“No. I am responsible for these children right now and I am telling you no. They need to rest, besides an attack could come at any moment. Shouldn’t you be practicing or something?”

  Althea held the bridge of her nose between her fingers as Mrs Ellsworth spoke. When the matron finished, Althea said,

  “I have nothing else to do right now and it sounds like “rest” means that they can play or do anything as long as I am not around.”

  Betty and Joseph watched Althea speak from behind a crack between the inner door and its frame.

  Mrs Ellsworth shrugged, letting a slender smile cross her lips,

  “Then I think we understand each other, Ms Thompson.”

  Althea started to open her mouth as Betty and Joseph burst through the door shouting,

  “We want to play Knights and Dragons with ‘Thea. Please!”

  The children curled their fingers into Mrs Ellsworth’s pants legs. She looked down her nose as if the two kids were insects come to crawl across her shoes,

  “You have friends to play with already. What’s wrong with Yun?”

  Betty stuck her tongue out and Joseph looked downright unhappy as they both spoke in a rush decrying “Yun” as stuffy and unwilling to play along with them. Althea felt honored and a little proud when Joseph said,

  “Besides, Thea’s much better at Knights and Dragons than Yun. He’s just terrible.”

  Mrs Ellsworth started to inhale looking a bit like a dragon as she did. Althea put her hand up and said,

  “Don’t give Mrs Ellsworth a hard time yall. Assuming you’re not doing anything tonight, I will come play games with you later, okay?”

  The ostensible caretaker pressed her lips together in a look of disapproval, but the two kids drowned out her objection with a chorus of cheers. Based on the way Mrs Ellsworth backed down, Althea suspected the woman’s shift would end by dinner, and another guardian would get to decide whether to send Althea away or indulge the kid’s desires.

  She knew she should not antagonize the unpleasant matron, but Althea found herself sniping other anyway,

  “Besides, I have no doubt you will be as safe in Yun’s hands as you would be if I were there.”

  The change that came over Mrs Ellsworth’s face; the opened mouth and considering expression in her eyes made Althea feel as though she made her point.

  That afternoon, Althea followed first Telly on patrol and then Erie as the latter checked the status of her “surprises” at the front of the shelf’s gate. Shadowing Telly proved harder than most of the other tasks Althea engaged in, overcoming Mrs Ellsworth’s first experience with Althea representing a notable exception.

  For one thing, the man was a human ghost. She could be watching him one second and blink, literally just blink and would lose him. His small stature and lithe agility made him a consummate scout. As much as she appreciated her own enhancements, none of them seemed to give her skills enough to compete with Telly.

  The second Erie returned to the base, Althea excused herself and ran for the orphanage building. Now that she knew its name and purpose, she felt terrible for the kids there. Spending time with them not only scratched her VR gaming itch, but gave her a chance to make sure these kids felt wanted and appreciated.

  At the first floor of the orphanage, a new man Althea had not met waited at the ground floor. He looked up at Althea and his mouth twitched into a smirk.

  “How can I help you, Ms Thompson.”

  “I am here to go upstairs to the rec center. The gang and I have dragons to slay.”

  He chuckled at her words and said,

  “Marie Ellsworth has less than complementary things to say about you.”

  His face never lost the smirk as he issued his minor challenge. Watching the smirk and playing from it, Althea said,

  “I doubt Mrs Ellsworth had complementary things to say about anyone. But I especially doubt she cares for people those kids like more than her.”

  The man laughed at that and said,

  “Nice retort. Name’s Damon Cartier. Telly says good things about you.”

  “He does? He did? When?”

  Damon’s face flushed red as he said,

  “Yes, yes, and that’s a little private. But I guess I could say last night?”

  “Oh,” Althea’s eyes widened as she understood the import of Damon’s words, “Oh! I see. Thank you.”

  Damon chuckled and brushed his hands over the desk as if the words were papers he wanted off the surface.

  “You’re welcome. Have fun upstairs, and make sure the other kids are nice to Betty. They’ve been picking on her a little lately.”

  Althea Eversmash loaded into the game, laying on the floor with her feet facing the circumference of the circle and her head pointed in the center with the rest of the kids. Damon’s words ran through her head that night, so she watched for the slightest sign of mistreatment. But rather than bully the young girl, the other kids seemed to heap their support on her head.

  They managed to kill one whole dragon that evening before Althea received an incoming call that cut through the fantasy.

