To my disgust, all the computers had been wiped. We had captured the equipment, which was something, but the scooters had bought the operator enough time to scrub the holographic storage. There were ways of retrieving trace data from it, but I’d leave that to the forensic boffins who’d follow up our capture.

I headed back out to Tasha. “We’re done here. Pop the trunk, want to check on our prisoner.”

“Is not necessary,” Tasha said. “He is doink fine.”

“He’s not fine, his arm’s off!” I said. “Have you radioed ahead for medical to be on alert?”

“Ah…yes. Am havink done that very think.”

Tasha is a terrible liar. I frowned, and started walking around to the driver seat—then at the last moment, reached down to slap at the emergency quick-release button for the trunk lid. It popped open, and I stared down into—

—a puddle of reddish goo in the bottom of the trunk. Silvery nanites were threaded all through it, and a few white chunks of bone stuck up here and there.

I found myself wanting to puke all over again.