He was about to kick open the rusted gate at the entrance of the sewer when he got himself under control. For a moment his anger and grudge had gotten hold of him, and he had just wanted to tear into his enemies and to hell with what happened to him. But he recalled to mind that he was doing this for them and therefore could not afford to be careless. Today was not the day to make his stand. Closing his eyes he inhaled deeply, concentrating on his diaphragm and exhaled even slower. He opened his eyes, and it was like one of those modern visual filters had been turned off so he could again see things clearly instead of through a lens of hate. He surveyed the yard on the other side of the bars before stepping out and walking crouched from one cover to the next, glancing over his shoulder regularly to ensure Lucas was still following, until he was by the dumpsters where they had left his car which he found under the front of trash. No sign of the people that had deserted in the night and even the vehicles that had scoured the streets just the night before where nowhere to be seen.

“Sorry about that back there,” he told the younger man. “Shouldn’t have grabbed you like that. When I get angry enough, it takes me a moment to get myself under control.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he muttered.

“What can you tell me about the place they’re being held?” he asked as he drove down the empty streets.

“It’s one of Ampere’s factories. Not much else.”

“Why would they take prisoners there?”

Lucas shrugged.

“Wonder why we aren’t being attack. A thousand cameras must have made us by now.”

“They probably have something more important to do. They most likely don’t see us as much of a threat right now.”

“Guess so. Still, where we’re headed will be guarded. Might be we’re going against impossible odds.”

“The odds have been against us the entire time.”

“I just wanted to say that if we die I’m sorry I dragged you along but I’m going to need your skills and knowledge.”

The young man turned to him which struck him as unusual for some reason. Then he realized he usually shied away from those speaking to him, his eyes darting around looking at everywhere but the other person’s face. But now he was looking straight at him, his expression hard to read, and not just because the glasses hid his eyes.

“You’re the best hope I’ve got,” he vouched. “I think we have a chance to accomplish something great together. We can’t let Routh win.” Then he turned away and fiddled with his glasses.

Thomas wondered what could have caused the usually so insecure man to appear with a degree of composure. Such open admissions of feelings seemed unlike him. But he had been through a lot and had sticked with him even when everyone else had left. In a way, he pondered, the man had lost more than anyone as a system of his dreams had been at hand and then taken away and turned into a nightmare. So, it made sense even he, who seemed afraid of his own shadow, would be willing to take up the sword. He found a new sense of appreciation blooming for the man whom he had until now considered with feelings of barely kept contempt and pity.

A spare few autonomous vehicles gave perfunctory chase and were outran without much difficulty, so they mostly had open road all the way to the industrial area of the city. In a way that was more harrowing than the constant attacks, since he knew they were being followed by a hostile being with thousands and thousands of eyes, hands and teeth, and as he figured it would be better to see the predator rather than know it was stalking him somewhere in the treetops. His tension grew the closer they got to the enormous factory.

Large, lifeless facilities surrounded by rusted chain-link fences defined the industrial area. Most manufacturing had been delegated to machines, the same as transporting, packing and most other manual jobs until there was little reason for people to ever enter the area. As they left, so did cafeterias, stores and other services until just the machines were left to toil away in the no-man’s land and things were left to crumble so the buildings and streets were dilapidated, the same as the rest of the city, but there was little trash to be seen as there was no one to litter.

The Ampere plant was just one dull concrete hunk among many of its kind, the many panes in the skylight too covered with dirt and soot to reflect light or let it pass in a meaningful quantity. He drove around the building, giving it a wide berth but spotting no signs of trouble. He stayed away from the loading area at the back of the building, thinking it had enough room to house an ambush and figured the more cautious option would be to go through the main entrance, as there was no way to evade the cameras one way or the other. He left the car running and took cover behind the trunk before sprinting to the wall by the entrance, peeking around the corner into the lobby with his finger on the trigger.

No one.

He waved Lucas over. “Are you sure this is the right place?”

He jogged over in his stiff, unaccustomed way. “They’re in there, I’m sure of it.”