  Erie said,

  “Althea, we have movement on plain Bravo. I am putting the ship and base into high alert. You don’t need to stop what you’re doing just yet. But you should be ready for incoming. Speaking of which, where are you?”

  “I’m in the orphanage playing K&D with the kids here.”

  Erie paused as if Althea’s information required additional analysis and thought.

  “That’s… excellent. Damon should be on duty right now, have him bunker the kids up and help him with anything that goes wrong. I will update you in fifteen.”

  Althea acknowledged the message and returned to her virtual world where the kids had all stopped and huddled around her in a semicircle.

  When her eyes focused back on the kids, Joseph stepped forward, his blue wizard’s hat bouncing in the torchlight and said,

  “Something bad’s happening, isn’t it?”

  Althea spent almost half a second in thought before she said,

  “Kinda, yeah. We need to cut the game short so we can bunker up. Yall know about that?”

  All six children nodded at her as they blinked out of the virtual environment. At the final disappearance, Betty, Althea logged out herself. When she could see through her real eyes again, she saw all six children gathering their VR rigs and blankets with purpose.

  Althea stood and said,

  “Okay, I’ve never done this before. Betty, why don’t you show me where I need to go?”

  At first, Althea feared she made the wrong decision. Betty looked horrified, but Joseph took her hand in his and squeezed it. That made Betty smile and said,

  “Okay Thea, I will show you what we do!”

  The elevator took them to the bottom floor where Damon stood waiting for them. He carried a large rucksack over his back that appeared to be stuffed with gear. He clapped at the kids and said,

  “You guys go grab your running kits, okay?”

  They nodded and Althea followed them a short way down the hall to a series of multicolored cubbies, each of which contained a bag sized for a pre-teen.

  A small disagreement broke out over who got to carry the biggest of the bags, but none of the kids appealed to Althea to handle the dispute. Once they managed to settle that question, they lined up and walked back to Damon with Betty and Althea in the lead.

  Damon nodded and said,

  “Alright. Check your partner’s bags. Go!”

  Out in the lobby/administrative offices, the group broke into three pairs as the kids turned their backs to each other and checked their bags. Althea watched this part with interest. All of them carried enough food for a week and a small cistern used to purify water even from potentially lethal sources, like the river of sludge. Each had a shovel sized for them and each carried a map and physical credit stick. The latter was the most surprising.

  Credit sticks were old and expensive. Most people used their personal implant for purchases. Some merchants would not even accept a credit stick on the basis that accepting them made their business seem shady. Althea said nothing of this, understanding why these kids might need physical credit. None of them possessed the implants needed to transact anyway.

  Damon walked the line and made a spot check of each bag. Then he helped the kids stuff their extra blankets and VR rigs into their bags along with miscellaneous toys a few of them, including Joseph, insisted on bringing.

  Althea’s compulsive habit of setting timers for events meant she set a timer in preparation of hearing from Erie. When the timer hit fourteen minutes, Althea received a critical priority broadcast from Erie:

  “BREACH! We have a perimeter breach near the western and northern wall segments! All defenders, be apprised! Battle stations now, all forces to battle stations now.”

  A map opened, curtesy of Pontikos, in Althea’s AR space. It showed her where the potential breaches occurred. One of them, the northern breach, occurred only a few hundred meters from her present position. As she stared at the map, letting only a second slip by, Althea felt a sinking feeling in her stomach.

  She turned to Damon, who’s glazed expression combined with her own had already succeeded in spooking the children around them and said,

  “Damon, get them to the bunker, now!”

  Althea would have preferred to keep the alarm out of her voice, but based on Erie’s warning and their proximity to the attacks, Althea worried about the kids’ safety. Damon’s eyes focused on her and he nodded.

  “Come on gang, we’re hitting the bunker. Betty, don’t dawdle, Althea has her own mission.”

  A thumping sound punctuated his words as Betty tugged on Althea’s shirt. She spun in place, almost throwing Betty to the ground as Althea watched a flame trail arc out nearby and over the building where they stood.

  The ground shuddered as Damon shouted at the kids around him. All five of the children around him broke before the wave of his adult authority and voice. But Betty shrank away from the sound and words, crouching down to cover her ears as the building shuddered again and pieces of concrete started falling from the ceiling.

