The look on Professor Reunification’s face just before he logged out was not going to be one of Attaboy’s cherished memories. He had about a second to regret the times he had pretended there was a crisis on the Outside to get away from a particularly boring lesson, which, objectively, was most of them.

Guess I should have learned from Atticus’ boy and wolf story, he thought. But it seems like a pretty good strategy as long as there isn’t actually a-- holy crap!

He had sort of ignored the last message from Lilijoy, as it was hard to simultaneously read and get yelled at, so his return to his senses carried a few unwelcome surprises. First was the hissing. There was a nice nook he had found to tuck his body in when he went inside, almost, but not quite on the roof at the top of a collapsed staircase. He just felt weird about lying out in the open somewhere everyone could see while they went about their day, so the snug enclosure felt right and had a great signal. And now a very loud hissing sound on several sides, and a smell…

He inhaled a bit deeper to place it, and then his system began to go nuts.

Djian yelled, as if the other alarms and notifications in going off in his head weren’t enough.

Attaboy squeezed the air he had taken in back out through his nose reflexively, then pushed out a bit more. Already his eyes and lips were burning, but he was much more worried about the unwanted passengers he might have taken in. He had heard a bit about what Lilijoy was working on for the past few days, and had no desire to be dissolved from the inside. Rationally, he understood that something so lethal was probably far too valuable to be used on the likes of him, but it didn’t change the momentary panic he felt.

Djian added.

Attaboy checked the timer on his blood bugs, and saw he had about twelve minutes of oxygen if he didn’t move much. He doubted that was going to be an option though. Already, the gas was pouring into his little shelter, forcing him to close his eyes and flood his exposed skin with med bugs.

he sent off to the others.

He couldn’t help but feel that someone must have screwed up for this to be happening, and was just glad it wasn’t him. He was pretty sure it wasn’t him.

was Lilijoy’s reply. She sent him a map with the positions of friends and foes.

He oriented himself to the map. Looking at it, it was clear that Nykka and company hadn’t gotten very far. The assault vehicle was located in a large equipment shed attached to the main building, a structure that was now little more than rusted steel frame and a few stubborn corrugated panels. They were still in the main building, clustered at the back door that led to the shed.

he sent to Nykka. He didn’t wait for a reply, because it didn’t matter just yet. First, he needed to get across the roof to the functional stairs, and that wasn’t going to be pleasant. Hope nobody moved the furniture while I was gone, he thought as he pushed out of his shelter, eyes squeezed shut. Someday he would get around to building the crystal lenses that would protect his corneas in circumstances such as these, but that day was not today.

Fortunately, his spatial memory was perfect, and his echolocation decent. He could feel the gas swirling around him, cold and burning at the same time as he dashed for the stairs, hoping that it obscured the sight of any distant snipers. The roof was in awful shape, but the underlying support beams were still strong and he made it across in seconds, slamming through the door into the stairwell and jumping down the first flight. He slammed off the cinder block wall, then pushed himself around and down the next flight before he finally dared to open his eyes. Even here, the gas flowed and swirled, running down the stairs in wispy rivulets.

He took a quick sniff, which told him that what he could see was only part of what was there. Now was not the time to supplement his oxygen. Wincing at the sting in his sinuses, he dialed back his pain another notch and ran.

***

Mo staggered under Anda’s weight and shifted once again to keep him on his shoulders. The guy looks so thin, he thought, when did I get so weak? It was an entirely rhetorical thought, but one that insisted on dancing through his head on a loop.

He was weak. Too weak to defend Maria, too weak to do anything more than cower while children half his age and size did the real work. This whole situation was a clusterfuck, and he should know, having been a part of more than his fair share. At least this time it wasn’t his fault.

Except that wasn’t really true. He had been sitting back, enjoying the ride, enjoying this new world that he and Maria had somehow created, a universe of two, a fantasy that was far better than what a washed up reprobate and addict like himself deserved. He was all too aware of the clock counting down the days before Maria finally grew past him, before she realized that he, basically, sucked in every way. Damaged goods that were never good in the first place.

Would she hate him for taking advantage of her ignorance?

His hallucinations were acting up again, worse than ever. It might be, he pondered, that there was a different clock running, one that would remove him from Maria’s life even before she saw him for what he was.

He wasn’t sure which clock scared him more.

Ahead of him Nykka stalked with her sword drawn. She looked dangerous, competent, and more than a little frightening. In front of her stood Camalotz, which Mo found odd, as he was one of the more obscure Mayan entities, the butcher who had helped remove the gods’ second attempt at intelligent life. His large jagged cleaver barred the door to the outside, dripping blood onto the floor.

