Lilijoy wanted to shoot Mo. Really, really wanted to. The slippery piece of crap was up on the assault craft, hiding behind Anda’s body. And he was laughing.

“Can you believe this,” he said between chortles. “It’s just the three of us again, only this time it’s Anda who’s about to croak. Shit girl, you’ve got a gun and you know how to use it and everything.”

Lilijoy didn’t see any humor. “Why are you like this?” she asked. “I didn’t do anything to you. What do you think you will get anyway?”

Mo was abruptly serious. “Don’t take it personally sweetheart. I’m just following the money. Bugs like you’ve got are a once in a lifetime opportunity. You found them first, that’s all, bad luck for you.”

He paused in thought for a second. “Now here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to sit here all quiet, and not accidentally put my thumb into our friend’s skull. You are going to put down the gun. No, wait.” He chuckled. “Even better, you are going to take all the guns from my hovercraft and toss them into your old one.”

He waved a hand toward the blood covered mess. “Go on! Get it done. My thumb is feeling a little twitchy.”

He made a show of putting his hand over Anda’s face. Lilijoy would have loved to take a shot, but with one arm and a bad angle it was never going to happen in time. She reluctantly threw her pistol over, and then picked up the other guns and tossed them, one at a time, over into the muck on the bottom of her hovercraft. Mo was sitting up and smiling broadly as she finished.

“There, that wasn’t so bad! Now we have a decis…”

His speech was interrupted at that point by a knife that materialized in his left shoulder. He looked at Lilijoy for one frozen moment, as if wondering how she could have possibly pulled this off. She looked back and shrugged, and then they were both diving for cover, trying to find the source of the projectile. Her hearing was not recovered enough to echolocate, but she clearly heard the sucking sound of muck reluctantly releasing as a lithe and extremely muddy form hauled itself out of the swamp and on to the half sunken hovercraft.

“Hello little mouse. I see you brought a new playmate!” said the rhyming woman in a cheery tone. “Thanks for the guns! I guess you’re ‘armless after all.”

“What the holy fuck is happening?” came Mo’s voice from behind Anda “Who’s the swamp bitch? And did she just make a pun?”

The ‘swamp bitch’ was busy gathering up a couple pistols from the floor of the hovercraft. “That’s much better,” she said. “I actually felt naked for a little while.” The only clothing she wore was a band around one leg, but she stood casually, dripping gobs of mud. “This better do wonders for my skin, or I’m going to take it out of yours,” she announced to all present.

“Lady, I don’t know who you are, but I just called in drones from Lone Star,” Mo said. “I suggest you jump back in and swim the fuck out of here.”

She seemed unconcerned. “Oh goody! A drone race. Whose do you think will get here first?”

“Nice try swamp thing. Lone Star’s drones are the best.”

“But are they the closest?”

While the two bantered back and forth about whose aerial support was better, Lilijoy considered the situation. The assault craft was still an easy jump away for the woman. Lilijoy guessed she was waiting to find out more about Mo’s capabilities before taking the risk.

“Hey, rhyming woman!” she stood and yelled, hoping to distract her.

Without looking, the woman fired a shot in Lilijoy’s direction, just past her left ear. She kept the other gun trained in Mo’s direction.

“That’s enough out of you. Be a good little mouse and keep quiet while I play.”

Lilijoy fell backwards, partly by choice, partly from shock at the woman’s prowess. This was the strength she wanted for herself. Only with less creep.

There were a variety of blades scattered on the floor from Mo’s earlier looting, and she made sure to grab one after she fell. Then she put her plan into action.

Mo was almost enjoying the wild ride. The last few days of his life had been one improvisation after another, an oddly liberating creative spree of deception and intrigue, all toward recovering his prize. He just knew it was going to work out, even as the situation spiraled out of his control in this oddly surreal way. He wasn’t sure how Sinaloa had found him as he tracked Anda through the swamp, following the sporadic, single glowing pixel on the ancient infrared weather satellite. Maybe a leak in Lone Star or Boggs’ gang.

After the debacle in Manaus, Boggs had been mildly irate, which was, for anyone else, a raging tantrum. Luckily the anger was not directed at him. He had even been given a little taste of blood bugs for his information.