  Althea made a snap decision and grabbed the girl around her waist. She could still see the hallway and destination of the other children. Planning to carry Betty to safety, Althea took one step toward the hallway and her own body balked. Looking up at the ceiling, Pontikos flashed her whole interface orange and said,

  “Critical structural warning Mistress. Retreat or death is assured.”

  Other words might have caused Althea to debate or request more information from her AI. But those words made her tighten her grip on Betty and race away from the building. She punched her way through the door of the orphanage and out onto the glass-covered street.

  Overhead, few windows in the upper floors remained intact. As Althea watched the upper floors seemed to bow and gallop as if made from rubber. Gawking would have killed Betty, so Althea turned and raced away from the orphanage as the building began its slow collapse.

  Dust from the building’s collapse billowed out from the first floors as the entire structure fell. The clouds from the destruction rolled down the streets between buildings, still not quite reaching Althea and Betty.

  Jostling from her steps made Betty’s voice sound distorted as she said,

  “Oh no, our house!”

  The young girl’s tone sounded more excited than dismayed. Althea had to swallow her humor lest she drop the girl in her laughter. Once the plumes of dust settled behind her, Althea stopped in the shadow of one of the remaining buildings. Her map showed her that the section of the city stood far enough away from the border of the shelf to pause.

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  Althea set Betty down on the ground where the girl stood and looked up at the woman.

  “What’s happening, Althea?”

  Over her shoulder, Althea could see dozens of people moving about and trying to respond to the attacks.

  Althea bent her knees to look Betty in the eyes as she spoke,

  “Bad people are attacking the town. Wait right here for me and I will keep you safe, okay?”

  Betty nodded back at Althea. The little girl’s eyes shone with unshed tears and Althea cursed herself. What had started out as a loud, exciting adventure just turned dark for the little girl. Using her AI and the short wave transmitter stack, Althea sent a message to Erie.

  “They just dropped the orphanage, I think all of the kids made it out.”

  A few seconds later, Erie responded,

  “I lost contact with Damon, are you sure they all made it?”

  Althea pressed her fingers into her forehead, irritated that she forgot to give the best information she could quickly.

  “I have one of them with me. We’re on the surface. Last I saw Damon and the others, they were headed to the bunker.”

  “Shit! I have reports that place is breached too. You have one of the kids with you now?”

  “Yes.”

  Erie seemed to wait to answer Althea. In the meantime, Althea slung her SKS over her shoulder and watched the streets for attackers. She doubted anyone would shoot a child, but Althea knew she was a target herself. Plus, while Althea stood there, she did not intend to let anyone shoot Betty.

  Erie returned after half a minute,

  “Okay, you’re on your own. I don’t have any other teams that can go look for the kids in the bunker so you’re our army, okay?”

  Althea swallowed and wished for a better weapon, maybe something in the plasma or laser range.

  “Roger.”

  She addressed Pontikos,

  “I need a path to the bunker. And if you have reports from people about closed tunnels, include those too.”

  A bright red line appeared in Althea’s vision showing her where to walk in order to reach her goal.

  She activated SLIDE along with her full compliment of battle protocols and hefted Betty onto her shoulder.

  “Wrap your arms around my neck and try not to let go, okay?”

  Betty replied with a wide-eyed nod. She switched from curious and excited to nervous and quiet as if she were trained for this.

  Addressing Pontikos, Althea said,

  “Reconfigure my arm to support her and keep Betty from falling. Is that a thing we can do?”

  By way of reply, Althea felt her arm spread out over Betty’s body.

  Althea addressed her,

  “I am securing you so you don’t fall, okay?”

  For a second, Althea thought she could see Betty trying to smile for her. But then she just bit her lip and nodded. That was fine for Althea.

  Her low gait and additional passenger failed to elicit the muscle-jarring pains she had grown accustomed to when training with Boris. Her body seemed to fall into the step as if designed for it. Betty’s head hardly bobbed as Althea darted from building to building as small arms fire and explosions ripped through the shelf.

  Althea stood less than fifty meters from the Caritas.

  “Why aren’t we using that as our bunker?”

  Pontikos answered her question:

  “Because it’s too obvious for an assault. If a CoreMil or CoreSec force wanted to erase that ship, it might take them a little bit of time, but they would destroy it thoroughly. There is little military value in blowing out every part of the earth in an area. Even if you think someone’s tunneled through the area.”

  Althea nodded at her AI and checked her perimeter. Movement alerted her to opfor when two figures wearing a similar leather cloak to the cyborg that killed Boris darted into and out of Althea’s sight.