“Hold up,” Mo called, trying to keep his voice low.

Nykka turned to him with a look of impatience and made a zipping gesture on her lips. Ignoring Camalotz completely, which made sense since he wasn’t there, she started to push on the back door.

That was when Lilijoy yelled out something unintelligible, and the sound of several somethings hitting the ground outside came to their ears.

Awww fuuuck, thought Mo as the hissing sounds began.

***

It was hardly the first time Maria had been woken in the middle of the night to flee to safety. The serfs knew how to look out for one another, how to pass on warning that, say, a particular clan candidate had had a bit too much to drink and was making his way to the dormitories. Or that a supervisor was looking for someone, anyone, to blame for their own mistake. At such times, Maria’s mother would wake the sisters and hurry them to any of a dozen hiding spots to wait out the circumstance. She shuddered to think what might have happened to her sisters or herself had it not been her mother’s tireless dedication to maintaining a social web that would give them warning of such occurrences.

When did I start thinking with terms like ‘social web’? her sleepy mind pondered.

“Get Anda,” she overheard Nykka whisper to Mo. “He won’t log out or something.”

Mo grunted in return, and Maria did her best to accommodate her eyes to the darkness. She wasn’t particularly worried by the situation; moving in the middle of the night was just something one had to do sometimes. She trusted that Lilijoy and Nykka had things under control. Some part of her still believed them to be almost supernatural beings, even though she had been around them for over a week, and seen that they were as human as she was in many ways, that even the white demon of Sinaloa had to eat and sleep.

They were human in many ways, but not every way. Her lessons with Lilijoy were more than enough to drive that point home. The daily sessions were, frankly, terrifying, the very definition of supernatural, and what they were doing to her… she found herself alternating between jubilation and dread. There was a feeling that hung over her, sneaking into her thoughts unguarded, that she was reaching too far, partaking in something unnatural, something dangerous and forbidden.

Thankfully, Mo was there to anchor her, to reassure her and comfort her when it all became too much. After her lessons, she wanted nothing more than to curl up into a ball and be comforted. They scared her, made her feel inadequate, ignorant. Every day she learned so much, not just from the tiny machines invading her brain, but from the conversations with her teacher. Every day she became smaller, shrinking against the background of all there was to understand, and she couldn’t help but feel that she would ultimately vanish.

Mo returned with Anda across his shoulders. She had to marvel at his strength, for the tall, black man draped across his body like some ridiculous cape. They made their way through the dark rooms slowly, and she did her best to clear the way, moving stray rubble and bits of improvised furniture from Mo’s path. She wondered if the little machines, the flowers and vines, were already helping her, because it seemed to her that edges were clearer than they should be somehow, that the borders that defined shapes in the dark had a new type of presence drawn upon her vision.

Soon they were at the back door, if it could be called that. Some previous resident had wired a broad slab of fake wood so that it hung over the opening like a hard, heavy curtain. To exit, they would need to push it up and out.

“Hold up,” Mo called, his voice strained. She turned back and could see his face in the faint light from a high-set, former window. The way his eyes caught the scattered illumination it almost seemed they glowed from within.

Suddenly Lilijoy yelled from several rooms away. Her voice was high and her words ran together in a burst, a sign, Maria had learned, that her teacher was distracted and had failed to perfectly calibrate her internal sense of time. “They’redroppinggasonus!”

Maria heard thumps from the roof, and then thuds from outside, followed by the sound of a thousand snakes hissing at once. Mo’s eyes widened. She felt a great surge of fear rush through her body, felt her knees weaken. Once again, everyone knew what was going on except her.

***

Nykka was pushing on the heavy panel of composite wood when the gas canisters began to fall. Lilijoy’s warning was redundant to her own senses, though it was on the Inside where she had learned to recognize the sound of objects falling from great heights. In fact, the first feeling she registered as the gas canisters began their sinister hissing was one of relief that no waves of fire or electrical storms had sprung forth.

That feeling was quickly displaced by the reality of the true danger. She doubted that the gas was particularly dangerous in itself, to her anyway, but she feared that its effects would be extremely unpleasant, and the assault to follow even more so. Unfortunately, what was an unpleasant inconvenience to her could be debilitating or even lethal to Mo and Maria. She didn’t know what would happen to Anda, but she assumed his system must have some safeguards in the event of unconsciousness, and this was pretty much the same thing. She couldn’t imagine what could be so pressing on the Inside that he wouldn’t log out if his life were in danger.

That’s on him, she decided.

