“Are you sure about this?” Kat asked, glancing worriedly at the submachine gun clutched in Whip’s hands. The gun was on the smaller side, but in Whippoorwill’s awkward grip it looked giant and out of place.

“For the twentieth time,” the other woman replied with a roll of her eyes, “yes. All I have to do is lurk around the outside of the building, plugged into this guy’s network while you do the real work. If he runs, I try to shoot him. If someone else shows up, I give you a heads up.”

“I just don’t like putting you in harm’s way Whip,” Kat sighed, running a hand through her short hair. “We needed you there when we raided the Field Tower, but right now I feel like I’m putting you at risk for no reason.”

Whip just snorted. “Kat, my part of this job is so easy that a child could do it. Literally,” she paused for a second. “Before I joined the ChromeDogs I did lookout gigs like this, but then they didn’t even give me a gun. Just a whistle and the advice that I should duck the second I blew it.”

Kat glanced across the street at the three-story apartment complex, chewing her lip worriedly. Only a couple rooms on the second floor had their lights on, and the third floor penthouse where their target lived was completely dark.

“Still,” She shook her head before turning back to Whippoorwill. “This doesn’t feel right.”

The other woman just shook her head, grabbing Kat’s hand and shoving a wadded up ball of fabric into her grip.

“Just shut up and put on your mask.” Whip grinned at Kat. “I can access most of the building’s surfaces from here.”

Whippoorwill rapped the lightpole that the two of them were standing next to with her knuckles. The structure’s bulb had burned out years ago, but it appeared to still function as a hub for the utilities that ran through the local area.

“I’m already inside the building’s power grid.” She continued, inclining her head slightly toward the apartments. “It doesn’t look like there’s any active security, but I can still cut electricity to the top floor as soon as you’re in. Unless they’re using an entire brick of batteries, any dormant traps will go down with the lights.”

“Fine,” Kat replied ruefully, slipping the mask over her face and tucking the bottom of the cloth into the collar of her infiltration suit. “Just promise me you’ll be careful out here while I make contact. We don’t even know who this ‘target alpha’ is. All we know is that Millenium wants him under observation. He could be dangerous, and even if he’s not, they’re sure to have him under observation.”

Whippoorwill chuckled, pink hair rustling back and forth as she shook her head.

“You’re literally the one taking all the risk.” Whip reached up and brushed her hair out of her face. “I’m just going to sit out here in an alley doing my best to look like a junkie while you make contact with an unknown.”

“I know you can handle yourself, Kat.” Whippoorwill leaned back against the light pole. “I’ll flip that on its head. Take care of yourself out there. After Xander died, I slipped. You were the one that hunted me down and pulled me out of that, I don’t know what I would do if you-”

She caught herself, glancing downward at the dark and cracked cement of the alleyway.

“Don’t worry,” Kat’s voice softened. She punched Whip gently in the shoulder. “Get your game face on, Chiffon. You know me. Even if the other side catches me, that usually doesn’t work out so well for them.”

“I know,” Whip chuckled again, not lifting her eyes from the ground. “I just wish you’d spend a little more effort on not getting caught. Now give ‘em hell, Erinyes.”

Kat grinned back at her friend. She knew Whippoorwill couldn’t see her, but at the same time, she knew sentiment would reach the other girl nonetheless.

Then she turned around, pouring enough mana into Shadow to obscure her form as she used Cat Step to cross the street toward the apartments. The spell probably wasn’t necessary, the street was abandoned and only one or two of the lights lining the sidewalks was even trying to do its job.

The flickering and inconsistent light of the buzzing lamps sent shadows scurrying everywhere, likely providing better cover than sheer darkness would on its own. Kat doubted anyone was even looking in her direction, but if they were, all they would see is another stutter from the failing bulbs as she flitted across the street.

A second later, Kat was at the side of the building. She layered a Levitation on top of Shadow, and moments later her glove-covered hands were seeking out the cracks between the decade old bricks that made up the apartment’s outer walls. The remaining grout crumbled under her fingertips as Kat rapidly began scaling the structure.

About halfway up, her breath almost unaffected by what was almost routine exertion for her at this point, Kat spoke into her microphone.

“Chiffon, I’m almost there. Kill the power for the top floor.”

“Are you sure, Erinyes?” Whippoorwill’s voice responded. “I’m looking closer at the power draw and it looks like there’s something on. It could be a smartpanel charger or a pilot light. I can’t really tell from here.”

“We’ll have to risk it,” Kat replied. “I don’t want a trap to electrocute me as soon as I touch a windowsill.”