  Before she had a chance to consider her choices, Althea rose and veered toward the threats. She had grown so accustomed to Betty’s weight in less than five minutes that she forgot the child clung to her. Althea set the girl down a second time, this time between two large concrete supports that held a nearby building up.

  “Huddle down here for a second, okay? I need to make sure our path to the bunker is safe. Keep your head down and don’t look, okay?’

  Betty covered her face with her hands and said,

  “Okay!”

  The girl’s answer was nearly taken by the wind and sounds of battle. Althea rushed to where she suspected the intruders had run themselves. Based on her internal map of the shelf, they could take up excellent firing positions from within deep cover in the city. Stopping them from where most of the defenders were stationed would be impossible.

  Rather than turning the corner and presenting her whole body as a target, she checked the corner with a brief glimpse and said,

  “Okay, we’re in trouble…”

  No one answered as the two cyborgs continued running past the excellent perch Althea had intended. Instead, they made their way to the bunker entrance Althea had been intending. Both cloaked figures stopped at the tunnel entrance and performed their own perimeter checks. Unlike the last cyborg, these looked human.

  They might even be humans.

  Althea’s thought echoed through her head as she shouldered her SKS and sighted in. The first cyborg tore the cover and lid off of the bunker entrance. Seconds later his partner jumped into the manhole. Less than a second later, Althea shot the remaining cyborg right in the head. AR enhancements let her follow the bullet’s trail from the barrel of her rifle into her target’s cheek, directly below the eye.

  Everything seemed to rocket forward as the cyborg hit the ground next to the bunker entrance. Althea swallowed a roar as she rushed forward. Without knowing what the cyborg carried in terms of weaponry, she knew her opportunity to stop him shrank with every step.

  Shifting cloth near the bunker opening made Althea fire a second time into the leather cloth as she sprinted forward. Her balance teetered for a second as her new body attained speeds Althea had not expected.

  The cyborg anticipated her charge and had his own plasma weapon aimed at Althea as he spotted her. Evidence of her first shot was quite direct: the cyborg had a hole in his face where Althea shot in him. But the evidence for her second shot was more indirect.

  The plasma gun made a low humming noise and went dark. For a microsecond, Althea thought she might have repeated the same move from her first time fighting the combat monstrosities. But she ignored that fear and shoved her bayonet into the cyborg’s throat as she vaulted over him.

  Mid-combat cognition seemed languid for her now. Relaxed and well placed, her mind watched from an ideal vantage as tissue and metal at the cyborg’s throat twisted and sheered. Pulling the trigger felt slow, almost like she failed to clean her rifle after the last time she used it.

  But the gun worked and shredded the cyborg’s upper chest and neck. As she hit the ground, her arms ripped the rifle and bayonet upwards. A loud clang from the breaking of steel matched a painful reverberation from the end of her rifle.

  The gun flew wide as the cyborg stood, windmilling its arms to keep it balance as it did. The eye over Althea’s rifle shot hissing and emitted sparks as the fluids leaked out of the socket. It blinked its other eye in surprise as the cyborg tried to take a step to hurt or grapple with Althea. She took two steps back and watched the thing fall to the floor.

  “Pontikos, how do I disable it? And should I keep anything from it?”

  Leading Althea through the steps to deactivate the cyborg’s remaining systems only took Pontikos seconds. A charge block popped out of its chassis as Althea jimmied the door open. Pocketing the charge block, Althea raced back to Betty. The girl knelt in almost the exact position Althea had left her.

  “I am back, sweetie. It’s time to go.”

  This time when Betty wrapped her arms around Althea’s neck, the older woman felt glad for her own cybernetic neck and systems. Otherwise the girl would have choked Althea out.

  Althea checked the entrance to the bunker tunnel before she considered hopping in. Logistically, she could not leave Betty up here, exposed and she did not want to jump down into a potential fire situation with Betty on her hip. Compromising, Althea jumped down with her left arm flared like a shield and Betty on Althea’s right hip. Blading her body down the hallway meant that any attackers would have to chew through Althea’s frame before they could hit the girl.

  Referring back to her internal map, Althea found a small closet between them and the actual bunker, but no cyborg, at least not so far.

  “Betty. This is dangerous, so I need you to hide again, okay?”

  Betty nodded at Althea and said, “Okay.”

