Through the door and past a security fence, Patricia arrived at a ladder leading up through a hatch in the ceiling. She climbed, forcing herself to move at a normal pace. The R.Nano2 rushing through her veins made everything seem a few seconds slower as if she herself were overclocking her senses. But she needed to rein in the rush and allow herself to analyze her surroundings. There was no way of knowing what or who waited for her at the top. Austberg had been simple to deal with, but an augmented group like him might prove more challenging.

In the back of her mind, under the surging nano, she felt Chillard through their bond. He was in distress. She hesitated, wanting to attempt to tap into the station's network and spy on their situation. Surely Liam's tactics and Scott's skill could carry them through the worst of what Mastermind-308 could bring to bear. That had been her thought process before Austberg, before she realized the Core AI had begun to fabricate tools of war he didn't already have. She should have realized with those skittering drones. The superthinker would not hesitate to utilize everything at his disposal... Patricia wasn't sure why she'd assumed otherwise.

What if he tackled the team with a tool she hadn't prepared them for? What if Mastermind overwhelmed them before Spider could devise a plan to counteract it?

Patricia emerged from a floor hatch and into a room of tall data nodes arranged in concentric rings around a raised platform. On the platform sat a single two-foot cylinder attached to a display. The ceiling sat sixty feet above where smaller nodes hung down. She scanned her surroundings, but found no sign of Onika. Every few nodes was a narrow path through which to pass, above which leapt arcs of lightning. She'd never seen this specific arrangement style, but Patricia knew a core nexus when she saw one.

Passing beneath one such light pulse, she caught a glimpse of someone walking down a similar path, attention focused on a datapad. Drawing her shotgun she continued towards the center platform. Approaching footsteps brought her up short, and she took cover as best as she could. A man with angular features and a business suit stopped beside her hiding spot and scanned the room.

"Austberg has not returned," he said to himself with Mastermind's voice. "Have the intruders slowed him down?"

A noise caught his attention and he turned away from Patricia, though they were close enough to touch. She followed his gaze to Onika, accessing one of the nodes with her datapad-mini.

"I've found an interloper," he said. The nodes around him flared and his posture became rigid, less relaxed. "I'm not interested in the human. I want that curious felarnian."

Patricia smashed his face into the nearest node and dropped him into a heap with a blow to the temple. Onika jerked away from her work at the sound and her eyes lit up. Patricia joined her at the node.

"I didn't think you'd get away," she said. "He was equipped with a strength enhancer. What are you wearing?" She plucked one of the metal plates and it clanged. "I kinda like it."

Patricia ignored the last question. Knowing about The Pale Garden's R.Nano was just as dangerous as having it in your system.

"Mastermind likely knows we're here."

"Most of the clones here are preoccupied with maintaining the nodes and network equipment. A few walked right past me without looking up. We might be safe for the moment."

"I doubt that. We need to shut him down."

"The nodes are batched in smaller clusters within the network. I've set two to do a diagnostic then system wipe and shut down. In about ten minutes he'll lose those sections, hopefully we can sabotage enough before he notices the first one."

"Crude, but it could work. Keep at that while I upload my killswitch virus. This is the kind of problem that should be attacked from multiple angles."

"I had a similar thought," Mastermind rumbled.

Thirteen clones rushed towards the pair from both directions. Determined eyes deep set in the same grim face. Some carried stunners, but most were bare-handed. Patricia fired into their ranks with her shotgun to devastating effect. Despite wounds that would take all but the stoutest opponents out of the fight, the fallen clones continued to crawl towards them. Onika took down a clone with superficial wounds and claimed his stunner for herself. Patricia found oneness well and they incapacitated the remaining enemies.

"You okay?" Onika asked, making Patricia laugh though Chillard's terror screamed in her head.

"I'm fine. What about you?"

Onika nodded. Aside from the bruising around her neck and wild disarray of her perfect hair, she looked it.

"Come on. He definitely knows we're here. Splitting up is a terrible idea."