Something wasn’t right but it was the only lead he had. He could all but feel the beast’s hot breath against the back of his neck, yet he had no option but to head deeper into its territory. Steadying his gun arm he pushed open the door to the lobby and stepped in.

“Wake up.”

A gentle voice awakened him from his slumber. He pushed the soft, warm and oddly constricting beddings away and saw timid morning light streaming into the bedroom from the edges of the curtains. He yawned, and drowsily figured he would just go back to sleep.

“It’s your big day so it’s time you got up,” the same, familiar voice chirped. He turned to her and muttered: “What day?”

“Your big race, of course,” Naomi told him, sitting by the bedside. “Against the car that drives itself.”

“That’s today?” he scrunched up his face, trying to think through the daze. “No, that’s not right. That was years ago and…”

“You’re just confused,” she smiled and went to open the curtain, letting sunlight pour into the room. “Nice to know even you get nervous sometimes, but you did have some awful nightmares last night. Barely slept an eyeblink! No wonder you’re so out of it.” She stepped closer and pecked his cheek with her dry, soft lips before assisting him in getting up. As he leaned on her shoulder to steady himself he caught a whiff of her perfume, a fruity aroma.

He got dressed, choosing the loosest-fitting clothes he could find and still feeling that pressure, like a vacuum-sealed piece of pork. She pushed him out of the room, and he wobbled forward like a someone trying on stilts for the first time.

“Let’s go say ‘hi’ to the missus,” she laughed, leading him towards the nursery they had painted and furnished with pastel colors.

He wondered muddily how they could be back in their old house. Everything was the way it had used to be, even Naomi had de-aged so the small wrinkles had been smoothed over and her hair regained its luster. More than that, she seemed more radiant than she had ever before and the same applied to his surroundings which were spotlessly clean and colored in tones pleasant to the eye.

She opened the door, and he unwittingly entered the child’s room in her tow. The room was like out of a catalogue, with warm gentle colors and a calm atmosphere. He was about to ask why she had brought him here when quiet baby gurgling came from the crib in the middle of the room, under a mobile of race cars. He stepped closer cautiously, his whole world shrinking down to just the crib. There, tugged snuggly under the blankets, the child they had lost smiled and raised her arms in his direction.

“No…. how is this possible?” he rebuffed, backing away.

“She’s happy to see you,” she smiled, picking up the baby. “Try holding her.” She pushed her in his arms. The child was surprisingly heavy in his arms, just like he remembered. She giggled, putting her fists in her mouth.

Even through the daze his he felt like his heart was about to burst. “But she died,” he groaned, shaking his head and trying to think. “They knew it could happen and did nothing but cover their own asses.”

She put her hands around his waist. “That must have been quite the nightmare but it’s over now. We can be together now, just like we always wanted. Let go of those bad thoughts.”

“Stop! This isn’t right!” The baby begun sobbing, startled by his shouting. He rocked the baby instinctively from side to side to soothe her, and she quickly calmed down and resumed her giggling. Concentrating on consoling the child had also served to ease his nerves, and now all was fine, although a bit blurry and he felt lightheaded. What had he been worried about? He put her back in the crib and turned to his wife.

“Wha—what day did you say it was?” his tongue lolled in his mouth and his jaw worked clumsily like he was drunk.

“Don’t mind about that,” she chirped, all smiles. “Let’s get you ready for your big day.”

The next thing he knew he was in the driver’s seat of his Charger pulling in the parking lot of the racetrack. Naomi got up from the seat beside him and he alighted after her. It was the cleanest parking lot he had ever seen, the asphalt so black and untarnished as to have been laid yesterday. The racing stadium had no signs of wear and tear either and everything was bathed in the warm rays of the glorious sun. People walking past—slim, neatly dressed and smiling brightly—greeted and cheered him politely.

“Go get them!”

“Those go-karts don’t stand a chance.”

“Can I get your autograph?”

