As disasters went, a burning building full of hostages and inept hostage takers wasn’t the worst situation that Ai could imagine.

“I could always be stuck in there with them,” she said to Zai.

“Aren’t you glad that we rejected plans 1, 2, and 3?” Zai asked.

“If you don’t start with the terrible plans, the good ones don’t have as much of a chance to shine,” Ai said.

“What kind of idiot takes hostages in a burning data center?” Curtweather asked.

“We’ll have to ask them that after the blaze is put out,” Ai said. “Unless of course…”

She trailed off as she reviewed the system reports from the building, already knowing what she would find.

“Unless the rustheads disabled the fire suppression,” Curtweather said.

The Tython building was an unnamed data center. Any data center, no matter how trivial the information it stored, was equipped with extensive fire suppression systems. It was the equivalent of saying that a bank was equipped with doors and walls rather than being a big pile of money in an open field.

The idea of a fire at a data center was considered a commonplace concern. Cooling systems could fail, the various electronics could fail, and employees could be careless. The odds of any of those happening was small but was always accounted for in any company’s budget for running a data center.

The first response to those fires lay in automated suppression systems, from simple sprinklers in non-critical areas, to autonomous robo-fire fighters equipped with flame quenching foam and, ultimately, entire building-scale atmospheric systems that were empowered to kill every human within by exchanging the air with halogen gas if that was required to protect the data stores.

The idea of an out of control fire consuming consuming terabytes of data every second was the sort of nightmare scenario that building planners considered, designed for, and then were told that the building budget didn’t need because the fire suppression systems would  prevent such fairy tale nightmares from occurring.

Which was why Ai had opted to arrange for such a fire to happen.

The Tython break-in was a side project. Data gathering not-quite for its own sake but because there were voids in her knowledge of the city and the entities that were struggling for control of its destiny.

Ai Greensmith, rookie patrol officer, had no need to understand the true power players in Gamma City. She was supposed to take her orders, do as Dispatch and her captain told her, collect her paycheck (and anything extra she could scrape up on the side), and not ask inconvenient questions or persist when told to back off a case.

That was how her father had worked during his long career, and how her brother had worker during his short one. Given how their careers ended though, Ai had very different plans for where her life was going to go.

Joseph Greensmith and Joe Junior had been good cops, at least by the GCPDs standards.

Ai wasn’t.

She was something else entirely.

“Damn Tython probably thinks we’re going to go in there and erase the hostage takers commando-style,” Curthweather said.

“Can we even get through the bullet-proof glass?” Ai asked.

They couldn’t. Standard issue police weapons were intentionally rated below the specifications of the “Defense Steel Glass” that was installed in secure buildings as part of a deal between the parent company for the glass and the GCPD. “So secure even the police can’t break in” was considered a viable selling point in a city where the police were reasonably likely to be working for whichever company bid the most for their services.

“We’d need to call in a SWAT unit,” Curtweather said, “and then they’d get the response bonus.”

“Is the bonus really worth the headache of dealing with this ourselves?” Ai asked.

“Tython hasn’t raised their response fee,” Curtweather said. “If we show up and declare it an active combat site, we can keep our fee and force them to cough up some extra cash.”

“And the hostages?” Ai asked.

“The toastier they are, the more Tython’s going to be willing to pay out,” Curthweather said.

“I’m not sure how toastier we can afford to let them get,” Ai said as they pulled up to crime scene.

The Tython data center was a nondescript block of a building. Too tall to be a proper cube, it showed all the luxury that someone would spend on a building they never intended to visit or have associated with their company. If anything the gouts of flame that were pouring out of the lower windows at least gave the drab gray edifice some color.

“Zai, can you patch into whatever internal monitoring systems are still online and give me an overview of the situation in there?” Ai asked.

“Already have one prepared,” Zai said. “Our crew and the hostages are secured on the upper floor. Fire suppression systems are still enabled there but that’s not going to matter if the rest of the building goes up.”

“It’s not a sealed environment?” Ai asked.

“It is, but the floors below it are already showing signs of structural decay.”

“So they won’t burn up, but the buildings going to crumble?” Ai said calling up a copy of the building’s structural support schematics.

“Yep, unless we can get them out of there,” Zai said.

“Does our team have the data packet they were supposed to retrieve?” Ai asked.

“I can’t tell. All net traffic in and out of the building is being monitored by Tython and GCPD probes. If we try to contact them at all there’ll be a pathway that the sniffers can follow back to us.” Zai didn’t grumble, but she sounded as annoyed with the heist team as Ai was.

“Let’s assume they do have it then,” Ai said. “If they hadn’t retrieved the data they could have fled with the upfront half of the fee we paid them.”

“What if retreat wasn’t an option?” Zai asked.

“Being arrested with nothing incriminating wouldn’t have been as severe as either burning to death or being arrested with terrorism charges hanging over their head. The upfront fee would have covered their legal expenses and they would have been walking free in time for drinks during happy hour.”

“So, we assume they have the data packet. What does that get us?” Zai asked.

“A reason to pull their fat out of the fire,” Ai said. “What we need for that though is to identify the exit options that we have and understand what went wrong with the infiltration. The fire was supposed to clear everyone out of the building, not trap them all on the top floor.”

“Greensmith, you might have a point about frying the hostages. See if you can get through to Tython. Those flames aren’t looking to good anymore and the death benefits on that many employees can’t be less than our combat fee,” Curtweather said.

“Talking to Tython might help with figuring out what went wrong,” Zai suggested.

Ai tapped the building’s contact link and selected the priority police override channel. A calm voiced woman answered almost immediately.

“Officer Greensmith, how may I assist you today?” she asked.

“My partner and I are on scene at your data center,” Ai said. “We’ve declared this an active combat site and are placing an official recommendation that SWAT be deployed to handle the situation.”

“Tython acknowledges that report but declines SWAT service,” the woman said.

“We have visual confirmation of eleven Tython employees who are trapped with the hostage takers,” Ai said.

“Tython acknowledges that as well. We have positive identity scans on each of our employees who remain in the building.”

“They are in active peril. As it stands we will need an accelerated response from both SWAT and Fire Service to have any chance to save them,” Ai said.

“No response from SWAT or Fire Services will be approved or allowed,” the woman said.

“But they’re going to die!” Ai said. She didn’t have to fake the anger in her voice, but the notes of surprise and betrayal were completely illusionary. She’d checked the employees contracts, and knew what they were up against.

