As they walked down the path, David found himself looking around the junkyard. Tall stacks of dead cars lined the pathway, the rustling of small animals coming from under the heaped wreckage. The overlay on his glasses showed the aether in the region, tinged green to show its level, with a blinking icon leading them to the breach.

“Nice place,” Mari muttered, looking around at the place. Weeds rose up around the pathway. “I bet nobody’s been here for years.” She pulled out the neutralizer and activated it, holding the device at the ready.

“Are you expecting to get attacked?” David asked.

“No, I’m just being prepared.”

“You really want to use that…”

“Again, it’s a raygun. Who wouldn’t want to use it?” Mari replied.

“Yeah, it’s…” David paused. “Mari, did your sensors…”

“Yeah. The level just intensified. Three and a half and going up…” Mari frowned. “Aether doesn’t do that unless…”

“Unless the breach is getting bigger.” David broke into a trot. “C’mon, if the levels hit a five, we’ve gotta leave.”

And on this, David was with Mari. It had been fun, but having to back off just when things got interesting…

Well, we’ll just get to it first. Maybe find out something new.

“Four.” Mari kept up with David her shorter legs moving faster as they turned down another path, only to find it blocked at the end. “Dammit, this place is a maze.”

“Right. Time for Google to the rescue,” David said. He called up the map, hit the satellite overlay, and grinned. “Good thing this place has been out of business for years. It doesn’t matter that they don’t update the maps in real-time… Okay, follow me.” With that, David took off, running back the way he’d come, before darting to the left. Mari followed him. C’mon… It’d be just their luck that some stack of cars had fallen and blocked the road after the last time they’d updated the pictures, but—yes!

“There we are!” David said as the path opened out into a broad flat space. There was a burned-out camper on one side, some sun-bleached chairs sitting out and abandoned. A little garden, long since gone to weeds and dust, occupied the other side.

“This was…” Mari stopped by him. “Some kind of home? A homeless guy?” She looked around.

“Not for a long time,” David said. The sun was low enough that a good chunk of the clearing was in shadow, and even though the air was still hot, David felt a chill.

“Yeah…” Mari muttered. “Maybe he was the owner? Quit after this place burned down, or…” She stepped back. “This place closed because…”

David followed her gaze to the camper. He shook his head. “Nah, there’s no sign any firefighters came by and if someone died here, especially if he was the owner… Nah.” David hoped he sounded more confidant than he felt. After all, if whoever owned this place didn’t know anyone…

“Right!” Mari said in a chipper voice. Let’s start—” She stopped and looked around at the alert sound.

Like David was looking around. The overlay pulsed, and now the ambient aether had hit level four. The pulsing indicator for the breach was in the remains of the camper. “Of course,” David said. “Mari, let’s set up the collectors first, so this doesn’t shoot up any higher.”

“Right,” Mari said. She put down her case like David did his, and they started activating the collectors. Green lights blinking, the storage units began to hum. “Good,” Mari said. “Level three point five… Level three point three… It’s going down.”

“Great,” David said. He held the sealer in his hands. “Okay, let’s get this done.”

They walked up to the burned-out camper.

Mari paused and pointed at the ground. “Look at that, bootprints.”

David looked down. New bootprints. “Okay… Hello?” he called.

Nothing. David reached out and opened the door, revealing the charred interior of the camper. And inside it…

“Is that a sealer?” Mari asked. “Wait, if its a sealer, why is the breach still here…” She narrowed her eyes. “It doesn’t…”

“It doesn’t look like one of our sealers…” David said. The design’s a little different. The device was six-sided, unlike the five-sided sealer they used and the controls…

“It’s not on my menu,” Mari said, touching her control band. “So if it’s one of ours, Wilma and Antonio didn’t give us authority over it—or tell us about it.”

“Yeah, I think…” David pulled out his phone, “we should call this in. I—”

Then there was a beep that quickly turned into an alarm sound.

“The level—what the, it just hit six!” Mari said. Then the sealer on the ground started sparking, strange St. Elmo’s fire running over it. Around them, David saw the air start to tinge violet, not because of his glasses, but because the aether levels were rising to where they could easily see it.

“We should go,” Mari said, holding her neutralizer.

“Yeah—yeah, we should,” David said. “But let me set this sealer up.”

“Wh—”

“Mari, if it keeps going up, we’re in a lot of trouble, and this is in town.” Behind them, there was a sudden bang! Mari spun around with a cry, to see one of the storage units smoking, the casing deformed from an explosion.

“Shit,” David said. They’re overloading that that means—

“Danger. Aetheric contamination has exceeded safety margins. Level seven and increasing…”

The gadget, it’s making it bigger. If we don’t—David didn’t think. He reached over and grabbed a rusty iron rod and brought it down as hard as he could on the strange device.

