“It’s the big day, Gray. How are you feeling?”

“I started breathing right at some point in the night, so great!”

Ms. Scarlet and Mr. Purple stood at the massive steel door with Bec… Ms. Gray, now. This exit opened up to the far east side of the compound. Apparently, it opened up about three kilometers away from civilization. A brisk jog and we’d be in the thick of it. The outskirts of the City extended for approximately three hundred km across with the City in the center. The City is a very controlled locale dense with buildings and is approximately ten km across. Apparently, it grows and changed although Bec didn’t know how. The Suburbs was the product of a rogue housing project that people didn’t care enough about to stop.

The legend goes that essentially, a strapping lad of thirty-four invented a drone fleet and just started building. Retaining exclusive control over the fleet, He built a real estate empire that would erect a myriad of buildings at request overnight. Buildings on Demand. One day, his rivals sent assassins to kill him and they fought his building swarm for 50 nights. On the 51st night, Lauds stepped in and their elite squad of hunters killed the leaders of each movement, including the boy. With his last breath, he uttered a final command to the fleet, “Go forth and multiply. Make sure no one will ever need a house,” as a last revenge against those that sought to prevent him from housing every person. Some of the drones escaped the chaos and multiplied endlessly, building and maintaining 1 building for every person alive on Dust and a few more. When asked why, it said “because there is a high likelihood of unknown humans,” and, condescendingly explained the asker about the pioneers and the chances of other successful colony planets. The fact that hundreds of thousands have moved to the relative safety of the City meant that there was sparely populated, moderately dense collection of buildings. Bec held up her hand, running her fingers through the light of endless rows of buildings. Every once in a while, Bec felt a building reinforced in some way or another. Scarlet told her those ones were likely inhabited.

“It’s one big suburban jungle.” Bec thought it reminded her of photos of ghost towns that dotted the wastes of Nevada.

Scarlet, Bec, and Mr. Purple all dashed into a building on one of the smaller side streets. Leaping up the stairs with grace, Scarlet gathered the squad around a wall in some sizable bedroom with a nightstand and desk lamp glowing a soft orange light. Inside this room was a scout’s nest comprised of 2 chairs, a radio, a pair of binoculars on a tripod and an olive drab boy. She greeted that young boy in camo that had tracked Bec in the forest. He flinched when he saw Bec, but he nodded at the window. Bec realized it wasn’t a window, but actually a display showing a picture of a plaza. Flickering like a screen, Camo had revealed a square of wall facing towards a plaza like the wall had turned to glass. There were two men napping at the side of a small white, metal door.

“Woah, is this a high-tech window?”

Mr. Purple scoffed. “This thang costs more than your life. A proprietary gadget courtesy of the technology wizard Mr. Black. Helluva perk of werking for him.”

The boy in camo was all business. “Ok, you three, here is the situation. We have an unknown number of hostiles inside the building. No one has left since I’ve watched them. I’m fairly certain they have a motion sensor or something alerting them when something enters a 500m radius around them. The only time either one awoke was when a bird flew by them. I saw a glow deer antler shard on the road entry of the plaza. I believe there is some kind of trap at all the chokepoints.” He pointed at the maze of rubbish and the window zoomed in and panned over the plaza. “Big machines laid in burnt-out husks all around them as a form of improvised cover. I think that anyone that drove into the traps died as well. Likely heavy ordinance, not turrets, based on the way the machines have been destroyed.”

“Mr. Purple, if we got a good vantage point, could you take them out?” Ms. Scarlet asked.

“Yerp, ah know ah can.”

“Alright. Let’s relax for a moment. Eat something. We’re going in 5.”

Bec sat down and munched on a wrapped bar of banana bread. Having a convenient foil wrapping made her uncomfortable. What a waste. Bec shook her head. It was only a waste if it was a finite resource. Bioplastics and Word Generation had broken the need for serious recycling. She pocketed the glossy yellow wrap. Littering wasn’t cool even if it was war. Bec hyped herself up. She would see death today. She’d lived death before but those would inevitably be undone. She looked at her Timelet, placed in a neat holster to her side.

“Bec, I have a gift for you, to commemorate your first mission.” Ms. Scarlet grabbed a pillow from the bed, and it flickered into a box. Bec opened the box. “It’s… a mask.” Bec was holding a thin, gray, full head mask.