“Data integrity is Tython’s primary concern. The employees in question were all signed on as standard data center workers and have completed full safety waivers. We regret their loss but no data will be allowed to leave that facility in a physical form.”

“But if the hostage takers were after data they would have just transmitted it!” Ai said, knowing the statement was completely incorrect.

“We are monitoring all transmissions in and out of the data center. If there is a transmission of any data bearing our encryption we will be able to identify the source of this tragedy.”

“If that’s true, then why haven’t you canceled the alarm?” Ai asked.

“We require official presence on site to verify to our clients that the criminals responsible for this did not escape.”

“So, to be clear, our job is to watch over a dozen people burn to death?” Ai asked.

“And testify to that fact during the inquest that will be convened.”

“And if we can work out some option for saving your employees and apprehending the criminals?” Ai asked.

“If you compromise the integrity of the data center, we will pursue restitution for all of our present and future losses against any personnel involved and the GCPD in general.”

Which was exactly what Ai expected to hear.

Or rather exactly what she expected to hear if the Tython data center contained data that was more interesting than its security had suggested it would.

She’d sent her team in to dig in one of the medium security nodes Tython maintained. Theft was almost impossible in general and effectively impossible to do without arousing suspicion, so she’d planned around the suspicion by making it impossible for Tython to know what was stolen.

Their countermove of choosing to scorch the earth rather than suffer a breach revealed the value of the data that was being maintained. Ai had struck a richer vein than she’d been certain she would. What she needed was a move that would distract Tython long enough for her to snatch the prize from under their noses.

“Bad news, the top floor only exits to the roof and there’s a charged security fence that is still operational there,” Zai said.

“Can we get the fire suppression systems back online on any of the floors?” Ai asked.

“I’ve been trying,” Zai said. “It looks like they followed our plan to disable the controls, the safeties and the backups.  I would need physical access to the control junction to correct that, and that, of course, is currently on fire.”

“What’s Tython got to say?” Curtweather asked.

“The hostages are acceptable losses,” Ai said. “To them at least. If we want to save them, it’s up to us. And we’ve got to do it without letting the hostage takers get off the premises.”

“Well that’s a damn shame,” Curtweather said. “Do we still get the alarm fee?”

“Yeah, if we stay here, watch them burn, and then testify to it,” Ai said.

“Day keeps getting better and better,” Curtweather said. “I hate testifying.”

“I bet the hostages would be willing to swap positions with you,” Ai said.

“I’m sure they would, poor saps are dead already, they just don’t know it. Best thing they could do would be to storm their captors. Better a bullet than the flames if you ask me.”

“The best thing would be if we could get them out of there,” Ai said. “Anything else is just failure by another name.”

“Be careful of that kind of thinking,” Curtweather said. “Any cop who imagines he can take on the World is gonna find the World hits back a lot harder than he can.”

“I don’t need to take on the world,” Ai said. “But sitting here while people roast to a crisp in front of me while I do nothing? That’s not what I signed up for. There’s gotta be a better way to handle this than that.”

“On that note, Sidewalker, our team’s lead, just sent out an open message asking for our help. It was unencrypted and on a public feed so Tython, the GCPD and every news feed that’s watching this has seen it.” Zai said.

Ai stood at attention and waited. There were many responses she could have made to her Captain’s declaration, but silence seemed like the most fitting.

“Do you have any particular wording you’d prefer for your resignation?” Captain James asked.

Ai observed her and wondered how many new recruits had committed career suicide under Grace James’ baleful glare. She was an imposing woman. Older and broader in appearance than people in her position typically were, given the sort of bio-tech a police captain was infused with. Or should be infused with.

With the proper bio-tech cosmetics in play, no one need needed to look their actual age. At the extreme levels of integration it was difficult to even say what someone’s age truly was, but instances of that were few and far between given the costs involved. Most people aged and wore out as humans had for millennia but did so with fewer physical impairments or visible signs of the aging process at work.

In Grace James case though something had gone awry. Bio-tech could solve most physical and systemic problems in the human body, but not for everyone. Some people had extreme allergies to necessary elements in the implanted devices and nano-vehicles that insure the health of the general populace. Others had less severe reactions but couldn’t afford the higher end components required to avoid presence of the allergens in their health maintenance gear.

Being without the lower half of one’s body went well beyond a simple case of allergic response though.

Behind her desk, Captain Grace James sat not on a chair, but on a multi-tentacled throne of wires and tubes. If the office had been decorated in an blue and green theme, its owner would have made a passable sea witch.

Instead the ambiance was more slanted towards grays and harsh edges. No knick knacks, no memorabilia, no pictures. If a visitor left the Captain’s office with anything but an overwhelming sense of solid steel professionalism then they needed their input sensors inspected.

“No? Can’t think of anything?” Captain James asked.

“You asked if I had any words for a resignation letter,” Ai said, playing the role of a frightened yet defiant rookie. Her father had told her so many stories of how the department operated that she knew where the conversation was going to end from the moment she walked in the door. “I have no words because I will not be resigning.”

“You think you have a choice here?” Captain James said, staring at Ai with disbelief painted across her face.

“Resignation is always at the Officer’s discretion,” Ai said. “I’ve been reviewing the procedures manual since I left the hospital.”

“You lost a leg. That allows for a medical override,” Captain James said, a smile spreading across her face that didn’t match the intensity of her gaze.

The Big Eye in the Interrogation Room could detect subtle cues that signaled consciously false answers. Ai had no doubt whatsoever than Captain James was far more discerning. How much more discerning could be a long term problem, which meant for Ai the interview was less a matter of keeping her job and more an opportunity to assess a potential antagonist.

“The medical override only applies to decisions made during care, and only while the operating surgeon deems that the patient is sufficiently dispossessed of their senses due to the effect of strong spirits or anesthesia to decrease pain during or after the surgery,” Ai said, paraphrasing the relevant passage from the GCPD Core Procedures Manual. “Some of the rules are a bit out of date it seems.”

Getting someone drunk enough to perform surgery on them was something even the Rusties didn’t do anymore. Ai wasn’t sure if it had ever really been done given the untrustworthiness of pre-digital record keeping, but knowing human psychology she wouldn’t have bet against it.

“And the destroyed cruiser?” Captain James asked.

“The self-diagnostic from its onboard systems that I included with my preliminary report showed that the damage it sustained in the initial crash had rendered its repair cost higher than the replacement fee,” Ai said.

“You endangered your partner.”

