Erin blinked, looking away from her phone and at Ashlynn. “I need to take this. Please give me a moment.” Erin answered the phone call from ‘Rat Catcher.’ “Hello?” Erin held a finger up to her lips, indicating Ashlynn shouldn’t speak.

“Erin?” The Ferret’s modulated voice came through the other end. She sounded a little out of breath.

“Yeah, it’s me. What’s up?” Erin watched Ashlynn take a drink of the black coffee. Ashlynn watched back with bemusement, but Erin’s phone was quiet enough that she probably didn’t recognize The Ferret. The country-techno had become much quieter as Erin stepped to the far side of the kitchen.

“Hey listen.” There was a pause as it sounded like someone cracked a dry, thick stick against the microphone on The Ferret’s side. “Could you turn on the website tonight? We-” another crack against the receiver “- collect any tips we can. We are facing four of those-” three more of those cracks happened, and Erin began to suspect these noises were gunshots. “-you do that?”

“I… sure.” Erin looked at Ashlynn. “Yeah. I can do that. It’ll be a couple hours.”

“That’s goo- fuck, fuck. Pyrocles! That’s the direction of the hospit-” Crack-Crack-Crack. “Gotta go! Thanks.”

Ashlynn waited for Erin to lower the phone and asked, “Everything okay?”

Erin pulled the news up on her phone, wondering if it was what she suspected. “No. We-” There were four of those autonomous kill-bots in the city today, not just three. They were near one of the three general hospitals in town.

Four kill-bots now. She wondered if the Ferret had made the same guess that came to her mind. She wondered if the forums had more information. It might mean eight tomorrow, on a Wednesday night.

“Erin?”

Erin had gone quiet, and realized she’d gotten distracted, half-way to logging into the forums to see what the details were. She forcibly put the phone down, and focused on Ashlynn. “Listen, I need to do something. Do you mind?” Erin needed to process how to approach the fact that her universe was being oppressed and the oppressors can’t see the boot.

Ashlynn shook her head. “No, no. Everything okay?”

Erin took the offered coffee cup, mostly empty. “No, yeah, it's fine. I just gotta get some things done. Listen, we can talk more another night.” Erin paused, needing to ask, “You don’t have anything to do with the kill-bots downtown do you?”

It wouldn’t make sense, but if Ashlynn did, Erin was just as likely to be killed now as ever.

Ashlynn laughed. “No way, not my style. Also, there’s not much pizzazz to it. Too orderly and planned.”

“Mmm.” Erin didn’t have much to say about what Ashlynn thought was fun. “Maybe tomorrow then? I think I need to know more about what is going on from your side.”

“Yeah, like, definitely. If what you are saying is true, then, like ‘Invader’ is mild compared to what you could have called us. I wish we could just-” Ashlynn choked up again as Erin opened her door. Ashlynn stepped outside. She sounded as frustrated as Erin usually felt. “Sure, sounds like fun. We can get choked up over simple words another time.”

Erin nodded. “Yeah yeah. Thanks for not trying to kill me.”

Ashlynn shrugged, “Thanks for not punching me again.”

With a wry look, Ashlynn left and Erin shut the door.

Erin grabbed her coffee mug, refilled it, and went to her computer. She still had a few things she needed to do before the website could go completely online.

Erin put the website up without fanfare an hour later. 

She texted the website information to The Ferret, followed by emailed instructions on how the team could access the mail sent into the website. The kill-bots were doubling in number each evening since Sunday, which meant if the Plot waited until Thursday night, then there would be sixteen of them, causing havoc, likely causing real casualties.

When Erin got to work Wednesday, she was not surprised that she saw a number of out of office replies. Everyone else’s absence really emphasized the disappearance of all the managers as well. Janey was still out, without an away message. Erin was tempted to text her, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to dig too deeply. And Erin still hadn’t met her own manager yet. 

Not really inspired by work today, she looked a little at the news, and found where The Cavalry announced their website via hasty interview. They were soliciting any and all information regarding the kill-bots. 

Three people had died when two tanks’ heavy arms crossfire had partially collapsed a building.

Erin would need to go onto the forums to find out what their names were, because the news wouldn’t say. She didn’t want to see another tally of dead. She used to want to check if she knew who they were. Now that her ‘friends’ were responsible for just being here… Erin didn’t need anyone to tell her to be ashamed of her complicity. Even if no one believed Max when he said Erin wasn’t a Pawn, the conversation had long moved on from her having any sort of solidarity with other backdrop.

And, according to the news reports, the attacks were starting earlier each day. They were expected to begin at five PM today.

It was no wonder the roads into the office were nearly empty. The attacks yesterday happened only a handful of blocks away. Erin tried calling Janey at around one, having gotten no responses that morning. Erin was growing more than a little concerned, and she didn’t know why exactly. Janey was not exactly prone to vanishing, and the chances of her being in trouble were significantly higher as a Pawn love interest to a Protagonist.

She texted Tyson, who didn’t respond either, though Erin had learned well enough in the last two months that he was not particularly responsive to texting. Erin looked over her work distractedly while she waited for any response, finally deciding to bite the bullet and ask some of Janey’s employees. 

Erin had been so self-obsessed over her apartment, but something was growing in the back of her mind. Something about everything else was off too.

She walked halfway across the building and found the cubicles close to Janey’s office, stopping at the nearest occupied seat. The cube tag said it was “Sara Vasquez”. The person sitting there was an attractive lady who couldn’t be much older than Erin, with short brown hair and gold-rimmed glasses.

