The large metal door slid to the side, letting light flood into the dark well. Kat blinked once, letting her perks reset her vision. To either side of her, Kat’s companions flinched as they struggled with the sudden change, leaving her to be the first person to step into the factory.

Kat took a deep breath as she stepped into the sharp light of the complex. The air was chilly and recycled, a welcome respite after the dry desert night. The walls of the hallway were cheap plaster covered in some brand of glossy light-green paint that looked like it was waterproof.

Seeing no one in the passage, Kat’s hand left her thigh. She sighed, taking a couple of steps forward while scanning for threats. It was a bit early in the night to gun down a janitor, but their team needed to maintain the element of surprise as possible. With any luck, they’d be able to avoid the facility’s workers until they had a better picture of their situation.

“Chiffon,” Kat said, glancing over her shoulder at Whip. At some point Emma had added cat ears to the hacker’s infiltration suit in honor of her namesake. The addition was a mixed bag. It made it a little harder to take Whippoorwill seriously, but at the same time it made the woman a lot easier to identify in the otherwise featureless suits.

“Erinyes?” Whip asked back, cloth ears bobbing with the rest of her head as she nodded at Kat.

“Deploy the drones,” Kat continued, turning back to the empty hallway. “Even if there’s a chance that they’re picked up by security or a guard spots them, we’re moving in blind. We need to get you to a network access point as soon as possible so that we can get a proper picture of what’s going on with this place.”

Without comment, the four small machines behind them whirred into motion, their batteries full after most of an afternoon spent charging in the desert sun. Two of them extended their quartet of rotors and took off, hugging the ceiling where they would hopefully be less immediately visible as they passed Kat with a quiet hum. The other two drove into the tunnel, oversized wheels helping them clear the gravel and uneven levels of the cistern floor.

“So do we just wait for the drones to report back or…?” Emma asked, meandering into the factory after Kat. Somehow, even through her suit, the woman managed to blend nonchalance and curiosity perfectly.

“No,” Merrimac responded, following Emma into the factory with surprisingly light steps despite the heavy, multilayered ceramic and metal battle suit he was wearing. “The drones help, but human intelligence is always better. Plus, if someone spots you, you have a gun. With any luck you can keep them from reporting your presence.”

“But they also have guns,” Emma grumbled, “and statistically, anyone I run into will have a whole hell of a lot more experience with their gun than me.”

Despite her complaints, the woman undid the clasp on her holster, drawing the heavy silenced pistol that Davis had provided her with before they left the vacation home in the Grand Canyon. Emma thumbed the safety off and racked a round into the weapon’s chamber, all the while muttering quietly to herself.

Kat grinned despite herself as Emma huffed and began stomping down the hallway. Before the other woman could get more than ten or so steps away, she called out- “If you don’t want to end up in a gunfight, I would suggest simply not letting any of the guards see you.”

Emma waved her free hand dismissively over her head, not even bothering to turn and look back at Kat as she responded. “Thanks Mom, I’ll get right on that.”

Then the other girl was gone. Whip, Davis and Kat walked a little further into the factory, letting the metal door slide shut behind them before they began waiting. Finally after about a minute of silence, Davis shifted slightly.

“No screams or gunshots,” he grunted, expression inscrutable behind his armor. “I’ll chalk that up as a good sign.”

“That seems like a fairly low bar.” Kat chuckled. “I feel like there’s plenty of space between a perfectly successful mission and chaos and gunfire.”

Whippoorwill snorted, shaking her head and sending the cat ears wobbling back and forth. Even Davis, inscrutable in his heavy armor, seemed to be unimpressed with her response.

“Look,” Kat said crossly. “It’s not like every one of my missions ends up in a gunfight, and for the ones that do it’s mostly because I don’t have proper information. Once we’re not jumping from disaster to disaster, it’ll be smooth sailing.”

“Tonight won’t be smooth sailing,” Davis replied, ceramic and metal grinding against each other as he shook his head. “Our intelligence is flawed, and we are trying to infiltrate a fortified enemy position. We will encounter security forces. That much is a given. The question is whether we can disable this facility and escape before we are overwhelmed. As confident as I am in our skills, I do not have an answer to that question.”

