Amelia, the horribly responsible person she was, refused to share any details with me about her dubious plan until she was sure it would work.

I wanted to say she was being distrustful and paranoid, but… well. With how frustrated and reckless I was feeling, I couldn't guarantee that I wouldn't have ended up trying to sneak off or something.

But I refused to feel guilty about that. She'd gotten a point of Essence, somehow! I needed me some of those very quickly indeed, if the constant flashes of eldritch nightmare memories during meditation were anything to go on.

Still, nothing could have prepared me for step one of her master plan.

"You want us to spend time looking up local news?" I asked disbelievingly, staring at the scroll she had shoved into my hands.

She huffed as she joined me on the couch, leaning in so we could both look at the screen at the same time. "Listen, we spent a week eating junk food, going over my father's creepy files, and trying to figure out Essence. When's the last time you checked what's happening out there, hmmm? Did you even check for news on the slums?"

I very much didn't wince or look away, but that was entirely the result of steely will on my part.

Unfortunately, that 'steely will' couldn't do anything about the stab of guilt that went through me.

I'd thought about looking for news. More than just several times, really. But I didn't. Because so long as there were no cold hard facts confirming my suspicions, then maybe I could keep pretending that Mela, Garren, Revs, and Feyo were still alive, alongside all the other Kittens.

It wasn't likely. Not even a little. But there was nothing to stop me lying to myself. I was quite proficient at it.

"Exactly. That's what I thought. We had important stuff to study up on, anyway." Amelia brushed right past my awkwardness, either not noticing it or, more likely, choosing to overlook it. "But now we need this info. We can't just rush out and hope for the best. If I'm giving you info that can potentially result in your death, then we're at least putting in the work to minimize the chances of it."

"Yes, yeah, fine," I finally got out. "Not like we didn't go on a shopping trip first thing after our escape."

"Hey! That was a necessary risk! Besides, the chances of my father sending someone after us that quickly were low. And I paid for it all using my secret account he couldn't possibly know about."

"How are you so sure of that?"

"Because it's the account I've been using to pay for all the aforementioned junk food. Really, if he did somehow manage to find out about it, he'd have taken this apartment from me ages ago. Plus his goons would have been at our doorstep less than twenty-four hours after our escape."

I felt a flush color my cheeks and I turned away from her, refusing to let her see my embarrassment. "Right."

She giggled and nudged me with her shoulder, voice switching from exasperation to something low and teasing. "Really, you didn't think I was lying around in the apartment this much because I'm lazy, right? We're hiding out! There's no way he tracked us here. If we don't go out, he can't find it. All deliveries are left at the door, and we've both been careful when fetching them."

"Aren't you lazy, though?" I teased right back, finding my voice again. "Cause I remember looking for you three days ago when I thought you were dead or something, and I found you lying in bed hugging that bottle of juice and —"

"Moving on!" She spoke over me, nudging me again. It was less 'friendly' and more 'trying to get me to roll off the couch' this time. "Anyway, I didn't want to specifically look up anything about the megabuilding my father's lab was in, just in case he paid off a runner or twenty to be on the lookout for people doing exactly that. But I figure, by now, news would have gotten out about something happening there."

I narrowed my eyes at her, remembering all the games and shows she'd dragged me into 'properly enjoying' with her over the last week. How much of what she was saying was true, and how much of it was making excuses? Then again, laziness and the need for lying low were not mutually exclusive.

"Okay, you've convinced me," I lied, like a liar. "So, where should we start?"

"Let's see… how about…"

Biting the tip of her tongue in a rather amusing expression, Amelia typed in the name of the district we were currently in, and then tacked on 'local news' at the end.

I had to blink several times at the search results that showed up.

'Spralond district under lockdown.' 'Spralond denied access.' 'Spralond number of residents swells in the wake of attack on Micog megabuilding 18.' The number of similar titles scrolled on and on, only deepening a pit of worry that had suddenly opened in my stomach.

"Um… district lockdown?" I asked, my dry throat making my voice a bit raspy.

Amelia turned to me with wide eyes, looking just as freaked out as I was feeling. What followed was a lengthy browsing session that escalated my fears.

The city was on lockdown. The whole city.

It wasn't just one or two districts, like we thought at first. After all, we were still only a district over from where the lab had been. It was perfectly understandable that our current district would get temporarily isolated after any sort of major disturbance, at least for a little while. Maybe even all the nearby inner districts.

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To hear that our little escapade had affected the entire city, from top to bottom? It didn't fill me with jolly vibes, that's for sure.

The ironic part was the flippant way the public was handling things. There were complaints about delivery delays, about not being able to work properly from the office 'because this whole work-from-home thing is bullshit', about the inconvenience of traveling to a different district for a guys' night out.

But in spite of all the drama, daily life was chugging along as usual. In fact, the lockdown had lasted for only two days after it was initially issued (which accounted for why Amelia couldn't order in our favorite pizza on days two and three of our stay at our new apartment). After all, keeping people locked inside their districts was simply not feasible.

The top corporations of the city would not allow it.

This meant that travel was permitted now, but there were so many new checks and security precautions in place that it was more than a mild hassle. In fact, if you didn't have a good enough reason to travel to a different district, let alone move between the different tiers of the city, then you'd be turned away or outright detained at one of the many new checkpoints.

