Chapter 17: Auction

My mass-produced centipede model was never customized for sniping, and that was proving to be a problem. I was acutely aware of it now, in the shower room. Maybe it was a mistake to follow the sequence of bath, food, and then treatment the moment I got back to headquarters. I was struggling to wash myself using only my left hand in the cramped shower room, with condensation trailing down the mortar walls. I couldn’t move my right shoulder. The spot where I’d braced the stock had turned a deep…