“Our situation was a Red-1 level scenario,” Ai said. “Life expectancy against an active NME averages less than ten seconds.”

“And your actions bought the two of you at least an additional minute.” The Captain eased back onto her throne and rolled her eyes. “And may have helped trigger the cascade failure the NME experienced.”

“I can’t speak to that,” Ai said. “Forensics is still retrieving material from the scene.”

“Which will go in a large bin labeled ‘we have no idea how this could have happened but we’re sure it’ll never occur again’,” Captain James said.

“Official reports claim that researchers are close to a breakthrough,” Ai said, remaining at attention.

“You know what ‘close to a breakthrough’ means?”

“That they’re not there yet?” Ai guessed.

“Not there and not even close enough to guess at what it might be,” Captain James said. “Which brings us back to you. You survived an encounter with an NME. There aren’t many on the force that can say that. The question you should ask yourself is do you think you can do it again?”

Ai twitched at her in surprise.

Her father’s descriptions of a rough after-action debriefing had highlighted how much the Captains were tasked with weeding out the people who weren’t fit to serve. If an officer broke during their first debriefing then there was no chance they would hold up through the years of constant stress and spikes of terror that defined a career in the GCPD.

Ai knew to avoid that pitfall. What she hadn’t expected was the concern and desperation that lay under the pressure.

Captain James wasn’t trying hard at all to push Ai out. She’d started with the topic of a resignation to test the waters. If Ai had stammered or been unsure in any sense, she knew Captain James would have been on her like a shark on a bloody steak. James wanted her to leave if she was going to break, but if not, if Ai could hold things together, then James wasn’t about to throw away as good officer. Or even one that just got lucky.

“NME attacks are few and far between enough, I’m guessing it’s not likely that I would have to worry about it,” Ai said. “But I think I could, if I got very luck again.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Captain James said. “If you meet an NME again it’s because you’re luck has run out. That happens? Find a good way to die.”

“Does that mean I’ll be remaining on the force, Captain?” Ai asked.

“If you’re not going to resign then I suppose you are,” Captain James said. “I want your full report submitted by end of day today and the final report a week from now.”

“What if it takes forensics longer to close their review than a week? I thought they were pretty backed up,” Ai asked.

“They are, and they always will be. Find something that will motivate them. There’s no extension for this,” Captain James said.

Of course there wouldn’t be. The news feeds would cycle over to slamming the department a week after the event. Or rather more of them would. Some were ahead of the curve and had already started criticizing the department for failing to prevent two simultaneous attacks, despite the impossibility of even predicting such a thing could have occurred.

Ai found Curtweather returning from his own debriefing with a sour look on his face.

“You’re still here?” he asked.

“Sure,” Ai said. “I just blamed everything on you.”

Curtweather pulled up to stop, looked at Ai, and shook his head.

“Nah, you’re not that smart,” he said and started walking again.

“Observation: blaming partner will get me out of trouble,” Ai said as though recording a voice note for herself.

“It will also get you on my bad side, you don’t want to be there,” Curtweather said.

“Where are we going now?” Ai asked. “I haven’t seen any new orders from Dispatch yet.”

“They also haven’t canceled the old ones yet,” Curtweather said.

“The ones for the Tython break-in?” Ai asked.

“The same.”

“I thought we were too late for that?”

“We are. Much too late,” Curtweather said. “But if Tython didn’t think to put a stop command on their alarm then we can still claim the service fee.”

“No fine for me then?” Ai asked.

“There’s a downside to every plan,” Curtweather said.

Another cruiser awaited them in the motor pool. The one they’d requested for transport back to the station was a deputized civilian model; none of the perks that came with an official cruiser at twice the going rate! The only thing it had going for it was availability and even that was unreliable.

Ai registered with the new, and official, cruiser, letting Zai handle the click through licensing agreements, while Ai dug around looking for more information on the NME attacks.

The timing had been conveniently coincidental with the break-in. That was fortunate for the thieves since it took attention away the alarms when resources could have been scrambled in time to catch them. On a broader level though it also established a connection between the break-in and the still unknown source of the NME eruptions.

That bothered Ai. Tython wasn’t supposed to be connected to the NMEs. Not via any direct channels. Either there was a much deeper connection there or someone was trying to forge a chain of evidence where one didn’t exist.

“You want to drive this time?” Curtweather asked.

“Worried about signing the personal liability form?” Ai asked.

“Maybe this is a test,” Curtweather said.

It wasn’t. Ai knew Curtweather’s accounts weren’t at risk either. He could handle a full replacement claim if he needed to. But that would raise its own set of questions, and with 80% of his holdings coming from “non-official” sources, he was justifiably concerned about losing another cruiser any time soon.

“Let’s hope I pass then,” Ai said, happy to be behind the wheel.

With proper certification some people were still allowed partial control over the mechanical aspects of driving a car. Ai had never understood where the joy in that lay. Sure, on a track or a race course driving could be fun, but on city streets? Only a masochist liked the constant need to pay attention to the flow of traffic and pedestrians. The moment she and Curtweather were buckled in, Ai turned over control of the cruiser to its onboard systems and gave it the Tython building’s address to navigate to. That gave her time to plan a dinner appointment and call up details on the Tython site from the official records.

They were halfway to the building when the first preliminary reports came in.

“Wait, this can’t be right, can it?” she asked, flicking the virtual report sheet over to Curtweather.

He took a long moment reading it, long enough that Ai was able to check the live video feed to confirm what the report said.

“Well that explains why they haven’t canceled the alarm yet,” Curtweather said, looking up from the report.

The live feed showed a building that was partially aflame on its lower floors. Most of the attention from the various onlookers though was centered around the top floor where the bullet proof glass of the windows was acting as a formidable defense for the hostage takers who had corralled the building’s relatively sparse staff into a single room and were using hand written signs to communicate with the outside world.

“Those have to be the stupidest thieves I’ve ever seen,” Curthweather said. “And believe me that’s making it to the top position on a very long list.”

Ai couldn’t stop staring at the scene. Flames rapidly devouring the lower floors and spreading just like flame loves to do. Hostage takers above the flames with dozens of innocents in danger and their demands were for a getaway car (which they couldn’t possibly reach) and two dozen Saucy Sally’s Pizzas (which no one could possibly deliver to them).

“I really shouldn’t have hired those guys should I?” she thought.

“At least it was only half up front,” Zai offered.

