Lloyd grabbed the gun and shoved it into his pants before he set out, hoping he'd only have to use it on another bot. Maybe, if he's lucky, they can both hide. But getting off the grid wouldn't be as simple as ditching his phone.

The car pulled up shortly. And her home was only fifteen minutes away. He opened the door and held his breath, just to gaze at the sepia toned sky. There was a big bright light in the distance. His eyes teared up as they started to burn, so he put on the mask, turned it on, and get blasted with the cool breeze of the inner fans as they cleaned the air inside.

He got in the back of the car and it slowly pulled off, a soothing piano melody playing from the stereo as background noise. The hum of the car's air conditioning sounding much softer than the ventilators in his house. Taking off the mask, he opened up his messages and texted Frederick: 'On my way now.'
Almost instantly, it was marked as read and bubbles appeared. 'Good.' Frederick was reply.

Lloyd closed his eyes, exhausted. Suddenly, the car came to a stop.

Huh? He thought as he opened his eyes. The big screen monitor in the car said Obstacle: Moving Around Now. And Lloyd looked up at the automaton standing in the middle of the road. The car tried to go around it but it stepped in the way again.
Lloyd paused the ride and clutched the gun as it approached.

Please be Ben. He thought. Please be Ben.
The automaton gave a rhythmic knock on the glass. Lloyd quickly put the mask back on as before he rolled down the window.

"Where are you going?" Ben asked him. "Aren't you off work?"

"Are you psychotic?!" Lloyd snapped. "Do you know how creepy you look, standing in the middle of the road?"

"Oh. Uh... whoops." He laughed nervously. "I didn't mean to scare you. And they told us not to think about how we look, forbid us from even looking at mirrors, when we're in these. I obviously have seen others but, there's a certain disassociation that happens when you're in one of these. It might even be part of our code."

"Well, I'm going to go talk to my last client."
"The one that got away. You're just gonna talk to her?" Ben asked curiously.

"That's the plan."

"Why do I feel like that's not what you've been told to do?" He responded cautiously.
A realization dawned upon Lloyd.

"Frederick sent you, didn't he?"

"Bingo. Not only that, he spoke to me privately. Said I had to assist you in any way possible. And that you could help me get out."

"Get out? Out of what? I thought you were happy in there."

"I am, or at least, I was until I spoke to him. He seemed stressed as hell. Talking about what might happen to the us, the people inside, after midnight. He wants you to put me in the blackbox, just until the new year is over."

Lloyd called pulled out his phone and called Frederick. No response. Then bubbles appeared in messages and a single message arrived: 'Finish Your Task. Ask Nothing Else.'

"What do you think he's doing?" Ben asked Lloyd.

"I don't know. But you can't follow me to her place, she's scared of ya- the automatons, and rightfully so. Wait at my place. I'll bring her there, and then we'll go somewhere they won't track us."

"But they can always track me." said Ben. "I don't even know if I could find the tracker and take it out."

"We'll figure it out later. Just trust me." Lloyd responded, rolling up the window. Ben gave him a two finger salute and ran off. Lloyd unpaused the ride and took off the mask, humming along to the piano melody as the ride continued.

Clearly, he thought. Frederick has a plan. But if I lose communication with him, I still need to have one of my own. And then there's Connor. I could access him with the black box, but only if he came back. Hopefully he arrives soon, even if he doesn't have anything to say.

Minutes later, the electric car finally cruised to a stop. A little jingle played telling Lloyd he had arrived at his destination. Phoebe had an older house than his, hers still had a garage. He wondered if she still harbored a gas vehicle inside, even though it would've been illegal to do so. Her yard was almost exactly like his, same fake turf instead of grass, same mechanical trees that produced oxygen faster than real trees. As he walked to the door he turned to look at the neighborhood. There was a little variation between the houses, but not much. Sometimes he felt real was just as fake as the place they were sending people to.

Collecting himself, Lloyd took a deep breath and knocked on the door. A few minutes pass as he stands there in silence. Could she not be here? Where would she hide?

He started to knock again and the light above the peephole activated. She was home.

"Hey, Ms. Caulley? It's your therapist from today, Lloyd Hall. I wanted to talk about what happened. It's actually kind of urgent."

Lloyd heard a soft click, but no verbal response. He grabbed the doorknob and opened it slowly, his heart rising faster because of her silence.

"Is it okay if I come insi-"

BANG!!! BANG!!! BANG!!!

Lloyd instinctively flinched and ducked, the door only halfway open, he had only stepped one foot inside. He opened his eyes, but the house was almost pitch black, save for the lights on the ventilators going overdrive. Breathless and panicky,he started to himself down, checking for wounds.

I wasn't hit! He quickly realized. Warning shots?

"Just hear me out, please!" He shouted. "If I wanted you dead I would've let the robot do it, for fucks sake!"

