I’m glad that we finally found a good use for the replica campus I built a whole lifetime ago. Andrea is holed up inside, and she’s not letting anything get to the inside of the copy of the dorm building. I didn’t believe her when she declared in clear images that she was going to hold down the fort solo against all of the rest of us, but she’s pulling it off. Granted, it’s not all of us together at once, but she’s been doing an impressive job of it so far. Even with the combined assault of all the Geologists trying to undermine the foundations of the place, Andrea remains calm as she stands firm in the center of the sandy soil that forms the commons of the fake campus.

“It’s going to collapse,” Evan says confidently, gesturing to the dorm building.

“I don’t think so,” I say. “Look what she’s doing around the edges of the windows there. She’s got that same thing growing all through the interior supports.”

The areas I’m pointing out have a crystalline crust growing on them. I’m not sure what exactly it is, since Andrea is blanketing the area in some weird electromagnetic field that prevents a lot of the bots’ sensors from working right, but I’m pretty sure it’s a response to what the Geologists are doing.

“It’s not going to help,” Evan says. “The rock under the foundations is almost completely sand at this point. And there it goes!”

Jets of sand start streaming from seven points under the dorms, kicking out minerals like fire hoses. No, like geysers. At this rate there’s going to be nothing left under there soon. I peek underneath to see what’s still holding it up. More of that crystal, which seems to be resisting the efforts of seven determined cloud wielders.

“There what goes?” Valerie says from her chair. The elevated platform I put up so that we could get a good view of the event was more useful when the Doctors and Roadbuilders did their combined attempt. This round’s probably been pretty boring for her and Lin with so much of the action happening underground. They’ve been good sports about it though.

“Nevermind,” Evan says, “I thought it was going to collapse.”

“It will soon, but not how you think,” I say, feeling the impromptu crystal supports all starting to crack simultaneously. “Watch this.”

Some kind of signal that I can’t read with my disrupted sensors seems to coordinate the dissolution of the supports, and the building falls. Gracefully. Without any apparent damage. It’s like a giant hand had slowly lowered the whole building two meters into the ground. I check the dummy children inside and they’re all undamaged, which is impressive given how fragile I made them. Lin and Valerie clap. This is the first visible indication this round of what was actually going on.

From Phil: We give up. That was our best play and her counter was awesome.

To Phil: Good effort. Feel free to come join us up here if you want.

Geologists start flying up one by one, taking seats on the platform. They seem to be in good spirits for just getting beaten.

To Andrea: Are you ready for round three, or do you need a break?

A musical roar like a hundred trumpets issues from the mock campus. A clear challenge.

“Alright, Evan. Our turn. Don’t go easy on her.”

I start in with a wave of brute force, just throwing my massive cloud right at the dorms in a direct assault. Evan brings his cloud around and starts attacking Andrea directly from the other side. I can’t really tell what’s going on with that part of the fight because of Andrea’s weird disruption field, but my front is going well for our team. The side of the building facing us is slowly melting away. The crystalline reinforcements she’s building are much tougher than the sand-based concrete that makes up the rest of the exterior wall, so I mostly ignore those. Rooms are getting exposed, where the child dummies should be, but aren’t.

Where did they go? There’s no way she had time to move them. With as delicate as I made them, she’d need to gently cradle each one to move it without breaking it. But they’re gone from the rooms I’ve opened up.

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Wait.

Clever sister. I’m only seeing what she wants me to see.

I detect the slight refraction of the sun’s light on the edge of the screens embedded just behind the walls of each exposed room in the building. If she didn’t have her disruption field up, I would have sensed those as soon as she put them up, but she did, so I didn’t. I pull back a portion of my cloud and try to consume her bots that form the screens. They’re slippery though, scattering like a school of fish, forcing my infinite tiny hands into a fruitless pursuit. When did she figure out those kinds of evasive maneuvers? That’s not baked into the software baseline, though it probably should be. I make a note to get something like that automated for everyone.

