Her foot was on the gas. There were a couple of cops that attempted to pull her over, but she just made them pull to the side and take a nap. She had no time for their games. She flew, stopped for gas, and then took flight again. As she barrelled down the highway, she stuffed a cheeseburger into her mouth while periodically sipping a strawberry shake. She thought about what she would do when she got to the warehouse.

She looked at the time and saw it was nearing the hour of her plans. She ran every light in the town as she raced through the streets. The engine of the Camaro roaring like an enraged beast.

She blared the horn as she saw the warehouse, she didn’t bother to look at her phone, she knew the service would be out for miles around here. Keung and Robert heard the horn and the engine being repeatedly revved outside the warehouse.

“HAL?!” Keung shouted.

“HAL, what is that? HAL respond!” Keung continued.

“How is this happening?” Robert asked.

“I… I don’t know. HAL!” Keung shouted and ran to the computer room.

Robert checked his pistol and made sure it was chambered. If he had to deal with this woman himself, he would do so.

Keung checked the computer and found that the internet was completely down, the satellite dish was down, but why wasn’t HAL in the computers? He frantically keyed-in searches and found nothing. Nothing at all to lead him to where HAL was.

Keung growled out a shout that was both angry and frustrated.

Robert walked in at the shout.

“What’s going on?”

“HAL is missing.”

“Missing? How? Doesn’t he live in that computer?”

“That one, this one, this one, the one upstairs, and the internet.”

“You mean he doesn’t just browse through the net, he actually leaves our systems and goes there?”

“He can.”

“And he just so happened to be there when the internet was taken offline?”

“It appears so.”

“Well forgive me for saying so, but that sounds like a serious design flaw to me pal.”

“Can you get the cameras online?”

Keung performed a few searches and pulled up the camera footage in real time.

“Well at least there is…” Robert began, and stopped when he saw the crowd of people around the warehouse.

There were men, women, and children outside. Some of them were armed, some were uniformed officers and military personnel. All of them were just standing there. Waiting.

And then Robert saw the Camaro, and the woman leaning upon it.

“She’s here,” Robert said quietly.

“We are so screwed,” Keung replied.

There was a knock at the door. The camera showed the visitor was a small girl in a scout’s uniform.

Robert looked to Keung and Keung to him.

“What now?” Robert asked.

“Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat,” Keung said simply.

“Who said that?”

“I did. Just now.”

“Yeah, but who said it before?”

“Ralph Ellison.”

“See, I knew you couldn’t have come up with that yourself,” Robert laughed.

Keung joined him as they both walked toward the door.

“Hey, you think she has cookies?”

“Maybe.”

“Man. I hope she has some Samoas.”

Robert opened the door with a smile. They had failed to outwit their attacker, it was a game of chess this life. Now, they needed to meet the board stacked against them and hope that the two pieces they have left were enough to turn the tide.

The little girl smiled wide at the two.

“Hello sirs! My name is Amanda Johnston. I have been told that if you do not cooperate with Morgaine Smith I will be the first of many innocent casualties. She told me that there will be a rifle on my head throughout our time here and that, if you make any moves that displease her she will have me shot before you. I implore you sirs, please do not challenge her, I have a mother and father at home that believe I am at school at the moment.” Amanda said in a chipper and friendly manner.

Robert’s eyes welled with tears.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

“Do you have any Samoas?” Keung asked.

“I’m sorry. I don’t have any on me sir,” she replied.

“Fine,” Keung said and slowly walked from the building, Robert just a step behind him.

As they walked toward the Camero, two armed officers broke from the crowd and confronted them, pistols already free of their holsters and aimed at the two men exiting the warehouse.

“Hands up,” one said.

Keung scoffed.

There was the sound of a rifle going off. A bullet hit the warehouse inches from an unmoving Amanda.

“Hands up!” The officer repeated.

Robert put his hands up, and Keung followed begrudgingly.

“Must we do this, Ye’randid?” Keung asked.

One officer held the two at gunpoint, the other searched them both for weapons and collected Robert’s pistol.

From the crowd, Morgaine began walking slowly toward the two men, now held securely by her minions. The smile on her face was wicked. The gleam in her eye, so much more so. Each step she took was slow and deliberate in her steel toed black boots. She unrolled her cigarette pack from her white t-shirt sleeve, and pulled out her zippo lighter to light the coffin nail.

She moved through the crowd inhaling deeply and when she stood right before Keung she bellowed that smoke directly into his face.

“Hello, Anastasia,” she said coldly.

“Hello, Ricardo,” Keung replied, attempting to hold as much confidence as possible.

“Cuff them, and bring them inside,” she said to the officers while entering the warehouse herself, walking with Amanda in front of her, her hand on the little girl’s shoulder.

