"So we'll-" Screeeeeeech. "Do you mind?" Harper pauses shyly. Our mid-way strategic meeting in the hall is interspersed by the faint creaaaak of crumpling metal as Evan takes a half-molten Walker leg and squashes it in on itself like an aluminum can.

Evan flicks the metal across the passage and runs his hand down the wall."I don't see why we can't do this back at the Lair. I'm not saying I'm not all for sitting around until they come for us, because I love being used as bait, but this seems like a bit of a dangerous place to do it. There's a split in the road down the hallway."

"There are no cameras here, there are at aforementioned hallway split. Furthermore, we're absolutely baiting them out. Strategy, Harper." Megan says.

Harper summons one of her shadow beasts. This one is cut through in several places, representing a full diagram of the plant as we know it. It's a large, boxy structure with warehouses (represented by larger rectangles) in the back and front, joined by several narrow passageways the entangle themselves with the more central layers, including the funnels themselves, which we've been yet unable to access. "So we know at least a few of them are guarding the machine..." Harper messes with her hair. "Do we have a name for it yet?"

"The echo chamber." Evan smirks. "Get it?"

"We get it." I confirm. "Echo chamber it is."

"The echo chamber, when developed, basically puts an end to any plans we might have had. They could start dragging people off left and right for all we know. Worse, authorities are going to get involved. We have-"

"Two months. Tops." Harper says.

"We don't have any way to get in there. The Diosite doesn't work as an activator, we can't get anyone to talk..." Megan says, and her eyes widen. "With the mask off. What if we kept it on?"

I nod. "Worth a try."

As she says it, one of the more ornately-masked members of the Delegation bounds down the hall. He's wearing long robes, just refined enough to look less stupid than our costumes, and he is accompanied by several metal beasts. These Walkers have adjusted joints and faces covered with plastic- waterproofing. The jaws, however, are sharp as ever. One bounds forwards and Harper's shadow creature slams it, pushing it back down the hall, and its metal legs writhe hopelessly as it is pushed away, leg joints clicking on the white surface.

The hall is too narrow to go more than one to one. It's a disadvantage for the rest of the group, but heck, I can't take more than two or three anyways. My sword illuminates the corridor, which is already bright and sterile, but now the light bounces off the walls and cloaks us all as if we were standing on the surface of the sun. My blade looks like a beam of pure light, but it hits as solid as any blade when I draw it towards the Walker's head. Megan's hydrokinesis swings around to provide a sheet of water beneath the Walker, tipping it over, and I thrust the sword into its chest.

Another leaps up and I draw the sword upwards from one body into another, ducking to the side as it clanks to the ground. Harper, Megan, and Evan follow behind me. I raise my sword. The man turns to run, but without so much as a command, Megan seals the exits with walls of water. She's trembling from the effort, but it's enough for me to get him by the collar. It's like someone else is holding him up. My arm is slack- Adam Rosenbloom couldn't do this if he tried. Stick behind the mask, stick behind the mask, stick behind the mask....

"Who are you?"

The mask can not emote, which I can only imagine is part of their intimidation strategy, but I hear the poor soul's voice waver. "Part of something far bigger than myself. A gear in the great machine-"

"Anyone else getting real tired of this crap?" Evan says, hand raised and smoking.

Megan's water walls collapse. An ensuing blast of water hits Evan on the side of the head. "We are not touching a person."

"We almost knocked that one guy's head off! If Gen had hit a millisecond slower or faster, that man could have received a pole to the face." Evan reasons. "We need this." His fingers tremble with violent red light, more sinister than my sunbeams. Onyx's eyes are dark behind his mask, filled with silent, emotionless intent. "Give us the passcode into the main plant."

The man mutters something beneath his breath. "The passcode is-" They cut off and begins choking. The noise grows more violent as we stand there, holding him by the collar, and it goes into heaving, the noises growing more gruesome by the second. I want to drop him but my arm remains in place, unable to obey my own command. I grit my teeth.

"It's like... what we have. You can't tell people." Harper says. "Take it. Let's just go. W-we'll have to..." she sniffs. "We..."

"Are you okay?" Megan asks, holding Harper's shoulder. Harper shakes her head.

I peel the mask away, taking the strap with it, and the man's eyes are glossy as they fix mine. His mouth is a perfect 'o' of unknowing, and he crumples to the ground, like my arm was the only thing keeping him up. "Give us the password." I can hear Anthem's snarl in my voice.

"I don't- I don't remember." The man clutches his head. Evan raises his hand and I hold him back. "I don't- none of this matters. It can still hear me." He clasps his hands together.

The grown adult breaking down in front of us is so unnatural, so wrong, that I have to take a few steps back. "What are you..."

"The mask owns us." He makes a desperate reach for the object clutched in my hand. "They'll kill you for that. They'll kill you when it turns on- told you to leave- pesky goddamn kids."

He's mumbling under his breath. We can't bring him with us, and the alarm sirens are going off again. One way or another, we're going to run out of time. Discomfort rolls in my stomach as I let the man go, tossing him the mask after I've plucked out the Diosite from around the forehead. There's a matching small indent on his forehead. He clutches the mask like it is going to save him, and my breath starts speeding up again.

Megan has her hand around my sword-free hand, and Evan blazes us a path out up ahead. "Look. We'll get another on the way out, more likely than not, and we can go home. You're not going to work effectively if you're panicking."

"We don't have to quit because of me." I mumble. "It's fine."

"That is the kind of thing you say," she taps my nose, "when you're not fine. We're going."

