Waypoint Kangaroo Read Online Free

performance.
    â€œAnd how many private security firms take contracts in Kazakhstan?”
    I shrug. I didn’t research that. Probably should have.
    â€œThe EM lance is a weapon of last resort,” Oliver says. “It’s too sophisticated for private security. Anyone who gets hit with an EM lance is going to know that it came from a first-world government agency.”
    â€œDidn’t you tell me that the pulse charge also fries the casing? Burns away serial numbers, fingerprints, all that good stuff?”
    Oliver sighs, rubs the bridge of his nose, and casts a baleful gaze from under his shaggy mop of dark hair. “It doesn’t matter if they can trace the weapon, Kay. They don’t need to know exactly where it came from. Their suspicions about its origin are enough to cause trouble.”
    Now I’m getting a little annoyed. “It’s the only weapon I discharged on this op,” I say. “I’d hardly call that ‘profligate.’” He doesn’t need to know about the AED; that’s Jessica’s inventory.
    â€œWe’ll see about that,” says Oliver. “Let’s go check you in.”
    I follow him out of the workshop and down the corridor to the armory. He puts the flying disk thing on a flat, empty table and taps at a wall screen, bringing up the inventory of equipment I signed out last week. I put on a pair of insulated gloves. Grabbing one object out of the pocket’s deep freeze is not a problem, but I’m going to be unpacking a lot of stuff here.
    â€œOne EM lance discharged,” Oliver says, looking over my inventory list with a sour expression. “Which one was it?”
    â€œBlackbird.”
    He manipulates the screen, updating that list entry. “Right. Robin Red-Breast, then.”
    I visualize the reference object—a small brown bird with an orange chest—and open the pocket.
    My code name, the only name I have within the agency, is KANGAROO. Not because I’m originally from Australia, or because I can jump supernaturally high, or because I’m a genetically engineered human-marsupial hybrid. None of those things is true, and come on, that last one is pretty ridiculous.
    I’m Kangaroo because I have a universe-sized secret pouch.
    I call it “the pocket.” Yeah, boring name, but give me a break; I was ten years old when the ability first manifested. Nobody knows how it works—not yet, anyway. Science Division keeps testing me every chance they get. They say I have the ability to open a “hyperspace shunt”: a variable-size portal into a “pocket universe,” an empty, apparently endless void that looks like deep space. It’s very useful for smuggling things into places where they don’t belong, or out of places where we don’t want them to stay.
    The reference objects—Science Division calls them “pointers”—help me keep track of where everything is inside the pocket. Having a different image in my mind when I open the pocket will put the portal in a different part of the empty universe on the other side. But imagining a pistol, or a clip of ammunition, doesn’t help me if there’s more than one in the pocket. I need a unique pointer to each location.
    Opening and closing the pocket is a purely mental exertion. I have to be awake, and I have to concentrate, but it doesn’t feel any different from moving a part of my body. It’s like making my hand into a fist or sticking out my tongue. My brain just knows how to do it. Science Division hates that answer, but it’s the only one I can give them.
    Oliver watches as I pull the unused EM lance out of the pocket, followed by the rest of the special equipment I was issued for this operation. We weren’t sure how deep underground the item was buried, so there’s a lot: shovels, pickaxes, chisels, electric and hand drills, deep radar and lidar scanners, subsonic resonators, laser