"Huh." Cassie breaks the silence in the car. "Just realized today is Vince's birthday."

"I hope he believes it's more real than I did." I say.

"If he doesn't, something is incredibly wrong, and I'm going to kill Mara again."

"She deserves more than just twice."

"I'd drink to that if we weren't going to fight in an hour."

"You can drink a lot after." I let the conversation fade while a thought grows in my mind. "Hey Cassie?"

"I don't like that tone." She says.

"Sorry. I just wanted to tell you that if I get shot-"

"Oh no, fuck that." Cassie immediately cuts me off. "Don't give me the 'if I die make sure you move on' conversation. We're either both surviving, or both dying."

"No! That's not what I'm trying to say. Although, now that you bring up the topic…"

"What did you want to say?" She asks quickly.

"I need to show you something." I turn away and pull my hair out of the way. I retract the skin plates around my neck, giving her a clear view of me. "You should see a little card that's slotted into my body. That's my brain, me. If any of my coolant lines get ruptured, and we can't fix it, I need you to grab me and leave my body behind." My voice starts to break up at the thought of leaving Kara's gift behind.

"Alright." She reassures me. "I just squeeze the two metal bits and pull?" She guesses.

"Yeah. I don't know if I actually need electricity to survive for a long period of time, so just ask Lance or whoever survived for help hooking me up to the car."

"I can do that, but you're going to be fine. I'll make sure of it."

"I'll do my best to not jump in front of any bullets this time."

"That'll be a first." She says with a small smile. "I'm not sure you'll be able to stop yourself."

"Probably not, but I'll try." I need to change the subject away from me dying. That's not a safe conversation while Corax is scouting. "How do you feel, Clover?"

She shrugs in response.

"Do you think you can handle this?" Cassie asks. "If you collapse, we're not waiting for you."

"Kismet thinks I can, so I guess I do too." She says quietly. "And you're fine to leave me behind if I can't. I won't be sad if I become us once again."

"Vince will be, and I don't want to give him any bad news. So make sure you either make it, or stay behind." Cassie says.

"I will."

Corax lands on our open windowsill out of nowhere.

"Clear." He reports, and takes off to inform the other car.

"I still don't like that we sent him to check the route." Cassie says.

"Mara already knows." Clover says.

"I know, you said that. It still feels like we lost our surprise anyway."

Corax swoops past our front window before taking off into the bright sky again. I track his tiny black form for as long as I can.

Just fifteen minutes later we catch a glimpse of the covering for Mara's trench. It's just a flat metal covering. A small section of it has already been lifted up, forming a small door welcoming us inside.

I plug myself into the car and drive by wire, drawing my pistols and keeping them at the ready. Cassie's doing the same with Vince's rifle, and Clover has a rifle of her own.

I park the car a few hundred feet away from the entrance and step out, everyone from the other car doing the same.

Wordlessly, Lance steps in front of us, and we all take our positions. Nimda passes me a cord, and I plug myself in. I'm not going to be able to hear anything once things get crazy, but everyone being networked together through Nimda makes communicating easy. Except for Cassie and Corax that is, but Nimda can just pass me whatever they say.

We've practiced this, we know what we're doing. Don't think, just act.

Lance begins to creep forward, and I stay as close to him as I can without disrupting him or Cassie. Clover stays behind me, doing her absolute best to keep her head up and pay attention. Nimda stays behind her, slowly shuffling along, and Lance takes up the rear.

Lance reaches the stairs and I activate the CPU denial device. I aim it exclusively in front of us, leaving Nimda to do the same to our sides. Hopefully that should disable most people in the bunker, if we're lucky.

Lance starts down the stairs, with Cassie just behind him. A single shot rings out through the canyon.

"Ivy's in the bunker!" Cassie yells, and I instantly disable the device. Fuck, I really hope I didn't hurt her. "Push forward!"

Gunfire echoes through the canyon. Not many people in the bunker were unaffected, and Lance's shield holds.

I lean to the side, revealing the minimum of me possible, and pull the trigger a few times.

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"But the plan." Nimda says.

"Fuck the plan!" The moment Cassie sees an opening, she maneuvers around Lance and sprints across the bridge. She holsters Vince's rifle, and draws her knife and pistol just as she reaches the entrance.

Lance sprints to keep up with her, and we all do our best to keep up with him, quickly crossing the bridge.

Inside is a pile of limp people, with Ivy half buried by yet more semi conscious bodies. Cassie is quickly putting a bullet in every head, and I sprint up to Ivy. She looks awful. Her hair is an unkempt mess, and her face is gaunt. I don't think she's gotten enough food or sleep. A makeshift splint runs down the entire side of her body.

"She's still breathing." I say, and cradle her head in my hands. Some guilt leaves my mind, but most remains. I shove that feeling into a ball, there's no time to deal with it right now.

I pull her eyelid open, and her eye limply rolls towards me. A small smile spreads across her face and her hand slowly raises, landing on my cheek.

"Are you ok?" I ask. "What's wrong?"

Cassie leaves her grim job to everyone else and crouches beside Ivy as well. Ivy's head twists a little, settling on Cassie's face. With a momentous effort, her other hand lifts up, giving us an Ok signal.

"Can you fight?" Cassie asks.

Ivy tries to sit up, only to fall back into my hands again. She gives a small shake of her head.

"We don't have time to sit here. Kismet and the child are fighting for our lives." Nimda steps over, lifting Ivy off the ground. "Change to plan 18-C. Go."

"Right." Cassie take a deep breath and grabs one of the pistols off the ground. She hands it to Ivy, who takes it and leaves it resting on her chest. "Blue, grab her rifle."

