"Yuna, I'm going to be honest. I'm starting to miss the recycling bin," I whispered into the darkness of the alley. Above me, the skeletal frame of the building formerly owned by Apex Logistics loomed over the surrounding buildings. It was a giant, tombstone-shaped slab of concrete - welded steel plates covered all ground floor entrances and a giant "CONDEMNED" notice had been spraypainted across the front door, along with a wide variety of graffiti tags.

  "Focus, Kurumi," Yuna's voice crackled in my ear. Her voice sounded thick ... distant. "I cut the public stream before we got anywhere near here. You're totally off-grid. No chat room, no viewers, it's just us."

  The silence was defeaning. While I hadn't beem comfortable with the chat room, suddenly losing the hundreds of viewers, a few dozens of which actually interacted with us in the chat, made me feel smaller. I adjusted the strap of my suit, feeling the high-cut fabric digging into my hips once more.

  "Okay," I muttered. "The maintenance shaft on the north side?"

  "Yeah," Yuna said over my headset. I could hear the rhythmic click-clack of her keyboard as she continued typing. "It leads directly into the primary server hub on the second floor. But it's ... well ... it's a tight fit. Twenty-four inches wide."

  I glanced down at myself. "There's no way."

  "Check your utility belt, back right pocket." I did, finding a cannister of what looked like industrial baby oil. I arched an eyebrow, staring at Eye-Bee as the drone circled around me in a holding pattern. "Use the lubricant, Kurumi. All over. Don't miss a spot. It'll help you get through the vent, keep it from snagging on anything."

  I sighed and began slathering it all over my vinyl clad thighs, my torso, and my arms. It was cold and slick. By the time I was done, I was shimmering like a glazed donut under the dim security lights.

  Getting into the vent was a struggle of muffled grunts. Once I was inside, the world became a dark, metal tube. I had to crawl on my stomach, sliding an inch at a time. Behind me, Eye-Bee whirred into the vent, its violet lens practically pressed against my heels. The vent was rusty, hanging loose in spots from the ceiling and rattling as I moved, making me pause nervously each time it did, worried it would come crashing down.

  "Kurumi ... stop," Yuna's voice came through the earpiece. It was a low, shaky rasp now. I heard the rustle of fabric on her end - a soft, frantic friction. "Stay right there for a second. The ... the drone needs to calibrate. Uhm, coordinates. The purple light ... the way it's catching the oil on your hips..."

  I heard a muffled, low moan on the other end of the line.

  She's just stressed, I told myself, my heart hammering against my ribs. Managing a stealth mission is high-pressure. She's probably ... uhm ... rubbing her temples. Really fast. With lots of conviction. Yeah, temple-rubbing. It's a common stress-relief technique in high-stakes e-sports.

  "Yuna? Are you okay? You sound like you're running a marathon."

  "I'm ... I'm fine," she gasped, and I heard a sharp, wet slap of skin against skin followed by a shaky exhale. "It's just ... the heat in the apartment. God, Kurumi, you're so tight in there. The way the suit is stretching ... just keep moving. Slowly. Slide for me, Sparky. Show me how much room you have left."

  I froze. My face was suddenly ten thousand degrees. I could feel the slick oil on my inner thighs, and beneath that, a blooming, heavy wetness that had absolutely nothing to do with the lubricant. I could hear Yuna's breathing getting faster, punctuated by the unmistakable, rhythmic sound of a hand moving with desperate speed.

  She's probably just ... adjusting her chair, I thought frantically, my brain spinning at a million miles an hour to figure out what was disturbing my friend-slash-manager. The apartment is old, the leather on her gaming chair probably squeaks when she moves around. And the heavy breathing? It's ... her overclocked CPU! It's putting off so much heat that she's struggling for air. That's it. It's a hardware issue.

  "Y-Yuna," I whispered. "Is the ... is the drone recording this?"

  "Only for me," she whispered, her voice breaking into a soft, high-pitched keening sound. "Just for me. You're doing so good, Kurumi. You're such a perfect little hero ... ah ... god..."

  A final, long shuddering breath came through the earpiece, followed by the sound of someone collapsing into a chair.

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Static, I decided. That sound was definitely a localized burst of static interference from the server room. Very common in commercial districts.

  I pratically scrambled out of the vent, landing in a wet splat on the carpeted floor of the server room. I didn't have time to process why my own legs felt like jelly or why Yuna was suddenly very, very quiet.

  The room was filled with rows of black towers, covered in dust and cobwebs. Most were silent, but a few still hummed with electricity. I found the master console and, scrambling for a keyboard, accidentally pressed my hand against the interface. My black circuit-tattoos flared to life and I felt myself interacting with the computer.