Ai woke feeling light, unconcerned, and very tired. Each of sensation was an effect of a different chemical in the cocktail of drugs that Zai was administering to her through the Cognitive Partner shell that was supposed to take care for her medical well being.

“Vacation’s over buttercup,” Curtweather said.

If Zai could have medicated him away, Ai would have been tempted to indulge in whatever drugs were required to make it happen. Instead she let her eyelids open slowly and tried to take in room around her.

Dull walls that were once white but had faded to a sickly yellow. Just enough space in the room for the bed she was lying on, and a couple of chairs. In the place of a door there was a curtain that had been drawn to close off the entryway.

“Where am I?” she asked.

“You’re lucky, you’re in a medi-mart,” Curtweather said.

“Lucky people don’t wind up in hospitals,” Ai said, slurring the words a little as the anesthesia drained out of her system. Zai could have brought her to full wakefulness, but she still needed time to heal and the fatigue was an effective method of communicating that.

“When the alternative is landing in the morgue?” Curtweather said. “Then yes, making it to a hospital room is where lucky people wind up.”

Ai pushed herself up in bed to a sitting position. To her relief, both of her legs appeared to be present.

“What happened?” she asked.

“You disobeyed orders and got your left leg blown clean off,” Curtweather said.

“Sounds like some bad luck to me,” Ai said.

“NMEs don’t go for leg shots,” Curtweather said. “The plasma bolt that hit you should have vaporized your head.”

“I guess I was moving around too much.” Ai said.

“Nope it was pure luck. The things tracking system was on the fritz. Turns out going berserk wasn’t the only bug in that NMEs systems. The walking dumpster heap couldn’t shoot straight or repair itself properly.”

“What does that mean?” Ai asked, wondering how the GCPD were going to play the event. Anything from “Heroic Rookie Cop Risks Own Life to Stop NME Menace!” to “Loose Cannon Maverick Pays the Price for Her Arrogance.”

“It means the only reason the thing didn’t kill you was that it was in the process of dying already,” Curtweather said. “All you had to do was stay still for another sixty seconds and we would have been safe.”

“It could have targeted the civilians though,” Ai said, massaging the numb area of her leg where her bio-tech was busy reconnecting and regrowing the bone and tissue that had been lost to the plasma beam.  

Most of the work had already been done.

“I followed the standard recovery protocol,” Zai said inside Ai’s mind. “You’ll be good to walk on the leg in another few minutes, but no strenuous activity for at least six hours.”

“Nice work there,” Ai said. “What sort of scarring am I looking at?”

“Grade 3,” Zai said. “You’ll be getting cosmetic flesh shaping advertisements for the next few months. I can reduce the scar tissue faster than any of them could if you would like?”

“No, these are marks I should be treating like a badge of honor,” Ai said. “Being ‘injured in the line of duty’ gives me a story to tell next time we have to attend a social function.”

Ai blinked and swung her attention back to Curtweather.

“You’re going to have to learn how to set your priorities Greensmith,” Curtweather said. “For example, we missed the call for the Tython break-in thanks to your little stunt. The bill back penalty is being charged to your account.”

“It’s what?” Ai asked, weaving not-entirely feigned outrage into her voice.

“Want me to bounce the penalty back?” Zai asked. “The cruiser was damaged through no fault of yours. Curtweather should be the one billed for the delay according to the GCPD Standard Employment Contract.”

“Tempting, but we don’t want to draw too much attention to that break-in,” Ai said internally. “Let’s eat this one. Looking broke isn’t a bad thing for us at this point.”

“What happened to the civilians?” Ai asked aloud.

“One of them tried to loot you, but I chased her off,” Curtweather said. “The rest ran as soon as the NME fell apart.”

“Did Highfall ever show up?” Ai asked.

“Not for us, thank the lord of money,” Curtweather said. “They were still scrambling I guess but the Black Valkyries beat them to the fight on that other NME that you saw.”

“The Black Valkyries were there?”

Ai called up a info sheet from the city-wide newsfeed.

Based on the timing, the Valkyries had been in the area when the attacks started. They’d engaged the other NME sixty three seconds after the one Ai took out shut down. Their battle had lasted seven minutes and nine seconds, of which six minutes and forty one seconds had been spent clearing the battlefield of potential civilian casualties and leading the NME to an uninhabited block.

In an earlier age, the Black Valkyries would have been an urban myth. A quintet of warriors clad in armor and bearing weapons beyond the likes of any available to the world at large. They showed up when trouble arose, protected people, vanquished the monster in question and then disappeared without asking for thanks or payment.

As much as the public was terrified of the threat the NMEs posed, they were equally in love with the Valkyries. Thirty years ago, when the first bio-tech plague had nearly wiped out the world, there hadn’t been anyone like the Valkyries to stand against the monsters that emerged. For as much as the world seemed to be teetering on the brink of another melt down, the Valkyries gave people hope. Knowing that there was one group of good guys out there suggested that there had to be others, and that if things got back enough there was someone who could come and save the terrified masses from the techno-predators that were set to drive them into extinction.

In Ai’s case, her hopes were slightly different from the rest of the population. She embraced the hope that she hoped she wasn’t going to have to move against the Valkyries at any point. Conflict with the mysterious heroes didn’t seem likely, the Black Valkyries were a useful resource if nothing else, but there was enough hidden about them that Ai couldn’t quite trust their intentions.

“You’ve lain around long enough,” Curtweather said. “Time to get back to the station and enter our reports in.”

“Is this going to be in front of the Big Eye?” Ai asked.

The Big Eye was one of the departments more unique features. With improvements to bio-tech, the need for a giant apparatus to remotely measure vital signs and monitor micro-expressions had passed away. The GCPD still kept a few around though. The story was that the intimidation value of seeing a giant all-seeing eye hovering over you tended to loosen  the tongues of recalcitrant individuals. In practice was just creepy and tended to jangle up the vitals in whoever it was supposed to be monitoring so that everyone looked like a criminal. That may have made arrests easier to justify but it rankled Ai as sloppy and unprofessional.

That the Eye was likely to validate whatever reprimand they chose to throw at her wasn’t her chief concern but it did place the Eye on the list of things to demolish as time permitted.

“No, you get to report to Captain James directly, she loves chewing up newbies who make stupid rookie mistakes,” Curtweather said,

Ai sighed and slipped off the recovery bed. Her bio-tech was in proper working order and the bill for the leg re-attachment service had already passed through GCPD insurance and landed in her account.

“It seems unfair to pay that one given that I did all actual work,” Zai said.