“It looks like a gimp mask, Scarlet.”

“It’s to hide your identity from any of the cameras in there. We are going to take every precaution we can to keep you incognito for as long as possible. It’s got a rebreather in there, so you’ll have no trouble breathing… or hearing by the way. Normally, this is for people who want to shut out the visual world while they pilot a fully immersive machine. You won’t be hampered nearly as much as them.”

Bec slipped it on and tucked the cloth into her collar. Bec bet she looked insane, like a synthetic, faceless android. “I need some gray gloves to match the whole ensemble.”

Mr. Purple nodded. “That thing is so unnerving, I’d wager they’d shit their britches before trying to fight with you on the street.”

“Don’t underestimate a reputation, Bec.” Ms. Scarlet ran a nail down her lip.

“I think the Crimson Lady will do enough for the fear factor,” Camo kid mumbled only loud enough for Bec to hear.

Once the break was over, they congregated on the roof with the binocular tripod. “Are you ready, Mr. Purple?”

“Ye, can you bring my Suburban Ranged bag?” Mr. Purple pulled out an empty paper bag.

“Yes, yes.” Ms. Scarlet grabbed the bag and it turned into a duffle bag full of… clubs. “Riiight, you’re the baseball guy. Bec thought about the broken ribs he delivered in an alternate timeline.”

“You’ve seen me practice? Well, I do a helluva lot more than that. Watch.”

Like a well-oiled machine, the camo boy sat at the binoculars and homed in on the sleeping men. “246 meters east-south-east. Wind… 12kph.” Mr. Purple grabbed a 5 iron and hopped on the edge of the roof, teetering frighteningly in the wind. His hands up to shield his eyes. He said, “Gotcha, fuckers.”

He placed 2 golf balls on 2 cracks in the grout of the brick railing. He tapped the top of one causing it to bounce up and he batted it up higher with the top of his club. He quickly popped the other one up and started to juggle these two bouncing balls on the club. He stuck his tongue out to focus on his shot. He popped both high, one twice as high as the other and, as they fell, he took on the posture of a pro golfer. With 2 practiced swings, he launched both balls with a metallic pinging sound in under a second. His follow-through was followed by a whistle. “Damn. What a nice drive.”

Bec was certain that was his Word after the way he said it. I guess not everyone cares about keeping their Word a secret. Maybe I could have bought info on him for relatively cheap, if I wanted to.

“Both men are down. Nice shooting, P.”

“Ah try.” Mr. P popped down from the ledge and slid the club into the bag. “Let’s go git my balls back.”

Ms. Scarlet effortlessly teleported us down to the men. Both the men laid on the floor with a golf ball embedded in the skull of each. One was perfectly embedded into the eye socket of the right man, who had been leaning his chair on the wall. He and his chair slid down looking like he’d almost been eased down gently, despite the massive head wound. Scarlet also took the time to swap Mr. Purple’s club bag for a bag carrying a bat and a handful of baseballs, ball bearings, and an ice pick.

Bec had a holstered knife on her belt opposite the Timelet, but she was used to fighting with her fists. Ms. Scarlet ripped off the back bumper from one three-wheeled car and turned it into a long black tube with a body strap. She popped the lid and unfurled a glossy plastic sheet which she stuck to the wall left of the metal door. The sheet fuzzed and Ms. Scarlet waved in front of it to get a clearer picture. A blue, green, yellow, and red picture formed. Bec ran her hands over the air in front of her towards the screen to feel the picture clearer. It was a thermal image of the room on the other side. Perk indeed.

There were 2 men inside. One was sitting on the armrest of a couch across from the door. He had his weapon trained on the door. Shit. The other was hidden in the blind spot left of the door, unfortunately for him, the squad was looking at him pressing his ear to the wall. He waved his hand in a gesture telling the first man that he was going to open the door.

“Bec, breach!”

