Deception Well (The Nanotech Succession Book 2) by Linda Nagata Page A

thin air. It circled once around Urban’s head. “ Shit ,” Lot whispered.
    Without warning, Urban lunged at the thumbnail-size device. With a sweep of his hand he tried to knock it out of the air, but it gracefully evaded the blow, whispering past the tips of his fingers to settle in front of Lot, hovering on a golden blur of wings.
    Lot glared at its bulbous eye, as smooth and curved as a drop of water.
    “ Who’s on it? ” Gent whispered (as if the bee couldn’t detect a whisper).
    Lot scowled. “Authority. Who else?” Despite Gent’s promises, they were logged in, and he and Gent were going to the monkey house, maybe to cold storage—there was room enough.
    But Urban had moved up softly to his side. “ Shut up, Lot ,” he said softly. “ Just shut up .”
    The camera bee backed off, then turned and sped away, quickly disappearing down the curve of cold storage. Lot glared after it. They would have only minutes, at most, before security officers arrived. “Let’s finish it!”
    He sprang away, racing across the black panels to the point where they’d left the mate finders. Red display lights exploded under his pounding feet. He could hear the thunder of Urban and Gent following several paces behind him. Then the camera bee was at his shoulder, its wings buzzing hard like nasty toddlers’ tongues, full of contempt. It hovered beside him, staying even as he half-turned and dropped to the ground. Smoothly sliding past the mate finder, he grabbed the device and came up on his knees on the next panel No match .
    And the next panel No match .
    And the next No match .
    Grimly delighted with the continuing negative results, sadistic delight in the sad sighing of the mate finder’s artificial voice, in the equally sad laments of Urban’s and Gent’s mate finders bemoaning their dismal luck.
    A sudden, soft, rapid percussion sounded from the direction of the lock. Lot stepped forward to the next panel. The reverberant clacking grew louder. Gold flashed on the edge of his vision, and a moment later he heard the close, cold rattle of Ord’s scuttling limbs. “Don’t touch me,” he warned the little robot. “Stay away.”
    Ord stepped in front of him, its tentacles raised in an inverted V. That was Ord’s shot at a pleading gesture, but the sentiment wasn’t reflected in its pale eye disks. “Come home, Lot,” it wheedled. “Rest. Counseling.”
    Lot stepped grimly over it, activating the panel that it occupied No match .
    “Please Lot.”
    No match.
    “Come home.”
    No match.
    “Good Lot. Good boy. City authority doesn’t need to know.”
    “They already know. Get out of my way.” He could hear Urban coming up behind him. They only had a handful of panels to go. They had to finish. At the least, they had to know.
    Ord scrabbled back in front of him, its tentacles dancing around his ankles, not quite daring to touch. “Authority doesn’t know, Lot. Good Lot. It’s not too late.”
    They rounded the curve. Lot had expected to see security forces at the lock, but there was no one. He stepped onto the last panel in his circuit. No match .
    Only then did he notice the camera bee resting motionless on the floor in front of him. It lacked the green stripes that would mark it as a device belonging to city security. Instead it carried the emblem of a news service. An eerie feeling swept over him. Carefully, he stepped around the bee, then glanced back. Urban was just finishing his circuit. Gent had ten or twelve panels to go. And security still hadn’t arrived.
    Abruptly, the camera bee lifted into the air. It hovered between Lot and Urban, its water-bead eye reflecting the dark, curving walls. “ How much do you know? ” it demanded, in a tiny, tinny, feminine voice. “ Do you know why cold storage is empty? No. I can see not. That shock on your faces. Shao? Stop recording. We have enough video to do the story. Now I want to know why. ”
    Lot and Urban exchanged a glance. “It’s Yulyssa,” Lot