Patricia led her to the nearest path between node rows and the two navigated towards the center. Their route quickly led them to a solitary clone, scanning nodes with a datapad.

"I thought defeating Station-Z11221 was the final test of my functionality, but I see now that it is you..." The rest of Mastermind's words were lost as they hurried down the next passage. He continued his monologue through a child of about five, waist-deep inside of an inactive module. "Don't assume I was not prepared. On the contrary, I've been primed for a fight!"

A group of clones came over the top of the next set of nodes, diving down on them with feet and teeth. One drove both feet into Patricia's knee, driving her to the floor just as she yanked Onika from between two assailants. The pain was sharp and immediate. Even though the armored plating protected her, the same flexibility that allowed her to move unhindered left her vulnerable. From the floor, she grabbed her knee and shifted it back in place. The nano drowned the pain.

Fwendi stunned that clone then smashed another's teeth in with the shaft of her weapon. Two clones jumped on Patricia's back as she rose to her feet. Another struggled to wrest the stunner from Onika's grasp. Taking a clone in each hand, Patricia yanked them free and smashed their heads together. She tossed them into the last clone like bags of grain. Onika reclaimed her weapon and stunned her opponent as he untangled himself from the pile of limbs.

The indoctrinated child watched them with cold eyes, a cruel smile split her heart-shaped face.

"He's stalling us," Patricia realized.

A persistent tapping sound, one she'd heard faintly from the moment she entered the core nexus, drew closer. With no time to waste, she gathered Onika and continued to the center. The platform was twenty feet high with a narrow ladder leading to the summit. Onika went first, eyes wide as she climbed hand over hand. There was blood on her tunic, only some of it was her own. Patricia looked down at the silvery bands wrapped around her hands. There was clone blood on her clothes too.

The moment Onika reached the top, Patricia began her ascent. A ripple of pain lanced up her leg and threatened to make her lose her grip. Kicking out reflexively she connected with a teenager in torn clothes, sending him sailing into a node. She looked down and hiked up her pants leg. Where the stunner had struck her the armored plating had receded, leaving a wide patch of her ginger and midnight blue fur exposed. She resumed her climb, her analytical mind comparing the weaknesses of her combat form with what she knew about the team's. Spider and Raven's R.Nano seemed thicker and less susceptible to impact damage, but concentrated electrical currents could paralyze them or worse. Her R.Nano2 provided less protection and more flexibility, but seemed to flee from electrical current rather than absorbing it.

At the top of the platform, she checked her leg and observed that the silvery nano had begun to slowly reform the plating on her leg. Looking out over the acre of data nodes, Patricia saw dozens of clones slowly approaching as their numbers grew larger and larger.

"His firewalls are solid, but Station-Z left me a program to help bring them down," Onika called over the constant crack of lightning as energy jumped from bank to bank. "You keep them off me and I'll get you in... then we'll switch."

Her hesitation was understandable. Onika was a highly capable woman, but she was no fighter, and Mastermind had hundreds of clones. Patricia did a quick inventory: grenades, clips of kinetic pistol rounds, buckshot and slugs for her shotgun, and a couple of untested experimental items she'd had the forethought to bring along. It didn't feel like enough, but it would have to be.

"Sounds good to me. Work fast, we don't have a lot of time."

Patricia primed a grenade and pitched it into the vanguard of advancing clones. They didn't react, marching on until the explosive erupted, ripping through their numbers and the nodes around them. The clones continued their advance, stepping over their fallen brethren with no recognition. More emerged from side doors and floor hatches, replacing the two scores they'd lost. Her second grenade killed the same amount and destroyed more nodes.

This seemed to grab Mastermind's attention. The clones paused for a moment and then as one they charged, funneling down the paths. The constant clicking sound abruptly stopped as Patricia readied a third grenade, she glanced up and dove aside as a massive form dropped from the ceiling. It caught her by the ankle and flailed her about like a ragdoll before tossing her away from the platform. She dropped the grenade as she flew and the explosion threw her attacker in the same direction. They both crashed into a trio of nodes, leaving them sparking ruins.

