Clay nearly pulled the headset off in a panic, but resettled it and turned her head to focus on the child. "Who is it?" she asked.

"My name is Matilde," the child said.

"What did you call me?"

"Warrior."

"How can I help you?"

"Find my cat. His name is Darby. He's orange, with stripes. He might've gone up a tree, but I don't think so, because he's kinda fat and pretty clumsy."

Clay sighed. With a last surge of hope, she said formally, "I accept your quest."

"Oh, thank you!" Matilde squealed. "I hope you find Darby soon!"

Clay fumbled with the glove to open the radial menu in the space in front of her. Predictably, it appeared in the center of her vision, right where the macular degeneration rendered everything hopelessly fuzzy. She tried tracking around with her eyes for a moment, then sighed and tugged the headset off. She tossed it into the box, followed soon after by the glove.

She reached for her Dobelle glasses and put them on. Everything became clearer as the lenses fed a fuller picture to her cortical implant. She'd initially balked at the surgery, but as her vision worsened she gave in and now was glad for it.

Considering the flimsy crap in the box, she wondered if there wasn't a way to jury-rig a connection between the visor and her implant. Her electronics bench was covered in yarn at the moment, but that could be remedied.

Before she went chasing digital ghosts, though, Clay figured she had to be sure. She called Lydia again. "Lydia, dear, I wanted to knit Raf something nice while he's recuperating. Where is he, again?"

Her niece had to take a moment to check, then came back on. "All I have is his last message from a week ago. He said he was moving to rehabilitation and that he was going to be working for a company called Anabasis."

"Oh, thank you, dear. You know, I swear my poor old mind is going. How did Rafael end up in this state, again?"

Lydia sighed. "He was poking around the old chicken baron's house--I guess they've got it fenced off now. Anyways, he got hurt jumping the fence after the caught him, I guess."

Clay's maternal instincts had never really kicked in, but she was sure she would never let "I guess" be the extent of her knowledge where the health of her child was concerned. Still, she kept her tone sweet as she said, "Oh, thank you, Lydia. I know you must've gone through a lot because of this. You've been a great help." Not. They said their goodbyes and Clay impatiently tapped her hand unit against her leg.

"Vonzell," she said. She gave a little sigh. "We're going to have to go out."

"Yes, Miss Clay," Vonzell said, turning around with a poorly-concealed smile. "I'm calling for a car."

Clay hated going out; Vonzell relished the break from routine.

The car would only be a couple of minutes. Clay waved her hand unit and her knitting bag over the charging spot. Bracing one hand against the door jamb, she stepped outside.

In the car, she looked up the address for Anabasis. It was in the light-industrial area that formerly had been a horse park; Clay knew of no clinics around there.

She ordered the car to take a path leading them by the old chicken baron's house and go past at reduced speed. More than "fenced in," the iconic little white house that had featured in their corporate logo for so long was behind a concrete-slab wall topped with barbed wire. Clay had a sudden increase in her respect for young Raf's abilities and pluck.

The roll-away gate in front had a sign: "Protected by JohnnyLaw™."

They didn't have to drive very long to get to the wide circle of spaced-out businesses. They parked near the entrance facing the street and Clay told the car to wait. She and Vonzell entered the large, steel-sided Anabasis building. Clay remembered it used to house a call center. It'd never been a medical facility as far as she could remember.

The lobby had certainly been modernized: soft brushed aluminum accents around a high reception desk of self-luminescent purple marble. It was one of the odder interior design fads of the last quarter-century, but one of the few that didn't make Clay wrinkle her nose reflexively.

She put a hand on Vonzell's forearm, a signal to hang back, and approached the elevated desk. The confused old lady act would do here, she thought. "Am I in the right place? I was told this was a clinic. My grandson, you see--"

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

"Oh, we're not a medical facility," the young woman said. "We have some medically qualified staff for the comfort of our medically remediable contractual partners."

"Clients in need of medical attention, you mean," Clay said.

The girl's smile dropped a little. "Oh, no, we don't have 'clients.' Everyone is a contractual partner. Some need medical remediation," she said.

"Well, that clears that up completely," Clay said. "My grandson, you see, might be one of--"

"Claybelle!" a reedy but still resounding voice came from along the hallway.

"Oh, Christ," Clay muttered. Xenophon Kaminides, presumptive head of whatever the hell "Anabasis" was, strode over to them. He was elderly, though younger than Clay and certainly spryer. Vonzell moved up protectively to stand behind Clay's shoulder.

"Claybelle, how good to see you," Kaminides said with a smile showing white teeth. "You got the package and played Everhome? I was hoping you'd be impressed and come see what we were up to."