“Well worth the money to keep your privacy intact,” Ai said internally, and shooed Curtweather out of the room so she could get dressed.

She found her belongings in a sealed case mounted to the wall. There was a recovery fee linked to the lock. She paid it in the interest of expediency. Inside were her police issued uniform, including a repaired set of ballistic armored pants and her regulation side arm.

“Zai, are there any personnel here?” Ai asked.

“This medi-shop has a staff of six,” Zai said.

“Did any of them help with my transport or was it all automated?” Ai asked.

“One of the orderlies helped carry you in and corrected the repair arms when they froze up,” Zai said.

“Are they still around?” Ai asked.

“Yes, they’re still on duty for two more hours,” Zai said.

“Glitch the payment system for the personal effects box then and recall the funds we transferred.”

“Done.”

Ai exited the small room and found herself in the lobby of the medi-shop. There were nine other service rooms, all empty in the small storefront operation.

With the advent of cheap bio-tech, the big hospitals of yesteryear had given way to cheap bio-tech repair centers and the exclusive full-service medical resorts the wealthy enjoyed access to.

“Ready to go?” Curtweather asked.

“One second,” Ai said, spying her target emerging from one of the empty service rooms.

“Excuse me, are you an employee here?,” she asked, catching the orderlies attention. The woman was old, and not especially well off given how few cosmetic alterations her bio-tech provided.

“Take any billing complaints up with the head office,” the woman said.

“It’s not a complaint,” Ai said. “The box with my belongings popped open when I went to pay.”

“That’s what they usually do,” the woman said.

“Except it didn’t take my payment,” Ai said. “So I was wondering if I deposit the money through you?”

“Why?” the woman asked.

“Because I know how flakey hospitals can be,” Ai said.. “If your parent corp doesn’t get their money, they’ll put a blacklist on my account, and I don’t have the money to get that removed.”

“You’re a cop though?” the woman asked.

“I am but they don’t let us shoot the kind of people I’d need to if I wanted to get a medi-corp off my back.”

It was a joke but both Ai and the woman exchanged a longing look for homicide to be a viable alternative in that case. With a nod, Ai transferred the fee into Khalindi Sensivana’s account with a little extra added as a ‘Service Fee’.

“And the plan here is what exactly?” Zai asked

“Always good to have friendly contacts in unexpected places,” Ai said.

“What if she pockets the whole fee?” Zai asked.

“Then I’ve got a little bit of corruption to hold over her,” Ai said. “That’s almost better than a friend.”

The trip back to the station was free of any more NME attacks. No surprise there, berserk bio-monsters didn’t appear that frequently.

Ai spent the trip back pretending to listen to Curtweather’s deliberately horrible advice on how to approach her first after-incident report to their Captain. With her spare attention, she scoured the news feeds looking for references to herself in the reports on the NME attack, and any data she could collect on the Black Valkyries.

They were a mystery to everyone else, but that didn’t mean they had to be a mystery to her.

Ai was in the middle of parsing a report on the incident she’d been a part of, diving ever deeper into the fragmentary details that should have identified the woman who’d held her when she was injured when Curtweather jostled her shoulder.

“Get your head off the net, rookie, we’re here.”

In front of them a door with the words “Captain Grace James – GCPD Division 15” stood like the gate to a unique sort of hell.

“Greensmith, in. Curtweather, report to the Eye.” a heavy voice from inside the room said.

Ai entered as instructed and found her Captain waiting for her with a dour expression.

“Less than a week on the payroll and you’ve trashed one of our cruisers and hit our insurance with a major traumatic injury claim. Let’s talk about the wording on your resignation letter shall we?”

The civilians were a problem. Always. Being a cop in Gamma City meant that in one sense or another, the civilians were either causing the problem, aiding the problem, or exacerbating it by being in the problem’s line of fire. From what Ai could see it was possible that the batch of noncombatants behind the rampaging NME filled all three categories.

“Dispatch, we have two hostile NMEs in our current zone, one within personal weapon fire range,” Ai said, following the procedure that had been drilled into her at the academy.

The GCPD was not, technically, a military force, despite fielding more armed members that all but twelve of the world’s largest political entities. The prime differentiator between a GCPD cop and a soldier for the Northern Free Cities was that the cops were not expected to engage enhanced individuals as they lacked both the firepower and training to survive such encounters.

Ai wasn’t concerned about the lack of training. She’d spent a long time studying a variety of things the average cop had no reason to look into. The issue of firepower however was a problematic one.

Ramming the NME with an exploding patrol cruiser hadn’t ended the threat the bio-enhanced beast presented, but she hadn’t expected it to either. Neuro-Muscular Enhanciles were the result of so-called “hard bio-tech”, specifically technology that went beyond squishy organic solutions to problems and started incorporating transhuman, weaponized elements into the user’s physiology. In the case of berserk NMEs that went beyond converting parts of the user’s body to hardware. The out of control bio-tech constructed almost completely mechanical bodies around the original human host. Whoever the human was at the heart of the NME didn’t seem to matter. Their personalities were gone, and their minds were a substrate for the programmed directive of the bio-tech that had become an ever transforming beast of rage and violence.

With armor woven together from any metal it could scrounge from the environment, NMEs grew harder to destroy the longer they persisted. The exploding cruiser had blown away close to a foot of metallic hide off the NME in front of Ai but the beast was recovering quickly, incorporating the wreckage of the cruiser into its lumbering exobody.

“We’re dead,” Curtweather said.

“Not yet,” Ai said. “Dispatch knows what’s happening. They’ll get Highfall in here won’t they?”

They wouldn’t. Ai knew that. Highfall was the military task force charged with answering the sort of tactical threats that NMEs posed. Threats that were beyond the GCPD’s capability to put down or contain. The Highfall troopers had the armor and weapons to survive an engagement with an NME. Or at least that was the theory.

In practice the capabilities of the NMEs were difficult to predict and that had resulted in Highfall fatalities in every engagement in the previous six months.

Highfall would be scrambled therefor, but only if the NME’s moved towards one of the more prosperous neighborhoods. Within a Rusty slum, there was neither the property value nor anyone of sufficient credit-worth to risk endangering the expensive Highfall materiel for. Even two GCPD cops could be replaced more cheaply than a Highfall combat unit.

“NME unit is sixty two seconds away from from full combat functionality.”