She backed away from the live wires, wary of what the electricity might do to her armor. Out of the smoke and twisted metal rose a giant crablike machine with eight legs and a giant crushing pincer. Atop the outer shell was a curved display monitor with Mastermind-308's grinning low-face.

"And you'll say: Oh, well I never! Was there ever a cat so clever as as magical Mr. Mistoffelees!" the machine sang, its rolling timbre making her teeth vibrate. "You've caught my eye, clever cat... though I still cannot see you, I can see where you are not," the last came out as a growl as the crushing pincer smashed down. Patricia barely tumbled aside. "You'll agree, the difference is negligible!"

Sparing a glance at the platform where Onika worked furiously on her datapad-mini, Patricia led the crab away from the center. The machine lumbered after her as if it was not in a hurry.

"I designed this vessel on a whimsical tangent while reading about crustaceans native to Earth Prime." He climbed up on a pair of nodes, his eyes narrowing as he glared down at her. "Are you familiar with Paguroidea? Humans called it The Hermit Crab."

Patricia remembered a vague excerpt from something she'd read long ago. "Hermit Crabs make their homes in the stolen shells of other creatures."

"Yes. Fitting, isn't it? I was created to commandeer the infrastructure of other artificial intelligence then use it to take over organic bodies in much the same way. I make my home in everything I touch."

Mastermind's laugh was a cold sinister thing that seemed incapable of mirth or humor. Mastermind-308 emanated calculated malice.

"You're a monster," Patricia finally said.

"I'm what my creators made me!"

He leapt at her and brought his pincer down on the ground in front of him. The AI thought she would try to get away, but she rolled beneath him, firing into his underbelly with her shotgun. The plating dented but held. The machine wheeled around, but she was already gone. Patricia sprinted down one row of nodes and came upon the army of maintenance clones. She lobbed her last two grenades into their midst and spun around, firing Nubia's pistol.

The first shot hit the crab in the center mass as it turned into the row. The rest ripped along a half dozen nodes. For a moment, the arcs of electricity stopped and the lights on the nodes flickered. The crab staggered and crashed into yet more nodes. A partially burnt and bloodied clone grabbed Patricia from behind in a headlock. Another whose legs were blackened stumps tried to pull her down.

She emptied the clip on the row of nodes as she shrugged out of the clone's hold. Her natural strength would have likely been enough to overpower them. Amplified, they were outmatched. Patricia focused on the nodes. The crab was a tough opponent, but it was no construct. It had no brain of its own, no vital cognitive chips to disrupt. Mastermind-308's consciousness did not live inside it. He lived in the neuro-network of computers all around them. That was his weak point.

The crab barreled towards her, covering the last twenty feet in a sideways tackle that trampled the clones and propelled Patricia into the burning aftermath of her explosives. She rolled through the burnt bodies and twisted metal, barely feeling the heat. Tucking into a tight ball, she came up on her feet and fired on the clones still moving towards the center. A clone jumped down from a node, kicking the pistol from her hand. She chopped him in the neck and something hit her chest like a sledgehammer. Falling back, she saw a heavyset man approaching as he reloaded a single-shot antique rifle.

The weapon's medium-yield round hurt, but hadn't pierced her armor. Patricia snatched a flat disc about the size of a coin from her belt and tossed it at the man. It hit the ground in front of him and emitted a sheet of light three feet wide and five feet high. At the same instance he fired, the round struck the light wall and flattened. The man paused for a moment and examined the barrier. Patricia scrambled to grab Nubia's pistol and reloaded. She raised the weapon as the crab burst through the wall of fire. His expression was grim.

"You've reduced my current processing speed by fifteen percent, but unlike my organic counterparts I can rearrange my fragmented data. While annoying, your tactic will not stop me."

Patricia shot his curved screen though she knew the display was not really his face. The heavy man laughed with Mastermind's voice.

"You can't win, clever cat!" he said as he stepped around the shield.

