My heart fluttered, a smile cutting through my tears. Oh my God, Matt actually got my text and came for me.

Clad in flannel pajamas, clutching a fire extinguisher the color of his wrist cast, he planted his sandals in the doorway and took in the scene: Athleisure, eyes closed and motionless, plugged into the HVAC machine across the roof. Me, all bloodied and weepy on my knees. Laramee, looming above with a lit-up Iriguchi.

The cop stepped back, equal parts surprised and annoyed—all his attention on Matt.

This was our chance to take out Officer motherfucking Laramee. So in one swift motion, I shot to my feet, rocketing my knee into his balls with the white-hot fury of a thousand suns.

Except ... there wasn’t the expected groan. He didn’t double over, fold to the roof. Instead, he drew himself up to tower over me, leering down with a soup-spoiling smile that parted like movie theater curtains.

“I purchased an athletic cup,” he said, all canine teeth and contempt, the cut on his lip weeping red.

Shiiit. My stomach balled up and I shrunk into my hoodie. I’d never seen Laramee smile before—and I never wanted to again.

Apparently all that empathy of his had its limits. But before he could grab me, I ducked, diving away.

The nanosecond I hit the roof, Matt triggered the “customized” extinguisher he’d threatened to use on the bridge, a mist of non-dairy creamer spewing forth instead of anything to put out fires. Then he sparked the business end of a flint striker pilfered from AP Chem—and the mist erupted into a fountain of flame shooting past Laramee’s head.

The cop leapt back, eyes like a rearing horse, his Iriguchi clattering to the roof.

I shielded my face from the blaze, my skin tingling like someone had opened an oven. Oh my God, Matt. That was insane.

The flame fizzled out. Matt clutched his extinguisher with chest heaving, backlit by the stairwell.

Laramee’s wild gaze met mine—before he scrambled for the Iriguchi.

Panic pushed the air from my lungs. I snatched my backpack and ducked behind the nearest HVAC machine, plastering myself against damp steel with only a view of more roof and machinery.

“Matt!” I shouted. “Take cover. There are two of them!”

“Two of what?”

“Laramees. One’s a bot. Athleisure.” Hopefully he was staying plugged into the Matrix or whatever the prep was for flashing himself with the Talisman.

“Oh … okay.” Matt’s voice was thin, distracted. The stairwell door creaked.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Laramee called out to him, “but I will if I have to. You’re going to turn around, interlock your fingers behind your head, and slowly step backward out of the stairwell.”

“N-No, sir…. I don’t think I will.”

I hazarded a peek around the corner. Laramee lay belly-down behind an HVAC unit steps away, his Iriguchi trained on the stairwell, its door ajar. Matt wasn’t coming out, and Laramee wasn’t going in. If Athleisure stayed put too, we had a second to catch our breath.

Through the haze of fear and pain, another tide of emotion swelled in me. Matt must have followed my trail of unlocked doors. “You came back for me,” I called out, my shoulder blades pressed against the HVAC machine.

He cleared his throat from the stairwell. “I couldn't sleep, saw your text. I ... had to apologize for ditching you. But then you were kinda screaming from the roof when I got here.”

I shivered, the wind lifting my hair. Apologizing was something, but I wasn’t ready to forgive him. I wasn’t ready to forgive me. “I’m sorry I didn’t let you help.”

A beat of silence. “It’s okay, Ko.”

“Enough,” Laramee said. “I need you to come out with your hands behind your head. Right now.”

Matt didn’t answer.

I wound my fingers around a rust-red pipe, rushing to fill the silence, a sudden need to make him understand. “I really wish I’d—”

“Ko?”

“Yeah Matt?”

“Do you think you can zip it for two consecutive seconds so I can, you know, help you outta this pickle you’ve gotten yourself into?”

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

I bit my lip, my cheeks warming. With Laramee distracted, maybe I needed to do the helping here.

But my arm hair stood on end as a thrumming mechanical whine drifted in.

Whipping around, I searched for the source. It came from the sky, a couple hundred feet away. Yes, there. An object, black against the lights of the bridge, was somehow suspended over the bay—hitched via thick cables to half a dozen flying drones. It was large. Roughly rectangular.

Like, say … the size and shape of a dumpster just dredged from the bay, drawing closer with every heartbeat.

My mouth was open, my limbs rigid. This was bonkers. Laramee must have recovered the dumpster using his boat. The dumpster. This was his escape plan.

“Matt?” I said.

He huffed. “Yeah, Ko.”

“I don’t mean to alarm you, but a flying dumpster portal is headed our way.”

“Noted.”

“Laramee’s gonna move his consciousness into Athleisure and take the Talisman through the portal so he can—”

“Shh.”