There was a tremendous flash, and moments later, David found himself lying against some of the cars. Cars that had been on the other side of the clearing.

Oh wait, they still are. How did I end up here?

“David! David! Are you okay, please don’t be dead!” Mari said. David blinked, staring at her. She seemed…

Oh, right, his glasses were busted. He pulled them off. “What happened?”

“What happened? What happened?!” Mari glared at him. “You hit the sci-fi gadget with an iron stick, that’s what happened. There was a flash of lightning, and you went flying back, and—are you an idiot! You could have been killed!” She sniffled.

“Are you okay?” David asked. “You didn’t get hurt, did you?”

“No! Because I don’t hit mysterious devices with an iron stick!”

“I had to,” David said.”What’s the aether level like?”

“Six point five and going down, but most of our storage units have…” She gestured, and David looked behind her. Nearly every unit was either smoldering or looked like a can of soda that had exploded.

“How much are those?” David finally asked.

“I dunno,” Mari said, finally calming down. “I think they focused on telling us how unlikely it was to break one, nevermind twelve.”

“Okay,” David said, getting to his feet. “Let’s seal the breach and get out of here. Can we call the bosses?”

Mari shook her head. “Not with these levels,” she gestured around the clearing, everything still gleaming with violet light, even more apparent now that most of the clearing was cast into shadow. It’d only be a few hours until it was full dark.

“Okay, we can—” there was a sudden noise from the camper.

What… David looked up, blinking as the camper started to shimmer with violet energy.

“Oh, fuck,” Mari said. “Is it an AE?”

“Maybe,” David said, and suddenly Mari was using her neutralizer, shooting into the camper, the glowing beam cutting through the violet aura.

There was a hideous shriek, and then David was also shooting into it, but then the camper just seemed to twist and pull into itself.

What the fuck? It’s not using aether… Then parts were flying across the clearing. Mari nearly got beaned by a hubcap that whipped by her face. All of them forming a mass of junk where the camper had been.

“Okay…” Mari said. “David let’s…”

And then the junk got up. Metal and plastic merged, changed, covering it and forming what looked like a bulky humanoid, glaring out at Mari and David from a nearly featureless face with two busted headlights glowing with a bright violet light.

“Mine…” it rumbled.

“Okay…” Mari stared at the creature as it started stomping towards them. “Time to blast it.”

“Yeah,” David said, and then they were playing their neutralizers over it, the bright beams sparking on the creature’s skin… but nothing else happened.

Nothing at all.

“The AE it’s…” David trailed off as he glanced over at Mari, her eyes as wide as his.

“Hiding under all the junk,” Mari said. “I don’t think we can hurt it…”

David looked back to the creature slowly advancing on them. Slowly, but too fast to run by it, and…

It was between them and the way back.

Fuck.

Mari stared at the thing that was standing up and advancing on them. One “hand” was actually a refrigerator, and she had a feeling it’d turn her to a little blot of red on the ground. They were playing the beams from the neutralizers over the monster, but all that seemed to be doing was pissing it off.

“David…”

“Okay, okay,” David said, his voice unsteady. “We’ve got to close the breach.”

“The breach is behind it,” Mari said.

“Yeah, but what happens if it keeps getting bigger? What’s the aetheric level at?”

“Six point eight,” Mari said. “Okay… We’re going to die.” David had gotten to his feet and had grabbed a crowbar, holding it unsteadily in front of him. Mari stared at her friend. “You can barely hold that!” she said. “Give it to me!” Then she looked back at the nine-foot-tall junk monster. “And tell me what you were going to do…”

“I was going to hit it, try and get the junk off, and then we can—”

“You were going to hit it!” Mari said as she backed to the side. That thing was slow… Maybe we can run past it? Mari shook her head. David looked dead on his feet. But he’s right, what if this keeps going up? Sure, they’d wrecked the gadget making it bigger, but it didn’t seem to be getting any smaller, and…

I can pry parts of its skin off. The inside is all aether, I bet. Yeah, I can—” EEP!” Mari squeaked as the thing slammed the refrigerator down onto the ground, its violet “eyes” glaring at them. The aftershocks ran through the clearing, and then it was advancing on them faster, a lot faster, than it had been.

“Oh, fuck!” David said. “Mari, run, I’ll try to—”

“No, I—” and then a lance of fire just came right out of the sky and slammed into its chest with a deafening sound. Parts of the monster sprayed over the clearing and Mari felt a sudden pain alongside her upper arm. The creature staggered back and roared, but Mari saw that its chest now had a huge rent in it. Without thinking, she aimed the neutralizer at the gap and fired, the monster shrieking.

“Keep it busy!” David shouted and ran right for the monster, dodging past its legs as he snagged the abandoned sealer from where they’d left it. Another bolt of fire almost hit the creature as David ran past it, but at the last minute, it changed its path, rising up and flying out into the junkyard.