“Mo, put Anda down, maybe throw some of this junk on him.”

Mo stepped forward, more or less allowing Anda to slide down his back and land with a crash.

“Oops,” he said.

Nykka ignored him and Maria as they went about hiding Anda, distracted first by a message from Attaboy announcing his presence. Hooray, she thought. Our savior has returned. Then Lilijoy sent her an updated map of their assailants, along with a note.

Nykka wondered what that was all about, but she wasn’t about to clog up Lilijoy’s head with useless questions. she replied.

came the reply.

Nykka was beginning to wonder if she had made a mistake, hitching her wagon to this group. She still thought it was the least bad option, but the events at the arcology followed by nearly a week sitting on her hands hadn’t done much to inspire optimism.

Maybe all I need is a good fight, she thought. I haven’t cut someone’s head off Outside in ages.

***

Everything went to hell once the gas-laden canisters began to release their payload. It had been one of Lilijoy’s fears, a very rational one, that if her methods ever became known her opponents would take a few very simple precautions. First, they would make themselves immune to her attacks through the simple expedient of covering exposed skin and blocking access to their face. Second, lots and lots of bug spray.

She was virtually certain that the people currently assaulting them had no idea what she could do, and yet they had nearly accomplished both of the steps to neutralize her anyway, entirely by accident. The gas was mostly aerosolized capsaicin, that and some bugs that her system was still analyzing. Unfortunately, capsaicin was one of nature’s homegrown insecticides, and her closest links to her network were dropping like the flies they were. Some, those which had completely artificial nervous systems, were doing better than others, but it was already causing huge problems for her extended awareness and ability to control the horseflies poised to attack the enemy. There was no way to turn this into a clean victory, full of mystery and plausible explanations for the enemy to cling to, while hiding her true abilities.

This was what it meant to have one’s hand forced, and her world, the world would never be the same after, she had a feeling.

But first, she had to get out of the damn gas. Already it was creeping down from the roof, trickling through the many holes and openings in ceilings and walls. The enemy’s radio communications were disciplined, and her means of interception a bit impaired, but she could tell that they were waiting to ambush her group as they fled the building. The snipers had settled into positions overlooking all the likely avenues of escape, and the rest of the men, those she could still sense, were tightening the circle, closing from multiple angles with measured bursts of movement. Whoever these people were, they were professionals, though she didn’t trust her internet memory to fully inform her on the subject of current tactics.

It worried her that she couldn’t tell how well the foot soldiers were armed. She knew that Anda’s particularly nasty guns and ammunition were uncommon, but then, this was a force with some kind of air support. They probably had nasty weapons of their own. Even the best skin bugs would fail when specific countermeasures were applied, as she had learned through Anda’s injuries during their time together.

she messaged. She sent a summary of events and particulars, and a stream of her activities he could follow if he was able. Then she turned her attention to the snipers. They weren’t quite at the points of the compass, but she labeled them that way. South was one she already had a direct link to, thanks to a little luck with her initial flies. East and West were hunkered down and motionless, which would serve them well in many situations, but not when the enemy was a horsefly.

North was a problem. Her coverage there was thin, and she had lost too many of the links from where she was now. She was already shifting some of the midges to reroute her signals, but for now most of the creatures in that sector would be on autopilot.

In an ideal world, her attacks would have been simultaneous and decisive. She only had to look over the fallen city to know how far from ideal the world truly was.

One piece of good news, very good news, was that the systems used by the enemy forces were not hardened against attack. Like all bugs she had run across besides Sinaloa’s, they were almost the opposite, as if they had been designed to be subordinate to her. She still couldn’t decide whether this was an accidental byproduct of Guardian writing in its own back doors, or if this vulnerability had been placed for her and those like her. As usual, her best guess was that it was probably a false dichotomy, that Guardian might not even consider the Tao System as something distinct from itself.

But then, why hadn’t Guardian arranged long since for the Tao System to proliferate, to fulfill Henry’s dream of a truly upgraded humanity that could fight its own worst impulses? She feared the answer was that minds with the Tao System were ultimately subsumed into Guardian, that their individuality would be an illusion at best. It bothered her quite a bit that she had no way to test this proposition.

She put aside questions of her own agency and moved her horseflies to attack the three snipers. The sound of their wings was the biggest issue, but that was solved by dropping them from a moderate height onto the stationary men. She had been experimenting with the maneuver for a while, and while there was no way she had found to turn horseflies into gliders, they could steer their fall quite well. From there it was a quick scramble to the tiny band of flesh between mask and shirt.

