It was a pretty normal night at Burger Off!. Almost five AM, almost time to do the rounds and make sure there weren’t any druggies face-down in a toilet stall. Pretty exciting, relative to all of the nothing we were doing.

Things were quiet, which is how things at five AM tended to be. We were a skeleton crew of one stoner cook, one beautiful, talented, and underachieving cashier, and allegedly somewhere on the premises, one supervisor. And we were all very sleepy and very bored.

The phone in the tiny office in the back, where the supervisor allegedly was had been ringing for a minute now. That was the kind of thing the allegedly-there supervisor should be handling, as he’d made it perfectly clear that neither the cook nor cashier should, under any circumstances, leave their stations. And so the phone rang, and rang, ignored. Annoying us, but ignored. Because the only thing worse than being bored at five AM was being written up for it.

Several minutes passed, the phone still ringing. I had to wonder just who the heck was calling with such insistence, and shouted back at the cook, braving the potential wrath of the allegedly-there supervisor, offering bets on how many more times the phone would ring. Anything could become a game, if one was bored enough.

He thought the phone should have stopped already and would quit any time. I put down twenty creds it would be another thirty seconds at least. He goaded me that thirty seconds was nothing, and I’d have to put in for an extra minute, which I agreed to…if he was willing to play two-to-one odds.

And then the front end of a huge armored van crashed through the wall, showering the vacant seating section with chunks of brick and concrete. We screamed, both of us, and I ducked behind the counter as our cook grabbed a fryer basket and ran into the back corner, bearing it like a sword.

There was a moment of silence, the crumbling of mortar and distant sirens outside the only sound. I thought my heart was going to break my chest as I peeked over the counter. Clouds of dust hanging thick in the air, almost obscuring the benches I knew were only a few feet away, the beams of the van casting godlike beams in the swirling grey.

The driver-side opened, and a woman emerged, but not like any woman I’d ever seen. She wore all white, plated armor, seemingly designed for aerodynamics except for the dozens of pouches and compartments where she undoubtedly carried lots of dangerous things. Like, for example, the guns on her arms, or glowing visor, which she swept around the room with a cursory glance.

“Well, we are here,” she said, emerging from the front. “Grab what snacks you desire, AI.”

She was very beautiful and very tall and her voice was deep and resonant. I did have to wonder why she rammed into the wall during my shift, though.

“Har, har,” another woman said as she exited the passenger side. She slid over the bullet-cratered hood to bypass the new wall of debris they’d just created. She gave me a glance, but didn’t seem to care either that I existed, or that she’d just flashed her pastel-canary panties at me as she maneuvered across the hood. “I just need a minute with the cash registers.”

“Is this seriously about money?” the other asked. “Seriously?”

“What the hell is this?” The allegedly-present supervisor appeared in the doorway from outside, where he allegedly had not been this whole time. “My goddamn restaurant!”

“Oh it hardly qualifies,” the armed woman said, waving a gun at him. “Have you ever considered how your gluttonous, unhealthy food toxifies and enables the slovenly youth of this world?”

“G-g-gun!” he shouted, pointing for somebody’s benefit, presumably, and getting the really important part of her memo. He belatedly dove under a table, while she just shook her head. Inwardly, I agreed with both of them. But I was still hiding behind the counter, what did I know?

The second girl, the smaller one in the flashy dress walked over to me and gave me a smile over the counter.

It took me a moment, but I did wind up hating myself at my body’s reaction.

“W-welcome to Burger Off!, may I take your order?” I asked, slowly regaining my feet.

“You’re adorable,” she continued to smile at me. And I had to wonder for a second if she was the crazy one and didn’t need guns. The body mods, the walking around barefoot, the ease with with she was just…smashing out stuff up and…doing whatever she was doing. I’d seen a lot of crazies in this job, but none quite like her. But none were quite like each other either. “I’m just gonna take this, thanks,” she said, unplugging our register.

I thought she meant the register, but instead she took the cables and jammed them into her hair…which looking closely, and seeing cables connecting to it, wasn’t hair at all. So that was something.

“Will this take long?” a man’s voice called from the vehicle. Jeez, how many people were in there?

“They’re jamming all wireless,” she shouted back, pushing her glasses up her nose. “But every business is going to have a wired connection for transactions.”

“I know,” he shouted back. “They’re just setting up outside. Big semicircle at the moment, just outside Saga’s range. It’s looking…kinda bad.”

“Well you seemed curious,” she chimed, and then turned and gave me a diminutive shrug. “I thought it was a good plan.”

“Um, definitely,” I agreed.

“I got through to Rito,” she suddenly shouted again, frowning now. “I told her to get everyone out of Vegas ASAP. But um. I couldn’t get through to Vegas.”

