[Johannesburg, South Africa 2320]

The bus pulled up to Isaac’s home sweet dilapidated high rise and he got out. They already dropped Danny off, and Laura was right beside him. Without introductions, Isaac walked into the building and up the stairs. They were more strenuous than he remembered.

In the events of the last few days, his humble home had changed slightly. Most of the people living in the stairwells were no longer there, and the ones who were, weren't among the living.

"This seems like a high death count," Laura said. "Is it always this bad here?"

"It wasn’t the best," the hairs on the back of Isaac's neck stood up. "But this is a new development."

Laura stiffened a little bit at this, but she kept walking up the stairs with him. Whatever came through here, Isaac was certain it was up there now. Probably waiting for him.

Still, he trudged on. There was almost no point in running if he couldn't run with Neicia. Without her, he would not have the courage to keep going. While he talked a good tale to Laura, the prospect of just how far they would have to run was daunting. His mind raced at the logistics of hiding from an advanced supercomputer bent on finding him specifically. Really, he was shocked he made it this far.

The exit door from the stairwell to his floor was scratched and hanging open. On the other side was the familiar blackness he had encountered nearly every day of his life. He hesitated on the landing. There could be anything in there now. His once sure footing would be more detriment to him than help.

His tracker tingled in his arm. He checked it and it connected to a machine halfway between him and his door. Here, a machine gun on a mounted tripod stood in century mode. Isaac held his hand back to stop Laura.

"There’s a gun just outside of the light. It won't see our trackers, but I'm pretty sure it will blast anything that moves." Isaac whispered.

"Why don't you disable it?"

"A loss of communication may let whoever put it there know that I am here."

After a minute, Laura broke the silence. "I'm not staying in this stairwell."

"Then go back down. We have to find another way."

He knew full well that there was no other viable way onto the floor. The other stairwell had caved in several years ago. None of the elevators worked anymore. Any kind of service shaft or ventilation shaft would prove to be too weak to hold even one of them.

One floor down, he lead Laura through the hallway, stopping at a particular door. It opened freely and he walked to the back.

"What are we doing here?" Laura asked.

"Getting a girl's attention." Isaac picked up an old broom and proceeded to pound the ceiling with it.

Hopefully, if Neicia was still alive, she would hear this and interpret it as coming from him. He bumped the ceiling for a minute. Two minutes. Three minutes. Dread started to set in. Then doubt. Was he under her apartment? Or was it the next one over? Or was she among the newly deceased in the building?

He dropped the broom, unable to continue his train of thought. Just as the broom hit the floor, a slight tapping came from the ceiling above. She was alive! Now, did she know it was him?

He picked up the broom and jammed it hard into the ceiling. Repeatedly. This made a lot of noise, but it was really his only option. After seven or eight attempts, the broom stick broke, leaving a wedge in the ceiling.

Neicia hit it out, revealing a small hole. She pushed a cardboard tube through it, and he put it up to his ear.

"Who is this?" Neicia asked.

Isaac switched positions so he was talking into the tube. "It's Isaac. Are you alright?"

"Am I alright? What about you? Isaac, it's so good to hear your voice."

"I'm fine. Better than fine. We're getting out of here."

"But, they have your dad."

"What? Who has my dad?"

"The aliens."

The hairs on his neck stood up again. "Personally?"

"Yes. I saw one of them set up the gun before going into your apartment. There was a bulletin calling for your apprehension."

"What did it look like?"

Neicia paused before responding. "Like a nest of snakes forming a giant praying mantis."

"What are we going to do?" Laura asked quietly behind him.

"Neicia, can you get to my apartment? Without being shot I mean?"

"I don't think so. I didn't bother to test it out."

"Ok, in exactly three minutes, I want you to go to my apartment and say you are looking for a healer for someone downstairs. If you're not out in a two minutes, I'm coming in after you."

"But... the gun."

"Don't worry about the gun. Just wait three minutes, and head out your door when you hear it start shooting."

"You're not going to do something stupid are you?"

"Yes, but not what you're thinking. Just time it. Three minutes from... now. See you soon, and remember, don't come out until you hear the gun fire."

Pavarti left the room and ran down the hallway, Laura was panting trying to keep up behind him. He tripped over a few things in the dark, but they made it back to the stairwell.

"Are you trying to kill your girlfriend, or yourself?" Laura asked.

"Neither, preferably. I'm trying to extract her. Only way out is through."

"Through an automatic robot gun."

"I prefer the term bullet dispensing machine."

The timer in his head was down to thirty seconds. He had a small window to make this work. He grabbed his injured wrist and waved it in the direction of the sentry gun. With a spark of ozone, his tracker connected to the gun and he readied the plan.

"Uh, I thought disabling the gun would alert the alien." Laura whispered.

"Yes. That's why I'm just giving it multiple fake targets."

"What's that going to do?"

"Cover your ears and get down."

"Oh sh-"

Her swear was cut off by roaring gunfire. Isaac aimed the gun at the far wall and hoped that no one was in the apartment on the other side. Expended bullet casings rolled down the stairs around them.

Isaac peeked over the top of the stairs, trying to keep the gun pointed away from him and Neicia, while getting a good view of the hallway.

Neicia was at his door, knocking. She stood there, shoulders hunched against the noise for what seemed like forever. The gun kept hammering the wall opposite her, while she waited diligently.

The door opened and she was pulled in by a large tentacle like thing. It all happened in the blink of an eye. Without thinking, Isaac lunged up the last few stairs and charged his apartment door.

It opened when he got there, and the thing had Neicia in its arms, and it looked like it was squeezing her. His dad was on the couch, two swollen eyes and a few cuts here and there.