  Althea shut the door partway and knocked twice fast, then once and then twice fast again.

  “I will knock like that, okay. Don’t answer if the knock is different.”

  She closed the door as the absurdity of what she had said to the girl struck her. If Althea did not happen to return to that door and someone else did, knocking would be meaningless.

  Althea waited for her arms to return to normal and then decided better of it. She left her left arm spread out like a shield and pressed herself against the right side of the tunnel as she advanced.

  Real special forces teams had all sorts of creative words for advancing down a long hallway. None of those words came to Althea’s mind at the time, but they did not need to. Althea knew how deadly this procession would be, especially if the cyborg knew she was coming.

  Thinking of hiding herself, Althea tried to extend the notion to her body through her AI. Sure enough, her skin took on the hues of the tunnel around her. Where the shield exposed her innards, those turned colors to match the tunnel as well.

  Althea moved as quiet as a breeze through the tunnel. Nothing else within seemed to stir as she wound her way toward the bunker exit. As she closed the distance a sound of moving earth made her freeze in place.

  Ka-thunk, grind, crash. The sounds repeated with little regularity to either tempo or volume. Althea crept forward and spotted the cyborg moving concrete out of its way. A massive collapse of earth and stone separated both Althea and the enemy from the kids. Thoughts of those poor kids dying made Althea grind her teeth.

  Those rage-filled thoughts carried her forward, heedless of the risk to her as she sought revenge for the deaths of children on the only creature in sight who could be said to be responsible.

  Her fist impacted with the bag of the cyborg’s head, sending a jarring vibration through Althea’s whole body. The cyborg rocked forward, bending its knees and reaching out for the side of the tunnel walls as Althea tried to kill it with a single blow.

  It spun in place when Althea failed to follow her surprise attack up with a finishing strike. Tossing a large piece of shattered concrete at Althea, it ran up the hill of broken building parts with impossible speed.

  Althea ducked and guided the flying piece of concrete to her side as she struggled to keep the cyborg in front of her. A better weapon for these cramped quarters sat in her bag on her back. Rather than reach for the weapon, her right arm sharpened to a spear tip.

  She struck the cyborg mid-motion, bringing it off the hill of trash with her follow through. It rolled down the hill as Althea tried to harry it. The only warning that the cyborg was still armed came by way of a plasma pistol barrel appearing in front of her face.

  Every part of her body reacted to the threat simultaneously and saved her by the breadth of foil. A red-orange plasma projectile burst past her head, over her shoulder. Althea could feel the incredible heat from the weapon’s discharge as it missed her.

  Her counterattack took the cyborg’s arm nearly off. Hanging by a sliver of metal and a few sparking wires, the cyborg danced away from Althea and swung the arm and pistol up into its other arm. Lucky for Althea that the cyborg could only grasp its own arm rather than the plasma pistol. Althea grabbed the weapon in her right hand, the blade shifting to digits in order to meet her needs and managed to close her hand over it.

  The cyborg’s strength and durability dwarfed Althea’s own. Rather than try to pull the weapon away from her, it slammed into her from the front, pushing it’s arm and pistol away from Althea as it did.

  With her hand in its normal configuration, she could not reach the trigger or even control the pistol’s directions. But once again, her body responded to her need, reshaping her hand to enclose the gun and control the direction. Her back slammed against the wall of the tunnel. The impact rattled her brain, earning her stars for the first time in her life. Still, she was determined to keep her grip on the pistol while the cyborg seemed intent on killing her through sheer force.

  When she managed to aim the gun where she thought it needed to go, she fired. She felt her chest sear from the heat as a projectile shot through the cyborg’s chest, slagging its entire right shoulder as it did.

  The cyborg shuddered and Althea took her opportunity. She kicked the thing away with both legs and let the pistol go at the same time. Her hand rebuilt itself as she leaped onto the falling cyborg, pounding down with her bladed right arm as she did. She pinned the cyborg’s right arm to its chest and that to the ground with the force of her momentum.

  Finally, the cyborg rattled and stopped moving.

  Althea lifted the gun and holstered it as she fully deactivated the cyborg, removing its power supply as well. She lifted the arm along with the charge block and stored them both in her backpack. Transferring the knife to her thigh so she could reach it, Althea raced back to find Betty.

