Ventura looked to her right. Suddenly she saw a woman that looked exactly like her but with piercing black eyes. She looked innocent enough. Except for one thing. When she walked into the room, she wielded a small black baton. That black baton seemed innocent enough as well. Until the girl stepped forward 1 more inch under the threshold into the lobby and waved the baton like she was opening an umbrella. All of a sudden, the baton extended two-fold. The girl gave a devilish smile and clicked the baton on the floor. That is when the baton let off an electric blue streak of swirling lightning all across its length.

Ventura's eyes went wide and reflected the dangerous electric blue zaps emanating from her black-eyed double's sword. But the girl smiled again and only waited for Ventura to get the picture before she clicked the baton on the floor again. The electric blue streak vanished, leaving only the original black baton in her hand. The girl closed the baton back up, and pretended she had never shown Ventura her weapon. Ventura and the girl who looked just like her stared into each other's green and black eyes and Ventura understood the picture. If she tried to kill Al Zander, Ventura would have to go through her first.

Saying that the girl was not going to make any attempt to attack her, Ventura looked up to Al Zander and licked her dry lips before speaking. She cleared her throat and said, ""I'm here because you killed my friend." And all of a sudden, Ventura's eyes began to water. She began to think about the girl she left in the cab on the way to the hospital. "You sent your men to kill me, but instead you killed an innocent person."

But Al Zander shook his head. He scoffed at Ventura and took a deep sigh. "There is nothing innocent in a human. Innocence is a trait of guiltlessness, but humans carry guilt wherever they go. Your friend deserved death as much as she deserved life. And there is no reason why the company that brought her into this world does not have the total jurisdiction to take her out. Same with you."

That last sentence brought a shiver down Ventura's spine.

That was when two bots entered from the right side of the stairwell. They came in like two black pinwheels rolling down the steps and landed to their anthropomorphic feet. One of them Ventura noticed had a pair of electric green eyes and the other had an electric pair of red which both stared down at her like home security cameras following the trespasser coming in through the backyard. As she stared at them, unlike Al Zander, the two bots started to creep slowly down the steps to the second landing and then down to the lobby floor on which Ventura stood.

"So," said Al Zander, "did you come here for vengeance?" He stepped down another step, his chest boasting a cold heart of power. His face went grave. "How would you intend to avenge your friend?"

The two bots came slowly toward Ventura and she tried her hardest to not let her legs shake as they passed around her, completing a circle until they were behind her. Trying not to show any weakness she did not move her head to follow them. Instead she merely listened to them walk across the floorboards to the front entrance from where she had come and then stop and turn. She could feel the heat of their eyes burn through her back. Waiting.

She looked up at Zander, and said, "The same way you intended to avenge yourself when you realized getting your stepson, John Clow, wasn't going to be as easy as you thought." Al Zander wanted to kill her for letting Clow go. Her fists clenched. Her lips pursed. She never blinked.

All while Zander let free a sort of growl so animal-like, that he seemed unpredictable. But this was no interesting thing to Ventura. He was always unpredictable.

"Your move," said Zander. He pushed his frown into a sneer. He took one more step downward so that finally he was on the second landing.

But it wasn't really her move because her double with the black eyes took her first step before Ventura could take her own and swung her baton out again to double its length and clicked it three times on the floor before the blue electric light zapped in a bright swirl around it. The double fell into a deep sprint that would end in what she intended to be an epic blow to the back of Ventura's head.

And although Ventura saw it coming, Ventura made the wrong move bouncing backward. Because once the wave of blue electricity passed over her like a lethal tidal wave another blow came from behind and Ventura could feel something like a lit cigar burn from the back of her spine, and pierced straight through like a thick rusted scalpel. Ventura collapsed onto it, whatever it was, and her vision went black for only a second before she sprung up again and kicked her leg up high, kicking the red-eyed face above her.

The robot's head flew back but his metal frame did not budge. Ventura scrambled to her feet until she could hop over the wooden counter and throw herself behind it. She grabbed for the drawers and started searching for a gun. The gun behind the counter is what she had planned to look for when she had first arrived before she had seen Zander on the stairs. Pulling open the drawer after drawer, she suddenly dropped her head lower when the sound of wooden countertop cracking and bursting into bits revealed the presence of a shotgun targeting her from the top of the stairs.

