An hour of fighting traffic later, Erin lay in her little bed pondering what the hell she just did. She fought the Plot, and revealed to the Protagonists she was well aware of their secret identities. That’s ignoring the outright mortal danger she’d been in.

Why did she do that? To spite the Plot? Was she really that petty? 

Well, yes, but it was still monumentally reckless.

She would look up who died yesterday in the news. Half a dozen people died each week, either Plot related, or crime related. If more died today, most people wouldn’t have batted an eye. She wouldn’t have, if she wasn’t involved in it. No one would have expected her to do anything. No one expected anyone to stick their neck out.

She’d memorized the people’s names who had died the day before, the random casualties. She deserved the social ostracization. Maybe not all of it, but some. 

Erin curled up, not having even undressed since she got home. She had the sense to take her boots off but didn’t get any further, laying atop of the sheets.

Maybe she’d been wrong about what the Plot had planned. Maybe there wasn’t any purpose to her trying to stop the chaos tonight. Maybe she made things worse.

Erin definitely made things worse. For herself at least.. 

She got up to make coffee, in spite of her misgivings with the state of the rest of the world. She could at least see how things unfolded on the news. She dreaded to see what everyone on the forum thought.

The news was all about the bots, of course. The local news websites reported that half way through the fighting, superheroes stopped trying to destroy them, but instead focused on disabling them. No one was killed today, but they pulled footage of someone on a motorcycle fleeing one of the monolithic bots. If anyone had any news, they could contact the Cavalry at their website at the link below the video.

Erin did not watch the video. She instead went to go look at the traffic and backend side of The Cavalry’s website, which was surprisingly busy. It had only been up for a day.

She knew that she would have taken a look if the Cavalry had set up a website, months ago. Still, she almost didn’t expect it to garner any real attention.

There was a fair amount of fan mail, most of it benign and short congratulations on the new website and thanking them for saving the city a few times over the past four years. She forwarded that along to whoever they meant to message, either an individual or to the team email. Several pieces of mail were explicitly asking for endorsement deals or advertising, which she deleted.

There was also one piece of mail that definitely should have gone into the Crime Tip email address, telling the Cavalry about something strange going on about a block north of where Erin lived, under one of the highway bridges that left Meridian City proper. She didn’t read into that email any further, just forwarded it to the right email address, managed by The Ferret. It wasn’t her business.

She wasn’t going to solve all the Plot threads for the Cavalry. She was not that ambitious or insane.

There was no email in her personal webmaster email address, which was good. She’d set up an email account for people to contact if the website went down or if there were other issues, but expected very little.

By six PM, all eight of the bots had been destroyed or disabled. It wasn’t until around nine that she finally got a text from ‘Rat Catcher’.

“Hey. Saved Janey, stopped McMillan. May be a few more bots tomorrow, but we need to talk. After work on Friday?”

“Sure. Thanks for saving Janey.” Erin didn’t know what else to say. Thursday was Plot night. She couldn’t have bargained for a better deal on avoiding more superhero stuff.

Erin slumped off to bed and lay in bed staring at her ceiling, thinking and listening to the cacophony of music from next doorShe couldn’t guess when she’d finally fell asleep, but she had more bad dreams, incoherent and unsettling like some dreams were.

Coffee, more website message forwarding, not much more news. No one knew what happened exactly, at least according to the official news feeds, and no one had ID’d Erin there.

The forums would probably know more about what happened, but she didn’t check. Old habits die hard, but she could put this to rest.

She rolled into work early, as if nothing from yesterday had happened. She didn’t know how to report what she had done anyway. She was certain it was all kinds of against policy to allow a known hacker and superhero access to a work laptop, but it kind of felt like it went above just asking an ethics hotline, or going to her manager.

Her manager, who was probably in cuffs at the moment, because of Erin’s actions.

She kept working on the code that was intended to activate more bots as the previous ones fell offline, not sure she ought to be doing anything. She couldn’t take the day off, she didn’t even have a full day of sick leave or vacation left.

Around ten in the morning, Erin realized that her part of the office was getting an awful lot more foot traffic than she remembered. People would walk past her aisle, then see Erin looking at them, and speed past, like they hadn’t been ogling.

Erin messaged the only person she could.

Erin R: Max, mind telling me why I am getting so many drive by stares?

Erin R: Not that they are bothering me, I just don’t know what the plot gossip is.

Max W: ayfkm!?.

Erin R: Nope, serious.

Erin R: They are acting like I’ve jumped from Pawn to Protagonist.

Erin figured it would help to be just honest with Max. If he wrote it up on his blog, it couldn’t bother her anymore.

Max W: holy hell

Erin R: For what its worth, I am as surprised as you. But just so I know, what is the Gossip?

Max W: holy hell, you are a madman.

Max W: Madwoman, sorry.

Max W: Did you really go to the fight scene and tell the cavalry where the plot was supposed to be?

Erin R: I tried to tell them McMillan was former Boron and the code I was working on was suspect. Did anything I say get recorded?

Max W: People could see you dodging bots and yelling at the cavalry for something. then SK and Ferrrt went off to some out of the way garage and rescued Janey from mcmillan, some Ex Machina wannabe.

Max W: Ferret

Max W: ur manager sucks, btw. Gonna guess he’ll probably get fired tho.

Max W: Did you tell them about him? Did you mention Janey?

Erin wasn’t sure how much she ought to share with Max, or if he might get in trouble for being so interested in her side of things. She apparently had a twisted, very limited defense against the Plot, but Max may not. Cognizance was no blessing

Erin just didn’t know how much to tell Max without telling him the whole story, that she revealed she knew their alter egos. She finally settled on not telling Max.

Erin R: Just about McMillan’s connections to Boron. Didn’t know about Janey. Did everyone else already know? I had to guess.

Max W: ahahahaha

Max W: everyone knew Janey was gone, but no one suspected mcmillan.

Max W: no one on that floor gives me the deets.

Erin R: Fair enough. No telling when I won’t be able to, so be careful. I should be persona non grata soon.

Max W: Ha, you kidding? People told me to drop talking about you like you were still people months ago

Max W: Even the betting pools can’t pay out cause you outlasted them.

Erin R: Does that mean I win the dead pool?

Erin R: Anyway, talk to you later. Gotta figure out what to do for work.

Max W: hahaha.

Max W: okay, good luck.

Erin got up, startling one person who was about to walk past, curious about whether or not Erin had become visibly changed by yesterday's ordeal. She smiled at them. They sped away with a blank face.

She looked around for McMillan’s manager, ostensibly Erin’s boss when he wasn’t around, but didn’t find anyone in their office. Even the executives were avoiding her. Great.

It could have been a complete coincidence, but Erin didn’t feel like this was the case. She instead decided to go downstairs for a coffee, to get a break from being gawked at. It would die down in a few days, she was certain, but she didn’t feel like dealing with it right then. 

Janey was out of the office too, but that made more sense. She’d been kidnapped three days. 

The day passed without Erin having any idea what to do. She even went home on time and grabbed some groceries she could shove in her backpack. The mail had her insurance claim check. Only a week’s turnaround, but then, the insurance company wanted nothing to do with her. She’d deposit it tomorrow. Her priority was doing laundry, which meant going to a laundromat on a Plot night. At least it wouldn’t be busy.