"I'm sure you were,"Clay said tartly.

"And you still have--Vonzell, isn't it? Good that he's still taking care of you."

"I prefer 'they/them,' sir," Vonzell said coldly. Kaminides ignored them.

Clay said, "X, what the hell is this place? My great-nephew is here."

X seemed surprised. "Really? Well, I'm sure he'd tell you himself that he's well seen to here. This is a nice little dormitory workplace, plenty of amenities."

"'Amenities' that include medical care, X? I was told he was in physical rehabilitation. What the hell kind of work could he be doing for you?"

X's smile turned down from its megawatt brightness. "Clay. You know I've always had a passion for human-computer interface. All of our contractual partners are working to help refine that by contributing to a sourcework revenue stream: the Everhome multiverse."

"You're running a game."

X nooded proudly. "A virtual reality massively multiplayer online role-playing game. The latest of a long line of such games, an evolutionary leap in responsive, dynamic game worlds." X never could resist sounding like a commercial.

"Well, then. I'm excited to see my great-nephew at work."

"Ah, that won't be possible. The non-disclosure agreement, you see. It's crunch time now. Once we're out of beta we can arrange a visit." His smile widened again.

Clay's eyes narrowed. "I see."

X put an arm around her shoulder. "Listen. Clay. In the meantime, why don't you play the game some more? If you look real close, you might find some familiar elements: Everhome was built largely on the PERSEUS architecture."

Clay quirked an eyebrow. "The government let you do that?"

X pursed his lips in a smug little smile. "DARPA was the exclusive licensee of the system we built the Tai-shan simulator on. There was a clause allowing their lease to age out. The nonprofit formed to hold PERSEUS' intellectual property in trust was able to license it to commercial entities five years ago. Which, as it turns out, was Anabasis." His grin widened. "It wasn't hard convincing the head of the nonprofit, since it was me."

Clay nodded. X had always had a way with the labyrinthine world where business met bureaucracy, making the outright dodgy somehow legal. She had taken a page from his book when forming a couple of trusts and nonprofits for herself, including the Turing Organization.

With that, Clay made some polite noncommittal noises, let X make his excuses, and watched him retreat down the bland hallway of his mysterious building.

Clay considered the building as they got back into the car. "Front entrance, and there's a side entrance way down on the side. I can't see: does it have a card reader, Vonzell?"

"I can't tell, Miss Clay."

Clay huffed. "All right, let's take the car around the other side." There they found a glass-doored entrywway near where the majority of cars were parked. Clay hmm'd. When they got back home, Clay went to her workroom and started clearing the yarn from her electronics bench. She and Vonzell spent a half-hour looking for her tiny drone-cams; she got those talking with her computer and set them aside.

Clay asked Vonzell to take a car back to Anabasis with her cam-drones in hand. Vonzell called when they arrived and Clay asked them to hold one cam-drone in their hand and let Clay fly it off from her computer at home. She started it off toward the nearby treeline as she told Vonzell to drive around the other side of the Anabasis building and do the same with the other. She sent that one to hover near the woods as well.

"Okay, Miss Clay, I'm heading home now," Vonzell said.

"Not so fast," Clay said. She said she'd put in an order voucher for Vonzell's favorite restaurant and "ordered" them to have dinner there, as well as to get something to take home for lunch tomorrow. Clay's and Vonzell's was a mutually beneficial arrangement, and Clay took pains to keep their relationship a positive one. She would indignantly reject anyone's observation that she was just being "nice."

She got to work on the drones. She set them to hover about ten feet off the ground and hold position; they'd return to their assigned spots if the wind buffeted them around. She locked their cameras on their respective entrances, the one on the employee entrance and the other on the unmarked door toward the rear of the building. Clay had a hunch that door was important. She set the computer to identify human shapes approaching after eight pm and left them to do their business. They'd power down and drop to the ground overnight, she was sure, but they'd get enough of a solar charge the next day to be able to fly back to a nearby car for retrieval.

Clay began to consider the possibilities. She looked at the taken-apart headset. "Power," she said to herself. "I'm going to need power. And probably throughput." She called for Vonzell. "I need to use the copper house," she said. "As soon as possible, probably in a couple of days. Not sure for how long. A week? Maybe two?" Vonzell looked troubled. Clay let a few of Vonzell's cousins stay in the house rent-free, but still, nobody wanted to force someone to clear out on short notice. "I'll pay for arrangements at a hotel or suchlike," Clay said. "Oh, and you should probably get IV and catheter stuff ready to take there." Clay noticed a little quickening in her breath. "It may take some time to get this done."