"There's no gun there," said Zander. "You think I wouldn't have already taken it? You take me for a fool? You take me as lesser than a human? As a robot? As a Droid? Not as a cyborg? I encourage you to see me as I am. Not to partake in wishful thinking. Not to take the liberal view. Not to wrongly imagine us all as equals. But to admit to the natural hierarchy of things. See the universe as it is. And maybe you won't fall hard on your ass." Another shotgun blow sent the rest of the countertop spraying.

The wooden chips cut like darts across her cheek, and she turned her head to run while at the same time grasping to her bleeding face.

Suddenly she remembered that she had a friend in the room. Suddenly she remembered she could call out his name and scream out loud for him to turn off the lights. "Elon! Elon! Help me!" But the voice she expected never came. Instead the voice of a pre-recording blasted throughout the already crumbling lobby. "I'm at your service. Please let me know if I can be of any assistance to you. This hotel has installed me with great privilege to make your stay one to always be remembered. Just call my name again, and it would be my pleasure."

"Elon! Elon!" she screamed. But her calls were nothing under the harsh laugh of the man with the gun.

"His name is not Elon anymore, child," said Zander. And upon that very second Ventura's face went white and she learned that her last friend in the universe, a kind and gentle emoji, had been wiped clean. Deleted. Reset. She was on her own. And this was the end.

Ventura heard a sudden crack when the countertop's crackled bits of wood rained down on her as the sweep of the electric baton slammed down. Her double fell down on her and started batting the ground beside her face over and over. Ventura squealed and kicked and rolled deeper into the counter while hitting it. A row of glass bottles toppled over on to her double's head. The baton swung again but hit the counter because it was too close. And once it hit the counter, it locked into the wood and Ventura was able to shimmy out under it like a limbo pole. She crawled to her knees, jumped to her feet, and lumbered around, missing another shotgun from the CEO atop the landing.

Ventura spotted a figure, sprinting from her side and was knocked in the ribs and the blood that was already there crashed out with greater force than before. She squealed but she pulled the arm of the bot and threw him down. He hit the wood and she stomped on it, and she gorilla-crawled her way around the size of the first fleet of step pouncing behind the wall and ducking as another spray from the shotgun blasted of wooden railing.

Al Zander shouted, "Into the shadows now, girl?"

"Fuck off, Zander," she said. And she disappeared through a doorway under the stairs. Immediately she fell into the pool room where the door swung behind her and she raced across the slippery floors besides the crystalline water. Her reflection shot past like a deer being hunted across the lake. She was almost to the door on the opposite side when the door she had entered through swung back open and the two robots shot in from behind. Then the door slammed open again and then came her double with her baton, running even faster than the bots.

Once Ventura heard the door open and she reached the end of the room and latched her hand on to the handle but it wouldn't give. She jerked the knob. She jerked the knob but it wouldn't fucking budge. She looked into the reflection of the door and saw her pursuers were yards behind her. Then she shifted on her toes and pelted across the other side of the room hoping the last door across wasn't a closet. However, when the robots turned they slipped, and one went straight into the wall, bouncing back, hitting the other robot in the side and launching him splashing into the crystalline water of the pool.

Through the mirror on the wall Ventura faced, she spotted the bot who slipped stagger and mourn the bot who drowned. It was an instant paralyzing fall. No flailing no resurfacing. The water penetrated the drowning bot's metal crevices. And it sunk like a rock.

Still running toward that mirror and that final door beside it, Ventura skated to the left to dodge a flying spear, the electric baton, which the humanoid flung as a final, desperate attempt to stop her. The spear missed Ventura's neck and pierced straight through the mirror before disappearing completely while the entire wall of mirrors shattered to the floor. And this stunned Ventura, not because she'd almost been killed, but because that door indeed only led to a towel closet. There was nowhere left to run.

Just then Ventura turned and saw the humanoid slip on the wet concrete floor exactly where the live bot had fallen. As the two of them tried to push themselves back up to their feet, the CEO came running behind them and sprayed his last bullets with two final pulls of the trigger. The first sent most of the bullets spraying the concrete, and then only one managed to sting Ventura in her ankle. Ventura clung to her ankle and collapsed to the floor. However, it was miraculous for the CEO's gun bled a beautiful sound. A sterile click.

All eyes shot up and turned to the man holding his now useless weapon. And the CEO, the humanoid and the bot turned their eyes to Ventura with the sudden realization that she was the closest figure to the electric blue baton still sticking out from the wall where her double had thrown it, very much alive and dangerous. Now she had the upper hand and it was all up to who could get to it in time to yank it out and swing.