I peered around the corner. Laramee was clutching his hand cannon, army-crawling toward the HVAC unit between him and the stairwell door, still ajar. So much for the impasse. Matt was nowhere to be seen, probably crouched on the stairs frantically reloading his extinguisher and/or saying final prayers.

The distant whine ramped up. I wasn’t about to let Matt get shot trying to save me, although this time somehow felt different from on the bridge. So I scrambled onto my HVAC unit out of Laramee’s view, morning dew wetting my fingertips. Laramee would transit with the Talisman when the dumpster got here—if he’d transferred into Athleisure first. We had to stop him.

“Aiden,” I whispered. “I need your help. Can you cut power to the big machine using all the electricity?”

“All the power?” Aiden asked cheerily from my backpack.

“Please.”

“Okay bokay.”

There was a sharp, resonant thunk somewhere below us. The humming HVAC machines cut to silence and the stairwell light winked out. As did lights all around the office complex. And the Thai restaurant across the street.

Then, darkness cascaded block-by-block—all across Las Yerbas.

My stomach fell into my sneakers. Shit. Who needed EMPs when your little brother could hack the power grid? Now I couldn’t see a thing—and most certainly couldn’t help Matt. Oh, wait. Infrared. I flicked it on with a thought just like in the ravine, my vision flushing with amber and violet.

The incoming dumpster, now not so distant, pulsed with rippling whorls of light rivaling the aurora borealis and threatening to blind me. I froze in awe as my eyes adjusted. Below me, Laramee’s purply-tangerine silhouette crawled toward the stairwell door, his hand cannon spilling coiled tendrils like a smaller version of the dumpster portal. Matt’s faint glow was there too, masked by the stairwell.

The HVAC units around us flowered with ghostly color. But Athleisure was straight-up gone from his machine across the roof—no glimmer of infrared sheeting off the spot where he’d been crouched, nothing. Cutting his power must have woken him up. What use was infrared if I couldn’t see him hiding behind a blazing HVAC unit?

My belly was pressed into the top of my HVAC machine. Laramee had almost reached the stairwell. And with the lights out I couldn’t see a goddamned thing except these useless outlines.

“Aiden,” I whispered, “I didn’t mean for you to power off the whole city!”

“I didn’t,” he said, indignant. “I leaved the doggy on charge in case you want.”

“The … doggy?”

“The box doggy.”

Oh. Laramee had been crouched beside a wooden crate when I first showed up. And what did I know that needed charging and came in crates? “But … I don’t have a game system to control it.”

“Is okay. I getted software. I is game system now. I turn on BrainLink? Okay.”

My senses were suddenly assaulted by the overpowering odor of lumber and synthetic fur with a backdrop of wildfires and dead leaves. I had two bodies, four eyes, one tail, and way too many legs. Also of note—my original human-shaped head was getting … strangely warm.

Holy crap. My RoboDog vision was inky black—until I gained control of my canine legs and busted out of the crate, my nose twitching in the wind. Athleisure smelled of sweat and ozone, his footsteps padding deeper behind cover. Laramee stunk like a gas station bathroom, while Matt’s scent of fear and creamer wafted from the stairwell. As for me, there was the tang of blood with a backdrop of Mom’s lavender.

But my human head throbbed with a blazing heat, and panic bubbled over inside me. “Aiden. The BrainLink vision … It’s … I’m overheating.”

“It not hurt me. I take over? I play in doggy?”

My chest pattered at giving a three-year-old AI control of a robotic death dog, but I really couldn’t do all this myself. “Please. We have to stop the bad man.”

“Okay bokay.”

Relief washed over me as my canine senses winked out and I drew back into a single body like a snail into its shell. I was scared for Aiden, but it was real nice not having to do everything for once.

The yips of playful barking—and the sounds of a scuffle—drifted from behind Athleisure’s HVAC machine.

“A-Anyone know what that smell is?” Matt asked from behind the door, his voice tight. “Something’s hella ripe.”

“I think that’s Laramee,” I said.

“Oh my God. He shit his pants, didn’t he? L-Laramee, did the big bad teenage girl scare you?”

“Matt, shut up!” I shouted, my remaining teeth clenched. He was going to get himself shot. But if Matt was as shaken as he sounded, then why was he trying to piss off Laramee? Was he making a distraction?

“It’s not a question of being scared,” Laramee growled. “It’s an involuntary response to the electrical curr—”

Matt cut in with a sing-song voice. “Laramee shit his paaants. Laramee shit his p—”

Officer Laramee unleashed a withering hail of railgun rounds at the stairwell, sending up blooming gas in pinks and purples.

Matt answered with a curdling scream, guttering out with a gurgle.

And in the fading light of the Iriguchi’s gas cloud, I could just make out the contour of his sandals—peeking from behind the door Laramee had filled with rounds.