"Refill, ma'am?" asked the chubby barista at the Sector E faux coffee café.

Patricia finished off the contents of her mug and nodded. She smiled and thanked the young man as he filled her mug with steaming hot brew. Only beans grown on Earth Prime could be considered true coffee. Beans grown on Earth 2 or any of the agricultural colonies have to legally be called faux coffee. Patricia actually liked the faux coffee better than the real stuff, but she would never tell that to a coffee snob like Liam.

Once the mug was full and the barista moved on, Patricia removed the privacy screen from her datapad and set back to work.

Chilly: We're ready on our end.

"Good. I hope Thing 1 was helpful."

Chilly: Very, my knowledge of computer programming is rudimentary at best.

"And Thing 2?"

Chilly: She went off to stash some supplies at your other safe house.

"Perfect."

Patricia looked up from her datapad. Across the road, a squat office building sat at the corner overlooking the artificial canal and a garden reserved for the executives who work inside. In front, two men in overly expensive business suits laughed fake laughs at a joke told by a slightly older business woman. From her cold smug expression, Patricia was sure the woman was their boss. Neither man was the one Patricia came there for. That would be too easy. Sal Muun was going to make her go inside and get him.

With a stretch of her fingers and a sip of her faux coffee, Patricia tapped a key on her pad and dove into the building's system code. Mastermind-308 had given her the name, seeded a trap she would walk right into. There was no doubt in her mind that the purpose of his big announcement was to flush out Chillard and anyone working with him. This didn't deter her though. If anything, it acted as an incentive. A carrot for a horse who could never pass up a challenge for her considerable intellect.

Scott would say they'd inherited the desire to prove themselves from their father. Patricia suspected it was their natural response to the shame Arthur Felinus had brought upon their family name. Deep down, his children lived to prove they were better than him, that his immense shadow was no match for their prowess. Scott chose any battlefield where death was on the line. Patricia chose digital warzones.

Anyone could access a building's nodes and utilize its basic utilities, but the more secure functions like plumbing, emergency door locks, and security cameras required administrative passwords. Patricia smiled. One might call her datapad a universal key. The initial urge would be to go straight for the cameras, but Patricia was patient. If she was reckless, or misstepped the machine would have her. Patricia refused to let him win.

The initial plan was to shadow the man, crack his datapad and access the personal files that Mastermind-308 had already removed from the public and private servers. Patricia wanted to know the man and know why the Core AI had taken an interest in him. Unfortunately, Mr. Muun had been spotted just after Patricia set up shop at the café. According to a dozen anonymous tips, Sal Muun was in the building. Security would be on their way soon. She had to switch to plan B: access the man's datapad through the building's wireless network and take the files she wanted.

All she needed was line of sight. That's where the security cameras came in.

She snooped around the central heating subroutines then the water pressure. She cracked the window shade controls and shuttered two of the three conference rooms for a few minutes then opened them back up to the station's artificial lighting. When she backtracked to the heating she found an odd packet of code that wasn't there before. Giving it a wide berth she jumped to a new system and, as she'd expected, the code packet appeared in the directory a few moments later.

Chilly: What's your status?

"There's a prowler in the code camouflage as a bundle of junk code." Patricia added a bit of junk code of her own, causing the lights in one corner office to flick on and off furiously. "If I interact with it, it will self-execute and infect my pad. Might even be able to harm me in the physical world using the tech around me."

Chilly: Be careful.

"Where's the fun in that?" she purred.

"Whoa. Sounds like someone is having fun."

Patricia looked up, startled by the chubby barista. She slid down the privacy screen and looked up at the young man. With his dark skin, large eyes, and charming grin, he reminded Patricia of her favorite human. It had been almost a year since she'd seen him, since she'd had a good night's rest. Looking at the man's short-cut hair, she wondered how her friends had changed in the intervening time. He grinned, noticing her notice him.

"What was that?" she said, pretending not to have heard him.

"I said, it sounds like someone is having fun." He leaned in. "Feels like you're the first customer I've had today who's had a smile on their face."

She looked around the café. It had felt like the place was empty. Aided by her natural inclination to tune others out, she'd let herself believe she was alone in a bubble. Her little lab where all that existed was code and her schematics. To Patricia's surprise, the café was quite busy. A line of people waited for their orders while another placed new ones. Despite being able to use their datapads to make requests ahead of time, most people preferred to do so in-person.

Not a single person smiled. Most had their noses glued to their datapads. The rest scanned the room with uneasy, suspicious, expressions.

"It's the attacks and that xnean guy still on the loose. It has everyone spooked." He topped off her half-full mug.

Chilly: That xnean guy... ouch.

"Not you though," she said, noting that the light hadn't died in his eyes.

"What can I say? I'm an optimist. Besides, I grew up on a massive supply freighter." He winked. "I've seen much worse."

"Not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing," Patricia said with a glance at the office building across the street.

He followed her gaze. "Are you... waiting for someone?"

"No."

"Oh," his eyes brightened. "Could I get your name so that...maybe I can follow you on one of the chat forums?"

"No." She sipped the faux coffee and waved him off. "You're handsome and I'm flattered, but I'm busy. Respect my space, please." Only the last word held the friendly warmth she was shooting for. The rest was ice cold.

"Oh. Sorry, ma'am."

She glanced up at his name tag. "Keep the brown stuff coming, Camron. You've got a nice tip coming your way."

She returned to her datapad without another thought of the chubby barista or his inviting smile. The prowler code had tripled in size and hedged out most of the relevant data in the directory. This was no mindless robotic algorithm, but a program capable of action and intent. It had her surrounded.

