The little metal disk on his gauntlet spat out a laser beam that swept over the lock in a slow, gentle caress, almost like a bar-code scanner. After several passes, the laser went out and his tool let out a beep.
When he checked the screen, he found the wire-frame outline of a small device that looked almost like a beetle. No doubt about it. That was a nanobot. Not much bigger than a grain of sand, it would be almost undetectable to the human eye.
His tool detected five of them in the keyhole. Sometimes nanobots broke off of the objects they fabricated. The average multi-tool contained thousands, and they could be easily replaced.
His readouts confirmed what Ali had told him. This nanobot was property of an XJ-11, a multi-tool that had been discontinued over seven years ago. So that mea