Bec stood in front of the door and took a stable posture. Waiting until the man reached over to the handle, Bec unloaded a midsized punch into the sheet metal, blasting the door off its hinges. The man who had his hand inches from the door had it crushed. The door slammed into the man across the way, splaying him out over the couch. Ms. Scarlet slid past Bec as the door flew through the air and a man appeared in front of her. Pulling a blade from thin air, Ms. Scarlet stabbed it through his neck, severing his spine. She whirled and with a new blade, decapitated the man with the crushed hand. What Bec hadn’t noticed until it was too late, was that there was a man in the right blind spot as well. Bec had noticed her headcount mistake only after a third man’s body appeared in front of Ms. Scarlet with a blade practically already inside of him. He had just appeared in front of a perfectly thrust blade. Bec shuddered as she realized she had no chance of fighting Scarlet for real, anytime soon.

The man on the couch had managed to shrug off the flying door, only to have his head explode.

Bec pulled up her mask and vomited her banana bread bar on the floor. “Oh fuck!”

“Yeh, sorry, pretty nasty.” Mr. Purple had struck a ball bearing so hard that he had blown a plate-sized exit wound in the poor man’s skull.

“Bec, your Timelet! It’s stopped working! It says, ‘Error 602: Temporal Discontinuity Found.’ I don’t know what that means other than the timeline has been disrupted.”

Bec only had a moment to process that before the door leading into the back was kicked open. Two men armed with long blades barreled through, and Bec saw two men with some sort of handgun with green trim guarding the door. She acted fast.

“HEY! FALL BACK!”

One of the swordsmen looked back at the shout to see one of his allies with a gun also looking back. He then looked forward to see the second man with a gun and the other swordsman, dead on the floor in a pile. That was the last thing he saw before a metal sphere passed through his skull.

Bec was impressed to see Mr. Purple could aim his shots through people into others. It was horrifying to see the balls that he launched pass through people like butter, taking out a swordsman and a gunner in one shot. It was hurting Bec’s appetite for butter.

“You’re thinking of food? Right now?” Al said, snapping Bec out of her trance.

Al was right, Bec had to act fast. She ran up to the doorway. Ms. Scarlet joined Bec. She squatted and peered into the room low down to throw off people expecting a peek at eye level. To Bec, the room seemed to be an industrial warehouse with shelves stacked high up to the elevated ceiling. She stuck her fingers past the door frame to feel a good look at the room. It was huge.

“Was this warehouse that long on the outside?” Bec asked. Bec noticed that her mask outputted a tinny distorted voice instead of her own, which was badass. She felt like a cyborg supervillain in this get-up, and it thankfully concealed the dopey grin she had on her face.

Ms. Scarlet whispered so low, under her breath that only Bec could her at that range. “No. You really don’t see space expanders in the Suburbs. They’re highly coveted and fairly costly to operate.”

“No hostiles detected,” Bec said, feigning some professionality.

“Let’s go in.” Scarlet lead the pack in a quiet infiltration of the seemingly endless warehouse. They walked… and walked. Sandwiched between large stacks of boxes, Bec was really tense so she decided to get some answers from Ms. Scarlet.

“What happens if a space expander fails?”

“Since it doesn’t really interact with solid matter except for the bounding box, you can assume that it will suddenly get very cramped… then, as the collapsing force loses against the air pressure, the whole thing would suddenly explode. You’d be crushed before that happened though. Look up some videos in the library of the City, they’re very popular.”

Bec was excited to know that not all information was for sale. She’d started to worry that even mundane things would cost LC to learn, especially after Ms. Scarlet described the rise of the Suburbs in a way that made it clear that it was known primarily as a legend. Bec didn’t like that there were post-digital legends and folklore, but the information era of the early 21st century more than demonstrated that possibility.

Bec’s ears twitched against the mask. The hair on her neck hair stood up.

“Bec, we heard some movement… On an upper shelf.” Al whispered… not that anyone else could hear him.

Bec stopped Ms. Scarlet and pointed upwards. Ms. Scarlet looked at the shelves, warily. Bec’s ears twitched again against her mask.

“There are two people. I think they’re on the shelf second to the top.” Al could parse hard to hear things better than Bec could. She heard them only once, but he could review the sounds and analyze them for things like content and vector.

Bec gestured with 2 fingers up. She flattened her hand and indicated they were on the second shelf from the top. Ms. Scarlet pointed at the shelf’s metal support and made a punching gesture.