A light flickered on, and Phoebe was standing at the back of the room near a door, pointing a small revolver at him. She had on the same outfit as earlier, except now she wore a bulletproof vest on top of it.

"Why are you here?" She demanded, reloading. "Speak quickly."

"Can I please come inside?" He said, still regaining his composure. "I'm about to have a panic attack in this mask."

She took a moment to think about it.

"Stay. By. The door." She answered sternly.

"Thank you." Lloyd fully entered closing the door and taking off his mask. He saw two bullet holes in the door, then he looked along the wall and saw the last went through a window.

"Damn you can't aim for shit." He nervously chuckled, choosing to sit down against the door.

"It's my ex-boyfriend's gun." She admitted, keeping it pointed at him as she carefully at down.

"Was he a cop?"

"No, just security. Answer my question, why are you here?"

"To uh... Shit this is hard to explain. We have a few options ahead of us, and very little time."

"Very little time for what?" She snapped.

"The digital world. Manifest Destiny people. We messed up. Both of us. You escaping and being seen means they'll come after you. Me destroying that automaton means they'll come after me."

Phoebe's eyes widened and her hands started to shake.

"How do you know that's gonna happen? I have a place I can go to, I have friends, they'll.. they'll-"

"Probably get killed if you lead the automatons to their location." Lloyd interjected.

"They know where I live, employee records. They know where you live, patient files. And to make matters worse, you were going into digital, so six months ago, when you got that implant, you enabled yourself to be tracked at any given time."

"FUCK!" She screamed, throwing the gun across the room. She buried her head in cushions and continued to scream.

"That is extremely unsafe!" Lloyd shouted.

"It's empty!" She snarled, turning toward him. "Why did that thing speak?! Why is there another me???"

"You were supposed to be asleep when after the transfer. neither nor the digital you were supposed to interact with one another. That's one of our current problems." Lloyd tried his best to explain.

"So it was always just a big fucking lie huh? And you, pieces of shit like you, just happy to coax people along to their fucking deaths, to get replaced by some stupid ass code!"

"HEY!" Lloyd shouted furiously, much louder than before. Phoebe looked at him stunned.

"The only reason I signed up is because I refused to go in there. My wife wouldn't listen to me, she thought anything would be better than out here. So she took my fucking son and left to visit... her family..." Lloyd began to break down into tears.

"One last time. I had to know if my family would be safe inside. I had to know if we could actually trust anything the government was saying. So I signed up to be transfer therapist. I didn't want this. Who would?"

He wiped his face, ignoring her silence.
"My boss says that they put people into cryo sleep because if the digital and real memories overlap, it could cause dangerous case of schizophrenia. He also came to my house with automatons and a gun, and told me they wanted me to kill you so you wouldn't scare the remaining populace. I had no intention of doing it, so I'm a dead man anyways. Go ahead, grab your gun and shoot me."

Phoebe sniffled and wiped tears from her eyes. She rose from the couch and sat down next to him against the door.

"I already told you. I'm out of bullets." She said softly, her voice a little hoarse from screaming.
She watched as he fidgeted with his wedding band, breathing heavily. Lloyd was trying his hardest not to cry again.

"You said we had options." She put her hand on his shoulder. "What are they?"

He took a second, checking the time.

"They wanted you dead before the New Year. But the digital you is just as panicked about the situation as you are, so she's stuck in local. We can't put her in or she'll freak out everyone inside. So we need to calm her down. That, and your death, or you voluntarily going into cryosleep, is all option one."

"It's terrible."

"I think so too. So option two: I already have two people on the inside in the digital world, trying to figure out what's going to happening. Apparently every continent has been sectioned off into digital domiciles, with people being unable to interact or visit other continents until after the new year."

"They must have massive servers if they can support billions of people. Maybe they're separate, like one big giant computer for each continent." said Phoebe.

"Maybe..." Lloyd replied, a little stunned. "One of my clients is looking into the automatons, trying to recieve one. He had a brother already inside who had a damaged unit from a battle. It's locator was broken, so it ran across multiple states before it's battery died to tell him the info."

Phoebe gasped. "If the locator can be disabled-"

"We can have people on the inside with automatons, helping us." He responded.

"Then my implant can be disabled too! Wait what? Help how?"

"I'm not done learning what they're doing to people, it seems so obvious, but I feel like I don't know enough. We have to find the factories and check them. It's the only way to know if my family is actually safe."

"Oh... We." She said despondently.

"You aren't obligated to help me. I've put you in enough danger as it is. I could probably calm down the digital you must eventually. It is my job after all."

Lloyd rose to his feet. "I'm going to make sure your implant is disabled. And then you can join the friends that you said would help you."

"Well, that's just the thing. They might actually be able to help you too."