Corax and I finish our book just as Vince is ordering breakfast. It was sweet, and if I was happier when I read it, it might have become one of my favorites. As I am now, I don’t have the drive to process the words beyond their surface level meaning.

  I put the book down and Corax climbs onto my shoulder. The two of us head into the living room. Vince is collecting a few silver trays from another potentially sentient android butler.

  “Thank you.” Vince says and gives him a deep nod.

  The butler gives a far deeper bow and closes the door.

  Vince turns around, a small hint of surprise in his face at seeing me.

  “Morning Little Blue. You look like you’ve had a rough night.”

  “Yeah.” I wonder when Cassie will tell him about st night. She couldn’t have done it st night, he was feeling too bad. It would probably be easier for me to just tell him now that I ended the world, but there’s no way I’ll be able to force the words from my mouth. I’m just going to pretend like everything is fine for as long as I can. “Are you feeling better?”

  “Mm-hmm. I just needed some sleep. Mind helping me?” He nods towards his arm with two rge silver ptes banced atop it.

  “Sure.” I walk over and take both of them. “How did you and Ivy do that yesterday?” I try to keep things vague in case he doesn’t want whoever’s listening to know.

  “I’ll tell you ter.” He says with a smile.

  I follow him to his and Ivy’s room. She stirs when the open door leaks light onto her face, and drags the covers over her head.

  “Morning.” Vince says to her quietly. He puts his ptter on a dresser and crouches by her side. “How are you feeling?”

  “Drained.” Her voice is muffled by the thick bnkets. A few seconds ter she removes the bnkets and slowly pushes herself into a sitting position. Her hair is a tangled mess and she’s still wearing the same clothes from yesterday. At least she managed to remove her mask before sleeping.

  “I know, me too. Are you getting better?”

  Ivy gives a small, measured nod.

  “Gd to hear it.” Vince puts a comforting hand on her shoulder and brushes her hair out of her face with the other. “Try to eat something, alright?” He grabs the ptter and puts it beside her. Removing the top, he reveals a pte full of eggs and bacon.

  How in the world do they have eggs? Bacon makes sense, if they can grow beef in a b, they can certainly grow pig meat too. But eggs? That sounds so much harder to make than just meat.

  “I will.” She grabs her pte and slowly begins to pick at it.

  “Alright.” He gives her shoulder another comforting squeeze and stands up. “I’m going to go wake up Cassie.” He walks towards me and takes both of the ptters from my hands. He puts one of them on the bed. “Thanks for your help.”

  “I’m going to wait in my room.” I’m not sure I can handle seeing Cassie right now. I don’t know what she’s going to say or do. How is sleeping on what happened yesterday going to affect her mood? Is she going to be angrier? Or has the time helped?

  “Alright Little Blue. We’re going to head out before too long, but I’ll come get you before then.”

  “Ok.” Corax and I head back into our room. I drop onto the bed. “What do I do?”

  Corax yanks on my ear in response.

  “Ow! What was that for?”

  “Not angry.” Corax sounds certain.

  “How could she not be? I did-”

  “Nothing.” He cuts me off.

  “But- Ow!” He bites my ear once again, accepting no argument.

  “Nothing wrong.”

  I already know the answer to any argument or question I could ask. He has a feeling that everything is alright, and he trusts his feelings more than anything. I trust them too of course, but endless threads keep wrapping around my mind, smothering me in doubt.

  “I’ll try to believe you.”

  I don’t get long to rex before Vince knocks on our door.

  “Hey, Little Blue. We’re getting ready to head out. Do you want to come with or stay here?”

  “I’m coming.” Even if I’m nervous about seeing Cassie, I’m not going to be able to live with myself if something happens to anyone. I have to go with them.

  I open the door. Ivy and Cassie are sitting around the kitchen table. Cassie is quickly finishing her breakfast, and Ivy is checking her gear. She already looks much better than she did when she first woke up.

  “Alright.” Vince gives me a smile and I follow him towards everyone else. “So, Eight is the only lead we have. He is, unfortunately, Seven’s brother.”

  “Of course he is.” Cassie mutters under her breath.

  “Yeah. I’d expect him to know what happened in Denver, and he certainly already knows we’re here. I don’t see a problem with trying to do this diplomatically, but be ready to take more extreme measures.”

  That st sentence is much more worrying with Ivy cleaning her gun right next to him. If we’re going to end up fighting, maybe it would be best to stay here? No, staying here and worrying would be worse than suffering around everyone.

  “Alright.” Cassie shovels her st bite of food into her mouth and does a quick check of her weapons. I can’t believe how quickly she’s adapting to her new arm. I can still see her move it a little further than she means to sometimes, but not often.

  I already know my weapons and magazines are full, there’s no reason to check.

  “Little Blue, are you going to be alright?” Vince asks.

  I look to Corax for an answer. He nods, and I nod to Vince.

  “Ok. If anything goes wrong, just stay low behind me, alright?” He says seriously.

  “Ok.”

  “Before we go, I’d like to try talking to him first, but I do have a st resort pn. It’s something I’d like to avoid. Anyone have any other ideas to get us into the penthouse?”

  “Corax and I could just hack the elevator.” I offer. I’m not sure exactly what Vince’s pn is, but I’m sure I wouldn’t like it.

  “That’s going to be a little dangerous, you might run into other AI.”