Only Ai heard the voice which informed of her that. All cops had Cognitive Partner systems. For most people, Partner systems were no more than automated search engines and advertising dispensers. They offered publicly accessible information about whatever the user’s vision rested on for more than a few seconds, and tried to upsell them at every opportunity.  For police officers the Partners also acted as documentation systems and order handlers. They also handled warrants and remote judgements in situations where exceptional authority was requested or required.

Ai had one of those, like every other officer, and then there was Zai.

“Understood,” Ai said, forming the words silently in her mind. “Initiate infiltration protocol and inform me when you have substrate level access.”

Ai wasn’t going to fight the NME from the outside. Not when she could remotely override its systems at a core hardware level.

“Link established. Barrier strippers deployed,” Zai said.

Ai kept her expression grim and worried while her heart floated light and unconcerned.

Zai wasn’t a Cognitive Partner. Not anymore. The simple bio-mechanical expert system Ai had been given as a child to monitor her health and help with her education was long gone. Zai had technically evolved from that simplistic tool, but like a human replacing worn out blood cells, Ai had pushed her Cognitive Partner so far beyond its original specs that none of the original pieces, either hardware or software, were left.

Modifying your own bio-tech was against the law, a crime punishable by fines large enough to crush medium sized corporations much less private individuals, as well as forfeiture of all licensed bio-tech. Ai had known that when she started tinkering with the micro-machines inside herself when she 8 years old, but she’d also known she wouldn’t get caught. No one suspected a child of having the insight or patience to modify sophisticated and proprietary machinery, especially not machinery which regulated their health.

To Ai though, the basic bio-tech she was fitted with wasn’t hers. It was alien matter someone had put into her body. She understood the need and value for it but the fundamental wrongness of existing with devices that were outside her control forced her to do the one thing that made sense – make the tech her own.

“Substrate level access achieved,” Zai said, silently in Ai’s mind. “How would you like to ruin the NME’s day?”

Ai checked the time. Thirty seven seconds left before the NME regained full functionality. The civilians were still within its killzone and the fragment of collapsed highway she and Curtweather were hiding behind would stand up to no more than a few seconds worth of barrage fire.

All in all it was a better encounter with an NME than most of the one’s Ai had planned for.

“Wait three milliseconds after it triggers its primary fire mechanism, then remove its pain inhibitors. Make it look like a cascade failure,” Ai said.

“Shut down the primary fire too?” Zai asked.

“No, let that go,” Ai said. “We want it to look like its repairs were glitched and it blew itself up. It’d be too convenient if its guns shut down just as it became dangerous again.”

“Surviving this at all is going to look pretty convenient,” Zai said.

“I’m aware,” Ai said. “What’s the spec on its primary gun?”

“It’s assembled three primary system,” Zai said. “Two chemical cannons and an anti-air plasma beam thrower.”

“Cycle it’s attack priority to the beam thrower for ground targets,” Ai said.

“No need, that already what it’s locked on,” Zai said.

“Good.”

“Which body part do you want it to target?” Zai asked.

“Log it as targeting center mass, but scramble the input signal to show that it’s tracking as being off by one to one and a half meters.”

“Leg shot it is.”

There were all sorts of safety systems built into standard Cognitive Partners to prevent the expert systems from harming their user, or allowing them to knowingly harm themselves. That Zai was capable of understanding the necessity of shooting her human companion spoke volumes about the sort of creature she had become.

“Even if they scramble Highfall now, we’ll be dead when they get here,” Curtweather said, still discussing the conversation that was moving at meat-space speeds.

“Then we have to draw it away from those civilians,” Ai said as she heard the NME’s systems whir fully to life.

“Civilian Address System, Visual Targets,” Ai said aloud, glancing out from cover to identify the small group of people beyond the NMEs. “Police order: Hold your position until the hostile moves away, then seek safety to the north along this route.”

The Cognitive Partner she’d installed to camouflage Zai’s presence interfaced with the police communications grid, identified most (but not all) of the civilians who were present and transmitted to Ai’s message to them as a Priority Communique. No matter what sort of filtering software they had or what deficiencies their bio-tech suffered, the Priority channel would (most likely) reach them.

“They’re not worth it!” Curtweather said.

“It’s our job!” Ai said.

It wasn’t, but it sounded in character for her, and Ai had a lot of experience playing the character people expected her to be.

“Listen we don’t have to beat it,” she said. “We just need to get away. I’ll distract it, you target its visual systems. If it can’t track us, we and the civilians can get farther away without being blasted to pieces.”

Curtweather’s gun was already in his hand so Ai didn’t waste time waiting for his reply, just nodded as though he’d agreed with her and turned to dash out from behind their cover. She made it almost two feet past the pile of fallen asphalt before pain exploded her world to pieces.

The primitive areas of her brain informed Ai that someone had smashed her left leg off with a pointed sledgehammer. And that she was on fire.

Neither impression was wholly accurate but the force of the plasma bolt did sent her spinning in mid-air. Zai took over for the Cognitive Partner and shut down the pain receptors from Ai’s leg. That gave Ai the clarity to return fire at the NME. With Zai’s help targeting the sensor array was trivial but damaging it was another matter.

It was a rookie mistake to underestimate how armored the NME’s sensors would be. Humans had vulnerable optic systems, but battle forged combat beasts were another matter. Under pressure that was exactly the sort of fact people were likely to forget though and expert systems weren’t a help either. At least not the ones issued to the GCPD. Cops weren’t supposed to fight NMEs, so the systems didn’t include tactical analysis packages for them. The routines were too costly to install.

Ai crashed to the ground and skidded to a halt on the open road. A foolish young cop who drew the worst possible luck on one of her early patrols. With no cover, no backup, and no defenses only a miracle could save her.

Another plasma bolt blasted the ground in front of her and Ai struggled to pull herself farther away. She was leaving a leg behind but she still had to suppress a smile. Her miracle was already in progress. If it wasn’t the second bolt would have put a hole through her torso the size of a basketball.

The next shot was wildly off target, streaking meaninglessly into the sky.

The rattle of heavy cannon fire drilling into the group sounded like a scream of anguish to Ai’s ears because that’s exactly what it was.

Without its pain suppressors, the human body at the center of the NME was in agony beyond mortal tolerance. The bio-tech in the beast fought to bring its host under control but its repair routines weren’t crippled and failing, one after the other.

Bit by bit the mechanic monster tore itself apart, system after system crashing and taking a dozen others with it.

“You need to rest,” Zai said. “Your regen systems are supposed to be taxed to their limits here.”