He chuckled and entertained his fans to send them on their way. The atmosphere out here had always been one of camaraderie and excitement, affability mixed with anticipation as befits a sport where one willingly faces danger and for the entertainment of others. It had been a heavy blow when he was banned from the races after the accident.

“The accident?” There was something in that word, something he needed to remember…

They passed a row of neat fast-food stands serving hot dogs, soda, candy and the like and joined a throng of people waiting enter the stadium via the arched passageway. The guards whom he did not know recognized him and gave him a free pass inside past the line. He felt a big, stupid grin spread on his face when he got out of the tunnel and into the track proper. Sleek, shining vehicles were lining up on the pristine asphalt with markings done in pure, spotless white. One vehicle among the many had not driver on it, the marvel of engineering from the up-and-coming Ampere Inc., the car that drives itself. Thousands upon thousands of spectators waited in their seats for the action to start. She gave him a kiss of good luck and he took his place behind the wheel of his car, the one he had won more races with than any other and which was like an extension of his body. He knew it like the back of his hand.

And this was not it. The feeling of the clutch, the wheel, the gear shift were all wrong. Gone was the smell of oil and smoking tire he was used to, now there was no odor to speak of. It was like he had bent down to smell a particularly pretty flower only to find out it was made of plastic, except that flower was like his own child to him. And it all came crashing in his consciousness; his child, the way he had been hunted, how this competition had ended all those years ago.

“How could they set something like this up?” he wondered frantically as he climbed out of the vehicle.

“Are all these people in on it?” He marched to the nearest car and tore the driver’s helmet off. He didn’t know the brown-haired man that uncovered.

“Who are you?” he raged in the man’s face.

The man remained calm. “Sir, please return to your car. The event is about to start.”

“This rally took place years ago! Why have you recreated it?”

“You’re the favorite to win, Mr. Walker. Return to your vehicle and you will get what you’ve wished for all this time.”

His anger was quickly subsiding, replaced by drowsiness. He just wanted to sit, maybe lie down and close his eyes for a moment or two.

“No!”, he yelled, gritting his teeth. “This is not natural. I should not just grow tired all of the sudden, especially in a situation like this. It’s like I’m dosed, I feel the way I did when I was in the hospital, after my surgery.”

Fighting the lethargy trying to overtake his mind, he manually checked his body for anything that could be used to administer such a drug but found nothing. His limbs were like lead, his eyelids heavy. He slapped himself in the face and started pacing to stay alert.

“I was going to free Naomi, Jason and the others,” he retraced, fighting for every step in the quagmire of torpor. “Going to the Ampere factory. Factory building…virtual reality equipment?” He inspected everything around him with a new, critical eye, but everything seemed fine.

“Of course, visuals are thing they have most experience with,” he realized. He stomped on the ground, which seemed hard and firm under his feet. Yet it felt a bit too smooth when he scraped his foot across the surface of the track. Then he lied down on his stomach and licked the ground.

“What are you doing”? Naomi asked, sounding shocked. She had appeared by the side of the track with a group of other people.

“You are not real!” he yelled, standing up. “None of this is!” He craned his neck, shouting now to the skies. “Can’t simulate taste, can you? Or the feeling of dirt on my tongue? You’re not fooling me anymore!”

“Please, honey, you’re not well,” she pleaded, sounding genuinely concerned. “Get in the car and finish the race. Then you’ll see.”

“What’s so important about the race that you keep blathering about it?” The people that accompanied her, all seeming perfectly normal and average, all started towards him at the same time, grabbing him by the arms and clothes. They started dragging him towards his car.

“Let go of me,” he growled, but his struggle was in vain.

“Please, old friend,” a man dragging him said. “Get in the car and everything will be alright.” He turned to the voice and saw Owen, looking like he did in all those pictures commemorating him after the accident.

“You know what happened,” he howled. “I go out of control and ram the self-driving car so it hits you and you die. What’s the point?”

“You’re just confused,” he explained calmly. “Must be the nightmares messing with you. A good race will clear your head and then you can get anything you ever wished for.”

