Miles really, really wants to pull it back. It's the worst thing he's ever felt, and that includes having his fingers chopped off and being shot essentially to death - and it makes him, the him that's still human, want to puke. He probably will when this is over.

"Here we go," he growls, and closes his eyes.

But he doesn't stop seeing.

He can tell where things are; it's like normal vision and x-ray and infrared all at once. He can see Pepper's human form and her armor and her bones and blood and organs, and all he has to do is change how he looks at her, like adjusting the focus on a microscope. A perfect weapon; a targeting system that can detect any flaw, find any weak point, and infiltrate and destroy it.

He'd seen this before; he'd seen the man he'd deemed as no threat and saved, and he'd seen Jeremy Blaire, recognized Blaire, and picked him up and tossed him around before seeing these weak points and exactly how to become part of them.

Two things cannot occupy the same place, and the Walrider is stronger than human cells.

The realization that he can juice Pepper just as easily as he'd juiced Blaire shocks him so much the nanites drop; he looks like himself again, still surrounded by some nanites in a thin haze, and stumbles backwards, his hand over his mouth.