  The girl watched her as Althea used judicious and cautious blasts from the plasma pistol to clear parts of the debris away. Muffled tapping, too uneven to be a machine or broken part clicking away told Althea that other people waited for her beyond the collapse. She tried tapping back, but was not sure if the others could hear her.

  Althea pulled a particularly large slab of concrete away from the pile, she saw tiny little hands moving and waving to her through the gap.

  “You guys get your hands out of there, okay?”

  Giggles and squeals answered Althea’s soft correction. She made Betty stand further away and warned the kids on the other side of the collapse to back off as she carefully widened the gap enough for the kids to squeeze through.

  Joseph came last out of all of them and had to have the most debris cleared away so he could fit.

  Including Betty, six children sat on this side of the blockage.

  Althea said,

  “What happened to Damon?”

  Four of the five trapped children looked down and away from Althea. But Joseph said,

  “He died. When the tunnel fell, he seemed to know beforehand. He shoved me and another kid away before everything covered him.”

  Joseph responded naturally, as if reporting on something he saw on television. Althea could worry about their mental health later, the question of their physical survival was still an open one. This side of the collapsed tunnel led only here and then back out of the complex. Judging by her map, the tunnels forked between the collapse here and the ruins of the orphanage.

  Making a snap decision, Althea turned to Betty and Joseph and said,

  “You two are my sergeants, okay? That means you’re in charge if I am not around. Joseph, you’re the second in command and you are the boss if something happens to me.”

  Both children nodded while Althea cursed herself for her vague and somewhat contradictory orders. But they did not matter right then.

  “We’re going to try and leave these tunnels and find a different route out of the shelf, okay? Follow me!”

  All six kids fell in line as Althea started jogging back to the entrance. As they made their way, Althea assigned two of the kids to Joseph and the other two to Betty, making it clear that they were responsible for keeping those kids together and safe. Both of them seemed to rise to the new duty.

  At the exit to the tunnels, Althea backtracked about ten meters and said,

  “Alright. It’s going to be real dangerous up there. You stay here and wait for me to come back down. Okay?”

  She was half way up the ladder when the possibility she might not be back right away occurred to her. Silt and dust fell from the manhole overhead as booms shook the earth around them. Althea shook the thought away and peeked her head out of the hole on the top of the secret exit.

  More than half of the civilian buildings on the shelf had fallen by then, including the building where Althea had left Betty for a few minutes. Thankfully all of the orphaned children sat waiting for Althea to appraise the situation.

  “Althea, come back?”

  Erie came over comms, and Althea said,

  “I’m here, Erie. What’s up?

  “We are abandoning the base, condition Red. I repeat: condition Red. You are the last of the people who need to know. Did you find the kids and Damon?”

  “The kids are fine, Damon died due to a cave-in.”

  “Roger, you need to make for one of the beta escape routes. Somehow they know about the alpha escape routes.”

  Althea swore, but declined to broadcast her frustration to Erie. The beta routes were mostly overland and some of them were dangerous even without taking fire from hostiles.

  “Alright, I will update when I’ve picked a path.”

  “Negative. Reconvene at the gamma site, I am closing off comms after this. You have five minutes before the shelf goes down.”

  “Shit. I am on it.”

  Erie cut off with utter silence as Pontikos called up routes to the gamma site. None of them looked promising, and all required diving over the ledge behind the shelf where Althea had never been before. The way that locals talked about the place made it sound more dangerous than the cannibal infested territory that comprised the shelf’s front lawn.

  Althea shook her head as the timer in her vision counted down. She could grouse later. Now she needed to save these children.

  Plasma pistol in one hand, Betty’s small hand in the other, Althea stalked across the fields that flanked the Caritas. Overhead, the massive spaceship loomed mighty and implacable in the sun. Ignoring the provenance, the ship looked like some kind of ancient monolith, a structure intended to last the ages and to proclaim that dead race’s power.

  Every few steps, Althea performed a perimeter check that confirmed the absence of foes and confirmed that her line of ducklings had not shortened. Six children trailed behind her as she reached the edge of the shelf. Her vision swam as the scene below her feet expanded like a massive, breathing beast. Pontikos informed her that the drop was over one hundred meters down and enough to kill one of the cyborgs, assuming they landed badly. It was definitely enough to kill Althea and her bevy of dependents.

  The shelf hung over empty land like a plateau without support. In order to reach the ground below, Althea would have to cling to the bottom of the shelf and climb the rest of the way down. And she would need to do it while six kids clung to her like monkeys.