The next problem was that horsefly bites were not particularly subtle. They carried no natural anesthetic, and their proboscis was shaped to tear and rend, rather than pierce. This issue was solved easily enough by extending the bite process just a bit. It only took an extra second to send a first wave of Tao System elements through an initial probing attack. These were substitute for a chemical numbing agent, and allowed the fly to dig deep and empty the rest of its payload into the bloodstream without detection.

She had set these events in motion even before messaging Anda, and it wasn’t long before her vines and flowers were wending their way among the neurons of the snipers. In the meantime, she handled messages from Attaboy and Nykka, maneuvered all the insect forces she could still reach and landed more horseflies on the mobile attackers. Those she held back for the moment, allowing them to ride along on the men's maneuvers. The introduction of motion into the equation made the biting process more complicated, as the fabric from masks, shirts and various types of body armor moved and covered, greatly reducing vulnerabilities to her horseflies. This would have been where the midges’ role was to fly into eyes, nose and mouth, but the gas masks ruled that out.

It would only take one man realizing that the horseflies were a danger to nullify their future utility and she wasn’t ready to take that risk just yet.

The first sniper whose system fell to her was South. She had already had a small presence in his head, enough to intercept sensory signals, probably enough to shut him down if she needed to, or at least render him unfit for combat. That wasn’t the goal though. With the influx of system elements delivered by the horsefly, she was able to begin substituting her own changes to his senses, taking a page from what she had learned of the Suenos System and Marcus’ augsight altering bugs.

Sensory capture, she thought. You’re my brain in a vat now, buddy.

Her first action was to sprint out of the building, through the south sniper’s theoretical field of view. She chose a time when the men on the ground wouldn’t have a line of sight, and ran through the gas clouds that now surrounded the building. The gas billowed and swirled with her passage, but was otherwise unable to affect her, as long as she maintained a mild positive pressure in her airways.

The message she was expecting came almost immediately to the auditory cortex of all she had infiltrated, sent by whoever was running the show.

There was a fair amount to unpack there. It confirmed that the enemy had eyes from above, and pretty good ones at that. It suggested that they were there to capture one or more of their group, and kill the rest. She allowed the sniper to receive the message, but with a slight delay, and gave him a shadowy figure to aim at. It was far easier on her to be subtle with the alterations to his senses, especially since she might soon be juggling all three snipers. So far, everything was going according to plan.

the sniper reported. The sharp crack of the bullet breaking the sound barrier followed, almost a continuous string of pops across Lilijoy’s many ears. She had her shadow figure jut into cover just before they would have been hit, an impossible reaction that the sniper could only attribute to luck. he reported.

She let the interaction play out, interested to learn more about their communication style.

came the reply.

Now to make things a little interesting, she decided. She sent several shadows sprinting from cover to cover through the sniper’s vision.

he sent.

Just then, the systems of the other two snipers fell into her control. Immediately, she sent more of her phantoms into motion through the shadows of their vision. Immediately, the communications began to fill with reports of movement. The men on the ground were frozen, locked down by the uncertainty of their spotter and the snipers. For a moment, she hoped they would withdraw rather than risk ambush by unknown forces lurking in the darkness. Unfortunately it was not to be.

came the voice of the enemy command. She resisted the urge to wave at the sky.

She cursed a bit internally, and then removed the last sentence from what the snipers heard. On the plus side, it seemed that whatever was lurking overhead didn’t have an ability to paint targets, which would have certainly raised the challenge level of her plans. Her guess was it was an airship, possibly in the form of several smaller drones controlled remotely. It, or they, could have been lurking above the lower cloud layer for ages, watching for small groups of people outside of the populous areas, following their comings and goings.

We came here to find an airship, but it found us first, she thought. Now to find out who they’re here for.

Nykka was, at that moment, about to venture forth, which Lilijoy no longer thought was a great idea. She was still in the process of reconnecting to her northern sector, and it was clear Nykka would be seen from above through her heat signature.

she sent.

Nykka sent back, which confused Lilijoy a bit. She forged on nonetheless.

Nykka cut her off.

While she waited for Nykka to make her way through the building, she checked on the others as best she could. With most of her critters in the building disabled, her signal to the system elements she had placed in Mo and Maria was weak. She could tell they were alive, and their vitals weren’t alarming. She was sure they were suffering from the gas, but there wasn’t much she could do about it. Attaboy was in there somewhere too. She figured he was okay for now, but sent another message telling him to find and protect Mo and Maria, to forestall him doing anything impulsive.

It was only a few seconds later that whoever was coordinating the enemy movements lost patience.

came the order.

Lilijoy sent immediately.

.

.

.