Evan grunts with effort and I see his face scrunched in concentration. I can’t count on his attack on her for much longer. I go in for a quick win. With the screens gone, I can see into the building to the exposed dummy children, right where they should be. I start into the building and get three of them quickly before a wave of Andrea comes crashing around the mock dorm building from the copy of the commons.

“Sorry man, I held her as long as I could,” Evan apologizes.

I’m amazed at the size of the cloud Andrea has marshaled. I’ve never seen anyone do anything at that scale but me. She must have been quietly growing them all through the first two rounds of the mock assault, undetected behind her disruption field.

“Are you out?” I say, not feeling any bots matching his signature.

“Sorry, she’s just too good.”

“Take these and grow back up,” I tell him, detaching a contingent for him to sync with. “Then do anything you can to distract her.”

“On it,” he says, his face reverting to a mask of concentration. I feel the air start to cool and sky above us darken as his bots suck heat and light for the power needed to reproduce.

A million pinpricks stab into my non-skin as Andrea’s cloud starts consuming mine. I ignore the building for now and focus on the aerial melee between my cloud and hers. I employ every technique I can think of, but her control is masterful and I’m at a stalemate. One cluster chases another in a chaos of brownian motion. My full attention is devoted to the brawl in front of me and I don’t even notice the platform under me starting to collapse until it’s almost too late.

“Evan, beneath us!”

His newly grown cloud is just big enough to catch us all before anyone gets hurt. My feet hit sandy soil as I entrust my physical safety to my brother. I feel every bot like a finger, and in every way I become my cloud, ignoring my human flesh entirely. I dive and fly in a million directions, catching, breaking, eating, breeding. My electronic self grows and destroys, adapting to her evasive tactics and mastering the battle. Her cloud wanes as mine waxes.

“Noah!” Evan roars, pulling me out of my reverie.

“What?” I say, splitting my focus and seeing what he sees just before it hits me.

Andrea is adapting too, employing the Geologists techniques with a tunnel that opens under my feet. I drop at least a meter before Evan catches me. Lin screams, terrified.

“I’m OK,” I assure her as Evan lifts my body from the hole. I spare a few bots to plumb the depths and it goes down half a dozen meters. I would have broken my legs or worse if I’d taken the full brunt of that fall. Andrea is playing hardball. “Nevermind about offense, Evan. Just keep me alive.”

Pinpricks pull my attention back to the swarming chaos between me and the building. I command the upper hand again as I focus on reducing her cloud. Finally, I can spare enough attention to reach into the building again. I break a couple more dummies before Andrea seals off the side of the building, fusing what’s left of her cloud into a solid wall protecting the openings that I had I cut into the building’s exterior. She’s doing some kind of intensified version of her disruptor that numbs me entirely to everything on the other side of the wall.

I start chewing through her blockade from the outside. My bots feast on hers now that they’re not running anymore. I’m back in to get the last dummy that I need in order to declare victory when I feel a rain of sand and tiny pebbles clatter down on my head, the aftermath of a blocked death from above attack.

“Ow.” I wince. “Could you try to keep the debris off of me when you stop those, Evan?”

I realize the sky has gone dark, and not just because of the light collector that Evan had been running. The sun is gone from the sky. How long was I in the zone there?

Over two hours. It felt like minutes.

“Uh, yeah,” Evan says sheepishly. “I didn’t stop that one, Andrea did.”

“So she killed me?” I ask. “Did she win?”

“Yeah,” Louise says. “Kind of a pyrrhic victory, since you got all but one of the targets, but yeah. You two are dead. And Marc and I decided to forfeit our turn. If she can beat you two, we don’t stand a chance. Andrea deserves the win.”

Lightshow fireworks spring up from the center of the fake campus as Andrea pulls back what remains of her cloud from the wall of the mock dorm building and declares victory. Part of me wants a rematch, I think with a better strategy we could have won, but my better self is just proud of my sister. I’m feeling very comfortable leaving the campus in her sole care whenever we finally get permission to go to New Orleans.