Sinclair clicked her nails together to cease control over the Victorinox so Chicco could engage a manual override with his console keyboard.

"Chicco, you said you heard sparrow flechettes dive bombing through the roof lanterns. Any idea to whom those little nasties belong?"

He set down inside the booth, and kept his eyes glued to a log of execution instructions rolling on the seven by three inch flat screen. All green, nothing coming up yellow or red, meant the Victorinox was in sound physical condition.

Satisfied, he turned his head back to face her.

"I got a few ideas, but I ruled out my main suspects, the Al-Majhul. Opportunity invasions are their modus operendi. It's why they are hated by everybody."

He grinned maliciously before he continued.

"But they got hit with a world of trouble earlier this evening so they won't pull this kind of shit while still licking their wounds."

He paused speaking when the virtual display popped up. They could hear the sounds of a liquid churning in a chambered space. There was also a fizzing noise.

"Lights," Chicco commanded.

Dim green light lit up the creature's stomach cavity. The Victorinox floated on the surface of the creature's digestive juices. The liquid swished from side to side indicative of much movement going on.

Chicco shot a grin her way. "Any suggestions of how we get your drone out of there?"

"Point the camera up."

The esophagus was an oddly twisted spindle that cinched in the middle with three entrance flaps that wound together.

"Ever seen something so weird," Chicco asked.

"Oh honey, I have been living with a cult of vampire larpers for the past several months, and I am the lead systems administrator for a spore-based artificial intelligence."

She decided not to tell him about the human organ eating aspect of that cult. He might possibly be less willing to be intimate with a cannibal.

Chicco seemed to be on the verge of saying something, but he held his tongue.

How much does he already know about Drago's crew?

"Anyway," Sinclair continued, "the functionality of that esophagus makes sense when you consider that the body is entirely spherical. Turn the drill in the up position, at the lowest bit setting to start with, and then approach those flaps."

The drone pulled out of the sizzling liquid, and towards the target above it. At first there seemed to be no response from the creature when the Victorinox Multi-Tool Hover pressed a drill into it.

Blood drizzled down from the flaps, and spun out when it made contact with the drill bit.

"Double the size of the drill bit from 0.25 millimeters to 0.5 millimeters. Set the bit to spread out by .25 every five seconds. I believe it will eventually reach 3.5 millimeters."

Chicco acknowledged the command with a sharp nod, "will do."

They waited patiently as blood continued to trickle down and collect into a stream before twirling out. When 2.5 millimeters was reached in the drill bit width, a deluge of blood blinded the cameras.

Fortunately, the sound system was still picking up a high fidelity signal so it wasn't difficult to understand what was occurring.

A squalling noise vibrated out from the creature's lungs above the Victorinox. The bit penetrated into something, likely the lungs themselves. The drone appeared to shake from side to side; the mix of blood and viscera were too thick on the camera lens to detect anything but motion.

Sinclair grabbed Chicco's shoulder firmly as she instructed him.

"Execute full upward thrust; eat into it without remorse."

They could only see glances as blood cleared out and smoke took its place to obscure their view. The Victorinox buzzed at a high pitched squeal, and a sucking noise pulsed more and more rapidly.

A loud implosion of a lung as it gave out muffled the shrill dissonance of the drone.

The virtual display became nothing but white noise.

"Shit," said Chicco. "We lost it."

Sitting at his side, Sinclair threw him a side glance accompanied by a half grin.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"Give it a moment, that thing can survive the inner radius of a kiloton blast. It simply overheated under extreme conditions for it's drill motor. It'll reboot itself."

Chicco wiped his face with a handkerchief.

"While we wait I could use a drink, how about you?"

Sinclair paused a moment; she considered how mentally taxing it was going to prove to be to get the facility's system up and running once more, but screw it. Who knows what they were up against next, and she could use a brain-dousing after the last several minutes of fucked up shit.

"Sure, what are you offering?"

She peaked over and saw him grab a bottle of Jack Daniels and a soda.

"Nothing more complicated than a Sinatra for myself."

"Sounds good, make two."

When he returned with the drinks, Sinclair gave him an appreciative glace as he handed the tall glass.

She took a sip.

"Not bad, but I don't think Sinatra ever mixed it with cherry cola."

Chicco Shrugged. He glanced over to the council flat screen. It was starting to reboot.

"Eh, I like it this way. I'm not exactly a purist in anything."

Sinclair leaned forward, and looked Chicco in the eyes.

"You mentioned you had other ideas. If not the Al-Majhul then who?"

He raised his eyebrows, and he nodded.

"Yeah, I have suspicions. You are not the first to note that unusual things are occurring in Green-eyed Elise's camp."

Chicco paused to laugh at her squinched up face before he continued.

"No, I am not a mind-reader. I could read you straight up that you were wondering what the hell was Elise bothering with snatching Kip. She has a new girl working with her, have you ever heard of Felicité Paz?"