He stopped fighting against the group, letting them escort him back to the starting line. When they were by his car they let go, surrounding him so tightly the only way he could go was into the cockpit. He turned to Owen.

“I guess you’re right. I mean, it’s so much better in here than out there, it just took me a while to get adjusted.”

The man smiled to him brightly. “There’s a good sport.”

He stifled a shudder. “Say, do you still have your lucky knife? We did always use it to make a mark to the side of the car before a contest.”

Without a moment’s pause he reached into his back pocket and offered him a knife. It was nothing like the knife he had always carried. He grabbed the weapon, hefting it in his hand.

“The way I figure,” he said, testing the point of the blade with his forefinger, “most people go live in virtual worlds because they can’t deal with the unpleasant parts of the real one, so they would not want to face anything unpleasant while in there.”

He grasped the handle decisively. “Therefore there would be no way to simulate pain, because the thought would be enough to drive them away.”

He raised the knife and struck it unhesitatingly through his other palm. Naomi moaned in anguish and the others gasped. He rotated his hand, watching blood dripping down from the wound. He felt a mild pressure at the spot where his flesh was pierced, but his hunch was confirmed as correct when he twisted the blade and felt none the worse.

“I don’t know what kind of setup you have me in,” he growled, doubling his earlier exertions, “but I’m going to get out of it!” He started flailing around with all his remaining strength, trying to find some hint of the device that must have held him in the real world.

“The eyes!” he realized. “There must be something around my eyes to create these visuals.” He tore at his eyes, his face and the people came for him again, trying to grab him. He avoided their grasping hands and pummeled his own head, trying to shake whatever headgear he had loose.

“Please stop,” Naomi wailed. “Don't hurt yourself!”

He pulled at his face and the world tilted before his eyes. He kept wrenching and a tear appeared in his vision, cutting across the track. The warm sunlight turned red and when he raised his eyes he saw the sun spanned almost the entire sky and was covered with eyes, staring at him. The stadium and the people inside it were now melting, the asphalt bubbling and the air thick with smoke. He jammed his fingers into the tear and yanked, ripping off the faceplate with an inset high-resolution screen along with the apocalyptic vision it displayed, tossing it away.

He was in a concrete room lit by fluorescent tube lights hanging from the ceiling. Most of the room was taken by the device he was trapped in, a complicated system of lights, pulleys and wires where he hung like a marionette, hundreds of wires of different sizes attaching to a full-body outfit he was wearing. He lifted his foot up and lowered it again, the wires going taut when his leg was straight, stopping the movement sharply. He crouched and reached down with his hand, the strings again stopping his movement at feet level.

“So this is how they simulated objects and outside forces,” he deduced. “This outfit I’m wearing must have an inner layer with some kind of ability to vary it’s hardness and warmth.”

Small tubes that had been severed by his removal of the faceplate sprayed his face with the stink of smoke. He could still here the roar of flames eating away the stadium coming from his earpieces. He grabbed the plastic hood covering his entire head apart from the face and started tearing, finding that there were wires inside the suit also, to better simulate pressure. That made ripping the covering more difficult, but now that he had his fingers on the inner components of the sci-fi straitjacket he could disentangle himself from its clutch, one snare at a time. The pressure he had felt constricting his chest finally slackened and he could breathe freely again. He managed to free his left arm from the sleeve of the device, finding an iv-drip going into his forearm. The tube hung limply from his limb, having been torn from the bag of fluid by his trashing. Another one snaked to his other arm, connecting him to a bag of what appeared to be intravenous nutrition. He pulled both needles out.

“Maybe try horse tranquilizers next time,” he thought, releasing himself completely from the contraption and jumping to the ground. He fell to his knees, still dazed. He stumbled on something as he stood up and simultaneously felt a jolt of pain in his lower abdomen. Looking down he realized he had been catheterized as well. Remembering how the nurse at the hospital had removed the urinary catheter he had during his stay at the hospital he looked for something to empty the balloon and looking into a trash can found a syringe that had probably been used when the catheter had been inserted.