  "I'm seeing ... mostly junk?," I whispered, trying to ignore the lingering heat in my own body. "Millions of deleted files - only a few fragments of metadata here. Just the names, stuff like 'experimental-bio-salts' or 'posthumous-insurance-payouts' and so on. There's so much weird stuff here." I poked through the interface for another minute, Yuna's panting voice still in my ear, before I paused. "There's a folder called RESONATOR_CANDIDATES they didn't delete - do you think... ?"

  "Grab it," Yuna panted, her voice returning to a semi-professional if slightly shaky tone. "Do it now. Something is moving in the hallway." I quickly pulled a thumb drive out of my utility belt, plugging it into the interface and starting the copy process.

  *CLANG*.

  The heavy security door started to open, then the mechanism failed and the door awkwardly fell off its hinges. An archaic, faceless machine rolled into the room. Gunmetal steel plates, seven feet tall, with a single red sensor eye. It raised a hydraulic arm that ended in menacing looking claw.

  "Intruder detected," it droned. "Capture authorized."

  I dove to the left just as the claw hissed through the air, apparently part of a grapnel launcher. I tried to fire a bolt of my own electricity, but it just fizzled. The machine countered by spraying a sticky foam that coated my thighs, slowing me down. I dove wildly out of the way, hitting a desk and tipping over it as I tumbled to the ground, the air leaving my lungs in a desperate gasp.

  I scrambled back to my feet but the grapnel hook's claw whizzed at me again, this time catching me across the bare skin of my shouler as I tried to twist out of the way again. I felt the sharp, hot sting of the claw's rusty edge tearing my skin, followed by the trickle of blood down my arm. I tried to kick the robot, but it only hurt my foot and the machine threw me backward over another pair of desks, trying to spray me with the foam again.

  "I can't beat it, Yuna," I sobbed, backing into a corner as the machine advanced on me.

  "Kurumi, listen to me!" Yuna's voice was fierce now, a protective edge cutting through her earlier exhaustion. "Look at the drone! You are not the scared girl who fell off a roof. You are a hero! You saved me! You're Voltana! Get up and fight for me! I need you to come home!"

  I looked at Eye-Bee, the little drone circling wildly up near the ceiling, trying to stay out of the way for once. I thought about the oil, the shame, and the way Yuna's voice had just sounded - needy and entirely focused on me.

  "Get ... away ... from me!" I roared, feeling the lightning building within me.

  My circuit tattoos glowed with a new intensity. A surge of violet energy erupted from my body - a localized electro-magnetic pulse. The lights dimmed, then went out as the room fell into silence. The security robot froze mid-stride, its red eye going dark as it seemed to lose power. Even Eye-Bee seemed to power down and dropped out of the sky, landing on the floor with a heavy thump.

  I stood in the dark, gasping, as the smell of dust filled my nostrils and I tried not to sneeze. My shoulder was stinging and my ribs throbbed. Glancing around, I quipped to Yuna, "Well, I guess I won't be stealing any more data... everything's lost power." Noticing a weird silence on the comms, I tried again. "Yuna?" No reply. Maybe whatever I did made that stop working, too?

  Walking back over to the computer terminal, I plucked the thumb drive from the now-dark machinery and shoving it back into my utility belt. I sure hope the copy finished before everything turned off ... and that the drive isn't damaged. Stepping over to a nearby broken window, I glanced out, wincing slightly at the height. Taking a moment to adjust my suit, I stared pensively around the dark and powerless server room. It seemed eerie, being around so many silent computers.

  I stepped up to the window, hands on the frame, preparing my next move. Instead, the lubricant that I'd somehow re-smeared across my hands resulted in me slipping - and falling - straight out the window. Screaming and windmilling my arms, I plummeted two stories into a giant dumpster, landing in a massive stack of trash bags and construction debris with a loud thump.

  As I struggled to pull myself out of the dumpster, landing roughly on the asphalt of the street, Eye-Bee seemed to regain power and whirred past me, circling around to resume his usual position next to my ass. With a groan, I broke into a run, hearing the roar of vehicles in the distance - but approaching quickly. I had no idea if someone was going to come investigate this place, but if so, I wanted to be gone before they got anywhere near it.

  "Headed home?" Yuna's voice was chipper and upbeat over the headset, as if she hadn't just watched me get the shit kicked out of me by a giant killer robot. I grunted a yes, ducking into an alley as two S-Korp security vans roared past, then hustled down the street. "See you soon, babe!"

  Babe. My face flushed as I continued running, my heart beating fast. That's what girls who were friends called each other all the time. Nothing weird about that.

  "See you soon," I confirmed, panting slightly with the exertion, picking up my pace. I couldn't wait to get home to Yuna. To my friend.