"Ok." I grab it off the ground, sling it over my back, and we fall back into our positions.

Lance leads us through the right door out of the bunker. We move quickly through barren hallways dotted with doors and down a set of stairs. Turrets line the walls hanging limply, dead, disconnected from Mara. The moment anyone reveals themselves, throwing doors open or appearing behind corners to try to get the drop on us, Clover, Lance, and I all fire together. Nobody gets the chance to shoot back.

We set up behind a door and push through into the streets of the town. Three people stand in front of us, two of whom collapse beneath the signal from the puck, and the third goes limp from a collapsed skull. Lance pushes forward, and Cassie puts an end to both of the unconscious people as we pass.

Corax takes off from my shoulder the moment we're out. He hides against the roof of the canyon, utterly invisible in the shadows. He swoops down often, reporting anyone who's armed and going to be a problem.

The streets are mostly abandoned. Makeshift houses line both sides of the path, each one with blinds and doors shut tight. Windows fly open occasionally, but we're all faster. Nimda isolates the exact angle from each of us towards the location of the person's head and passes it to us. I don't even have to look to shoot. Of course, I'm not going to take that risk, but I could if I had to.

Turrets are mounted everywhere. No matter where we walk, and how close to cover we stick, no less than three turrets can see us at any time. Thankfully, none of them are moving, but the moment Kismet fails, we're undoubtedly dead.

On the bright side, it seems like the majority of the city's defenses were based on the fact that those turrets exist. There aren't many great places to try and ambush us as we move, and our route is carefully decided to avoid the ones that exist.

We walk slowly through the town. Despite the lack of obvious places to do so, people set up makeshift ambushes, which are inevitably spoiled by Corax, and then ended by bullets. They quickly stop trying to fight us, hiding and lost without anyone to give them orders.

Nimda drip-feeds me updates on Ivy constantly to stem my fears. She's alive, and she's not actively getting worse. That's good enough. Anything else I did to her can be fixed.

Corax stops us before we reach the elevator and the stairs surrounding it.

"Many people."

"Plan 24-E accounts for this." Nimda says.

"I don't like how long it will take." Lance argues.

I unplug myself from Nimda and hand the plug to Corax.

"Can you copy everything you saw?" I ask.

Corax takes the cord, plugs himself in, and just a moment hands the cord back to me. I re-add myself to the network just as she's passing the data to Lance, Robin, and I.

Nimda has already generated a map of the plaza complete with each person's location, their cover, and a number to designate them. The ambush is sloppy, but certainly had at least some planning behind it.

The elevator exists in the center of an open plaza. People have taken cover anywhere they can. Scrap has been piled at the ends of alleyways, windows are open with people ready to fire the moment we step inside. It's suicide trying to run to the elevator.

"That's doable." Lance says both over the network, and whispers aloud for Cassie and Corax's benefit. "Cassie, there's a man at the end of that alleyway." He tilts his head towards the nearest one. "Go through and kill him. There'll be a door on your right, breach and clear the whole building. Three targets inside. Blue, follow me and hit numbers 9, 10, 11, and 14. Robin, you're with me, standard right-left sweep, starting at number 8. Clover, hit 12 and 13. Corax, take out the clump hiding in the alleyway to our right. Yell if you don't get everyone. Everyone ready?"

"Ready." Everyone reports over the network.

"Ready." Cassie says a moment later, followed by a nod from Corax.

Ivy struggles to lift her head up and check her pistol. Her hands are shaky, but she manages to turn off the safety and aim behind Nimda's back.

"Go on the second explosion." Robin steps forward, taking his place over Lance's shoulder. Both him and Lance grab grenades from their pockets, pull the pin, and toss them to either side of the plaza.

Two great explosions of sound and light slam into my mind. Someone stands behind me and grabs my hands, forcing me to step forward and aim, despite my muddled mind. More explosions rock my mind over and over, and something stings my hands.

By the time I finally recover, I'm standing in the middle of the plaza. Dead humans surround us, and everyone is already forming up to continue moving on. Cassie has her hand around my arm, and is pulling me along.

"I'm ok." I reassure her and turn my head back. "Thanks Vince, I-" Instead of Vince, I see Kara standing behind me. Her arms are folded over her chest, and an angry look paints her face.

"Go save your friend. He deserves that at least." She says.

Cassie yanks on my arm again, causing me to stumble and lose sight of her for just a moment. When I look back she's gone.

I tear my gaze away from the spot she once occupied and follow the group. We head down endless staircases, covered by Corax. Few people try to stop our march. Those who do collapse beneath the data we're outputting, and the organic humans can't match up to our sub-millisecond reaction time.

We reach the bottom floor, just above the waterline. Lance steps up to a thick steel door only to find it locked. He takes out a small plastic explosive, places it on the lock, and detonates it, the sound and pressure slamming against my mind once again. The door swings open, and he steps inside. We all follow behind him.

The room is small, and packed with machinery. A massive engine that powers the elevator takes up most of the space. One turret is mounted on every one of the walls.

"I suppose that's an incentive to not fail." Nimda places Ivy on the ground, her back against the wall and her front facing the door.

Ivy pulls her leg in and rests her arm on her knee, trying to keep her pistol pointed at the front door.

Nimda plugs herself into a small electronics box on the wall, and a moment later a hundred turrets throughout the city begin to fire at people unseen. Each shot I know finds its home in some unfortunate person.

"The door to Mara's bunker is open, but I have no access to whatever is inside. I wish you four luck."

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