“Why not?” He sounded mad. Or worried?

“They’re cut out. Their ‘net’s been knocked out, like they’re trying to do to us. Except they’re stationary. Jamming, a couple relays, a couple cut lines, and boom, darkness. Either our friends are still sleeping and don’t know what’s coming, they’ve already escaped somehow, they’re currently fighting or…”

“Not a possibility.”

“Right.”

“You can’t like…get on your cam-drones, or wake up a DOG or something in there?”

She shook her head. “Off the ‘net means off the ‘net, Athan. I don’t have a special wire running from my head to the cam-drones in the house. I am going to let Taglock know what’s up at least. But…if Lia doesn’t authorize it, he won’t act, and she can’t. And he probably won’t want to go up against the whole of the XPCA anyway.”

“Inform Deej as well, if you would,” visor-lady added, between peering carefully at the windows. “Though we face a similar conflict of motivation with the hunters as with Lia’s spy friend.”

“Anything else?” she asked, drumming her fingers. “This is probably the only ‘net we’ll get, so speak now or…never.”

A man appeared halfway in the driver’s door just for a moment, younger than I thought, but pretty well put-together. Unflattering coat, short brown hair. He threw his mobile at her and then popped back inside to keep yelling. “Just send to every one of my contacts and let them know, I guess. Apparently just being connected to me is enough to put them in danger, the least we can do is give them a heads-up.”

“I’m also going to dump what I can about their ops right now,” she said. “I’m pretty sure we’ll just discover that hey, they’re trying to kill us, but you never know.”

“Does it say anything about the team going after Lia?”

“After Moon and Tem you mean. And…no. Not that I’m seeing. Which is deceptive given that we know they’ve already cut them off the ‘net, so they’re already acting. I’m sorry.” Her face suddenly went stony. “Well shit.”

“What is it?” The other girl asked.

“They were bringing Skyweb to bear on our future position. I’ve just sent it a directive to drift off-course which should buy us some time, and out here in the middle of nowhere, we’re relatively safe from it…but if we arrive in Vegas and they wrangle it back into shape, we might be looking at death from above.”

I understood maybe a quarter of the words being exchanged here, and they were all the uninteresting ones like ‘and’ and ‘but’. But I did understand Skyweb, and the fact that these three maniacs were talking about getting shot at by it and controlling it was…was…

Well. I didn’t even know. I wondered if this is what karma felt like, and all my wishes that work was less boring were happening all at once.

The visor woman fixed us with a glare. “That seems an ignoble death. Please do what you can to see that it does not transpire.”

“Yeah. They’re also…readying missiles,” the girl replied.

“I’ve shot down loads of missiles already,” he said. “Jesus, they’re everywhere out there. It’s like a city on the entire horizon.”

“No, you’ve shot down rockets,” she said, adjusting her glasses at him again. “Missiles are launched from bases or submarines or aerial platforms, and are very large. Like, destroy a city large, or worse, depending on the warhead. I am not sure it’s something you could just stand there and let smack into your shield.” She pushed her glasses up her nose with finality. “By which I mean, I am sure it’s not. The pressure wave and heat of the blast in the air surrounding you would kill you.”

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“Are you done there, then?” he asked. “You know, before the blast kills me?”

“Just another minute,” she said. “I’m not sure we’re in any super urgent rush at the moment. They’re not stirring outside, are they?”

“No,” he said. “Just set up and waiting.”

“It would figure,” The third said. “Time is their ally; they have everything to lose by pushing the conflict forward and everything to gain by waiting for reinforcements and larger weapons and closing off our paths. Likely, given the choice, they would keep us contained here until such a time as Skyweb is aligned, or those missiles are authorized for use, and wipe us out without a face-to-face conflict.”

“Just getting out of here again is going to be a problem,” he argued. “I’ve no doubt they’re fixing to disable the van as we speak.”

“To be honest, it is already fairly disabled,” she sighed. “It is riding up on the wall at the midpoint. She is a whale of a machine and requires good contact with the ground to maneuver, and we may have beached her.”

“They might not know that,” the first girl said, pulling on her hair. “Hmm.” She seemed to absentmindedly unplug from the cables and then examined the register she’d yanked out earlier.

“If you want money, just take it and leave!” our allegedly-present manager shouted from under his table. The armored woman walked over and gave the table a solid boot, making him yelp like a child. I glanced backwards and found our cook still standing there with the fryer in his hands, still as a statue. Maybe he thought if he didn’t move they wouldn’t see him? He was such a burnout he might believe it.

“Athan, can you lend me a hand over here?” the girl said, hopping the counter with no apparent concern how visible this maneuver made her panties. “And keep your head down, they probably have snipers in the windows.”

