L'Implacable, Tome 139 : Dream Thing

Chapter 1

(...)

He couldn’t tell without a microscope. The fact that the carrier fluid still glowed was a good sign. The nanotech machines wouldn’t glow if they weren’t also digging. He had programmed them that way.

Once, a lifetime ago, he produced the machines from a nanotechnological experiment that he never thought would succeed—but it did. He created functioning devices the size of gnats, and he programmed them to perform a few simple functions. He encapsulated the tiny machines in a tiny vial of silver and had the vial placed on his person, where it would always be with him. The dentist had balked at taking out a perfectly healthy molar to replace it with the silver vial, but a brick of twenty-dollar bills convinced him to do the deed.

The vial was intended to remain with him even after an intense search by law enforcement, and the nanotech machines were intended to be used to free him from a prison cell. Now his prison cell was the earth itself, and the nanotech machines had been put to work to perform a function for which they were not designed.