, Mehk’s gheet would play a crucial role.

“Here we go,” Mehk whispered. With the mirror fragment, he sliced an ugly gash into his own arm. Then, as before, he used the gum to stick the mirror fragment on the ceiling, and he banged on the door.

Immediately the lights switched on, the door opened, and his PEER flew into his cell. “Behavior change. PEER on alert.” In the next second, it detected the gash in Mehk’s arm and sent an alert to the command center. “Minor injury. One arm wounded. Initiating prisoner-to-medic protocol,” the PEER said.

Perfect!

The Zeenod next door then beamed the same code it had first used to keep the PEER from responding to threats or sending any security alerts. Once again, Mehk reached up to test it. The drone simply hummed. “Exit now.”

Mehk followed his PEER out the door.

As he walked down the hallway, he hid his smile. His arm hurt, but it was so worth it.

Following the prisoner-to-medic protocol, the PEER led him to the medic office, announced their arrival, and opened the office door. Inside, the Z-Tev medic looked at Mehk from the eye in the back of her head. They had interrupted her nap.

While Mehk’s PEER zoomed over to the wall and docked as he had hoped, Mehk showed off the gash on his arm, and the medic rolled her eyes. She barked at Mehk to lie down and then grabbed a bottle of cheap repair fluid and squirted it on the wound.

“Aren’t you going to create a smartskin covering?” Mehk asked. “This is going to cause a scar.”

The medic laughed. “Waste my resources so your arm looks pretty? Stay still. The bleeding will stop and the wound will close in a few minutes. Then you can clean up this blood on the floor and go back to your cell.”

This was the point at which another Zeenod was supposed to fake an even worse injury that would require the medic to go to that cell.

One minute went by, and Mehk began to sweat. If the medic didn’t leave, Mehk had only one other option: to switch on the stun setting of his gheet and get the gheet to bite her. Knowing that the medic could discover and try to destroy the gheet before it bit her, Mehk wanted to avoid the risk.

Just when he was about to panic, an alert came in requesting the medic. The annoyed medic sent a message

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