“I’m not exactly sure how an antimatter breeder reactor works,” Kat said pensively, “but it doesn’t sound like the sort of thing that’s terribly safe. I won’t be surprised if it’s a lot easier to disable the factory than it is for us to get out in one piece.”

“Hopefully-” Davis began only for a hiss of static from their earpieces to cut him off.

“Call the flying drone with the yellow stripe back Chiffon.” Emma’s voice was garbled, evidently something in the factory was interfering with her broadcast. “I’m following it and I hear voices up ahead. I don’t want the overeager little lump of metal to get me shot. After all, my skin is quite delicate and my blood belongs on the inside.”

Whip waved a hand, two fingers extended. A second later she replied.

“That’s drone three, I have it on standby mode now. Can you confirm that you’re hearing people? I’m not getting anything through its microphones but the feed is a bit garbled.”

“Oh yeah,” Emma responded with a dry chuckle. “They’re arguing over the most recent Augmented Football League game. At least two guys and one girl by my guess. It sounds like one of the guys lost a bunch of credits betting on the Desert Dervishes and the other two are making fun of him for it.”

“That makes sense,” Davis said with a sage nod. “The Dervishes’ secondary are only using fourth generation chrome, and their quarterback isn’t even a player. Until their owner invests properly in the team, they’re going to be dwelling at the bottom of the division for the foreseeable future.”

Kat stopped, turning to stare at Davis. The man was massive in his matte black powered battle armor, assault cannon at the ready with thick plates of modern ceramics rendering him almost impervious to smaller caliber bullets. He shrugged back.

“Shit!” Emma yelped, the sound of padded footsteps audible through the still active connection as she began running. “They’re sending out the guy that lost the bet and the girl on patrol. You need to get the drones hidden, and I need backup.”

“Erinyes.” Davis’ playful tone evaporated. “This one is on you. I don’t really have a ‘quiet’ or a ‘quick’ setting. Unless we want loud and slow, you’re going to have to be the one to pull her out of this.”

“Just lead the way Chiffon,” Kat replied grimly, drawing her knife. Theoretically, her silenced pistol was probably the better option, but it’s uncertain effectiveness was a major problem. In order to minimize the noise made by the gun, the big bullets had to travel under the speed of sound. That meant that even fairly standard kevlar or dermal weave was enough to stop a fatal shot. Hell, the thin armor of her infiltration suit probably would prevent the handgun from dealing serious damage, and it was designed more for flexibility than actual protection.

No. If Kat needed to take someone down fast and hard, she’d rely on her knife. She had Tower granted skills and perks that made it much more dangerous than the flimsy gun. The only question was getting close enough to use it.

“Uhh.” Whippoorwill’s voice was briefly hesitant before firming up. “Head right at the end of the hallway. Drone two, that’s the one with wheels and a blue stripe, will meet you there and guide you to drone three. I’ll try to provide cover, but-”

“Got it!” Kat didn’t even look back, sprinting down the corridor. She didn’t activate Cat Step yet, instead saving her stamina for when she closed on the patrol.

Just as she rounded the corner, Whippoorwill’s drone whirred into view. It wheeled in a tight circle before tearing off down another hallway.

Kat’s shoes squeaked against the polished floor as she followed it, tread on the soles of her feet struggling to keep up with her speed as she took the next corner at a run. She did her best to keep track of the twists and turns of the facility, but evidently the factory was laid out in a gigantic grid and they needed to make frequent course adjustments in order to catch up to their quarry.

Finally, after almost two minutes of sprinting, Whippoorwill’s voice crackled in her ear, static blurring the ends of her words.

“Once you turn right, the patrol will pass by the next intersection in 20 to 40 seconds. E only heard two of them but that doesn’t mean there aren’t more nearby.”

Without responding, Kat activated Cat Step. A dim red glow, barely visible in the factory’s fluorescent lighting, surrounded her as she quickly outpaced the struggling drone. Seconds later, she slid to a stop, pressing her back against the facility’s wall just before the next hallway.