There was plenty of photo and video evidence of this. Disgruntled residents of the inner and core districts were more than happy to vent online about all the 'injustices' they had been subjected to.

I didn't mind that so much. Even better were all the posts complaining about how much the lockdown was slowing logistics. I scrolled past rant after rant about startup corps heading for bankruptcy because they were failing to meet previously agreed upon delivery times.

That tickled the slum rat in me enough that I actually chuckled. I had done the one thing every slum resident dreamed about: I'd hit the corps where it hurt.

Their profits.

Of course, underneath all the clownery stretched a more sinister thread of news.

While there was plenty of noise from the rest of the city, Micog, the district the lab had been located in, was utterly silent. There was no outgoing communication from it. People were posting plenty of comments about their failed attempts to reach out to friends and family in the district.

Someone even loudly complained on a forum thread that they'd paid a well-known netrunner to figure out what was happening to their family, only for the runner to disappear entirely right after they accepted the job.

Not even the official news outlets could agree on what exactly was happening. Everyone claimed there had been an 'attack', and that a 'biological or chemical weapon' had been unleashed on Micog's megabuilding 18. However, some argued it was a kind of gas, others claimed it was a highly virulent disease some corp was testing in secret, while some minor outlets and 'private news channels' ranted and raved about monsters wondering the city's streets.

The latter seemed to be on the decline, though. Those posts were disappearing. Entire channels and outlets were unexpectedly shutting down. Everyone was saying the people behind the news had vanished because they'd been sued into the ground for misinformation.

I was hoping it was just that.

None of the posts, news, or anything else so much as mentioned us, Amelia's father, or his lab.

That was the one bright spot in the shit sundae we'd discovered online. I wasn't sure if whatever 'authorities that be' were keeping these details close to their chest, or if they actually weren't aware of them. But if the anxiety I was feeling could have been harnessed into Essence, I'd have ascended to immortality on the spot.

"Do you — do you think they know? About the lab? About us?" I asked shakily, still scrolling through complaints and disaster theories.

"I… don't think so? I mean, the megabuilding was lost. Utterly. They might be able to clean out the physical shadows, but the netspace?" Amelia shook her head. "Nah. I'm also pretty sure the node did its job and cut off the net access to the wider city when the shadows infected it. Otherwise, there would have been a lot more screaming and panic in that district while we were shopping."

"That makes sense. And I'm guessing your father would never leave behind anything to bind him to the lab, in case it was discovered?"

"I mean, maybe? A bunch of us did have living quarters there, but I was never allowed to keep any physical notes or anything of the kind. I just had some clothes there and that's it. Forget deeply personal belongings. He never let me buy stuff like that anyway. He did have his data on the private server of course, but you already raided that and the shadows are infesting it, so…"

"Am I right in assuming that the only reason our faces are not plastered all over the news is because he doesn't want to implicate himself as well?"

"Exactly what I'm thinking, yeppers on that. He'd love to sic the authorities on the idiots who cost him his secret torture dungeon, I'm sure. Then again… there's absolutely no proof my father even knows we're alive."

I furrowed my brows at her. "What?"

"Think about it. We raise hell inside his lab, the shadows take over, all the data's been scrambled, most people have been turned and a minority killed. And then, I'm guessing, the authorities noticed. If he'd been the first on the scene, he'd have tried to hush it all up and sweep it under the proverbial rug. None of this lockdown business. So, he never got to the lab. Meaning…"

"He doesn't know what happened," I breathed. Anxiety, hope, and fear all mixed together in a confusing medley of almost overwhelming emotion inside my chest. "For all he knows, the shadows could have gotten out on their own somehow. Or I turned fully when I woke up, then turned you, and we rampaged through the lab as shadows."

"Exactly. We — we might be scot-free. I mean, he's probably still going to look for us, just because he's a paranoid bastard. But if we can keep him from finding out we're alive, then he'll never even see us coming!" Amelia squealed, excitement dancing in her eyes.

"See us coming? So, you want to go after him eventually?" I zeroed in on the pretty important detail she'd let slip, making the former research assistant freeze up.

"I mean… you don't?" she asked, in a voice so tiny I almost felt bad.

So, I gave her my best bloodthirsty grin. "Of course I want to! I'm just happy to know we'll definitely be doing it together. We haven't, eh, discussed the future a lot these last few days."

"True. Well. I guess you're stuck with me. Unless you want to walk out or something," Amelia murmured, suddenly looking and sounding adorably embarrassed.

"Hmmm… I mean, I guess I could, but all the pizza…"

"Jerk! Is that all I am to you? A pizza dispenser?"

"That's not the only thing you've been dispensing, so no."

"You're impossible, and rude!" But she was giggling now, and I was soon laughing right alongside her. "Oooof, needed that. Okay… this complicates things. I wanted to hit another of my father's facilities, but if we do that, he'll know we're still around for sure. Hmmm… I guess I know some people he occasionally hired, and they're definitely horrible enough that no one will miss them. We need to plan this carefully, though."

"Yeah…" I trailed off, eying the string of posts dealing with the fallout of our escape. "We'll need a real plan for sure. Going out there right now would be risky for either of us."

"And whose idea was it to unleash the shadows on the city?"

"You agreed it was a good move!"

"I was under the effects of your creepy shadow powers that lower the IQ of everyone around you."

"Then you're still under the effect, smartass."

"True… maybe I should be the one to throw you out of the team."

"Oi!"

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