Minnie woke up gasping and cold. They had moved her to a room with white walls and a chemical smell. The smell had given her nightmares, dreams of syringes and her father and restraints. And she was restrained just then— chained down to a cot from neck to toes.

She tried to keep her breathing still and even. Realizing she was visible, she quickly disappeared.

The nasally voice came scratchilly over the microphone. “Welcome, dear, to the Owl’s lair. I am the Owl, and you’ve met my assistant Carl. How are you feeling?”

Minnie coughed weakly.

“Yes, that gas has unpleasant side effects, I agree. Well, it’s nice to meet you. But you can tell your father that he’s not getting his birds back. Well,” the Owl chuckled, “I’ll have to tell him myself. You’re not going anywhere.”

“My dad?” Minnie wondered aloud. She thought maybe the drugs had loosened her lips. She didn’t usually talk to bad guys— most of the time she just kicked them in the face and moved on. But here, even her toes were chained, so she couldn’t reach him.

“Yes— the Whippoorwill. I expected him to make some kind of move— but his daughter.” He laughed again. “Shows I’m really getting under his skin, eh?”

Minnie spat at the speaker, hitting just below it.

Some time later, Minnie was still struggling uselessly against the chains holding her down. The room she was in had white walls, and a white floor, all of it bare and gleaming in the fluorescent light.

“I hate this!” she yelled at the glaring walls.

To her surprise, a door on the far side of the room opened.

“No need to be so hostile,” Carl said mildly, bringing in a tray of food.

She frowned at him.

“Well, I hope you’re hungry,” he said, crouching next to her. “Because I made this myself.”

“Great,” Minnie muttered. But she was having difficulty putting energy into the sarcasm.

He beamed, then unchained her, just enough so that she could sit up and feed herself. Her toes remained chained up.

Minnie, of course, used the opportunity to try and subdue Carl. But something unusual happened. He was rock hard in places where human bodies are supposed to be soft and vulnerable, and stiff where most people were flexible.

He calmly restrained her, showing once again that massive strength he’d exhibited upon bringing her inside. Then she saw it. An off switch.

She reached for it, but he jumped back. “No,” he said firmly. “Now eat your soup.”

“Fine,” she replied, lifting the bowl to her lips. After finishing, she asked, “Are you a robot?”

“Yes,” he replied curtly, then took her bowl and left.

Despite his shameless begging, Rori had flat out refused to let Alorfred come with her. Counting all the time she spent in airports, it was about twenty hours before she was officially in Frankfurt. Then she realized that she didn’t know where to look.

“Doh.” She facepalmed.

She went to ask for records of Americans landing in Germany within the last week, so it didn’t take long to find Minneapolis E Fox. The attendant who had checked her in remembered her as a pretty blonde with blue eyes and messy hair. Rori went to the security cameras to double check the memory, and it was correct. The suspect had taken a shuttle bus from the airport to the obscure town of Katzeburg.

Once there, she invited herself into the video surveillance records of the city’s traffic department and spent the next five hours looking combing through footage from the last forty-eight hours.

It was mind-numbing work, and not made any easier by the ever-present thoughts of others intruding on her mind. She had learned to block them out, mostly: they remained as a buzzing kind of background. Shaking her head, she tried to focus on the screen. She was tracking Minneapolis through a quiet street, when she turned a corner. Switching to a different camera pointing straight at that very corner, there was no suspect. Minneapolis was gone.

She got a call from AlorFred. “Have you found her yet?”

“No. Yes. Kind of.”

“Did she disappear— like Batman? She’s Batwoman!”

“No, she—” Rori thought for a minute. Genetic experimentation had become possible in the last twenty years or so, and although strictly banned… No, the more likely explanation was that Minneapolis knew where to duck the cameras.

Time to do some footwork. She hung up on AlorFred.

Making it to the corner, Rori checked the positions of the cameras. Both seemed to have a good view of her position, and there didn’t seem to be anywhere to hide from both of the cameras at once. The suspicion that Minneaspolis was unnaturally talented crept back to the edge of her mind, but she pushed it away again. The second camera might have been faulty… or something. It didn’t matter, though. Rori had her own way of finding people.

Closing her eyes, she relaxed, allowing her mind to expand, to listen.

Back in the lair, there was a muffled crash. If Minnie were a cat, her ears would have pricked. There was the faint sound of maniacal laughter and shouting. Then there was a series of bumps and thumps, and Minnie heard The Owl distinctly say ‘Drat! That rug was expensive!’

Then Minnie was joined by another prisoner. He was also tied up down to his toes.

Minnie hissed.

Rori’s mind-y ears perked up. There was a conflict going on, somewhere very nearby. Zeroing in on the commotion, she located three people: a madman, another madman, and a madwoman. One of the men was full of twisted triumph and anticipation, an attitude of maniacal laughter. The other two felt surprised and frustrated, like trapped animals before an earthquake.

She approached the site with all caution, alertness, and stealth; she wasn’t called ‘Ninja’ for nothing.

The man bound on the other side of the room was Minnie’s father.

“Minnie?” he asked.

Minnie spat at him. The glob of spit hit him just below the eye.

“That’s disgusting,” he told her.

“You’re disgusting.”

“I know. But you’re better now— look what you can do! I stand by what I did.”

She spat at him again, this time splatting right in his eye.

He winced, making a scrambled yelping noise.

Minnie laughed.

Peering from behind two barrels, Rori saw two men in a one-sided conversation. In fact, it was so one-sided that Rori couldn’t even hear what the other man was thinking. He was like a blank spot— like empty air. It was disconcerting.

Mwahahahah! The one Rori could hear thought. She didn’t think his evil laugh was very well developed. However, the plan nestling in his head was well underway.

The robots— they had bunkers hidden all over the world. He’d set them up, sent them more robotic parts to them via bird, and they’d propogated themselves. They were going to replace humanity, turning them into slaves to their robotic overlords.

It’s a pyramid scheme to promote AI dominance! Rori realized. As crazy as this guy’s plan was, it was going to work.

“Get the prisoners ready,” the crazy scientist said. “I want to test my new electrifying techniques. Besides, I need to break the Whippoorwill— if he realizes I can hurt his daughter, he’ll work for me— creating more devious birds to carry out my schemes.”

“Yes, master,” the igor-like, blank-minded man said, then moved farther into the building, towards a shipping container. Rori followed him.