I don't argue with her. The sword is clenched so tightly in my hand that it feels like it's been welded to me, metal and human, embittering the irony of us fighting the machine. I can already tell this is making me more miserable, so I take a deep breath and try to let it go.

Sure enough, there's another member waiting in the lobby on the way out, like a baited lure. The Delegation member, who is idly toggling settings on a board of switches, turns around and sinks into the posture of a caged animal. Their hair is long and copper, and wreathes around their shoulders in contrast to the white robes. I recognize the voice for female when she speaks, "You're fighting a fruitless quest here."

"Same old, same old. You're still right here in the open, doing nothing, and we're about to relieve you of service." Evan snaps, sparking his fingers.

A darker voice purrs beneath hers, "Do your worst." She raises a sword, lithe and silver.

Evan runs at her, and Harper cuts in from the side. With inhuman grace, the woman dances around Evan's first grab from the mask and straddles the shadow. Her mask's empty black eyes stare back up at us, and Megan joins in, coating the floors in water. The woman stumbles as she tries to stay atop the water, but Evan's mobility is no better. He lunges for her and falls (stunning display of teamwork there, we have a reputation to uphold, guys) and I stand, keeping look out as Evan gets up. The woman has stepped off the wet expanse of floor, but Harper is just as quick to cut her off. She swings the sword through the shadow and hits nothing, and she twirls herself around the blade as she does so, stepping around Harper's attack.

"Interesting," she says. "Very interesting."

Evan races in from the side, attempts to grab the mask, and it refuses to come off. Harper binds the legs, Evan has to rip it upwards, and the woman's eyes widen. She's unfamiliar, but something about her face is singularly unnerving. As soon as the shadows release, she dashes away, sword in tow, and the door slams behind her.

"Equal opportunity dad cult." Evan suggests.

"Great, we're going to need a new nickname." I say.

'Woman can be dads, too. " he chides. He lifts up the Diosite shard. "Let's bring this baby back home."

I lead them out. The nausea refuses to leave me, spurred on by an overwhelmng intuition that we're being played with. We can destroy a thousand robots and they'll make more. We can defeat twenty, even thirty of them, and they'll just stop sending people out. They're screwing with us, like a cat absentmindedly batting a mouse toy. We can't run and we can't fight back.

It doesn't stop me from feeling invincible the second Megan's hand falls on my back, from thinking of afternoons when all of this is over... as if they're that close at hand. The Veins are familiar, almost home at this point, and I try to suppress the nausea out of my system. We give Anthem the shards (still no clue what she does with them), and Harper turns to depart.

"They're playing us." I say.

"What?" asks Megan.

"If they're so smart, why do we keep catching them? Have you seen them get close to us once? Then there was that woman- I don't get it. They're literally barely shielding their shards, and their membership is dropping like flies." I say, pressing my temples. "None of this makes sense."

"I guess we'll just have to keep going." Evan suggests. "What else can we do?"

"Maybe if you hadn't chased out Serena-" Harper suggests, beneath her breath.

Evan roars back, "I didn't chase anyone out! She quit. She decided to ditch us because her personal welfare meant more to her than the literal fate of the world."

"I think we're all a little tired now-" Megan timidly tries to step in.

"Maybe a lot tired- and stressed." Harper says. "My parents called in last night. My teachers- I've been inattentive- I'm in danger of being pushed down a level in most of my classes. I'm sorry! I'm sorry, I wish I could handle this, but it's h-hard and I-"

"We can handle this. Take all the time off you need." Megan hugs her. "It's okay."

Harper nods.

I look to Megan with an are you joking glare across my face but Megan doesn't meet my gaze. When Harper leaves, she turns back to the both of us. "Let me guess," she sighs. "Bad decision, we're totally screwed."

Evan shrugs.

I tap my foot. "Am I being paranoid? Please tell me I'm being paranoid, and that this is going well. Maybe it's just... not a hard mission. We're already exerting all the effort we physically could with five people. Maybe that's enough."

"We're all paranoid," Megan says, hands folded. Her voice is hardly above a strained whisper. "It's okay."

"I'll do more," Evan promises. "I can do missions alone-"

"No you can't."

"I'm not fucking stupid, okay? I know I messed this up. Look, I wasn't kidding all those months ago, at the gym, when I told you both that I was happier here than I was anywhere else. I had issues before I moved here. My dad moves a lot because of his job, and I used to just... I just stopped, you know? I didn't want to make friends a thousand times over. I didn't even want to make them once. Everyone thinks I'm stupid, or reckless-"

"Evan," Megan embraces him, her fingers clenched so tight around him that her knuckles are white. I sigh and put aside the tension of the moment, holding both of them in my grip. Evan, tensed against my side, is unexpectedly short. I'd never noticed the height difference when he's Onyx, in part because he never stands still long enough and the sheer aura he exudes could fill the room, but this reminds me of our encounter in the hall.

"This is going to be impossible." I say.

Evan puts a hand on my shoulder. "We can do this. Together." His hand is warm.

"This isn't about us. We can punch through a hundred walls, snatch these until we're blue in the face, but there's no way they haven't plugged one cell, maybe even several cells of Diosite, into the system. If we can't get in there, we're chasing them down on their terms, and we're going to lose. It's not about our individual efforts- it's about strategy. We need some way to fix all this."

He watches me, dark eyes fixed on my chest, and he moves his hand there, right where my outfit gives out to my neckline. His other hand is curled with one of Megan's. Evan whispers, "Fine. Tell her I'm sorry."