She looked up when Erin paused at her desk, and stared at her, her face politely blank. “Yes?”

Erin offered a polite smile of her own. “Hey, sorry to bother you, but have you seen Janey Grayford or Donovan McMillan in the past few days? I’ve been looking for them…”

Sara’s control was very good, but Erin could see her eyes sharpen a bit as she stared at Erin’s face a little harder. “Ah.” She slipped into a slightly less polite tone, but answered, “No. I haven’t seen or heard from her in the past two days. She usually doesn’t check in unless another deadline comes up. Nor have I seen Don.”

Either Sara was being incredibly dry, or completely honest. Erin couldn’t tell, but she was not focused enough on Sara to find out. “That’s fair. Do you know where she is though? Have you heard anything at all?”

“No, Erin, I haven’t.” Sara must have placed her with that searching gaze. “I last saw her Monday morning, arguing in Don’s office. I haven’t seen or heard from her since. It’s probably his project you are working on.”

“Thanks, Sara. I didn’t mean to take up your time.”

“Yeah.”

At least she was polite, all things considered. Erin was a persona non grata in most sane circles.

Don was almost certainly Donovan McMillan, who Erin vaguely remembered Janey arguing with on the phone on Sunday too. She looked to find Don’s office. The door was open, but it was dark. Erin looked in for a moment, frustrated, and was about to go back to her seat when something caught her eye.

Erin glanced around, not quite certain she wanted to be caught in a manager’s office snooping, but saw no one.

Reaching a hand in, she flicked on the light to stare at what caught her eye. On Donovan’s desk was a model of a small autonomous security bot, used to police property lines for trespassers and loiterers. They were made popular by Boron Heavy Industries, which would explain the large Boron poster behind Donovan’s desk, with their old motto: “Safer Policing, Superb Engineering.” Most of their bots were never armed with anything more dangerous than a taser, and were usually no taller than four feet.

The ones out in the street were twelve feet tall and had projectile weapons on a rotating platform, but the similarities were impossible to miss.

Erin felt the rush of coincidences line up, and her heart beat faster. She turned off the lights and bee-lined for her desk, logging in to look up Donovan’s work profile and for more information on Boron. It was a quick search and told her everything she needed. Donovan McMillan worked as a chief of engineering for Boron Heavy Industries until five years ago, which is the same time they shut down their defense services branch to focus on construction and heavy machinery, which had been making them far more money.

The software Erin was supposed to be working on was for a company called “Intra Operables,” but she couldn’t find any information about them online. A fake company, maybe? It was a stupid but common occurrence around Protagonists and the Plot may have made it seem real enough to Divinilogic’s contracts team, especially if McMillan helped cover the tracks. 

Donovan wasn’t on any of the Pawn lists Erin had ever seen, but sometimes it was impossible to tell, especially if they’d been taken by the Plot more than about ten years ago. It wasn’t like the spotty webs of forums that had become popular were infallible. And so many people didn’t like to talk about the Plot at all, and reacted just like Pawns, blank or agitated.

Things fell into place.

Janey was missing. Tyson hadn’t talked to her recently either, if she read into his comment back when she was in the secret Cavalry base. 

She had been arguing with McMillan. McMillan used to work for Boros Heavy Industries, who built policing bots like this.

The software Erin was working on had a hydra design, where if one function ended, the software would boot up two functions. Janey, or someone with her phone, demanded she change nothing yesterday.

This was another Janey kidnapping and Tyson rescue story.

Erin shook her head. She was possibly being paranoid. Even so, she reached out to give the Ferret, planning to give the number on that calling card a text. 

The Plot seized her just as her fingers wrapped around her phone.

Erin sat there, dumbfounded and numb. 

She’d cracked a Plot line and was refusing to let her warn the protagonists. 

The Plot wanted her to keep the charade up for its sake. It wanted her to remain complicit with its story. Erin was supposed to sit here and let eight bots destroy the city streets tonight. Maybe sixteen tomorrow, on the true Plot night. 

Three people died yesterday. 

The three people who used to work for McMillan missing. If they’d learned something, or had tried to intercede, like Erin was trying… Would the Plot stop them... or just use McMillan directly? 

Erin sat there, silently fighting. What use was Cognizance if it meant she had to wait for more people to die?

The Plot burned her skin, especially along her hand and wrist. It hurt so badly, tears came to her eyes. Slowly, she was able to pull her phone from her desk, but it was like moving in molasses at first. Minutes later, her heart beating like she’d been running a marathon, she pulled up The Ferret on her phone and dialed. 

The Plot still smoldered on her skin, just as it did when she’d smashed Doppelganger’s mutagen gas bomb. Just like back then, it couldn’t stop her. She was surprised she hadn’t combusted or that it hadn’t screwed up the phone system to stop her. 

It hurt so much. She was surprised she wasn’t screaming or that the Plot didn’t just stop her heart. 

The Ferret answered after two rings, “Hello? Erin? This isn’t a good time-”

“I know, listen. I think I know what’s behind-”

“Crack! Crack! Crack!” The sound burst from the speakers on Erin’s phone, cutting her off, loud enough to hurt her ear.

“Damn! It’s early!? Gotta go Erin. Sorry.” There were another few cracking noises that Erin tried to talk over

“No, Misty, wait, don’t go-” she whispered urgently. If she let any more noise out, she’d be shouting in an occupied office.

The phone went silent and she didn’t need to look at the screen to know what the line was dead. At the same time, the Plot had stopped burning across her skin.