As those words made my blood freeze, she poked at the offline register for a moment before picking up the entire freaking thing in one arm and clambering back to the van like it was nothing. “I’m going to see if I can get this system online off the truck’s power and get the two talking. Can you clear some of the rubble so it can drive out of here?”

“Sure,” he said, popping out and under the van like it was nothing, his voice just coming from a different place now. “Even if you got through to Rito, I still want to get to Lia myself. We’ll need the van for that.”

“Well. We need something. Maybe not this van,” the body-modder grinned.

“What’d I miss?” A new woman…a girl maybe?…scrawny, dark-haired and bored-looking emerged as well and spoke in what was barely more than a whisper. She walked right over to the window and peered out. It was about half a second before her head snapped backwards, and then an echoing distant crack.

I felt my body trembling all over, my heart seemed to vibrate in my chest. I blinked, over and over again, looking at the body just…just lying there. Blood seeping out of it. I opened my mouth but was hyperventilating too much to scream.

She sat up, and like her friend, turned and grinned at me, adding a wink.

“Oh, is that why you guys are all staying away from the windows?” she stood up and waved at the sniper before snapping backwards again, another distant crack, another heart attack, this one mixed with all kinds of confusion. She had some kind of bulletproof armor, I concluded. But she was just wearing a sweater? And…the blood?

I decided not to think about it, which was a convenient ability for any fast-food worker to have, especially the graveyard shift variety.

“It pains me to consider that all of my plans might hinge on that girl,” the woman fussing with our register fretted. “But come on. We’ve got only a little time to work here before they decide to start pressuring us seriously. And I have no idea how long it takes to authorize a missile strike on your own soil, but I’d rather not find out first-hand.”

“Gotcha,” he replied over the shifting of cracked brick and mortar out from the van. “I guess Karu’s on lookout duty then. Try not to get shot.”

“An excellent plan as always,” the woman who was Karu replied, sitting behind the van and peering out, not exposing herself in the way the twice-shot girl did.

“Oh not always,” that girl said.

“Always.”

“But not always.”

She sighed. “Were you not earlier complaining about ruining your sweater?”

“You know, you’re right. But today’s made me realize that red is really my color, and there’s really only one way to change my look out here anyway, right? A little impromptu dieing?”

“Saga, if that was a pun, I swear we will leave you here,” she threatened. The way her guns and visor glinted, I certainly wouldn’t want to cross her, but the other woman just laughed.

“Empty threat, Karu,” the body-modder replied. “Don’t forget, you’re the one in the doghouse right now.”

“I hardly need two antagonizing me at the moment,” Karu said. “Do not side with Saga, AEGIS.”

“I’m siding with Athan,” AEGIS said. “Don’t blame me for you going on a rampage to your own damn detriment.”

“Guys,” the man — Athan probably? — called from under the van as he shoved rock. “No fighting. Amongst ourselves, I mean.”

“Well this isn’t working anyway,” AEGIS said, pulling the register from the driver’s seat. “The voltage isn’t high enough in the dash to power the core, and I don’t exactly have the time or parts to get it running.” She sighed heavily, and then picked it up and brought it back over to me, plopping it back in place at the counter.

“Um, thanks,” I told her.

“Emily,” she said, glancing at my badge. “Why the heck weren’t you evacuated?”

“I…didn’t know this was…going to be a thing. Is this a drill or…something?”

She gave me a smile I recognized as being condescending and immediately lowered my estimation of her by a notch.

“We’re kinda…hmm. Hey, Athan, would you call us terrorists at this point?”

“No?”

“Serial killers,” the last girl — who must, by elimination be Saga — added. “No, wait, vampire serial killers.”

“Yeah we’re in kind of a grey area,” AEGIS explained turning back to me. “But what’s clear is the XPCA wants us dead, along with a substantial part of the Army and National Guard. I’d have thought they’d have gone down our route and evacuated civilians by now. Or at least called. They’ve gone downhill a lot in the last hundred years,” she frowned.

Maybe that phone call was important after all.

“Nothing like that. Sorry?”

She laughed. “Don’t know why you’re apologizing for getting caught up in our war zone. You seem nice. I probably shouldn’t talk to you though, or the XPCA will be interrogating you for a month.”

“AEGIS what are we waiting for?” Athan called.

“For you, dummy,” she called back. “Let me know when the van’s in order.”

“Why not help?” he asked.

She rolled her eyes. “Because, honestly, we’re already about as boned here as we’re gonna get. We need a plan. I was being sarcastic about waiting on the bricks.”

There was a clang from under the van that made AEGIS wince, which I think might have been Athan’s head. He certainly swore afterwards like it was. “Then what’s the plan!?”

