“Well-sure,” Makele answered.

“Will it shrink a pair of scissors?”

Makele squinted. “What are you talking about?”

“Willy Fong. Marcos Rodriguez.”

Makele didn’t answer.

Dan Watanabe went on: “I understand you want to tell me what happened to the missing students. But I also want to hear about the micro-bots that cut Fong’s and Rodriguez’s throats from ear to ear.”

“How do you know about the bots?” Makele said.

“Did you think the Honolulu Police Department doesn’t have microscopes?”

Makele sucked on his lips. “The bots weren’t supposed to kill anybody.”

“So what went wrong?”

“The bots were reprogrammed. To kill.”

“By who?”

“I think by Drake.”

Watanabe took that in. “So what happened to the students?”

Makele explained about the supply stations in Manoa Valley, and about Tantalus Base. “The kids must’ve found out something bad about Drake, because he’s been pushing me to…get rid of them.”

“Kill them?”

“Yes. They ended up in Manoa Valley. Drake wanted to make sure they didn’t get out of the valley alive. They tried to escape. A few of them made it to Tantalus.” He explained to Watanabe about Ben Rourke. “Drake torched the place. Also, I’m pretty sure he murdered our chief financial officer and a vice president…”

Watanabe’s head was swimming. Vin Drake seemed to have killed thirteen people. If this was true, Drake was extremely dangerous. “Tell me why I shouldn’t decide you’re a nutcase?” he said to the security man.

Makele hunched over. “You decide what you want. I have to tell you the truth.”

“Are you involved in these deaths?”

“For seven million dollars.”

In his years as a detective, Dan Watanabe had witnessed many confessions. Even so, a confession never failed to give Watanabe a sense of surprise. Why did people decide to tell the truth? It was never in their best interest. The truth doesn’t set you free, it sends you to prison.

“Last time we talked, lieutenant,” Don Makele went on, “you said something about Moloka‘i.”

Watanabe frowned. He didn’t remember…Oh, yes-Makele used the traditional Hawaiian pronunciation…

“You said Moloka‘i is the best of the islands,” the security chief went on. “I think you meant the people of Moloka‘i, not the island.”

“I don’t know what I meant,” Watanabe answered, and sipped his coffee, and sat back, keeping his gaze fixed on Makele.

“I was born in Puko‘o,” Makele went on. “That’s a little spot on East Moloka‘i. Just a few houses and the sea. My grandma raised me. She taught me to speak Hawai‘ian-well, she tried to. She also taught me about doing the right thing. I joined the Marines, served my country, but then…I don’t know what happened to me. I started doing things for money. Those students didn’t deserve what we did to them. We left them to die. When they didn’t die, Drake sent people to take them out. I will do a lot of things for seven million dollars, but there’s some things I won’t do. I won’t take orders from Vin Drake anymore. I’m like pau hana.” Work is done.

“Where is Mr. Drake right now?” Watanabe asked. The man was beyond dangerous.

“Nanigen, I think.”

Watanabe flipped up his phone. “We’ll get him.”

“Not a good idea to just walk in there, lieutenant.”

“Oh?” Watanabe said coolly, holding his phone away from his ear; you could hear his phone ringing. “Tactical deployments are pretty damn effective, I’ve noticed.”

“Not with micro-bots. They can smell you, and they can fly. It’s a hornet’s nest in there.”

“All right. Tell me how to get in.”

“There’s no way in unless Vin Drake permits it. He controls the bots. Hand-controller. Like a TV remote.”

Watanabe got an answer to his phone call. “Marty?” he said, putting the phone back to his ear. “We’ve got a problem at Nanigen.”

Eric Jansen swung the fat-tire truck into the entrance of the Kalikimaki Industrial Park, and cruised past the Nanigen building. Apart from a sodium light splashing the entrance door, the place seemed lightless and dead, in the early hours of a Sunday morning. Karen King and Rick Hutter stood on the dashboard of the truck next to their aircraft. Near them a plastic hula girl bobbled, stuck to the dashboard and swinging in a grass skirt. The hula girl loomed over Karen and Rick.

Eric drove the truck inside an unfinished building, just the frame of a warehouse and some concrete block walls, which sat next to Nanigen. He parked behind a wall, out of sight. He shut off the engine and got out, and listened for a few moments, and looked around. Time to move on Nanigen.

He put on the squirt radio headset, and spoke into the voice pickup. “Launch your planes and follow me.”

Karen and Rick climbed into their planes and took off. Eric could hear the props whining near his ears as he crossed the lot, heading for Nanigen. He realized they were flying directly behind his head, to keep out of the wind.

“You okay?” he said on the radio.

“Fine,” Karen answered. She didn’t feel fine, she felt terrible, like a bad case of flu coming on. Every joint in her body ached. Rick probably felt worse, she thought, since he’d had loads of toxins in his bloodstream. That would accelerate the bends in him, probably.

The front door was locked. Eric opened it with a key. He held it open for a moment to let Karen and Rick fly through. Then he closed the door behind him.

He moved along the main corridor at a slow walk, hearing the mosquito-like buzzing behind his head. He glanced back and saw the two micro-planes, their propellers whirring, floating along under the ceiling tiles, bobbing in air currents generated by the building’s air-handling system. His head created turbulence, and they bounced around in his wake as he walked. “Don’t get sucked into a vent,” he warned them.

“Couldn’t we land on your shoulder? You could carry us-” Karen said to Eric.

“You’re better off in the air. You might need to get away fast-if I run into…trouble.” Eric glanced back at the planes, to make sure they were still behind him, and stopped at a corner, and peered around it. He was looking down a long corridor past windows covered with black shades. There was nobody in sight. He crossed this corridor and continued down a side hallway to a door, and opened it, and went in, the planes following him. “My office,” he said on the squirt.

Eric’s office had been ransacked. Papers were strewn about, and his computer was gone. Eric pulled open a drawer in his desk, rummaged through it, and said, “Whew. It’s still here.” He took out a device that resembled a game controller. “It’s my bot controller. It should disarm the bots,” he explained to Rick and Karen.

Then he led them back to the main corridor, and they flew along behind him past the darkened windows. Eric stopped before the door marked TENSOR CORE. He pushed the door.

It wouldn’t open. There was no security pad, just a plain lock, he explained. “Shit,” he said. “This door has been locked from the inside. That means…”

“Somebody’s in there?” Rick asked.

“Could be. But there’s another way into the generator room. We can get in there through the Omicron zone.”

The bots in the Omicron zone might be programmed to kill an intruder. There was no way to know without entering the zone and seeing what the bots did. Eric just hoped his bot controller would work. He led the flyers around a corner, turned right, and stopped by a nondescript door. The door had on it only a small, unfamiliar symbol, with a single word: MICROHAZARD.

Rick flew past the symbol, a few inches from it, and said on the squirt radio, “What does this mean?”

“It means there are bots on the other side of the door that are capable of causing death or serious injury-if they’re programmed that way. It could be nasty in there.” Eric held up the controller where the flyers could see it clearly. “Let’s hope this controls them.” Then Eric tried the doorknob; it wasn’t locked. But he didn’t open it. Instead, he punched in a series of digits on the controller’s keypad. “You see, Drake thinks I’m dead,” he said on the squirt radio to the flyers. “I’m assuming Drake didn’t bother to delete my PIN number from my bot controller, since he figured I’d never be using it again.” He shrugged. “We’ll see.” He paused for a moment, pondering the danger on the other side of the door, and then thrust open the door and walked in. He stopped, holding the door open so that the micro-planes could follow him through.