Free They Tell Me I'm The Bad Guy by R. D. Harless Page A

druggy, slow, monotone voice. He had been force-fed medication or something overnight and came close to resembling a sane person. "He died from complications," he corrected her. "I didn't kill that guy. I didn't mean to."
    "Jim, I swear to God--"
    He quickly piped up, "I might be able to do something with the stuff in there, okay? But the whole setup is low-tech, and without knowing the wiring layout or power relays or redundancy features or potential traps or--"
    "Jim, stop talking and get to the fucking point," Tracey interrupted. "Yes or no? On a scale of one to ten, how good are our chances of you getting the vault door open without any demolition?"
    Spencer blinked slowly and licked his dry lips. "I won't know exactly what to have my 'bots target or what kind of fail - safes or programs could be triggered by my sabotage. We would need somebody to either sense where all the wires are in the walls or we could spend weeks there drilling and digging and finding pathways ourselves by trial-and-error. This is all pre-internet stuff wired through there. Nobody uses this anymore. And my nanites are microscopic machines. They're so small you can't even see them." He held up his hand. "They're all over my skin right now, but you would never be able to tell without detection equipment. That's how small they are."
    I found that unsettling and suddenly felt like I could feel them crawling on me.
    Tracey rubbed her eyes. "I know what nanites are. Would you stop talking in circles and--"
    The door of the conference room opened. Some middle-aged woman in her Sunday best and a large portfolio stuck her head in. "Oh, excuse me," she said, embarrassed .
    " Get the fuck out! " Tracey yelled at her. The woman got a horrified look on her face and shut the door, and Tracey stomped over and locked it with a "Jesus Christ! What is her problem?"
    She thumped her elbows back on the table and cradled her head. "What the fuck good are you to me, Jim? Either of you. Don ," she snapped her fingers to physically let me know that I was being addressed, "This vault door lockdown. Forget getting past the alarms for now, let's just say I go in and the security door comes down. Would you be able to melt through it? How fast could you make that happen?"
    "What's it made of again?"
    Spencer said, "Stuff that's estimated to qualify as a Grade 38 Titanium alloy. That's armor plate grade, which will very likely have a melting point at over two thousand degrees."
    "Shit, that's a little much. I could try it, but the chlorine gas that'll flood the vault I think's pretty flammable. If I get it that hot, that's gonna be bad."
    Three internet encyclopedias confirmed it was. "It's a strong oxidizer, so he'd cook anybody in the room as he heated up the metal, maybe cause an explosion since it'll be a sealed space, and then that triggers the radio pulse fail-safe that fries our brains."
    "Then that fucks us," Tracey said. "So we need a lifter to take the door and somebody to sense the wiring layout and somebody to sweep the place on site for security measures since it's fucking psy-shielded to the outside world and somebody to wipe our asses in case we have to take a shit. Fuck !"
    She stared at the words on the wall again like an idea would jump out at her. This was all going badly, and she knew it. She had talked to the client the night before and explained that she would be taking over the project from Rory, so now this was all on her. And it was a little more difficult than looking at two pictures and thinking hard. Even in Europe, the most she had ever contributed to a planning session was an idea or two. I had contributed even less.
    "Didn't you used to know a lifter, Don?"
    Fuck.
    "I did, yeah, years ago."
    "Kamikaze had his name in his phone. Will Bowman, right? Could we call him in on this?"
    Shit.
    "I wouldn't. He just got done with parole and still has to do check-ins with the SCEIA three times a year. He's not exactly reliable, either. Kind of a fuck-up,