“With a setup like this, one could stay inside that cocoon and never come out,” he mused, pulling out the final foreign body. The thought sent chills down his spine. Or maybe that was just the cool room temperature as he had been stripped down to his underpants. He looked for his clothes with no luck. His gun was missing as well.

Cameras hung from the corners near the ceiling. They had no lights on and he did not see them move. Where they off? He had no way of knowing whether he was being watched or not. That had been the norm in their city, of course, regardless of whether one had been out on the street or in one’s own living room but now surveillance meant there could be a group of fanatics were headed his way with the intent to kill. At least the people of the city had been more subtle in their malignant desires.

He put his back against the wall by the exit and cracked the door open. Peeking out he saw an ordinary, featureless service tunnel. Footsteps approached rapidly and he pulled back. The sound grew louder before coming to a stop near the door. Seconds passed and nothing happened. Holding his breath he thought he could hear hints of a whispered conversation from the other side but could not be sure. He considered his options. If there were people on the other side, the longer he waited, more likely it would be they got reinforcements. The men would be armed. If the cameras were on they would know exactly where he was. The only way to beat them would be to do something quicker than it took them to react. Still, it would be a shot in the dark when he could be going against an army equipped with night vision goggles, so to speak.

He steeled himself and pivoted away from his cover, kicking open the door. It crunched against something, eliciting a yell of pain and a curse from the other direction. He threw himself where the curse had come from, bringing his elbow up so it collided with the nose of a man he hadn’t even seen until now, shattering the Ampere glasses he was wearing. The man fell down with his legs straight, smashing the back of his head on the concrete floor. He didn't move. Thomas spun around but there was no one else. The man he had struck with the door got up. He looked around, looking for something until his eyes locked on the handgun he had dropped which lay some feet to his side. He made for the gun as Thomas’ fist made for his jaw and proved to be the slower of the two as he went down for the count. Thomas grabbed the gun and was about to jog down the tunnel when he realized something.

The man was about his size.

He headed out outfitted with a set of clothes pre-heated to body temperature which smelled faintly of someone else’s sweat. He had tried on the smartglasses of the stripped man as well, but found they only displayed a many-eyed sun burning in hostile red and refused to react to any of his commands, so he tucked them deep inside the pocket of his jacket. The knocked-out men also proved resistant to questioning as even hard shaking and slaps in the face failed to elicit more than feeble mumbling.

The room adjacent to the one he had come from didn’t hold any other captives, so he thought it best to leave the area before reinforcements arrived. The tunnels intersected once in a while, but none looked more important than the other so he just kept heading forward, thinking that at least he would not be running in circles. After a minute he arrived at a larger junction with a mural portraying the layout of the facility with different colors, with a red dot helpfully pointing out his current location. Not seeing any obvious places for holding captives he memorized the path to the overseeing offices, figuring that was the most likely place to find someone who was in the know.

He heard people running towards him coming from around a corner. He pulled out the glasses, planning to disguise himself as one of the group. The footsteps came to a sudden stop around the corner.

“Shit.”

He charged forward just as the mouth of a pistol appeared from behind the corner. He grabbed the hand holding the gun and pulled, causing the armed woman to lurch out of her cover. He struck the gun from her hands and seized her in a one-armed chokehold as a human shield. Her cohorts, a man and a woman, kept moving their guns hesitantly, unsure whether to try shooting or surrender.

“Drop your guns or I’ll shoot!” Thomas commanded. They lowered their weapons some more before all three of their heads twitched slightly to the left, an instinctive movement typical of a person receiving a notification at the edge of their vision.

“No!” screamed the woman he was holding. “I’m still worthy! I’m needed!

“Sorry, Cathy.” Said the man. “That’s not what Amun-Ra says.”