So it was with no fear that he removed the throwing knife in his shoulder, feeling the wound seal off as soon as the metal left his flesh. This new woman was a bad-ass, no doubt. He probably couldn’t take her in a straight fight, and now she had guns as well. He wasn’t sure who would prevail if she jumped for him guns blazing but he didn’t like his odds much. His bluff with the drones hadn’t gone well either. This close to his goal, he didn’t want to share the windfall with Lone Star. They could bid along with everyone else, when the time came. He hoped she was bluffing about her drones too. Go big or go home, he thought. He just wasn’t sure what ‘big’ was quite yet.

The standoff broke a moment later. Anda’s rifle, sitting forgotten in the bottom of the old hovercraft near the rhyming woman, went off on full automatic, firing a variety of ammunition around the floor of the hovercraft as it careened wildly from the recoil. Simultaneously, the assault craft drifted up, door closing. Lilijoy registered Mo’s surprised face in her peripheral vision, even as she threw her knife at the woman’s head, quickly picking up another one from the floor where she crouched. The woman shot straight into the air like a startled cat, already firing her guns at Mo. The knife thrown by Lilijoy struck her in the belly, hilt first unfortunately.

Guess I’m going to need to practice that, thought Lilijoy.

Fantastic reflexes and sensory awareness put to the test, the woman was forced to decide where to put her attention as she fell. The wildly firing rifle was shooting out all its ammunition randomly. Bug bullets were already eating holes in the hull and seats, bola bullets were slapping and bouncing, unable to uncoil to a functional span, and explosive bullets were, naturally enough, exploding. She got one foot down on the back of a seat that was already starting to melt away, delicate aerogel composites no match for the devouring bugs from the bullets. She managed to push off into the air again, now headed toward Lilijoy, swinging her guns around as she flew through the air in a recapitulation of her first entrance.

Unlike then, she didn’t have control of her trajectory, and when Lilijoy’s second knife smacked into her face, again hilt first, she lost her mid-air composure and crashed into the side of the canopy, bounced off and fell into the swamp again.

This time Lilijoy was taking no chances. She swiveled the assault craft’s machine guns and aimed into the swamp where the woman was thrashing in the mud, firing until there was no more ammunition, no more movement, and no more woman.

She noted that Anda’s rifle had finally blown itself into the swamp and sunk, still firing. She turned it off with a thought and surveyed the destruction. Pieces of hovercraft floated on the thin muddy surface, curling and dissolving like tissue paper on a fire. There go all the other guns, she mused. Well, she still had a knife left. Wonder what Mo’s doing?

Mo was watching the events outside the assault craft unfold with incredulity. He was propped up against a seat, legs resting next to Anda’s still form. His other shoulder now had a new hole in it, luckily just a flesh wound through the outside of his deltoid muscle. The woman’s accuracy was appallingly good; the top of his shoulder must have been sticking up from behind Anda by an inch as he lay on his side. He wished that he had the ability to shut down pain selectively, but turning it all off was his only option. He hated the numb feeling spreading over his entire body, but it beat the alternative.

“This is why you need more money,” he muttered to himself.

He looked over again and saw Lilijoy looking in his direction. The canopy of the craft allowed more light in than out, so he was pretty sure she couldn’t see him. She waved an arm to get his attention and yelled “There’s a camera in there you know!” He winced. She continued. “I’ve made a decision. I love Anda, but he’s probably going to die anyway. We both know that!”

The door to the assault craft rose a foot, and she continued in a normal voice.

“All we need to do is figure out how to switch craft and go our own ways. Don’t bother threatening Anda, it won’t work anymore. Any ideas?”

Mo considered her proposition. It rang true to him. Anyone could tell you that a man with a golf ball sized hole in the middle of his forehead was not likely to survive. Hell, if it were him, he would rather croak anyway than be some kind of brain damaged freak.

“How about we do what we did before? Bring me around so I can hop on the canopy of my hovercraft...” he reconsidered “...strike that, my arms aren't working great at the moment.”

He thought some more. “How about I put down my knife...” he showed her the throwing knife he’d pulled from his other shoulder, “...you keep your knife, and we do-si-do to switch?”

Lilijoy took a moment to figure out what do-si-do meant, but then nodded her agreement.

“Fine, but no funny business,” she said, gesturing with her knife.

Mo gave her a wounded expression. “Let’s do this then.”