Keung entered the thoughts of Robert.

“Do you think she will leave everyone out there while she does whatever she is going to do?”

“Likely. She is keeping the girl with her, if something goes wrong, she will be the first to die.”

“Have you attempted to make contact with the officers?”

“No. Don’t try either. Ye’randid is a master of the mental arts. When we were Jyi’ntol, there were rumors that Ye’randid could trap the consciousness of others within her own mind, or at least pieces of them. She could have learned a way to do it by proxy.”

Morgaine walked through the warehouse with Amanda, stopping at the car on the rack, Robert’s Jeep, and looked it over with admiration.

“Nice Jeep,” she said to the two men.

“Thanks,” Robert replied.

She walked to the cuffed man, who was equal to her own height and roughly the same build. She looked him eye to eye and smiled, she drew in the final hit from her cigarette and looked around.

“Where should I put my butt?” she asked of the two.

“Seems like you are the one in control here. I suppose the answer is: wherever you want,” Keung replied.

“Yeah. What he said,” Robert quipped, looking to Keung with a smile.

There was a sudden pain as Morgaine put her lit cigarette out on his chest.

“Oh, good. I was wondering if we were going to have to jockey back and forth to prove whose dick is bigger,” she said and began toward the other rooms of the warehouse.

Robert grunted and winced, but did not scream.

As they all walked to the computer room the two men continued in their conversation.

“What in the hell are we going to do?” Robert asked in Keung’s mind.

“I’m open to ideas. She’s taken your gun, she has crippled HAL, she has a small army outside and she has both of us in handcuffs. Exactly how many options are you seeing here, Robert?”

The frustration in Robert’s mind was obvious.

The door to the room was locked.

“What’s in here boys?” Morgaine asked.

“Nothing really interesting. Just some computers,” Keung replied.

“Oh, I love computers! Since becoming Morgaine I have learned a lot about them. I was at MIT during my realization. Two years. Honestly, had it not been for this unyielding drive to lay my hands on you, I might have stayed there a while longer. Be a doll, open the door,” she said as she moved Keung before it with a shove.

“I would love to, but, regretfully…” Keung said and tugged his arms around from his back to show the cuffs locking his hands from using the thumbprint biometric lock.

“Officer, please uncuff the boy so he might unlock the doors please.” Morgaine instructed.

The officer did and Keung briefly rubbed his wrists and then unlocked the door.

“I’m afraid it isn’t as glamorous and amazing as it usually is, my internet is out.”

“Oh, that’s fine. I would love to poke around, anyway. We can get your internet back up in no time if it’s necessary for anything,” Morgaine said and walked into the room, having Amanda lead her through the doorway.

“What kind of system is this? What’s the operating system?”

“Mac OS Mojave with Windows 10 and Linux OS Ubuntu running in the background for compatibility reasons,” Keung answered flatly.

“Impressive. And the overall processing speed?”

“I have five Core i5 3.0 GHz processors in each tower.”

Morgaine opened up the nearest tower and saw the cores linked, as well as variables she wasn’t expecting that had been built from various other devices all linked and jumbled together in an eloquent mess that allowed this computer to process in ways that humans could barely comprehend.

“I see. Well that is interesting. You lied to me. Just some computers, you have been digging around rather impressively in that mind of yours there, Jyi’ntol. What else have you brought to this rock?”

“Oh, you know. This and that.”

“This and that. I see. With all this impressive computing power, I assume your experiments into Intrinsic Field Aura editing has come a long way since the last time we were in the same room together. Particularly Divide Marker Relation.”

“Divide Marker Relation?” Keung said softly.

“Is that what this is all about?” he asked.

“What is all this about? What this is all about?” She said calmly and suddenly punched Keung hard in the stomach.

She grabbed a handful of his hair as he was doubled over and dragged him around the warehouse.

“Gee, I wonder why she’s so upset?” she said, emphasising the statement by kicking him in the stomach before throwing him to the ground.

“Could it be that I shredded up her soul and then cast her out into the ether to be reborn with a mind filled with holes?” she shouted and kicked him again.

“Was it you?!” she screamed.

“Was it you or Deagol?!” she kicked again.

“Who did this to me you little weasel?!”

“Get him up,” she instructed the officers and the two picked him up by either arm.

She turned her back to him and breathed for a moment. When she turned around, the calm on her face was more unsettling than the rage she just displayed.

“I’m sorry. I think I interrupted the tour. Shall we continue?” she said, unshaking, without any emotion, and with a smile upon her face.

Robert was shaking with anger. But Keung merely smiled slightly and looked her in the eyes.

“Of course. Please. If you would direct me, I would be happy to continue the tour,” he said weakly.