Bec winced. It was one thing to punch a flat metal panel, but this was a sharp right-angled metal support designed to hold weight. Bec thought for a moment and realized the obvious. No punch necessary. She struck the support with a stepping side kick and imparted a medium amount of additional kinetic energy to the strike. It was comical how silent the actual strike was, but the whole structure reverberated in response. The bar bent and the whole structure shook and groaned. Bec’s heart dropped when the whole thing didn’t collapse right away. Instead, it took over 7 seconds for the bent metal to give out and the whole thing started to fold. With a metal moan of agony, the bar bent and sheared. The whole thing began teetering toward the group. Bec realized, far too slowly, that it was collapsing towards the group at the same moment it wasn’t.

Bec was disoriented for a moment, embarrassingly so since she had trained for this. Ms. Scarlet displaced the group and moved them over one aisle, clear of the immediate mayhem. The shelves smashed into their neighbor, ejecting all the boxes and smashing them into the floor where the party stood moments before. No people.

“Bec, get down!” Al warned.

Bec dropped to her stomach as shots rang out from an adjacent massive shelf. A bullet winged Mr. Purple, but he didn’t even flinch. He was already in the process of cracking a baseball into the bottom of the shelves. Splintered wood exploded out as the entire shelf floor got blasted up out of its frame. When the wood panels settled back into their moorings, the wood instantly collapsed under the weight of the boxes, and Bec saw people fall through. Ms. Scarlet grabbed out with her hand and both the men didn’t land on the shelf beneath them. They were shifted a few meters over and continued their plummet into the center of the aisle. One landed in front of Ms. Scarlet on his feet. He had little time to enjoy that landing without his head, which was removed unceremoniously before the man fully righted himself. The other body landed in front of Bec with a sickening crunch and a howl. Bec was startled by the falling body and the unbelievably loud scream.

The writhing body reared up and revealed a rifle pointed at Bec’s face.

The man screamed, “FOR GREEN!”

Bec’s instincts flared, and she punched the barrel of the rifle. Hard. Way too hard. The barrel shattered and the whole gun, in chunks, blew through the man’s chest and head, killing him instantly with a bang louder than the gun would have made.

“Dust damn, that was worse than my hits.” Purple remarked but Bec wasn’t hearing it. Her ears rang and her head spun. Her heart raced and she dry heaved. “Oh fuck.” Bec wasn’t recognizing her own voice in the mask which didn’t help this dissociative crisis. Ms. Scarlet ran over to Bec and gave her a hug.

“Oh, sweet baby, I screwed up. You shouldn’t have had to do that. I’m so sorry.”

“I—”

“Shhh. You did what you had to. You did good.” A little quieter and with a tighter hug, she finished with, “You did good… but it’s not safe here.”

Bec tried to calm her breathing. She needed to get a hold of herself.

“Bec, you saved yourself. Scarlet’s right. You did what you had to.” Al tried to reassure her. “You—No one should have to kill. You came here hoping that you’d avoid getting your hands dirty, but you did.” Al paused. “You think you saved my life. I see…”

Bec rose to her with tears oozing oddly from her eyes, reminding her that she was already broken. “I can do this.”

“Gud, stay focused. I don’t have much sympathy for people too green to kill.” Purple said with utmost seriousness.

The group continued its slow walk towards the center of the warehouse. Bec sensed a cluster of lights illuminating an area far ahead.

“That must be where the action’s at.” Mr. Purple said.

“Bec, I heard some people talking down the way. Too quiet to hear.”

Bec motioned everyone to stop. She didn’t need to move to use her power anymore, but it really, really helped. She held her breath and focused hard on amplifying the sound.

“—is in here. None of the people we’ve sent to investigate have come back. Our radios have been outputting nothing but static; someone is jamming us.”

Bec smiled. Oops. Did I do that? Bec very much enjoyed letting loose out in the Suburbs. Constricting her Word’s leaky radiation was not hard anymore, but letting it go wild was comparable to taking off a bra after a long day of work. Freeing.

“Well, stop them! I don’t know what else to tell you. The invaders must die.” Bec was surprised. This was a woman’s voice. The leader?

“I think it would be best if we all hunkered down, dear. They will have trouble handling a group of our size.” Oddly… friendly?

“You know better than I would. Don’t forget rule one.”

A group of men chanted, “We must protect our queen…” Queen!? Bec balked at that.

The crowd started to shuffle, sounds of footfalls and boxes sliding filled her ears so Bec turned the sound down and turned to Ms. Scarlet.