They raised their guns in a quick, unquestioning motion. Thomas cursed and threw her down as gunfire thundered and bullets came whizzing by, blasting the gun as he jumped into cover offered by the corner of the junction. He fired a few blind shots before peeking around the edge to aim at his opponents only to find he had gotten lucky and his hasty volley had been lethal.

The woman, Cathy, lay on the ground, whimpering. She held her left thigh where blood was quickly soaking her jeans. He crouched by her side, lowering his weapon.

“Tell me where they’re keeping the prisoners and I’ll help you.”

She rolled over quickly and reached for the gun she had dropped. Just as her fingers touched the grip of the pistol he grabbed her by the shin and pulled her away, her fingernails scraping against the floor.

“Close, but no cigar.”

“Please!” she wailed. “If I don’t kill you I’ll have no worth at all. I want to be good!”

He let go and she slumped on the ground in a sobbing heap, the epitome of grief. He tried to think of an argument or a threat that would convince her to tell him what he needed to know but could not think how to sway someone who has given up on life. He was turning away when she spoke up.

“They’re being held in one of the conference rooms. There’s an armed guard by the door.”

He bent over to help her up put she slapped his hand away.

“Leave me,” she snarled, her teared-up face contorted in hatred. “I don’t care if I bleed out here or if they come down to shoot me. This was the last chance I had for a good life, to get what I deserve, and they took it from me. Always someone keeping me down, taking the money, the power, the everything that would be mine if the world were just! I hope you shoot them all, that way I can at least take them with me.”

He did not argue with the woman. Staunching the blood flow from her wound would be pointless, as it would not be the bullet that killed her but the poison and rot that had diseased her heart and mind much more gravely.

“One more thing,” she added. “There are cameras everywhere watching you and the footage is relayed to us. No use hiding or disguising yourself. But there aren’t many of us here and it’s not like we’ve been trained in combat.”

He left her there. Passing the people that lay silently in their own blood he first tried to ignore them but finding that did not sit well with him kneeled by their side, throwing away the smartglasses that covered their eyes. The corpses stared blindly at nothing. He closed their eyes gently with his thumb and forefinger. Somehow, it seemed perverse to him that the dead should gaze unseeingly at whatever drivel the eye gear conjured up until they ran out of battery. After giving them what little decency he could under the circumstances, he gathered the magazines from their pistols and continued on. But not in the direction where he remembered the conference rooms should be.

He followed the signs towards the factory’s electrical power center.

He made his way towards the conference area through quiet, empty hallways lit by red emergency lights. He had shot up a lock to the control center and flipped the emergency shutdown switch and proceeded to smash it into an unusable stub in case anyone tried to undo the blackout. He had heard small groups of people running about and debating what they should do, but all had passed him by without noticing, so the power outage must have shut down the watchful mechanical eyes on the walls as well.

One such small detachment passed him by so closely he could have extended his arm and touched them. In the darkness the lights projected by their glasses kept their eyes from adjusting, yet it still did not enter their minds that they might be better off trusting the natural organs that had developed for that very situation as they felt more blind without the information overlaid on their field of vision. He watched them, still and tense like a tiger, ready to strike at the first sign of being noticed but remained unseen.

Just one man guarded the conference room, fidgeting and spinning his head around with his back to the wall. Enough light filtered through the smudged windows opposite the door to expel his cover of darkness so he could not approach the cagey man without being spotted. Slowly, he took out one of the magazines he had appropriated and, without letting the spring system make a click, slid out a single bullet to his palm. When the man looked the other way he tossed the bullet over his head. It’s sharp clack against something broke the silence.

“Is someone there?” the man called, taking small, tentative steps towards the sound. Thomas sneaked behind him with focused, efficient steps and grabbed him in a chokehold, one arm around his throat with the other disarming him before holding his head in place. He struggled for a few moments trying to pull his arm away while gurgling quietly before going limp. Thomas dragged his unconscious body backwards and hung him from the back of his jacket on a coatrack. To anyone seeing through the cameras in his glasses’ frames—he hoped—it would seem like he was standing watch, as alert as ever.

