Gretta stopped shelling acorns and stared into space. A solitary tear ran down her face. She lowered her head with a little gasp, then broke into sobs.

“What’s wrong, dear?” Grandmother’s voice came from the ceiling. “Are you malfunctioning?”

“Oh, it’s nothing,” Gretta said, sniffing.

One of the Hands skittered up to her and focused both lenses on her.

“You can tell your Oma, liebchen,” the AI said encouragingly.

“It will be our birthday soon. Mama used to bake a cake with blackberries on it for our birthday. But now I’ll never eat blackberries again! I miss my Mama!” She began weeping loudly.

“Oh, don’t cry!” Grandmother said. “I can get you blackberries. I know the location of a bramble patch. It’s almost out of signal range but I could use one of my Hands to boost the signal.”

Gretta looked up. “You could get blackberries? Really? Oh, Grandmother, that would be so wonderful! Thank you!” She beamed at the camera on the wall.

“I’ll send my Hands out tomorrow morning,” Grandmother said. “Now dry your eyes, little one, we’re going to need all those acorns to make a cake.”

The twins were up before dawn. Gretta went into the kitchen wearing a green jersey, and her boots. Hans followed in his red jacket.

“Are you cold, my dears?” Grandmother asked. “I can turn up the heat.”

“Thank you, Grandmother, but I’m not cold. I always wear green on our birthday, and Hans wears red. It’s one of our family traditions. Have the Hands gone to get the berries?”

“Yes, dear. I expect they will be back in an hour.”

“Hans and I are going to hang the party decorations we made last night now,” Gretta said.

“So long as it makes you happy, my dears.”

Gretta went up to their bedroom and collected the pile of folded paper flowers they’d made out of pages from the least popular books.

She found Hans standing on a chair in the front hallway hanging a clumsily-made wreath of dried pine twigs over the video pick-up, blocking the view.

“Hold my chair, would you? It’s a bit wobbly.”

She steadied the chair as he began sticking paper flowers around a sensor on the wall with small pieces of sticking plaster. When he ran out of flowers, he looked down at Gretta. She gave him a nod and moved to stand by the door. Hans took his lighter out of his pocket. He applied the tiny flame to the chain of flowers, and then the pine branches. The flowers flared up nicely. The pine boughs started emitting a cloud of smoke.

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An alarm squawked. With a fizzing noise, the sprinkler on the ceiling turned on, spat out a few drops of water before stopping, blocked by the wad of chewing gum that Hans had applied to it.

“Children?” Grandmother said through the hallway speaker. “What is happening? I can’t see you! Are you well?”

A recorded voice began broadcasting. “Fire detected. Please evacuate the building. Proceed to the nearest exit. Fire detected!”

It stopped abruptly with a tired whine. Gretta kept her ear against the front door and there it was, the sound she was waiting for. A quiet clunk as the lock disengaged. There was no handle on the door. Gretta dug at the edge of the door with the knife she’d filched from the kitchen. Hans was beside her and together they heaved the heavy door partway open and squeezed through the gap, coughing from the smoke. Without a word, they ran into the trees.

They moved at a sprint at first then slowed down to a trot, walking for short periods, then running again. Gretta hoped they were heading in the right direction. She didn’t want to turn on her phone in case the house detected the signal. Then she heard cracking twigs and saw a flash of silver behind them.

“The Hands are coming!” she said, and they ran. They did their best to choose a path through obstacles that would slow the small robots down, but gradually the silver spiders were gaining on them.

Gretta had asked Grandmother once how the Hands managed to kill rabbits, and one of the droids had demonstrated, shooting out a bolt of electricity. She could hear the patter of their many legs getting louder. And then, looking back, she saw the Hands stop as suddenly as if they’d run into an invisible wall. She slowed a little, then stopped. The two droids were standing completely still.

“I think they’re out of signal range of the house,” Hans said beside her. “They’re not very smart without the AI to direct them.” The droids turned around and started back the way they’d came, retracing their route with all the zigs and zags exactly.

“Got the knife?” Hans said. She fished it out of her pocket. He began cutting a blaze on the nearest tree.

“Just in case we wind up going in circles,” he said. “We don’t want to wander back within range.”

They went on until they found a clearing and could consult the GPS. A full day’s hike from there brought them out on a rutted and overgrown track, the remains of a logging road. They made camp there, and shared a diet bar. They’d managed to save four of them during their time in the house, in the hope they’d eventually get away.

“Shame we couldn’t bring the blankets,” Gretta said as they curled up on a pile of bracken. “At least it’s summer.”

“I think it’s a shame we never got to try that cake,” Hans said with a grin.

Gretta made a face. “Acorn flour with no sugar or eggs or butter…blech!”

They followed the logging track the next morning until it connected to a paved road. It was another two days of walking before they saw signs of people: a cluster of summer cabins by a small lake. Most of them appeared disused, but one had been occupied sometime in the last couple of years, and had food in the pantry. They broke the lock and helped themselves to the food and some blankets, then carried on around the lake until they reached a road that appeared to be in use.

After waiting several hours at a crossroads, they got a ride with a couple of hikers who were heading home. Gretta told them she and her brother had been on a summer camp outing but they’d taken a wrong turn and gotten back to the parking area late, only to find the vans that had brought them had gone back without them.

“I think each of them though we were in the other van,” she said, and the hikers shook their heads in disgust at such negligence, and shared their lunch with them. Their hosts insisted on taking them to the town they’d claimed to come from, saying they wanted to speak to the camp counselors. Hans and Gretta gave them the slip when they stopped to use the bathroom. They managed to hitch further rides with farmers, who thankfully were not as curious about why two children were travelling on their own.