He got to his feet and stood over Anda. She raised the door, and he threw his knife into the swamp. She kept her knife pointed at him as the vehicles moved toward each other, each piloted remotely by the other. When they were only a few feet apart, he said, “Alright, count of three, one, two, three!”

She dove past him, but he spun and grabbed her wrist, twisting it in a way that made her entire body flip and the knife drop into the swamp. He continued the motion, swinging her arm up behind her and driving her to the floor of the assault craft.

“I’m sorry honey,” he said. “Knife taking is kind of my thing. My teacher back at the dojo could never understand why, but I think it’s just because I like turning the tables so much.”

He drew a breath of contentment. Still holding her wrist, he continued, “Now that that’s over, let’s set some ground rules for the next stage of our acquaintance. I’m going to restrain you, bring you someplace quiet and arrange to sell you and your bugs to the highest bidder. I don’t think they’ll really care what shape you’re in, as long as your bugs are there. Thus...” he paused to savor his wording, “...thus we can do this the easy way or the horrifically painful and permanently crippling way. Your choice.”

Lilijoy struggled to escape Mo’s grasp far longer than he expected, ignoring his words. After another minute of her silence, he lost patience. Twisting her arm to the point of breaking, he spoke again.

“I appreciate this is hard for you, I really do, but I would like you to know that some of the clans might treat you well. You might even come out the other side as a high-ranking clan member! That would be even more likely if...” his voice descended to a growl, “...you don’t make me rip your fucking arm off!”

He gave a sharp tug on her arm and was rewarded with a faint crack as something internal to her shoulder gave out. She began to speak.

“Mo,” she said calmly “I’ve been doing a little research while you were entertaining yourself back there.”

Her voice was muffled from her face being pressed against the floor. “Did you know that the blood circulates through the normal human body several times a minute? Wait! There’s more...” she said quickly to forestall his confusion. “…I promise you want to know this. I learned something about my system earlier today. Would you like to know what it was?”

Mo was annoyed. “Stalling won’t change anything. What are you, three?” He shook his head and snorted. “What am I even doing?”

He released her arm abruptly and picked up the knife. His shoulder gave a twinge.

“I promise you really want to know,” Lilijoy said, looking up at him. “I learned that I couldn’t give my system to Anda, because my bugs don’t play well with other systems unless they’re in charge. They have this thing they can do. It’s called suppression. That means they turn off other bugs if they get close to them. It’s why Marcus got so freaked out. I turned off his bugs when he sent them into me.

Mo’s shoulders were on fire now. “What have you done?”

He moved to hit her, but she moved away from him nimbly. His movements felt off, slow and uncoordinated.

“I’ve turned off your system, Mo. You wanted to get hold of my bugs so badly, I thought I would give you a whole bunch. They can travel through the skin, you know. If you get close enough to me, I bet I can talk to them. Would you like me to tell them anything?”

Mo collapsed as the pain of his wounds increased and his mood plummeted. He felt hopeless, worthless. Without his system to stimulate the neurochemicals responsible for well-being, or to stimulate and regulate the constant flow of dopamine, endorphins and endocannabinoids, his entire mental state was crashing. He curled up into fetal position as Lilijoy watched with satisfaction.

“Are you sad now?” she asked. “Are you sorry for what you did to me?”

Mo was unresponsive. She walked over, took the knife from his hand, and pressed her forehead to his. He made a whimper of protest and curled up even tighter.

“I’m going to need you to go now,” she said. “I’ve told my flowers to clean up your useless bugs and then remove themselves from your system. I’ve left one other parting gift for you to enjoy later.”

She moved the assault craft over Mo’s hovercraft as she talked.

“Move along, sweetheart,” she said as she stabbed him lightly. He uncurled and tried to crawl away from the pain. “Not that way, honey,” she crooned as she prodded him toward the canopy opening. It only took a few more prods before he fell out and into his own hovercraft, where he curled up again.

“I hope getting my ‘bugs’ was everything you hoped for!” she called down. “Enjoy the green skin!”

She drove away, still chuckling at her idea. In addition to her own system’s flowers, she had slipped just a few million med bugs into him. Med bugs programmed with specific tasks. Like causing hair to fall out and chlorophyll to gradually accumulate in the skin.

“Who’s the gob now, poophead?” she said as she left his hovercraft alone in the desolate waste.