  “If anything goes wrong, we can fall back on your pn.” I reassure Vince. Even if something goes wrong, one of us will be able to leave and unplug the other. Plus whatever risk I’m taking must be less than the risk Vince is prepared to take.

  “Alright, if you’re sure. Just be careful, if you run into any danger, come right out.” Vince says seriously. “But let’s try just asking first, we’ll keep your pn as pn b.”

  “Ok.”

  Before we head out I grab the cord I modified to let both Corax and I hack through one port. I plug one end into my wrist, and run the second port beneath my skin to my shoulder. Corax plugs himself in and sits in my arms in a way to make it impossible for anyone to see it. I keep the third end hidden in my hand, ready for whatever comes.

  We end up walking in the same formation as yesterday. Vince and Ivy are in front, although I don’t think they’re connected anymore. Cassie stays behind me and I carefully cradle Corax. Nothing will happen to him.

  The street is no less packed than it was yesterday. It’s tough for the five of us to stay together through the endless tide and hungry eyes.

  Luckily it’s not that far of a walk. Only a few buildings down the street, Vince leads us through a grand set of doors. The inside is so bright it’s nearly blinding. Every surface is made of pure white marble. Even the few seats in the lobby are carved out of a single chunk of it. Every surface has been polished to the point where faint reflections can be seen in the rock.

  Vince walks straight up to the reception desk while the rest of us head elsewhere, at least pretending to not be with him.

  “I’m here to speak to Eight.” He says.

  “Are you Vince?” The receptionist’s voice is emotionless.

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Very good. He actually left a message for you. He said, and I quote, ‘Fuck you, you fucking bitch. Go crawl back into whatever hole you came from and choke on your own dick.’” The message being delivered with zero emotion would be funny if it wasn’t such bad news.

  “Alright, thanks.” Vince steps back and begins walking over to one of the marble couches. “I guess I’ll just have to wait for him to come down then.” He says loudly.

  I guess that’s my cue? How in the world am I going to do this? They’re not just going to leave an open port unwatched, that would be incredibly dangerous. Maybe I can just remove the elevator’s control panel and splice in there? That may be possible, assuming we can even get in there. Although there are sure to be cameras, and if I fail, we’re in an incredibly bad situation.

  I could take a chance with the harpoon, just fire it into a secluded wall and hope there’s something behind it. I’d really rather not use it though. I’d like to keep it for either dealing with Mara, or better yet, returning it unused to Jade.

  The receptionist absolutely has some sort of connection to this local server. I didn’t see a ptop, but his job would be impossible to do without one. If I had to guess, he’s probably wired directly into the network. There are probably too many guards to avoid a fight, it’d be another all-or-nothing gamble. Plus, firing the harpoon into him would absolutely result in his death.

  Our best bet might be to break into a room and find something in there. If it has even a tenth of the bugs our room did, it should be easy to find something. The only question is how do I get in without anyone noticing, or at least not stopping me?

  I don’t have to break in, I just need someone to open the door for me. It’d be so easy to pretend to be room service, and then force my way in. There are even a few ground floor hallways filled with rooms.

  What are the chances that we can do that without security tracking us though? It’s obvious we’re with Vince, they’re going to be keeping a close eye on us. If something goes wrong, at least it’ll be easier to escape from than the elevator. It’s not a good idea, but I don’t have a better one.

  I pull out my tablet and quickly type in my pn. I walk up to Ivy who’s lounging on one of the couches and stand as straight up as possible next to her.

  “Ma’am, I’d like to remind you of an upcoming appointment.” I say with as little emotion as I can manage. I’m not sure if pretending to be just a bot matters, but it’s probably worth the effort.

  She reaches out for the tablet without even gncing at me. She immediately picked up on my intentions.

  “I’m well aware.” She says with a fake annoyance. She sets the tablet down in a way that Vince can read it without being too obvious. “I suppose you’re right though. Come.” She stands up and begins walking without so much as a gnce. I follow closely at her heels.

  She leads Corax and I into a quiet hallway and she slowly walks down the length of it, listening and watching for some invisible sign. Eventually she finds what she’s looking for and knocks firmly on one of the doors.

  “Whaddya want?” A paranoid voice responds.

  “My name is Madison, I’m with maintenance. We’ve detected a fault in your bathroom outlet, and are concerned about a fire.” Ivy says confidently.

  “Fuck off.”

  “Look, ma’am, I can either fix it today, or you can wait until a fire starts and be charged with repairing half the floor. It’s your choice.”

  After a few seconds, a half dozen locks begin to be undone. The door opens to a rail thin woman with the most intense eyes I’ve ever seen. Wrappers and needles litter the floor behind her.

  “Be quick.” She commands and returns to her bed, where she begins to wrap a belt around her arm. I’m not sure what she’s doing, but I’m sure I don’t want to know.

  “We will, thank you.”

  I follow Ivy into an equally trashed bathroom. She closes the door behind us, takes a quick look around, and reaches just below the rim of the toilet. She pulls out a camera connected to a small bundle of wires and hands it to me.

  “Will this work?” She asks.

  “It should.” I grab a few tools from my backpack and get to work. It takes less than a minute to strip the wires and connect them to the universal connector. “Ready?” I ask Corax.

  He nods, and I finish wiring us into the network.

  JanePtinum