“They know we’re here, but my disruptions to their communications means they have no idea what our team size is or what we can do. There are a lot of men. A woman seems to be their leader. They’re all calling her… queen.”

“Code names are common in espionage. That being said, Mr. Green’s handler is our primary target. Mr. Green is the secondary target. Tertiary objectives are to find out who they work for and what data they have on us. We need to destroy that data if we can’t recover it.”

“Do you know Mr. Green’s word?”

“Yes, it’s barely combat-oriented. He was responsible for the unique design of our base’s space generators. His Word was hyperbolic. He’s a meek scientist-type which was why we had initially discounted his betrayal, assuming he was just dead in a ditch somewhere.” Ms. Scarlet finished that sentence with a wave of her hand. The group reappeared on the top level of the shelves. “We will sneak in up high. Be extra quiet, these wood panels are pretty loud.”

Bec nodded. With the fate of the not-so-sneaky thoroughly etched in their mind, the party continued their approach at quarter speed. The opening up ahead was well light from standing lights. Bec noticed something odd that had slipped her senses before. The warehouse was narrower now than it was at the start. The aisle between shelves used to be five meters across, but now, as they approached the center, the aisles were no wider than three people shoulder to shoulder. The outside wall was merely thirty yards away, giving Bec a feeling of claustrophobia. Two crystal-studded machines whirred and hummed. “Those are Fabric generator. Do NOT destroy them. Don’t count on people like this to have backup systems for their space expanders. We’re dealing with something odd, especially if Green made it.” Ms. Scarlet whispered.

Bec peeked her fingers over the box she was using as cover. She saw a barricade with around 7 men, built out of boxes, metal shelf frames, and gray, corrugated panels. They were armed with assault rifles, handguns, and what looked like grenades. In the center of the troops, she found Mr. Green not where she expected. He was on his hands and knees, red in the face… being used as a leg rest. Bec’s fingers scanned up to see a face she hadn’t seen in months. The girl, whose name had completely eluded Bec, was seated in what could only be described as a throne. She actually did it. She’s built herself a real-life reverse harem. Bec’s nose wrinkled in disgust.

“What the fuck.” Bec whispered to Ms. Scarlet. “I know that girl. She works for Lauds.” Bec looked at Mr. Purple scoping the scene out. “Earth.” Bec said, even quieter.

Mr. Scarlet frowned. “We still need to kill her.”

It was now Bec’s turn to frown. If they killed her, would the timeline reset? Wait, is that why her Timelet wasn’t working? Interference from her Timelet?

Scarlet continued, “Purple. I’m asking for one huge line drive. You think you can handle 7 air, 1 grounded target?”

“Line em up, and nuthin’s stopping these puppies.”

“Perfect. Bec, you run interference. Blind them. Pull their attention. Anything,” Bec nodded. “On three.” Ms. Scarlet put on a severe look like she was going to pop an aneurysm.

“One.” Mr. Purple unsheathed his bat removed 2 balls from a side pouch. One had this black sheen to it, and the other was a shiny silver ball-bearing type ball, fist-sized and much larger than the ones he’d been using up until this point.

“Two.” Bec tensed her muscles, prepping for whatever happened in the next few seconds.

“Three.” Ms. Scarlet gestured with emphasis. The seven men on the barricades disappeared and reappeared in the air, but something was wrong. They didn’t line up exactly, instead, as they appeared, they formed a backward C formation, an arc shape away from the center of the room. Bec gasped, expecting the incoming shot from Mr. Purple to miss, but the silvery ball curved at an incredible angle passing through all seven of the men. The black ball flew near them and exploded, scattering unmentionable things across the arena. What didn’t happen was the shot meeting with the “queen” on the ground, instead the arcing metal ball careened into the shelves way off in the back of the clearing, making a massive racket.

“Something’s off with the space around here. Didn’t matter for mah shot but be careful!” said Mr. Purple.

Bec heard that as Ms. Scarlet appeared a few inches from the ground down below and landed awkwardly.

“So, the Mountain’s Border decided to fight back? I was thinking that you guys were a bunch of cowards.” The girl with green hair shouted. She threw some things at Ms. Scarlet so fast that Bec only realized that they were blades when they had already embedded themselves into the shoulder and arm of Ms. Scarlet. The clattering sound of a blade hitting the ground let Bec know that Ms. Scarlet deflected at least one.