He inched the door open and peeped inside but saw no one. He pushed the door open and stepped over the threshold when something swung at him and hit him in the face so his eyes teared up. Before he had a chance to bring up his gun someone had taken hold of his arm while still others pulled him down and someone sat on top of chest, pressing their hands over his mouth. He blinked away the water from his eyes and glared at the person smothering him. She stared back in open-mouthed stupefaction.

“Thomas!?” Naomi yelped, shooting up from his chest. She signaled the others to let him go.

“That was a pretty good ambush,” he approved as he got up. “You come up with it?”

“Yes, and we’ve spent the better part of the day practicing it,” she explained, one hand on her hip. “What took you so long?”

He returned her smirk. They shared a look that lasted long enough to express things he had never been good at putting into words. He was not sure who had moved first but they met at the middle and kissed embracing each other.

“How do we get out of here?” she asked as she disengaged for breath.

“That’s what I want to know,” grumbled someone who at that moment could not have mattered less to Thomas.

“We’re not going anywhere,” he informed the group. “Not without proper vehicles. Therefore our first order of business will be to secure the building.”

“It should not be that hard,” he added quickly, seeing the startled expressions around him. “These people are scattered, uncoordinated and only care about themselves so not even the greatest machine intelligence in Earth seems capable of making an organized regiment out of them.”

“I’m in,” Jason declared. The rest opted to tepidly follow their example. They split into two groups, Thomas in the helm of one and Jason of the other and headed out to clear the building. They were met with little resistance as the odd Chosen still remaining in the building fell back when they saw they were outmanned.

As he was going through the rooms he came across a virtual reality cocoon similar to the one he had been wrapped in. A person was encased within, held in place by the clusters of wires and pulleys. The person moved languidly, the many joints and connectors shifting smoothly and silently to accommodate. He looked for manual controls, but found none, figuring the system must have been designed to be operated wholly with virtual access. Maybe the thing was not intended to be handled by people in the first place?

He began unsnarling the person from their binds, discharging sparks with every rip he made to the system. The person he was trying to help seemed alarmed, trying to pull away but staying fixed to the spot as they were standing on what amounted to a large, multidirectional treadmill. He plucked away the iv drip and finally wrested off the faceplate, the linchpin holding the digital illusion together. Inside, he found Lucas who was terrified and disoriented as a result of being drugged and being subjected to whatever simulacrum that mechanical Hypnos, god of digital dreams had conjured up.

He pulled the young man from his cell and had to grab him tightly to stop him from collapsing to the ground.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I could not stop them from taking us.”

“It’s alright,” he assured, pulling him to his chest. “It’s over now. You’re free.” The depleted man gave no answer apart from the tears falling from his eyes. Thomas picked him up, noticing again how skinny and light he was, and carried him away.

“All clear, boss,” Jason reported as they rendezvoused, giving a mock salute. “They didn’t put up much of a fight.”

“Why should they?” Naomi interjected. “No point in endangering themselves when their master can just raze the whole building to the ground when he feels like it.”

“That’s why we need to leave while we still can!” someone interrupted. It was an overweight man with wild eyes whose face was wet with cold, nervous sweat. “I’ve checked the windows and there’s no movement anywhere. We have to make a run for it before their reinforcements arrive.”

“Could be a trap,” Thomas said. “We’re not going anywhere without being logged by the city’s surveillance network, and when that happens it does not matter if you run for your life.”

“Why should any of us trust you?” he spewed. “We’ve seen you on the news. I don’t know what to believe.”

“I’m not asking you to trust me. I’m asking you considered who has the better plan and do what you think has less of a chance of getting you killed.”

The man pursed his lips and worked his jaw like he was chewing something particularly sour before walking to the window and peering out, wiping his damp face with the back of his hand.

“I haven’t really won many friends lately,” Thomas quipped quietly.

“These people have been through a lot,” Naomi appeased. “We all have. Most of them think they’re only chance is to somehow increase their standing in Routh’s eyes enough for him to accept them among his vassals and they fear everyone else is out to stab them in the back for that very same reason.”

