I don’t let him put me under—this scumbag’s too spineless to try anything, but I’m not taking chances. He starts laying things out on his desk—heavy nerve anesthetics, some nasty looking things that give my stomach a sick twist—bores, drills, bite-sized buzz saws, handheld laser cutters. No, I’m definitely not letting him put me under. I prod one thing in particular, a big-ass sphere of bluish metal sprouting antennae and plated tubing like back hair. It’s the size of a grapefruit, one side caving in for grip, and the top sporting a fat silver button embossed with some kind of warning symbol.

“What in all hell is that?” I shove my finger towards the thing.

“Oh—ah, nothing, don’t worry about that.”

I clutch his collar and haul him down. I pick the thing up and shove it in his face. “The hell is it, Paris?”

“Shit—it’s just an EMP gun! Something I’ve been playing with in my free time, you know? Go ahead and fire it off if you want to torch my whole lab, but I can’t take your chip out then.”

“Why’d you bring it out?”

“In case the surgery goes bad and we have to quit, this’ll fry that chip for you. Then you’ve got a chunk of dead Silicon stuck in your brain. We can do that now and save some pain, if you want—but not here, we’ll have to go to a ElectroMagPulse-safe testing bunker on the other side of the city.”

Well, damn.

I don’t want that bastard inside my head with anything sharp. I also don’t have time to drive back across the city. I grab the EMP cannon and use it.

Do things the old fashioned way—it’ll take some time, but I can’t risk leaving that hunk of circuits inside.