The driverless autocabs were slow, but effective, and they wouldn't refuse to drive her if she was recognized as the latest Cavalry Plot chew toy.

The driverless cars hadn't been invented but recently, and they'd been pushed through development in order to set up an unspoken system to provide transport to Pawns and Protagonists, using a master list rumored to exist in the cab company database to only give them autocabs. It only fails when the Plot demands a living cab driver for some reason. For the most part, however, it worked well to reduce exposure to Protagonists. So far, at least.

The forum was still trying to dig into what happened downtown, but other than having placed Erin in a dinner with Tyson, Janey, and Rex, they hadn’t figured out the connection to the cops and Mistel Mason’s arrival. Instead, something else dominated people’s attention.

Weekend events were rare, a break from the standard Monday - Thursday Plot nights, so the forums were hopping. She got to the parking garage, far enough from the gang fights to be safe, before she caught up on what she’d missed. In a surprising weekend twist, two of Meridian City's biggest gangs, The Silver Hand and the Red Dust, had started to openly shoot at one another on the bad side of town. No one was quite sure what caused the altercation, but both of the gangs were known for their drug trades, so the best bet was some sort of turf war. It was just surprising on a usually quiet, non-Plot Saturday.

A handful of Heroes were already responding, including two of Meridian City's Pawn heroes, Knick-Knack and Paddywhack.

Erin’s fears had been realized, and she had found her motorcycle helmet long gone. So also was the dented SUV owned by the older man who’d been Puppeted and accused Erin. The helmet had been an expensive one, so Erin was not exactly surprised to see it gone, in spite of Misty’s assurance. Luck was for Protagonists, not their subjects.

She’d been smart enough to bring her old one with her. The pressure of the old compressed foam stung as it settled on the back of her head. Erin had already begged off Saturday lunch with her mom, and instead got something easy to transport home. 

By the time Erin got back home, the gang spat had spread, and even the Ferret and Alleyshadow got involved early in the morning, as it was revealed that both gangs blamed the other for attacks on their drug-making operations, with entire laboratories swept clean of tools and supplies, their operators killed.

The gang war carried on past Erin's bedtime, so it was the next day that she discovered the thrilling conclusion.

The mysterious villain that hit pharmaceutical companies last week was the culprit for the gang hits. They killed fifteen gang members total, and stole high value centrifuges, several devices that were used for precise mixing, and two metric tons of chemical agents used to cut pure drugs for human consumption. Millions of dollars in actual product and uncut drugs were ignored outright.

This was huge news, because it meant that - even with a confirmed third appearance of this new imposing but shadowy villain, bad security footage included - the suspense for the Plot was building. It meant that this was a huge reveal, and Meridian City hadn't had this big of a shakeup in the local Plot since the opening of the Spirit-Seal in Memory Park more than a year ago.

People were already making plans to leave the city for the next month, rather than risk the chance of getting involved.

Erin wasn’t going anywhere but work that next day. 

She was feeling more and more paranoid that her desk would be packed up by the time she got in. It was stupid, as there had been barely anything about ‘Erin Razor’ posted, especially after the weekend Plot ruining everyone’s plans. 

The office was quiet, but Erin would have been more surprised if it hadn’t been. Perhaps she’d downplayed how unsettled she had been at home, but she’d deliberately headed to work as soon as she was ready, rather than lingering around at home. Erin was at the office at 4 AM, well before most sane people would bother, even from her generation.

Her desk was not quite how she left it. She recognized that things looked like they’d been moved around and there was a five inch stack of that endless perforated paper, yellowed with age, where her travel laptop usually went. The paper probably hadn’t seen the light of day for ages. 

Erin didn’t want to read the note written on a spare piece of paper in a red marker on top. She did anyway. 

Written in all clean letters, Isabel’s neat handwriting, it said:

“Erin- Old Backup Files Lost. Re-enter this code into legacy system. Use Sustainment Gov’t charge line.”

Erin has been relegated to mindless work already. Likely meaningless, this work would keep her occupied for days and she wouldn’t have to talk to a soul. She could already tell the old program’s dot-matrix text was going to be nearly illegible, and hours of study would be needed to tell the difference between an ‘R’ and a ‘P’. Erin was no longer a fellow backdrop. She was, as far as anyone cared here, just a Pawn.

She wondered if Isabel came in on the weekend to avoid running into her. 