“How could we ever win people like that on our side?”

“Hope. They need to believe there is some other, better way to survive. That way they could work together towards a common goal instead of waiting for a chance to sell everyone else out.”

He was about to answer when a fight broke out between two people in the group, with the rest distancing themselves from the scuffle. A scrawny man was trying to grab something from a black woman who had curled up tightly to protect herself. He stepped in and pulled the disputants apart.

“She was trying to contact them with her phone,” he ranted.

“No, I wasn’t! Just trying to check the news.”

“Then why won’t you show it to me?”

“Because it’s none of your business.”

“Are you telling the truth?” Thomas asked, looking her in the eye.

She met his gaze firmly and openly. “Yes.”

“I believe her. And—“ he added quickly before the man argued further, ”­—here is what we’re going to do. There’s just one car here—mine—so I’ll drive out and take the fight to the city’s electrical plant and cut off the power, so I’ll kill the cameras in the whole town, like I’ve done here. That way I’ll either blind them or at least divert their attention, so that’ll be your best bet at leaving. I’ll strike at midnight. Whether you think it’s your best bet to run or wait for evacuation, you’ll improve your chances by waiting for a few hours more. Understood?”

There was no fanfare or round of applause following his proposal, but no voiced opposition either. Looking them over he thought he could even catch a glimpse of something like admiration in the eyes of some of them, but they lowered their gaze too quickly for him to be sure. With a little tension removed from the atmosphere of the room he returned to the conversation that had been interrupted.

“As far as your sales pitches go,” Naomi smirked, “that wasn’t half bad.”

“If any of them are still looking to change sides,” Jason whispered, “they’ll surely try to inform them where you’re going.”

“Yes, and that’s why I’m not going to the electrical plant. Now the would-be defectors also have no reason to be at each other’s throats when they have a much juicier target.”

“What are you going to do, then?” she asked.

“No more running. No more hiding. No more hoping for everyone else to come to their senses. That quiet conformity and submission is how we got in this mess. It’s time to attack instead of just fighting to survive.”

“And how are you going to do that?”

“I’m going after Routh. He’s the one behind all this.”

“That won’t do anything,” Lucas muttered weakly. He was slumped on the floor with his back to the wall and had not said a word until then, so they had not realized he had started to pay attention to his surroundings.

“Every single one of his Chosen is looking to replace him. Cut of the head of the hydra and three more will take its place.”

“What do you suggest, then?”

“Take me with you to their headquarters. I might be able to enter the system and be the one to take his place. Then I’ll make the network erase itself and this will all be over.”

“I thought you wanted to keep the Intelligence running, with some of your own code thrown in?”

He bit his lip, fighting back tears. “The risk is too high. Better to be sure.”

Thomas nodded. “Glad to have you on board.” He turned to the other two. “I’ll take you somewhere safe, just to be sure.”

They walked to the main entrance of the building where the Charger still stood, untouched. Naomi pulled him aside.

“This thing you’re planning…There’s a good chance you’ll end up killed.”

He nodded almost imperceptibly. “Never been one to shy away from danger.”

She placed her hands by his chest. “Yes…It reminds me of the old times, back when I first saw you when I promoted some race or another. Funny, while everyone else is miserable and petty, the same circumstances bring out the best in you. I don’t see any of that bitter hatred I used to, even when the object of your hate is more tangible than ever.”

“Don’t know how to explain it. I always knew that something was wrong but everyone else—the news, the statistics, most people—kept telling me things were better than ever. So I did my best to bury those feelings but I could never quite shake them. But now the emperor has been found unclothed; all pretenses are off and I can finally deal with the problem directly.”

She smiled sadly and grasped the front of his expropriated shirt in her fists. “Come back to me once you’re done,” she ordered looking at him firmly. “I don’t want to lose you again.”

“I will.” He enclosed her hand within his own, pressing it against his chest for a moment.

Then, too soon, it was time to go.