"What's the status of my proxies, Chilly?"

Chilly: It's Chillard.

"That's not what my optic lenses say," she chuckled to herself.

Chilly: Looks like numbers 1, 4, and 5 have gone silent.

"Perfect."

Chilly: Did you not hear me? I said, three out of the five have stopped transmitting. They've probably been discovered.

The prowler closed its noose, surrounding her in its code. Her only choice was to engage or disconnect.

"When spreading a pathogen, you want as broad a vector as possible. The infected cells will return to their respective node clusters and gestate. When those cells become viral, they will spread the pathogen, and propagate the process."

Chilly: I understand how viruses spread. What does that have to do with—

"I'm... sprinkling... seeds..."

Patricia prodded the prowler, touching the code and executing its program. The screen on her datapad wavered then went black.

"Got you," she growled.

The screen came back to life. In the top right corner, a small low-resolution canary bounced up and down. It furiously flapped in vain, banging itself against the borders of its new prison. Patricia dove back into the building registry, but now any observer would see her activity as her little canary, the prowler.

Sufficiently disguised, she accessed the camera system. Internal, external, conference rooms. They were all hers at the tap of her finger. She brought Sal Muun's corner office camera online just in time to watch a man dragged out into the hallway by a quartet of maintenance clones. His datapad sat on the floor, forgotten, unguarded. Patricia hesitated, teetering between wanting access to his personal files and wanting to know what the clones intended to do to him.

For a moment she let curiosity be her downfall, but Liam's voice repeating that old human proverb in the back of her mind brought her back.

Using the tracking and analytics software already onboard the camera, she zoomed in to the datapad's sensor. Patricia created the link and the data stream failed. A low-face appeared on her screen, hedging out everything except her caged canary.

George Orwell.

"It's you again, isn't it?" Mastermind-308 asked, his voice sprinkled with hints of suspicion and excitement. "An empty seat in a crowded restaurant. It has to be you."

Patricia placed her datapad down on the table, holding her breath for fear of giving away useful biometric data. She covered the camera with a small stack of napkins.

"I will not send security in to detain you. No. This has become a pet project of mine. I will best you. I will uncover your identity and then I will have you brought to a detention center." Mastermind-308 laughed, a low rumbling sound that hinted more at cruelty than mirth.

A low-res hand took hold of the sectioned off portion of the screen containing the canary and shook the cage until the yellow bird was reduced to a cloud of feathers.

"What's happening?" someone shouted.

Everyone in the café rushed to the windows to watch as maintenance clones dragged a man out of the squat office building. Pedestrians stopped in the streets. Onlookers watched from the windows of the nearby buildings. Sedans idled, their drivers entranced by the taboo. Such a sight might have been normal in the colonies or Earth 2, but there on Station-Z11221 it was unheard of.

"You're there, at the building with Muun-"

Patricia yanked the battery from her pad, cutting off Mastermind-308 mid-sentence. She grabbed her things and jumped into the next booth. Camron, the chubby barista, raised an eyebrow as he walked past with someone's order. If he had something to say, he kept it to himself.

"You're making a big mistake!" Sal Muun shouted as the clones carried him across the intersection. "Do you know who my father is? Do you know what kind of shares he owns in the real estate division? He's on the board of housing. He won't stand for this!"

Murmurs spread through the crowd: He was one of the suspects mentioned in Chief Ausberg's address. He had something to do with the assaults and disturbances. He was the son of someone important.

"This is barbaric."

"Where are they taking him?"

"I wish they'd hurry up and get these scum off the streets. My partner can't sleep at night knowing they're out there."

Patricia listened to these people, fighting the urge to look up at the camera above the barista kiosk. She leaned to the side to get a better look out the window, partly because she was curious and partly to keep up appearances.

Chilly: Thing 1 says he was only able to get a partial scan of Mastermind-308 before you disconnected. He doesn't think we have enough data.

"I couldn't risk giving him enough time to triangulate the location of our key node."

Chilly: Are you okay? Even from this distance I can feel your unease... you're spooked.

"I'm scared. I've made my life's work studying and understanding Super Thinkers. They're the closest to kindred spirits I've ever encountered. But he's... different. He radiates ill intent." Patricia swallowed a lump in her throat. "He's sinister in a way I only thought possible with organic minds."

Chilly: Is that by design or evolution?

"Your guess is as good as mine."

A van-sized transport arrived, depositing four security guards dressed in full riot gear. Their eyes were cold and lifeless as they jogged to meet the approaching maintenance clones. Onlookers retreated as Mr. Muun was dropped at the feet of the security staff. Harried and disheveled, Sal Muun jumped to his feet and jabbed an accusing finger in the chest of one of the clones.

"You are going to regret this!" he shouted with all of the righteous indignation of a man born of privilege.

"Mr. Muun, under the authority of–" began a security guard with Mastermind-308's distinct timber.

"No. Unacceptable. I want these vat boys written up!"

"Under the authority of the station's Core AI, your contract has been terminated," a second guard continued, drawing gasps from the watching crowd.

Such things never happen without a tribunal or review.

"Terminated? You can't do that. I am–"

In one motion, the guard drew a pistol and blew off the top of Sal Muun's head. His limp corpse dropped to the ground to a surreal chorus of gasps, jeers, and stunned silence. One man emptied the contents of his stomach and quite a few patrons of the café exited in a hurry. Patricia was among them, just another felarnian in the crowd.

The more she studied Mastermind-308 and Project: CTRL, the more she was filled with a sinking dread. Things were not what they seemed and the situation was far more dire than she believed possible.