"Hey." Isaac shouted. "Here I am."

The alien dropped Neicia and sprang for him. It was fast. Faster than he anticipated. He slammed the door shut and ran back for the stairwell. The door splintered behind him as he passed the gun.

Now on the other side, he overloaded the gun sensors again, telling it to shoot in the direction of the alien.

The gun turned and stopped firing. Of course, the alien programmed the gun with a safety. Why didn't he think of that before?

Tentacles grabbed at his arms and legs, and slammed him against the wall. His head went dizzy and the air was knocked out of him. He was now suspended against the wall via tentacle, the alien leaning in for a close look.

Isaac got a look of his own. The "skin" of the creature was translucent. Inside, instead of muscles, was a complicated labyrinth of what looked like fiber optic cables and tiny interconnected motors. Limbs in this sense didn't quite make sense. The whole body was limbs, and they could seemingly arrange themselves to fit whatever form they deemed efficient.

One of the limbs turned sharp and readied a stab. He still had to admire the efficiency. He closed his eyes in brace for the impact.

His wrist grew hot again, and he fell to the floor. He opened his eyes and saw he was laying in the threshold of his apartment.

The alien let out an inhuman sound. Something loud. In normal circumstances he might have called it cheery. Here it was downright frightening. He backed into his apartment, and out of sight.

Now, human screams joined the chorus. Laura. It must have spotted her in the stairwell.

Isaac focused on the machine gun and tried to take out the safety. It wouldn't budge. Then he tried to change the parameters of the safety. That worked. He switched it from ceasing fire on the alien to ceasing fire on himself and his friends.

"Isaac, how'd move from the wall to the door so fast?" Neicia whispered behind him.

"I'll explain in a minute. Now, stay here, don't follow me, and don't let my dad follow either."

He stood back up and entered the hallway. The gun turned to him, but didn't fire. Laura was held upside down by her foot at the edge of the stairwell. The same sharp appendage braced for a kill.

"Hey noodle brain." Isaac shouted. "She's just along for the ride. I'm the one in your systems."

The alien dropped her and slithered at speed towards him. Reasonably sure Laura was out of the line of fire, he turned the gun back on. The sensors were overloaded without his help. The alien was all spindly mass in constant motion.

Bits of robotic tentacles splintered off in pieces, but there was no scream. Just the slippery determination to kill. The bullets did very little to slow the creature down. At this point, Isaac was glad he had one more wrinkle to the plan.

As the alien rush him, the central mass of the thing engulfed the gun. Probably just to disarm it. At this moment, Isaac activated the self destruct mode. The hallway buckled and Isaac was launched back. He rolled and took cover as bits of plastic skin and muscle fell around him.

Isaac waited for his ears to stop ringing before he got up. If the alien survived that, there was nothing Isaac could have done but cower in the fetal position anyway. The explosion was as small as he could have hoped for, but it still did some damage.

For one thing, there was a large hole in the floor where the gun had been. The walls and ceiling were charred black. And the alien was gone. He had to look at the now exposed lower floor, but the only thing that remained was fragments of the creature.

"What have you done?" Thomas, his father asked, standing in the door with shock.

"I've saved your life. Now, come with me, we have to get out of here."

Neicia came to the door frame, but went no further. Instead of rushing to his side, she looked at him like he had leprosy. "How did you do that?"

"I'll explain everything, but on the way. We have to move before reinforcements arrive."

"It's not safe out there." Thomas shook his head, and took a small step back.

"It's not safe anywhere, dad." Isaac held out his hand in frustration. "I have a way of making it less dangerous-"

"Is this what you call less dangerous?" Neicia asked.

"He saved me too." Laura called from the stairwell. She was leaning against the door frame. "That thing on his arm, it lets him override their controls of the systems. You should have seen him guiding a predator drone on our way home."

Neicia eyed this new comer, obviously assessing the threat. Thomas was too busy holding his head in pain to have a look.

"I can do other stuff too. And I'll explain all of that later before a fleet of drones comes in to reduce this high rise to a pile of rubble." Isaac said out of irritation.

His dad took a quick look up, and then nodded. "No time to pack our things, I take it?"

"I'm afraid not." Isaac offered to help him across the newly minted hallway chasm. "But I have supplies in a bus a few streets down."

Together they walked down the stairs, while Isaac thought about how they were going to get out of the city alive.

*****

[Outside New Orleans Louisiana]

The tanks of Pavarti Matter were in their places, the shipping crew gone partying in the city. Pavarti wiped the sweat off of his face after hooking up the machine. This one was in another underground station, next to a nuclear power plant. Lots of power needed to get this baby running.

The engines hummed along, and the control panels worked smoothly. Here, the set up was similar to Alaska. Huge platform supporting the control station, while the mechanics of the machines ran underneath.

Instead of a pneumatic tube underneath him, there was a centrifuge. One large enough to contain thirty large eggs, of sorts. These eggs contained embryos of his making. The product of years of genetic engineering and human advancement. His scribes. They weren't the cream of the crop, but they were all he had.

The idea was the use the Pavarti matter to sling these eggs into the world, disrupt the power on a massive scale, and force people to see that these new abilities fostered in mankind were better than the automated devices.

In his Florida and Africa locations, the machines were similar, but more effective. He could launch the genesis eggs into the distant past. Not as effective as resetting the time line, but this would have to do. The only way into the past now was through the centrifuge. And that required the egg as a mode of transportation. This body was not suited for that.

Pavarti activated the sequence, and the centrifuge came to life. Around the machine, a purple mist developed. One by one, the eggs were shot through the mist, and into various parts of the world. Right after their departure, those sections of the world were hit with massive EMPs.

Step one was done. Now onto Florida for step two.