Her breath hammered in her ears after the harried run to her current position. Gulping to wet her dry mouth and tongue, Kat closed her eyes for a second as she tried to steady her breathing and listen for the oncoming guards.

“-the Omaha Outriders’ running back was out! He snapped on some designer drug and they had to sedate him and reset all of his chrome. It was a sure thing Betty!”

That was the male voice, a tenor marred by its harried whine.

“Sure, but Mick Rodriguez can throw a football over the rockies. Seriously, you need to check out the stats on the hydraulics in his throwing arm. I think the thing is literally classified as a low end assault cannon.”

And there was the woman. Her voice was slightly deeper than Kat expected as she mocked the unfortunate man.

“Come on Betty!” The male wheedled. “I have one hundred and fifty of the credits I owe Rick. Just give me another fifty and I’ll pay you seventy on the first of the month. I’m good for it, I promise!”

“You’re never good for it,” Betty replied with a chuckle, “That’s more or less your bran-”

Before the woman could finish her sentence Dazzle erupted in the crossroads, momentarily blinding the two guards as Kat slipped around the corner. The short, stocky figure nearest Kat raised her arms to shield her face, bringing the ugly, short barreled shotgun up into the air.

That was all the opening Kat needed, slipping under the person’s guard and stabbing her knife through the thin spot in their armor created by their armpit. The blade flashed red momentarily as she activated Penetrate, cutting smoothly through the tough fabric interwoven with metal.

Just as the dagger bit home, cutting through tendons and the guard’s axillary artery, Kat cast Overpressure, drawing a strangled scream from her target. Hot blood gushed from the wound, painting Kat’s infiltration suit and the hallway behind her.

She kicked the back of her target’s knee, using the motion of their fall to jerk her weapon free even as she spun to face the other guard. Time seemed to slow as their assault rifle rose, trying vainly to track her through the afterimages created by Dazzle.

Kat reached out with her left hand, making a grasping motion even as she cast Pseudopod. The tendril of water lashed toward her target, wrapping around their gun and jerking it from their grasp hard enough that the trigger guard snapped the security officer’s finger.

They staggered backward with a strangled gasp, clutching their hurt right hand in their left even as their companion bled out on the factory floor. Before they could draw another weapon or call for help, Kat drew a spare knife from the bandoleer and whipped it at the guard.

It flashed silver in the fluorescent light of the hallway, zipping through the air before ricocheting off of a ceramic arm guard with an almost bell-like chime. Her eyes widened as a disc of red light began to fade on her target right where the blade should have penetrated.

With an audible pop, their broken trigger finger snapped back into place, glowing red through their padded gloves.

A player. Kat’s gaze shifted up to the guard’s inscrutable armored face mask. For a second, the two of them just stared at each other.

Then the guard’s newly healed hand darted toward the holster at their waist.

Kat’s Pseudopod slashed sideways, hitting the person’s shoulder and knocking them to the side. She bolted forward, using the fraction of a second when her opponent was off balance to close the gap between her and the NeoSyne samurai.

Her left wrist rotated as she swung it downward, impacting against the guard’s forearm and pushing their hand away from their holster. The velcroed cover securing the pistol flapped as Kat stabbed upward with her knife, Penetrate lending the blade a ruby glow.

Somehow, the guard blocked, their forearm glowing the telltale red of a player activating a martial skill as it swept her blade aside. Kat’s knife skittered across the surface of the armor like it was glass, unable to find a crease or groove to bite into.

She ducked under a backhand from the samurai, coiling her Pseudopod around her opponent’s right leg and yanking forward. The soldier lurched off balance toward Kat just as she burst upward, leading hands clenched together as she twisted her shoulders and thrust her elbow into their chest.

Breath whooshed past her ear as the guard folded in half around her, wind knocked out of them. A moment later they stiffened, slipping off of her and to the floor with a gurgle. In the back of their neck, lodged in the thin flexible cloth armor between their helmet and chestplate, was the fletching of a crossbow bolt.

Blood began to seep out of the wound as one of Whip’s drones hummed in the air a handful of paces behind the downed guard. Kat nodded to it before activating her comm equipment.

“Thanks for the assist, Chiffon.” She nodded at the drone, using her toe to flip the guard’s body over. Their armor clattered on the floor, unmoving after the corpse rolled into position.