Wait. Why did it… Then Mari realized. It had been loud enough when it had been dozens of feet away. If another one hit while David had been right next to it…

But now David was setting up the sealer, and the monster was turning back around to get him. Mari saw that the gap was closing, junk and metal covering it.

Oh no, you don’t! Without pausing, Mari ran forward, diving under a sweep from the refrigerator hand, getting in front of it.

“Mari, what are you doing! Run!” David sounded frantic.

Oh, so it can kill you and then who will drive the van! Mari giggled at that thought, the sound hysterical. Then she jammed the activating stud on the neutralizer down and locked it in position.

“Enjoy your lunch!” Mari shouted as she stuck the neutralizer through the gap in the creature’s armor, into the swirling violet aether that was filling its torso.

The monster shrieked and staggered back, parts of its armor falling off, as Mari let go and pulled her arm back.

“Got you—” Mari forgot to keep track of its arms, and suddenly she felt herself flying across the clearing, ears ringing from where the refrigerator had smacked into her.

“Mari!” Now David sounded really panicked.

Why? I’m fine. Mari looked over to where the monster was just falling apart until the whole conglomeration of junk just fell to the ground. Then there was a beep from her wristband, telling her that the aetheric levels were going down.

Mari didn’t need that to tell her what was happening—the violet aura was fading, the energy getting too low for her or David to see without technological help.

Hah, special powers for the win, now where are my… Mari looked down and saw the remains of her glasses, crushed flat where the creature had stomped on them after it had punched her across the clearing.

Where it had been walking to her to stomp her just like that.

“Mari—Mari!” Now David was next to her. “God, are you okay, it just threw you across the clearing, we’ve got to call the hospital—”

“No!” Mari said, trying to ignore the fact that the side of her body was just one throbbing bruise. “Do you know what Mom and Dad would say if I ended up in the hospital?” She looked around. “Is the breach closed?”

“Yes!” David said. “That’s not important!”

“Look, let’s just go back and talk to Wilma and Antonio!” Mari said. “I’m fine, I can—” She started to get to her feet and then somehow ended up back on the ground. David stared at her. “I can do it! Just give me a hand!”

David did, and then almost fell over when Mari tried to pull herself up. But she managed to get to her feet, even if she was listing a little bit.

“Where’d…” Mari shook her head. “Did you see those things? They were rockets!”

“I—let’s just go,” David said. “We’ll call Antonio and Wilma once we’re away, the aether levels are still too high around here.”

“Yeah,” Mari said. Her stomach lurched. “You know, I think I might have eaten a little too…” And then she barfed. Oh God, Oh ew, ick, ick, ick! “Let’s go!” she said, spitting. “There’s water in the van, oh, God, this tastes horrible!”

“Yeah,” David said. “Let’s go.” He offered his arm, but Mari realized that now that the adrenaline was gone, they were both kinda leaning on each other. That was okay. It was nice to lean against David because that meant she didn’t have to put in all the effort walking normally took herself.

“We’ll have to come back and get the stuff,” Mari said.

“Later,” David told her.

Yeah, later. I can wash my mouth out and take a nap. That’s good…

But when they got to the exit, Mari found herself staring as Antonio’s tadpole came tearing around the corner, Wilma jumping out almost before Antonio had stopped the vehicle. She stared at them,her face chalk white.

“What happened?” Wilma asked. “You called us from the van and sent an emergency text!”

“What?” Mari blinked at Wilma. “No, we didn’t. We’ve been in there,” she said, pointing back from where they had come.

But Wilma didn’t seem to be listening to her as she stared at them and her face seemed to get even paler. “Christ,” she muttered. Suddenly Antonio had the side door of the van open, and Mari and David were being maneuvered into it as Wilma was running some kind of gadget over her.

Mari didn’t care. It was nice to be sitting down.

“Can I have a drink?” Mari asked. “I puked…”

“Here.” Antonio put a water bottle in her hands, and Mari gratefully washed her mouth out.

“No internal injuries,” Wilma muttered, waving something over Mari’s body. “Looks like you two lucked out.”

“Ditto here. Just a lot of bruising,” Antonio said. “We need to get them back to sickbay to make certain.”

“Wait…” David said. “Forgot the sealer and the storage units.”

“They blew up,” Mari helpfully added.

“We can come back and get them later,” Antonio told David. “Now both of you lay down in the back.” Wilma helped Mari scramble into the back of the van, where she could lay down next to the sensors and other gadgets. “I’ll drive them back, you bring my car back.”

“Gotcha,” Wilma said.

Wow, they must be pissed, Mari thought. No joking and neither one of them sounded happy at all. God, I hope we don’t get fired. But then the side door was closed, and they were moving. Mari just closed her eyes.

What a disaster. We are so getting fired.