Spellhacke- M. K. England Page 0,11
head. A faint snort comes from across the room, but I hold up a finger to Remi without looking over.
“Not a word.”
I click on the magnifier’s built-in light and accept Ania’s wrist cuff with a ginger touch, then sync my deck with her fingertip implants. I know this tech inside and out—I built it, after all—so I know exactly how delicate it can be. Not that Ania ever treats it that way. I set it on the tabletop, pull the magnifiers over my eyes, and lean in to focus on the minuscule screws holding the cuff’s access panel in place. The precise work makes my punching hand ache, but complaining about it will only draw a lecture from Jaesin about how to throw a proper punch. Again.
Across the room, there’s a sudden rush of sizzling, a pained yelp, then water dribbling in the sink. Ania’s low chuckle signals an impending fight.
“You planning to poison us tonight, Jaesin?” she asks, though she always scolds me for saying the same thing.
Jaesin growls. “Don’t tempt me. I don’t see you over here trying to cook. Doesn’t your family have a chef?”
Ania must be tired of us taking shots at her over her family’s money, but she never shows it, just accepts them gracefully. Which is even more maddening, to be honest. I tune out their bickering and zone into the job at hand. Access panel off. Drain what little is left in the maz chambers into catch jars, manually trigger the extruders seated inside the tips of Ania’s fingers. Watch the diagnostics spill across my vision via my contact lenses.
Ania falls silent above me, her not-flirting with Jaesin apparently finished. They’re the weirdest exes of all time. When I peek up at her, though, I find her looking back at me from the corner of her eye, hesitant. I know that look.
“Diz,” she murmurs, quiet enough to be concealed by Jaesin’s clanging. “Why don’t we all stay in to watch a movie or something tonight instead of going out?”
I speak without hesitation. “I think you should give Remi the choice and go with whatever they say. You can’t just dictate what you think is best for them. I guarantee, you try to tell them what they can and can’t do one more time, you’ll have a hot ball of firaz in your face. Burn those pretty eyebrows right off.”
Ania unconsciously lifts her free hand to smooth over one perfectly plucked brow, frowning. “I know. But we just got back from a job, and we have other things we wanted to do this week. I’m not sure it’s a good idea.”
She isn’t getting it. I need her to really hear me, so I wipe the smirk off my face, set down my tools, and blink away the text on my contacts so I can meet her eyes uninhibited.
“Look, it’s their decision. They’ll appreciate having the option, I think, but if they say they feel up to going out, you have to leave it at that.” I flick my gaze over to Remi, whose shirt is slowly losing the war with gravity, revealing a strip of pale stomach. I look quickly away. “Is this just your way of getting out of taking us to Nova again? You ashamed to be seen with your broke-ass plague-orphan charity cases?”
Ania huffs. “I’m not going to let you pick a fight. Besides, what if it’s closed for earthquake damage? That wouldn’t be my fault.”
I bring up a quick search and hit their net site, then share the view with Ania.
“Open for business. Any other excuses?”
She pouts in silence for a long moment, so I blink the deck display back onto my lenses and analyze the diagnostics from her ware. The first two maz extruders are fine, the ones that handled the terraz and linkaz she used during the quake. She’s apparently been playing with fire recently, because she has firaz loaded in the third position. It’s a bit uneven, but barely so; she probably hasn’t even noticed. An easy fix. Her usual position-four obscuraz is fine, but sure enough, in the final spot, the magnaz extruder fires in fits and starts, the computer sometimes simulating a strong flow and sometimes the barest gossamer thread. It’s all gummed up, probably hasn’t been cleaned properly in months. No wonder Ania’s having trouble weaving with it on the fly. I click my tongue at her the way my mother used to do to me.
“Honestly, princess, you are the most high-maintenance slob I’ve