She shot the man then dodged aside as the pincer came down with enough force to crack the floor tiles.

"I'm in!" Onika shouted, firing on the crab.

The machine turned in her direction and Patricia went for her trump card. Taking Chesire out of the kit on her waist, she shoved the chip into a small egg-shaped device with a tiny display. A purple cat face appeared and the egg mewed. Dropping it, Patricia charged into the nearest node, her lowered shoulder acting as a battering ram. The carbon fiber casing shattered under the force of her rush in a shower of sparking debris. Patricia emerged out the other side as her special egg exploded in an EMP that killed the power for twenty feet.

She felt dizzy and patches of fur peeked out from brakes in her armor, but she staggered to the center platform. Climbing the ladder, she hurried to the summit. Patricia picked shards of metal and glass out of her skin as she looked back the way she'd come and the carnage she'd caused. The crab lay on its side, systems blown by the electromagnetic pulse, and clones were scattered in every direction. Mangled bodies crawled out of the craters created by her grenades and more clones were slowly entering the room. None advanced. She'd finally taught the Core AI caution.

"Hurry, before he can bring his firewalls back on line!" Onika shouted, shooting at the few clones close enough to try for the platform. "I'm running low on ammo."

Patricia slid Nubia's pistol towards her. "This has a full clip." She hurried to the table and accessed Mastermind's data cylinder with her datapad.

Her thoughts raced. She'd taken out his machine, but it had cost her Cheshire. With his fabrication facilities, he could create another if he hadn't already. She didn't have the equipment to recreate her stealth program or the EMP Egg. She felt vulnerable without her tech, an easy target for any searching mechanical eye.

Shaking those thoughts away, she focused on the task at hand. Her killswitch virus had always been theoretical, but she knew she could do it and her datapad was preset with all the pieces she needed to put it together. Typing as fast as she could she truncated code in one program and pasted code from another. She started to add pieces of another and thought better of it, instead opting to write the code from scratch in the moment. Her original plan was to attack the Core AI's active network, but she knew that wouldn't be enough. She needed something that would jump into any device that connected to the network, seeking out and deleting anything that resembled a neuro-framework.

It was rushed and inelegant, but, heavily modeled as it was after the viruses that defeated the mecha during the war, it would get the job done.

A loud crack broke her concentration. Patricia looked up to see Onika fall, blood blossoming from a wound in her chest. The teenager from earlier reached the top of the ladder and unslung the antique rifle from his back. He reloaded like he had all the time in the universe.

"I have thousands of vessels and there are only a handful of you," Mastermind-308 growled. His tone contradicted his actions and Patricia realized he was only pretending to be unconcerned. "I think I will kill you, clever cat. I would have liked to catalog your thoughts as I indoctrinated you, but I've grown tired of this game."

"Me too," Patricia said. She tapped the screen and executed the killswitch. "Game over."

The boy raised the rifle then froze.

Patricia dropped her datapad and rushed to Onika. Blood pooled on the floor beneath her and spurted out with each gasped breath. Patricia pulled the first aid pack from the small bag on her back and searched frantically for things she knew she didn't have. The kit wasn't for the kind of trauma Onika sustained. Regardless, Patricia sprayed the sealant foam into both the entry and exit wound. The medical nano in the kit couldn't repair organs, and didn't come with enough if it did. Scavenged from the station, it wasn't military grade. Onika had lost too much blood and it sounded as if one of her lungs had deflated. She grabbed Patricia's hand and gave it a weak squeeze. Patricia imagined there was an award-winning smirk under the blood smeared across her face.

The teenager grunted.

"A... As long a... as there are more more more shells, I will h... have a home," Mastermind rumbled.

The boy's eyes lit up as if by an internal light then he collapsed. He did have a smirk on his face. Fluorescent nano oozed out of his ears. Same happened to a nearby clone, then another and another. The killswitch virus spread through Mastermind's network like a deadly wind, sweeping up all of his victims in the maelstrom.