“Too bad, you aren’t watching your back,” Bec whispered into the ear of the girl, while she laid safely hidden on the top of the shelf. She whirled around to look behind her, and Ms. Scarlet warped, and, with a swing, she stuck her blade into a body… Mr. Green.

“What are you doing!” Ms. Scarlet barked.

“I love her! You can’t take Tamara away from me.”

Bec gawked at the scene that unfolded in front of her. Mr. Green had leaped in front of Scarlet screaming how much he loved…

Tamaraaaa. Bec nodded, remembering her name. Tamara Watom. Remembering the name was nice, yet what happened next was very much not. Bec saw Tamara punch the surprised Ms. Scarlet right in the face. This punch violated all laws of physics by causing Ms. Scarlet to go flying. Not back, not up, but both in a weird crescent that started horizontal and rapidly accelerated until she rose and struck the ceiling with a resonating metal clang. Ms. Scarlet’s face stayed adhered to the ceiling until she was gone. It took a moment for Bec to see where she had teleported to, but Ms. Scarlet rose from the shelves behind Bec to slam hard into the ceiling again.

Mr. Purple jumped down and struck two shots towards Tamara. Tamara saw those strikes fly way off their mark, and she pulled an orb of her own out. Pushing over Mr. Green, still with the blade still wedged in his shoulder, Tamara gave the orb a lazy lob. Bec watched as the orb gained insane speeds and homed in on Mr. Purple’s face and exploded.

Shitshitshitshit. Bec grit her teeth. She was relieved to see that the bomb was some sort of incapacitation device as Purple seemed to shrug off the blast, only to be pulled to his hands and knees like he weighed several times more. Tamara walked up to him and started stomping on him until he was flat to the ground. Bec had to do something.

“Didn’t anyone tell you to not abuse the elderly?” Bec hid behind a box on the top of the shelves and projected her hissing mechanical voice. “Why don’t you fight someone your own age?”

Tamara punctuated every sentence with a stomp. “Where are you? I would love to stomp you into the ground, but I only have this plum to squeeze.” She stomped on Mr. Purple’s fingers so hard they cracked. When they healed again, she stomped them all over. Mr. Purple was completely silent, which put Bec on edge.

“GRAY, RUN.” Ms. Scarlet shouted as she dangled with her face against the ceiling.

What should Bec do? Did she run in past lives or did she stay? Did she stay, kill Tamara, and the whole loop started over? Did she stay and die?

What should I do, Al?

“I think you should run and hope that range is the determining factor on the Timelet not working. Try to get an update.”

Suddenly, Bec’s plan crystalized.

“That’s a huge gamble. How do you know that you haven’t tried this before?”

Bec wasn’t listening. She pointed her finger up to Ms. Scarlet and whispered her plan. It was one sentence. That was all that needed to be said.

“NO, RUN!” Ms. Scarlet screamed at Bec from the ceiling.

Bec, hidden behind the box, turned around and pressed her legs against it. Bracing herself, she kicked the box with an insane amount of energy. She was hoping that she would kick the box into Tamara, but, with a loud crack, her foot punched straight through and stayed there.

“Shit.” Bec hissed.

“Great job, genius,” Al said.

“You’re up there, eh?” Tamara lobbed 2 blades high into the air. At the peak of their arc, they zipped at Bec on her back, with her foot stuck.

“Meep.” Bec squeaked as she rolled her whole body away. The blades dug into the wooden slabs of the shelf down to the hilt a few centimeters away from her back. Pain shot through her ankle as the jagged wood cut deep. Her little roll forced all the wood around her ankle to dig in hard.

“Fuuu,” Bec muffled her own cry of pain. Pulling out her knife, she stuck it in the hole and started to pry individual panels away from her ankle. She had worked enough wood loose to pull her foot out when she heard something frighteningly close. The sound of feet landing on wood.

Bec pulled her foot out and scrambled back. Grabbing the edge, she tumbled off the top shelf and dangled for a moment before releasing. Using everything she knew about Mute Step, she landed 20 meters down silently and with little impact on her ankle.

“There you are, Gray!” Bec felt Tamara peering over the edge of the shelf. Bec’s breath hitched.