“You’re the boss.” Whippoorwill was distant, distracted as she went to work on the network. A moment later she continued. “Done. Powers out. Good luck, Erinyes.”

Kat didn’t answer. Instead, focusing on the last couple of handholds before she reached the third floor. She hoisted herself up on a windowsill, planting an elbow in the bricks as she reached out with a hand and tested the bars of the window.

Unsurprisingly, the cylinders of metal were the only part of the building that had any sort of maintenance. Whoever their target was, he wanted to avoid uninvited visitors.

She drew her knife, pressing its point into the base of one of the bars, spending the stamina needed to activate Penetrate. The dagger glowed dimly red before it crunched through the steel.

One after another, Kat cut through the metal before reaching up and pulling the severed bars to the side. Once the window was free, she dug her fingers under the bottom of the window before pulling it up.

Kat winced as the pane stuck for a second before slamming upward. It didn’t exactly sound like a gunshot or an explosion, but it certainly was loud enough to be noticed. Hardly how she wanted to start her incursion.

Quickly, she slipped into the apartment, taking care to slide the window shut quietly behind her.

A glance around the room, her vision in the grayscale of Nightvision, revealed a modestly appointed living room. The smartglass panel on the wall was an older model, overlooking a couch that didn’t match the two secondhand chairs positioned opposite it.

She took note of the dark kitchen and entryway before making her way down a hallway toward where Kat suspected the bedroom was located. Each step was carefully placed, even without the use of Cat Step, she moved like a jaguar stalking its prey.

Kat touched her hand to a wooden door, turning the knob gently before pressing it open just a crack.

Bathroom. Nothing more than porcelain and cheap linoleum.

She made her way to the next door. One again, quietly turning the knob before pressing it open a crack to reveal the corner of a bed and a nightstand.

Without questioning her instincts, Kat jerked to the side, barely beating the roar of a shotgun as she pressed herself flush against the apartment wall.

“I told you fucks to stay the hell away from me!” A man’s voice roared from the bedroom. “Now you can get the fuck out of my house or I’ll put you down and let you bleed out on the floor. Your choice.”

Kat reached for her gun, only to stop. She needed the man alive. With a knife she’d have the precision to cut tendons and disable him. If she used the pistol, well. Her accuracy had improved enough that she was pretty sure she’d hit him, but it would hardly be trick shooting. Three to five shots in his center of mass wasn’t the best way to secure a contact she could question.

The dagger left its sheathe, comfortable and familiar in Kat’s hand.

“I can hear you breathing out there,” he ranted. “I might not have wanted all of that chrome you guys forced on me, but I swear on everything holy that I will use every scrap of steel and wire in my body to put you in the ground if you don’t get the the fuck out of here.”

Quietly, Kat let Shadow and Levitation lapse, replacing the spells with Pseudopod. She curled the water tentacle around her waist as gathered her mana and began casting Dazzle.

Just as the spell finished, Kat kicked open the door unleashing the blast of light at head level even as she tucked her shoulder into a roll and dove into the room.

The spell didn’t work as well as Kat hoped. The gunman more or less ignored the pulsing cone of light, swinting the shotgun downward to track her rapidly moving body.

Before he could pull the trigger again, her Pseudopod writhed upward, grabbing the weapon’s barrel and yanking it to the side. Once again, there was a crash and a blast of light as the buckshot tore past Kat and shredded the faux wood paneling of the bedroom wall.

She came out of the roll with an upward thrust of the dagger. The man was massive, almost twice Kat’s size, and he moved with reflexes and speed that could only come from extensive cybernetic enhancement or significant time in The Tower of Somnus.

He still looked like he was moving in slow motion to Kat. Her massively improved agility and reaction stats let her twist bast a clumsy blow from the butt of the shotgun and land two quick knife strokes to his left wrist.

The dagger glowed red as it cut through the layer of metal under the man’s skin and the shotgun fell from his suddenly limp grasp.

Kat’s opponent hissed in pain, trying to backpedal away from her only for her to catch him with a casting of Levitation on midstep. The spell disrupted his balance just enough that her Pseudopod could reach around and apply pressure to the back of his knee, forcing her foe to the ground with a painful thump.

In the blink of an eye, she was atop him, straddling the man’s broad chest and holding her knife to his throat. He glared up at her, his vision clouded with a mixture of disbelief and pain.

“Wait.” Relief replaced his confusion. “Erinyes? You aren’t with Millenium?”

“How do you know me?” She asked, dagger not leaving his jugular.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” He slumped back to the ground, letting his arms go limp on either side. “I go by Otto. I used to be a Lieutenant with Millenium. We fought twice. You fucked up my jeep and my knee pretty bad the first time and the second-”

He shifted uncomfortably beneath her. “Let’s just say that I don’t blame you for the second time. You were a bit preoccupied with your mentor biting it and a fucking alien invasion to notice my brief involvement in the Field Tower fight.”