“Knock me out then,” Ai said. “If I look like a beautiful corpse I might get some sympathy points from the captain.”

“To look like a beautiful corpse, you’d have to look beautiful first,” Zai said.

“Ouch, you wound me,” Ai said.

“I’m not the one who decided to let her leg get blown off,” Zai said. “So pleasant dreams about that.”

Pain-free darkness washed over Ai, but sluiced away almost as quickly as it arrived.

“That was quick,” Ai said in her head.

“Yeah, one of the civilians picked you up and I figured you didn’t want her looting your body before the medi-van showed up.”

Ai flickered her eyes open and found a tattooed woman holding her. A Rusty from the low grade bits of tech that pierced her skin in various places, and from her rail thin figure. The woman’s expression wasn’t frightened or concerned. She looked mildly angry instead. The expression suited her. Or it was honest, and that was refreshing.

Ai knew that the chemical bath Zai had dumped into her brain meats was scrambling her thoughts – some things couldn’t be flushed instantly – but despite that it was nice to have someone holding her when she was traumatically injured.

“Is everyone ok?” Ai asked aloud, meaning the civilians. Curtweather could turn corpse and it might be a net gain for the world. The civilians on the other hand might be aggravating, and financially worthless, but that made saving them even more of a pleasant bonus.

“No, you’re injured,” the woman said. She cast a glance over towards the NME and her scowl deepened.

“Oh, well that’s good,” Ai said, and let Zai pull her back down into unconsciousness.

No matter how hard the rain fell, it couldn’t wash the past away. As the blood and oil and rare volatiles sluiced down into the storm drains, they took with them the evidence of what had occurred but left behind the unalterable truth.

“He didn’t have a chance, did he?” Ai said, tying her end of the mylar tent to an ornate spike that rose from top of an old brick wall the barely identifiable body was crumpled beside.

“First time seeing a dead body Greensmith?” her partner, Curtweather asked. There was no tenderness or caring in the question. It was a blunt blade looking for an opening to needle her through. It was how the GCPD treated new recruits.

“Seeing a dead body? No. Seeing one that’s this mangled? Yes. The one’s they brought into the forensics courses were more…intact.”

“Pretty gross isn’t it?” Curtweather asked, the smile on his face suggesting that he was waiting for Ai to show the traditional sign of weakness.

She could have faked vomiting, but that would escalate the taunting, which she had neither the time nor the appetite for.

“It’s strange,” she said. “According to his bio-telematics, his readings flatlined ten hours ago but the cause of death was instantaneous. A single cranial blow that destroyed all function.”

“Yeah, someone blew his brains out,” Curtweatherr said, forcing his corner of the mylar sheet to stay in place by wrapping it a light post and tying it into a crude knot.

“Why do all the other damage then?” Ai asked.

“Oh, you do not want an answer to that question,” Curtweather said. “They should have taught you that at the academy. The kind of sick things we deal with? You don’t want to go crawling around in their heads trying to understand them. They’re just not human anymore and if you think too much like them, you won’t be either.”

“Didn’t need the academy to teach me that,” Ai said. “My dad made it clear how messed up people were from the day I could walk.”

“Yeah, he knew the score, and even with that look where it got him?” Curtweather said.

Ai suppressed the rage that boiled in her. She’d done it so often that it was reflexive. Some emotions could be shared. Others were part of her private reserve of psychic fuel.

“Units Curtweather and Greensmith, report status.”

The words echoed in both their audio feeds and scrolled in the general priority alert line that was superimposed over their vision.

“Site secured at present coordinates,” Curtweather said. “Casualty confirmed and identified as Kevin Blasmidtz. Awaiting forensics units for full site eval.”

“Forensics unit dispatched. Prepare to receive new order.”

“Oh this is going to be great,” Curtweather grumbled.

“They can’t pull us off this scene yet,” Ai said, knowing that Dispatch was quite capable of doing whatever Dispatch wanted. “We need to maintain the chain of custody for the evidence until we can turn it over to the Fors team.”

“You newbies are so adorable,” Curtweather said as their new orders began scrolling across their vision.

“Patrol allocation limit reached for Block WC-24-60. Further police presence suspended awaiting Block Council credit extension. Unit Ai Greensmith will proceed to City Center for investigation into automated complaint at Tython Data Center CC-05-01.”

“Seriously?” Ai said aloud. “We’re leaving this with a tarp to cover the scene and a bill to get the forensics team in here?”

“Yeah, and the tarp will be on the bill too,” Curtweather said. “Get in the cruiser, every minute we’re still here is volunteer work.”

They were on Inter-City 5 traveling east into the heart of the Gamma City mega-metro area before Ai judged it was safe to speak again.

“I thought murder and other capital crimes were supposed to have automatic enforcement extensions,” she said. She knew what Curtweather’s answer would be but as the daughter of “Joseph Greensmith, Martyr Cop” she had an image of stubborn righteousness that people expected her to live up to.

“Wasn’t a murder,” Curtweather said without taking his eyes off the road.

Traffic was its typical snarled mess, but the complaint they were responding to originated in one of the city’s “gold zones” so they were able to use the priority lanes without accruing enough “special usage fees” to bankrupt each of them through their next seven lifetimes.

“I’ve seen some extreme Yoga before, but even someone with a spine made out of silly string couldn’t have pretzeled themselves like that,” Ai said.

“Doesn’t matter,” Curtweather said. “Without a bondable eye witness, only the lead forensic tech can make a cause of death ruling. It’s beyond scrubs like us.”

“Forensics isn’t going in there until Block W24 pays for it though,” Ai said.

“Yeah, and without a murder to prosecute there’s not much call for the Block Council to pay for the Forensic boys. It’s a nice system. Keeps us from getting too busy with the Bronzers and missing out on serving the people who really matter,” Curtweather said.

“The City Center crowd?”

“The very same.”

“They don’t pay for us though,” Ai said. “We’re supported two hundred and three to one by the other Block Councils.”

“Sure we are,” Curtweather said. “Salary, pension, and health-tech, all provided for by the good people of Gamma City. You tell me how that works out for you over the next few months.”

Ai swallowed another gout of rage. As if she didn’t know what life was like on a cop’s salary. As if she hadn’t seen her father struggling to get them by through the endless rounds of budget cuts and salary rollbacks. She’d been lucky, growing up a solid Silver citizen. It wasn’t an easy life but compared to the Bronzers, or even worse the Rusties, she knew she should be grateful.