“Erinyes, don’t scare me like that,” Whippoorwill huffed back, her voice distorted in Kat’s earpiece. “She almost managed to draw her gun! Plus, if I hadn’t been jamming their radios, the entire complex would already know we’re here.”

“Sorry about that Chiffon.” Kat grinned as her friend continued to chastise her. “I didn’t really have a whole lot of options, and I genuinely didn’t expect that one of the guards would have a defensive perk that powerful. On the plus side, it looks like the crossbows we installed into the drones are working out.”

“Yeah.” Whip’s voice softened. “I don’t know why, but the drones are definitely using my skills from the Tower. There’s no way that shot would have worked without six or so levels in crossbow.”

Before Kat could respond, Emma popped her head around the corner. The other girl gave her a brief thumbs up before ambling into the bloody hallway.

“I think I found the control room for this floor,” Emma volunteered cheerfully. “The remaining guy keeps mumbling to himself. Once you got the patrol off my tail, I doubled back and tracked him down.”

“If you’re already back here, that must mean that the last guard is close?” Kat asked, picking her throwing knife up off the floor.

“He is.” Whippoorwill’s voice crackled in their ears. “I have drone one keeping a camera on him. Once the other two guards left he turned on his smartpanel and started watching Chrome Cowboys. That said, you should hurry. It looks like he has an entire wall worth of smartglass showing everything on this floor, including all of us. As soon as he starts paying attention, he’ll hit an alarm and we’ll have every Goddamn samurai in this building hunting us.”

“Come on Erinyes,” Emma said with a playful slap on the shoulder. Somehow, despite not being able to see her friend’s face, she knew the girl was grinning. “There’s no time to waste.”

With a skip in her step, the other woman set off down the hallway, batons clacking together gently on her hip as one of Whippoorwill’s flying drones buzzed through the air after her. Kat slid the throwing knife she’d fished off of the floor into her bandoleer before breaking into a jog to catch up with Emma.

Barely thirty seconds later, the two of them arrived at a slightly ajar metal door. Printed on it in large red letters were the words ‘AUTHORIZED SECURITY PERSONNEL ONLY’ leaving little doubt as to the room’s purpose.

Emma reached up, tapping her ear twice and pointing at the entrance. Faintly, Kat could hear the sound of someone humming to themselves from inside the room. She nodded at Emma before drawing her knife and going down to one knee in front of the door and pressing her face to the crack.

The man was leaning back in a wheeled chair, boots up on the console controlling a wall of security cameras. Next to him sat a helmet, empty eye pieces staring blankly at the room’s entrance as he quietly sang a song to himself.

He shifted slightly, moving his left leg atop his right as he gazed off into space, eyes unfocused as the smartpanel he was watching flickered. The chair creaked slightly as the man leaned back further, his hands clasped loosely together against the back of his head, and letting his almost shoulder-length blonde hair spill through.

Without speaking, Kat began casting Gravity Spike. For almost a second, she let the mana build, watching the distracted guard enjoy his final moments.

She released the spell. Mana blurred around him, as gravity swelled and twisted into a maelstrom.

Kat burst into the room just as the guard’s chair gave out under the force of the spell, spilling him to the ground. His body spasmed, ravaged by the force of a spell that was usually reserved for immobile or slow moving targets such as dungeon bosses.

He hit the ground beside the twisted and broken chair, followed only a fraction of a second later with Kat driving a knee into his armored chest, forcing out a mouthful of breath and blood.

Then, she finished the ambush. A single downward stroke of her knife planted the blade in the thrashing man’s eye.

He shuddered once and then went still, leaving Kat in a fairly large room. One entire wall was covered with flickering screens that showed all activity on the first level of the facility as well as a couple dim camera angles covering the ruins that hid the factory. The rest of the room was some sort of combined locker room, armory, and lounge. Rifles and armor sat neatly on racks next to the personal effects of almost a dozen absent guards.

“Erinyes.” Kat frowned as she tried to focus on Whip’s static-shrouded voice. “Merrimac and I are on our way over. I have the drones patrolling the rest of the floor, but the sooner you can get a shunt onto a network port the better. I feel naked without having access to the building’s security systems.”