Leaning onto the leather backed seat, Sinclair shook her head. "Should I? What is she?"

As he explained, and not quite believing her claim of ignorance, Chicco's voice went up an octave.

"She is notorious. Like you, she is a hacker."

Sinclair snorted, and she chortled derisively.

"That's not really my field, at all. Artificial intelligence, systems administration, field engineering, I don't really have time for that nonsense."

Chicco shrugged with his palms facing out.

"I feel that I may have insulted you."

"You did but that was clearly not your intention. Hackers are just messy assholes who leave matters in disarray for others to clean up. I have no use for them -," Sinclair paused as she realized that she was ranting, she then switched her train of thought, "if it is this Felicité chick, for what purpose?"

Chicco's lips puckered out. He wasn't buying her story that she did not know who the hacker was.

Why is he so certain there is a connection between the two of us?

Chicco continued.

"Evidently, Elise had her take out our system, but I doubt if her bounty hunters are involved with whatever back door Paz installed. The flechettes though. She may even be helping out the Al-Majhul."

A beeping noise caught their attention. The virtual screen lit back up; they had a visual now spread across it. The Victorinox now lay on the banister floor. A pool of stomach acid and bile spread between it and the disemboweled corpse of the strange feathered creature

"Hover three meters up," Chicco commanded.

The visual now showed the walls and stair support covered in blue glowing runic design. Worms crawled across the wall, dozens of them.

Sinclair seethed with a slow release of air.

"Fuck me," she whispered. "It's a densidad event. This one is the Lair of the Wyrm Mother."

"What does that mean," Chicco asked.

"It means you need to be prepared to fight a dragon if the Family Sala wants to stay in business."

"The fuck?" Chicco looked aghast then down at his feet.

"I don't think so . . . not without my boots."

Sinclair threw him a hard glare.

"Chicco, I know you are more of a lover than a fighter, but for both of our sakes you need to be more of the latter tonight than your usual self. You got even a trace of a hard edge in you?"

Nervously, he laughed to that.

"I am joking. I have another set of shoes in the gym locker just around the corner out by the secondary entrance. I think I should go ahead and grab VJ and his crew and get them up to speed. Gangsters, but somehow they manage to be excellent as a fire team.

"Stay put. We'll be right back."

Chicco pocketed the 9mm snub nose then he put the 4 guage shotgun at her knees.

"I can't handle that in case you haven't noticed," she waved her wrist in the air, "I'm a dainty little thing. That is why I had Magellani custom build that 22LR revolver just for these brittle fingers so my bones would not snap."

Chicco nodded. "It did catch my eye. That one is not typical of their work. Just keep a watchful eye on the shotgun for me, okay?"

As he walked away, Sinclair adjusted the virtual display more to her liking with a 120° panorama in front of her.

She gave the walls beyond the door nearest her a good glance, and Sinclair sneered. Though the etchings were quite beautiful in their elaborate abstract design, they came from the dreams of a highly unstable and diabolical mind; one with the ambition of creating literal Hell on Earth.

"Fucking Demona Heloïste and her fuck-up," Sinclair snapped out loud right after Chicco shut the security door behind himself.

When the European Union spook injected her very own sensorium recorded dream content into the Entity as a catalyst to set up densidad events to evoke her Lord Lucifer, it changed everything. The Egliona Entity went from being a viable hunter of the Cull Spore Invaders to becoming an outright menace in her own right and by her own terms.

Sinclair set her anger to the side to begin an objective and professional analysis of the threat level they faced. Every dragon mother was different, and possessed a set of symbols unique to her that displayed in the inlay of the spontaneous architecture that in this instance replaced a posh office design with that of a fantasy inspired fortress made of bold black stone.

She slowly moved the Victorinox forward in search of the dragon mother to these worms.

Frescoes of spear-welding Bronze Age giants butted up against carved sconces that framed the niches in a zig-zag pattern. Tapestries of the Beautiful One stretched the vertical wall surfaces from floor to ceiling. Sculptures of menacing dragon heads topped columns throughout the server room to which the drone now entered.

A nude woman was chained down by linked ouroboroses of coppery colored snakes holding each of her long limbs out. She was tall and thin, with a shock of platinum hair cut punkish on one side, and long on the other. Beneath a hirsute pubis mons, a metallic scarab covered her vagina.

It's beating wings made harmonized music, pleasant and similar to an alto-flute.

The woman's head moved and tilted up as she noticed the Victorinox. Sinclair moved it to hover in a head-to-head position to get a good look at the woman's face.

She flipped the drone's speaker on.

"Felicité I presume?"

The blonde woman glared into the camera.

"Sinclair?"

A chill ran down her limbs as she recognized that voice. How he could have possibly known was a mystery to her, but Chicco was right, she did indeed know Felicité, and not just by reputation.