She squinted down at the man. Now that he mentioned it, she vaguely recalled his silhouette, but his face and his voice were utterly alien to her.

“Are you saying you were the person with Elaine that night?” She questioned skeptically. “You sure don’t look or sound like him.”

“Look,” he fumed. “The bitch backhanded me hard enough that I needed reconstructive surgery. She broke my jaw in six places, and the street doc I dragged myself to had to basically rebuild the entirety of my face.”

“Maybe,” Kat began grudgingly. “I still barely saw you in both of those fights. This all just could be an attempt to get me to lower my guard.”

“I guess,” Otto grunted back. “Listen, if you’re Erinyes, unless you’ve taken a contract with Millenium in the past couple of months, I don’t want to fight you. I’m not going to go for a gun or anything, but just let me sit up. You fucked my arm up pretty good.”

For a second Kat weighed her options. The samurai could be playing for time or trying to get her to drop her guard. Still, the information from Millenium didn’t exactly make it look like he was on their side and the big man seemed fairly sincere.

She pushed off of his chest, taking a half step back with her knife at ready in a reversed grip. “Fine,” she said, voice tight. “Now talk.”

“Sure,” he hissed with pain as he used his right arm to prop himself up by the side of the bed before cradling his injured left. “I’m all for spilling my guts. I just need one thing from you first.”

“You’re not in a position with much negotiating leverage, Otto,” Kat replied, frowning at his unarmed and injured body.

He shook his head. “Non-negotiable Erinyes. I need you to promise that in exchange for the information I’m about to turn over, you’ll pull me out of this mess. I need you to hide and protect me from Millenium.”

She didn’t respond for a moment. Finally, Kat nodded. “If you provide worthwhile information, I’ll try and get you a new identity and move you out of Chiwaukee.”

“Good enough for me,” the samurai answered, his voice heavy with relief. “Millenium has been relentless. Each time I think I’m clear, their teams start showing up after a couple of weeks. If I stay in one place for too long, an extraction team kicks in my door at one a.m. I’ve managed to keep myself out of their grip so far, but at the rate things were going, it is only a matter of time.”

“You have to understand.” Otto looked up at her, his eyes pleading with Kat. “I grew up in the Millenium Company. They picked me up off the street. I was just some random thug boosting old cars for a couple extra credits so that I could afford more chrome. For years they were my family. They shaped me into the man that I was.”

“But about two or three years ago things changed,” he continued. “Mr. Jackson became more hands off and brought in some new people that were just weird. I didn’t question it too much because a job is a job, but everything clicked in the Field Tower.”

“They were fucking aliens.” Otto spat onto the bedroom floor. “Look, I’ve done a lot of bad shit in my past, Erinyes. I don’t want to try and pretend that I’m some sort of saint or something. I wasn’t really spending my spare time running soup kitchens, but at the end of the day, that was a step too far. Earth is for humans.”

“So,” Kat responded slowly, “you’re trying to defect or something?”

“Damn straight,” he nodded fervently. “Look, Millenium doesn’t just let people leave, and I was a Lieutenant. I crawled away from the Field Tower fight and never went back. They were able to put two and two together, and right now the company’s remnants are trying to shut me up before I can blab.”

“I figure that if I tell you what I know,” the big man nodded in Kat’s direction. “That gives you something valuable enough that you’ll want to help me, and with the information out there anyway, I suspect that killing me won’t be a priority anymore. At that point, I might be a turncoat, but it’s not like I could do any more damage to the company.”

“I’d do it myself,” he finished. “I just don’t really have any contacts. The Company always had people to handle stuff like that for me. I could dump the data on the information channels, but it’s all just a personal narrative. Nothing to really back it up. They’d paint me as a crazy and it wouldn’t get any traction.”

Kat took another step backward, lowering but not sheathing her knife.

“I don’t suppose you have anything to prove your sincerity?” She asked appraisingly. “Last I saw, you were trying to kill me.”

“Sure.” He reached into his breast pocket with his good hand, fishing out a data stick and tossing it to Kat. She snatched it out of the air, not taking her eyes from Otto. “This is about a third of what I know. Get me out of here and verify its contents. Once you get a chance to look at its contents, I’m sure you’ll decide to help me.”

“Just keep me safe from their extraction teams, Erinyes,” Otto leaned back against the bed, clutching at his hurt arm. “I’ll help you find every sleeper cell and spy in this city and make you a rich woman in the process.”