Instead she was silent. Curtweather would fill in the explanations of her behavior that she needed him to believe and she didn’t have to say a word to make it happen.

She was Joseph Greensmith’s daughter, so of course she’d be idealistic and a knee-jerk reactionary against corruption. She would believe all kinds of fairy tales about honor and justice and being sworn the path of the righteous. People wanted to see her as “a chip off the old block”, just like her brother had been, and that’s what they would see.

“So who is our travel time being billed to?” she asked.

The GC Police Academy relied on “accelerated programs”, in part due to the high turnover in the police force ranks. The instructors focused almost entirely on the practical aspects of the job, with a few classes covering the fundamentals of law and advanced disciplines related to police work like forensics, investigation, and special response squads. Back office information like how billing was handled was omitted as irrelevant to a cop’s day to day work. An officer was supposed to obey the Dispatching directives routed to them without question. They didn’t need to know how billing was handled or what each minute of their time was billed out at.

“Probably the block we were in,” Curtweather said. “At least until we cross into the City Center. Depends on the client we’re responding to though. If it’s a serious one then they’ll pick up the whole bill just to make sure we’re not delayed.”

“Is the Tython Group a serious client?” Ai asked. On her display more data about the Tython group appeared than Curtweather could have accessed with a year’s salary. Ai didn’t need it. She’d already memorized everything there was to know about Tython, but her mind worked best when she could free link data bits together and, for that, having it all on tap was a convenient thing.

“They’re not one of mine, but they could be huge,” Curtweather said. “You never know who owns who, or which of these ‘Divisions’ or ‘Groups’ or ‘Subsidiaries’ are part of some world spanning super corporation.”

“All that power and not one of them can stop the NME attacks though,” Ai said.

Neuro-Muscular Enhanciles were the topic of the day across the board on the major news feeds. Curtweather just grunted.

“That’s been blown so out of proportion,” he said. “The Highfall Recon guys are being sold short on what they can do.”

“The NME rampage last week put a half dozen of them in the morgue until the Black Valkyries showed up. And that was just one NME right?” Ai asked.

“That was a raw deal,” Curtweather said. “The Highfall guys were called in late, the critter had dug in, and it was on a electric substation. I mean that was the perfect storm of bad karma for them to walk into.”

“Still though it was just one,” Ai said. “How bad could one enhancile be?”

It was a rookie question, the kind that baited stories out of more experienced officers. Ai knew that and she knew the stories Curtweather was going to tell, but she needed him to tell them.

“You ever meet one, you don’t ask that question, you just get the hell out of there,” Curtweather said.

“Sounds like you’ve seen an NME?” Ai asked.

“Yeah, there’s ones that don’t show up on the news feeds,” Curtweather said. “Ones that are smart enough to start off in the Rusties slums. Nobody transmits about those, but they still send in the Highfall guys after us suckers provide target confirmation and sit reps.”

“I thought our ordinance was supposed to be rated for anything up to a Bio-Berserker,” Ai asked.

“Sure, and if you see any fifty year old tech monsters lumbering around you can take all the pot shots at them that you like,” Curtweather said. “These NME’s are a new breed, new military tech if you ask me, and what we got ain’t enough to tickle them.”

Ai was only half listening to his words. Her attention was captured by a stream of light that cut through one of the building on her side of the car.

“How fast of a response time does Highfall have?” Ai asked, letting real concern show in her voice.

“They’re pretty quick, ten minutes or so, why’s that?” Curtweather asked.

“Something’s throwing out canon fire with enough tracers to make it look like a laser beam,” Ai said. “We’ve got to stop and check it out.”

Curtweather floored the gas pedal.

“We’ll need to take the next exit,” Ai said.

“No we won’t. If that’s an NME then we want nothing to do with it.”

“If it’s an NME then a lot of people are going to die unless we call in Highfall,” Ai said.

“Over there? In a Rusty slum? Don’t worry about it, it’s not like they’re real people in there,” Curtweather said just in time for the road to split open in front of them.

Ai felt herself lurched as the collision prevention systems grabbed control from Curtweather and fought to bring the vehicle to as safe a stop as was mechanically possible.

As it turned out ‘safe’ was a highly relative term. The automatic system did manage to stop the car well before it plunged over the collapsed section of the InterCity highway. Through the smoke and dust though a far worse danger emerged.

Ai knew the thing before her had once been human. In broad terms it still held a reflection of that, with a head, torso and limbs that were cast in a gross parody of what they had once been. In place of flesh and blood though there was nothing except writhing metal, flailing cables and a programmed weapon arsenal that was molecularly engineered from the debris the creature’s rampage had created.

Ten thousand details leapt into Ai’s mind all at once. The positions of the NME, the contents of their environment, the geometry of nearby cover and damaged areas.

The police cruiser wasn’t an oasis of safety, but it could be a distraction. She loaded a program on a delay into its automatic controls.

Her weapon was useless. That stayed in its holster. Safer to discard it entirely but the replacement cost would be difficult to justify.

Her optical feed was her best weapon. That got synced live back to Dispatch on a priority channel with the billing option set as a pass through charge to Highfall HQ.

“Get out of the car on three,” she said.

“Are you crazy? That thing will kill us,” Curtweather said.

“I’ve set the cruiser to ram it and engage pursuit mode. The battery was cracked in the crash just now, pursuit mode will blow it wide open.”

Curtweather’s dissatisfaction with her plan found expression is a stream of profanity but he bailed out of the cruiser on her count of three.

The NME belched fire at the car as it roared toward it and then opened up with a pair of arm cannons that stripped the “bullet resistant” hull off like it was made of tinfoil. Despite the abuse though, the cruiser engaged pursuit mode fifty milliseconds before making contact with the NME and, as Ai calculated, then exploded thirty milliseconds later.

Ai dove flat behind a chunk of rubble roughly twice the size of the car. Thanks to the cruiser’s acceleration profile, she and Curtweather were able to scramble behind it in time to be shielded from the blast.

That was the good news.

The bad news came when Ai peeked around the corner of the rubble and saw the NME getting back on it’s feet. It had lost a large chunk of its outer shell but the human inside, or what was left of them, was still functional.

The worse news could have been that, following the blast, the NME was oriented on Ai, having identified her as the primary threat facing it.

That would have been the worst news of the day, except Ai saw a group of children huddled on the far side of the NME and she knew the moment she shook it’s attention from herself, they would be next in it’s line of fire.