As the Kodiak turned deeper into the incursion, heading towards the next seed pod, a small shape shot out from between a couple of buildings and dove towards us.

  I flinched and nearly smashed the small being before I realized it was a flying squirrel and not a Model One. Once it landed, I approached the little bomber-jacket-clad robot, trying my best to ignore the barely suppressed giggles behind me.

  “Evelyn, Nora, I’m glad I caught you!” the squirrel declared in Angeline’s voice. “There’s a situation developing in your area.”

  “There are situations developing everywhere, both inside and outside the city. You’re going to have to be more specific,” I grumbled.

  “There appears to be a huge firefight happening in the Atlas megabuilding, around fifteen blocks north of you. The power’s out, so I don’t have access to the cameras, and a seed pod landed in the area, so there's a flock of Ones keeping my Squirrels out of the building. Can you two check it out?”

  “Ugh… Ones,” I shuddered.

  “What was that?” Angeline asked.

  “Nothing important,” Nora announced. “Evelyn just had a run-in earlier. I’ll share the video with you later.”

  I shot Nora a quick, disapproving look before turning back to the squirrel.

  “Send us the coordinates, and we’ll check out the situation,” I grumbled. “You know, you could have just called us with this information instead of sending a squirrel.”

  “I could have, but I already had a squirrel in the area, and someone showed me how convenient it is to have an avatar when talking to multiple people,” Angeline explained.

  “Yeah, yeah, I get it,” I muttered. “I’ve already instructed Dusty to re-route. We should be there in a few minutes. I’ll contact you once we get inside and know more about the situation.”

  “Sounds good, I’ll talk to you soon,” Angeline replied. A second later the squirrel’s eyes went dark, and it switched from a more upright, human pose to the slouched posture of a squirrel.

  “Shouldn’t everyone already be locked into a shelter already? Who the hell would be crazy enough to stay out to fight the antithesis?” Nora asked.

  “It might not have been by choice. I’ve seen a lot of malfunctioning shelters, both in the undercity and when I went to Seattle last year. Most buildings barely build them to code, so I wouldn’t be surprised if a couple weren’t knocked out by the power outage,” I said. “We should also sweep the surrounding buildings once we finish investigating, just in case there are any more issues.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Nora agreed.

  We heard the fighting long before we saw the megabuilding. When Angeline said there was a firefight, I’d expected small arms, security-issued pistols, and the like, but from the sound of it someone was packing some serious firepower in there. Rifles, maybe even an LMG. It was no wonder the building had been swarmed by Model Ones; they’d probably been attracted by the noise.

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  As the Kodiak swooped in, the APS systems opened up, clearing the way for Nora and me to make it inside.

  “Bob, take the others and check on the surrounding buildings,” I ordered through the open hatch, shouting to be heard over the particle beams. “I don’t want a full sweep, just confirm that the shelters are closed and everyone’s alright. Call in reinforcements to evacuate if you need to. People are the priority, as always.”

  “You got it, boss! You can count on me,” he yelled back.

  As soon as we were close enough, Nora and I leapt from the back of the Kodiak through a broken tenth-floor window into the Mega Building. The entire area was a mess, full of broken glass and shattered furniture. This area had probably been a fancy office at one time, until a couple of larger models decided to use it as a dance hall.

  “I think the fighting is above us? Maybe? The sound’s echoing around a lot in here,” I said as Nora and I rushed towards the front of the office.

  “I’d say probably two or three floors higher,” she replied. “We should hurry. The gunfire is attracting every antithesis in the building.”

  We stepped out of the office into a massive central atrium. The building must have been built for some of the wealthier people to live and work in because the central area had several parks suspended every few floors over the central shaft and offset from each other so they didn’t completely block the natural light coming in from the skylight suspended high above.

  They probably would have been lovely once, but in the short time the antithesis had been here, they’d torn out every shrub and tree. All that was left on the nearest platform was a Model Eight slowly working its way through the mound of ripped-up plant life.

  “There!” Nora exclaimed, pointing three floors up at the balcony across from us. The antithesis were storming into one of the hallways, ignoring everything else in their headlong rush to attack whoever was up there. “If we cut them off at that hallway, it should alleviate some of the pressure on whoever’s up there.”

  “But how the hell do we get up there?” I muttered, glancing around, looking for some stairs.

  Nora looked at me knowingly, then took two steps and launched herself straight across the empty space, landing directly in the middle of the horde three floors up.

  “That works for you, but what about me?” I yelled after her. “Fuck…”

  I sprinted out onto the suspended garden before leaping up two floors, on the landing directly below Nora. I used to think my synthetic muscles were impressive; allowing me to vault up two floors was quite a feat, but they paled in comparison to Nora’s cybernetics. It was going to be tough keeping up with that girl.

  Without a clear way to proceed, I threw my rifle over my shoulder and bounced onto the railing. The next park was still a couple floors up, so I couldn’t jump to that, but there were ornamental pillars supporting the walkways. They weren’t much, but they did stick out just far enough to provide me a handhold to climb to the next floor.

  I leapt up, grabbing a bit of trim, and hoisted myself up as fast as I possibly could. Nora was barely five feet away, crushing any antithesis that approached her, but I was deathly aware that all it would take was a single antithesis turning their attention towards me and pouncing to end my climb. And maybe even my life.

  As I scrambled over the railing, Nora glanced at me for a second. “Why didn’t you try and find the stairs?” she asked in between her deadly strikes.

  “Because you didn’t give me time!” I growled, yanking my rifle off my shoulder and unloading it into the nearest antithesis. “Launching yourself up three stories like it’s no big deal. Some of us aren’t capable of that, you know.”

  “I did it knowing full well I could handle these small fry. I didn’t expect you to try and follow me!” she yelled.

  “Well, you should know me better than that by now!” I yelled back.

  The antithesis weren’t fazed by our sudden argument in the middle of battle. If anything, it seemed to spur them on. More than once a Model Three got close enough to pounce at me, only to be met with micro missiles fired from my LCAR rifle directly to the face. One did manage to sneak its attack in while I was mid-reload. If I had been a civilian, it probably would have ripped me limb from limb, but instead I ducked down and brought the butt of my rifle into its midsection. Taking advantage of its momentum, I just gave it a little push, and the creature sailed over the railing and plummeted to the ground far below.

  I didn’t even have to stop reloading to do it.

  The antithesis continued to pour into the area for about two minutes before the assault began to stall. There were probably far more antithesis in the building, but at least they weren’t trying to force their way through here anymore.

  “I think we’re clear,” I announced, as I poked a downed Model Four just to make sure it was dead.

  “I don’t hear gunfire anymore. Hopefully that means we alleviated the pressure on whoever’s here, and not that they were overrun while we were cleaning up,” Nora muttered.

  “Careful now, you’re starting to sound a little like me. Think positive thoughts. We won’t know exactly what the situation is until we go check on them,” I exclaimed.

  “Well, there’s no reason to stick around here anymore,” Nora replied. “Let’s go find out.”

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