“On it Chiffon,” Kat replied, fishing one of the two shunts she carried with her out of its carrying case. A quick search identified the console’s manual hookup, more or less a plug for employees with a cranial jack.

“Done,” she finished, affixing the shunt to the jack. “You should have remote access now Chiffon, good luck with their security. Hopefully you can make some sense of what we’re going to need to do to put this place out of commission.”

Kat stood up, hands on her hips as she stretched the kinks out of her back. She blew out a deep breath before reaching down and pulling her knife from the dead guard, wiping the blade on the durable cloth that held the body’s ceramic plate armor together.

Behind her, something scraped against the floor, causing Kat to spin around, knife at the ready, only to find Emma pulling up a pair of chairs. Kat cocked her head to the side as the other woman pushed one of the two chairs toward her before taking her own seat.

Emma looked up at her expectantly. When Kat didn’t react, she reached up, tapping her earpiece before drawing her index finger across her throat and pointing at the chair she’d retrieved for Kat.

Kat took the seat, briefly checking their communication network to confirm that Emma had logged herself out before turning her own headset off.

“Okay,” she began, bemused. “Would you care to fill me in on what this is all about?”

“Chiffon,” Emma responded, her voice more sober and neutral than Kat had ever remembered from the usually bubbly girl.

“What about her?” Kat asked, still grasping at straws.

“I just wanted to know if you’re actually in the dark, or if you’re pretending not to notice.” Emma replied. “If it’s the first, we can do something about that, but if it’s the second, what you’re doing is unfair. You need to speak up and tell her.”

“Speak up about what!” Kat growled in frustration. “I feel like I’m smoking night glass right now. You’re being super vague for some reason, and I have no idea what’s going on.”

“In the dark it is,” Emma said, her voice betraying some uncharacteristic relief. “Good. Chiffon is a nice person and this makes everything so much easier.”

“Seriously.” Kat shook her head. “Speak English. Why did you turn your communicator off? What in the hell am I supposedly in the dark about?”

“She likes you,” Emma leaned forward slightly, angling her head toward Kat.

The room fell into silence. Underneath her mask, Kat frowned at Emma, trying to parse through her friend’s behavior. None of this was anything like her normal perky irreverence.

“Of course Chiffon likes me,” she replied slowly, eyes locked on Emma as Kat tried to sort out what was going on. “We’ve close friends. Both of us have been through a lot-”

“Not like that.” Emma cut her off with a decisive chop of her hand. “Chiffon has a crush on you. I flirt with everyone, but every time I come anywhere near you, she starts acting as territorial as a guard dog. I didn’t know whether you were just pretending not to notice, or if you were actually oblivious, but it seemed like I should clear the air before things got too weird.”

Emma shrugged before continuing. “Sorry about doing this in the middle of a mission. I just never have a moment alone with you to actually talk about this sort of thing.”

Kat’s mind went blank, words evaporating from the tip of her tongue. Try as she might, thoughts kept running away from her. It didn’t seem right. Whippoorwill was like her sister, but-

She blushed, the image of Whip’s skinny frame bending over to grab a soda out of the refrigerator burning itself into her mind. Her pulse raced, heart beating out of control.

Maybe Whippoorwill did like her. Maybe Emma was right and she wanted to be more than friends. Kat hadn’t even thought about the possibility, her love-life was in disarray, locked into a semi-permanent hiatus ever since the debacle with Arnold. Between school, The Tower of Somnus, and her work to uncover the stallesp, she hadn’t even had a moment to think about herself.

God. What if she did end up liking Whip back? What if she said the wrong thing, and it ripped their friendship apart, ruining everything. She couldn’t just-

“Can you hear me?’ Whippoorwill asked, voice crackling through the room’s PA. “If you can, turn on your communicators. I’m into the system, and well.”

Whip paused, leaving Kat still dazed and blinking as she tried to sort through the whirlwind of emotions that Emma had unleashed on her.

“I found the nomad tribes that have been disappearing from the area,” Whippoorwill continued grimly. “They’re here in the facility.”