“Well I had this idea to use the computer here talking to the van and hook up a really rudimentary autopilot. Basically just, keep the accelerator floored. And–“

“Couldn’t we use a brick,” he shouted, chucking one at us with surprisingly good aim for being on his back under a van. “On the gas?”

“–and putting in some basic intelligence to make it seem like we were still in there. Varying up our acceleration, adding some course divergence, that kind of thing. The XPCA would notice pretty fast if we just floored it in a straight line, especially if it ever wound up off the road and just kept going.”

“And what, we just hope they all chase after it then?” he asked, emerging, and looking a lot sweatier and dust-caked.

“No, we sneak out the back. Use Saga to find an isolated pod which can divert or distract their cameras and then…hitch a ride with them. Ride the convoy itself to our destination, right under their noses.”

“I do like that part of the plan,” Athan said, wiping his face as he rested. “But you’re right it doesn’t work without a diversion. Did you come up with all this on the fly?”

“Yes,” she said, swaying a little in a way that made her dress twirl. Oh. She liked him. She was crazy and infatuated.

“Well, good job with half the plan. Let’s see what else we can piece together.”

Saga stood up and dusted off. “Nope, plan’s solid. Everyone get ready to go, we’ll slip out the backdoor in the supervisor’s office. He’s got a little clever hidden exit that he uses to sneak out and go drinking during his shifts.”

He did? The rat bastard. No wonder he never wanted to be bothered in there. Not that it really surprised me. He was, after all, only an allegedly-present supervisor, after all.

“Uh, we still need a distraction,” Athan said. “We need some kind of AI to drive this thing.”

“Oh I’ve got an AI,” she said, cracking her knuckles as she advanced on the counter. As she drew nearer, I could see that she was stained with blood, black hair to barefoot toe. And she wasn’t just scrawny, she was spindly and gaunt. But none of that compared to the look in her eye. It wasn’t something there, but something which wasn’t. Like she saw me the same way she saw the sink of dishes behind me.

It scared the bejesus out of me. Until suddenly, it didn’t.

“Hi lover,” Saga said, leaning her elbows on the counter. “I’d like to order one of you. To go.”

“Saga, no,” AEGIS said. “Leave them alone. We can figure out another way.”

“Perhaps you do not think our moments precious, but while we may be temporarily removed from danger, can you say the same of his sister?” Karu said.

“Yeah, AEGIS. Think of the children,” Saga grinned malevolently.

“Please,” AEGIS muttered. “This isn’t a war for ideals, not right now. There’s always a smarter way. Don’t drag them into it just because you’re trying to drag Athan down to your level.”

Athan stood up, stony-faced, even though he’d wiped the dust from it. “No,” he said. “They’re right. We’ll do what we have to do. Saga…go ahead. Take the…the worst one. And blast all of this out of the others.”

“Pardon, garçon,” Saga said. “But if they use thermal or X-ray or the like, it will be a teensy bit obvious there’s only one human aboard. I count us as three. And a half. We can round down.”

“Athan, please,” AEGIS turned on him. “I know…right now you’re really lost and vulnerable. And you feel like you need to do everything you can–“

He raised a hand at her and she stopped. But only for a moment.

“–but don’t let a moment of weakness scar you for the rest of your life,” she blurted out. “Don’t do something you won’t be able to face tomorrow.”

“Such as, letting his sister die?” Karu crossed her arms imperiously. “Fight with all of your capabilities or none of them.”

“It’s fine, AEGIS,” he said, his voice dead and flat, as though he weren’t even the same person as from a minute ago. “If it kills me…it doesn’t matter. As long as it doesn’t kill her.”

AEGIS shook her head and pulled at her long strands of hair, and seemed to have a lot to say but said none of it. Saga led the others into the back, leaving AEGIS alone with us. After staring at me for long moments, she finally took my hand and gave it a firm squeeze.

“I’m so sorry about this,” she said.

“About what?” I asked.

“About…everything. You have the worst luck in the world. Please don’t blame Exhumans. We’re just…bad people, trying to do the right thing, the only way we know how.”

I numbly stared at her, not understanding what was prompting this stranger to suddenly drop this intimate moment on me, before she followed the others into the back office.

I didn’t understand why the three of us left climbed into the XPCA van either, but it seemed like the most natural thing in the world, and the others were doing it without question. I guessed there was a good reason for it…it certainly felt like there was, but I couldn’t remember it.

Not that I really needed to. I decided not to think about it, which was a convenient ability for any fast-food worker to have, especially the graveyard shift variety.

As our allegedly-present supervisor threw the van into gear, and the window radiated with spiderwebs of cracks, the sound of distant gunshots echoed out in the night. We gave each other one reassuring glance. Three familiar faces, doing what we knew was right.

And then he floored it, and we drove straight into the lines of the softest concentration of military we could find.