Isabel, that older woman who’d only, what, two weeks ago, invited her down to eat lunch at the food trucks with Joel and Mike… and Greg. Isabel didn’t even sign the letter. No emails either. Erin was alone.

Were she prone to melodrama, Erin would feel that some popular quote about nihilism would be appropriate here. She may be fatalistic at heart, but she wasn’t going to impress anyone with her two courses of modern philosophy from college.

She did not start archiving the code yet. Instead, she sent out several emails- polite, curt, and detailed emails- to the people who used to be her team, explaining what she’d been working on, where it was on the servers, and who would be best to take over, if it hadn’t been doled out already. None of these were short and simple; Erin didn’t want to leave questions unanswered. No one would come back to her for more information.

She didn’t argue or protest her final exile. She didn’t want them to feel guilty about this either. By all rights, Erin had probably stuck too close to Janette too long before she’d changed into Janey, and that was what got her in this mess. Erin had been talking to Janette up to the day that she suddenly stopped fretting about Tyson’s casual encounters.

One day, Janette’s fear and despair of Tyson vanished, she stopped using the word ‘Protagonist’ and became a thrall, giddy and excited at the idea of a first date.

No one from her company would meet Erin’s eyes as she walked the cubical labyrinth. She went downstairs to the decent- not great- cafe on the second floor of the next building, to get a coffee and a sandwich. 

She went ahead and ate at her desk, not really expecting, but hoping someone might need her. She was shocked when someone called her name.

“Razor?” Max asked quietly, his head peeking around the corner of her cubicle.

“Hey Max. What’s up?”

Max paused, stepping into her cubicle more directly, looking around at everything but at Erin directly. “Oh not much. How… are you?”

Erin could pretend everything was okay. She could put on a mask, and make everyone think she was a Pawn. But, damnit, at least Max came by, even if it was to pester her for information she didn’t really want to give out. “Well, my Friday evening sucked, but otherwise I’m okay.” The cut on the back of her head didn’t hurt much, at least.

Max swallowed but didn’t quite look at her. “Uh huh. I heard a little about it…”

Like pulling teeth, she swore internally. Erin had to bite her tongue around Protagonists, but around fellow backdrop, she had to practically beg to get them to talk.

“Max. Even if I were a Puppet, looking at me doesn’t cause it to spread. I am not going to talk if you don’t stop staring at my monitor and, you know, talk to me instead.”

Max seemed to realize the ridiculousness of his actions. He looked at her, the first real person, and the first backdrop, to engage her for some time, even knowing who she was associated with.

Erin wasn’t sure if she was relieved or not that the only person who would talk to her would most certainly write something about her online later.

“Razor, you know that cafe is kind of a dump, right?” e said, motioning to her take-out bag.

Erin was pretty certain she felt ‘not relieved’.

“Thanks for the review, Max. How’s things going for you?”

Max shrugged, still not comfortable to sit down, even when she gestured to the chair she had tucked into a computer. “Fine, fine. I can’t believe you are still real. Alive and everything.” He gestured at that vaguely like she still might be a mirage.

Erin shrugged at that. “The Plot moves in mysterious ways. Maybe I just am-”

“Yeah- I mean- I’d expected you to off yourself like Gary.”

“Greg,” Erin interrupted. “His name was Greg.”

“Yeah. Sorry. I am bad with names. But hell, this office is kind of a shit storm,” Max gestured, “I was talking to… well, I don’t think they’d want to be associated with you. Anyway, I was talking to another real person, and since we lost two people in like two weeks-” Erin assumed that she was being counted along with Greg, “- they don’t have any clue how we are going to keep up with it all. If you were gone, maybe, but how are we going to hire anyone in this environment?”

Erin was already relishing her chance to get back to the work on the archiving. At least the old stacks of printing paper weren’t insulting her personally. “I am sure we will figure something out.”

“Actually, ha, funny story,” Max said, interrupting without intending to, “I heard you were going to get moved to somewhere under Janette. You know, heh, ‘consolidating toxic resources’. It kind of sucks for you, so, you know, sorry about that. I wanted to warn you what I heard from managers, you know? I mean, seriously it-”

“Max? You going to come to the weekly? I-” One of Max’s team members came around the corner to see Max and Erin, which caused him to stop short.

Max gave Erin a short look she couldn’t read, something between amused and annoyance, as though he wanted to stick around here and talk.

Max went to his meeting, Erin went back to archiving. Somehow, it wasn’t so terrible when her alternative was talking to Max. She did appreciate the interlude and the warning, at least.