11

"Thaddeus Gentian Biggins, founder of RoboCorp and its CEO for 49 years, died on Thursday in a tragic industrial accident. He was 70 years old, and is survived by his only son, Chadwick. He…"

The obituary droned on. Ayaka stared straight ahead at the elevator doors and tried to tune the world out. There were 27 more floors to go until the cafeteria, and if she couldn't block out the noise, it was going to torment her the entire time. She knew that eliminating the input from certain senses was supposed to leave the brain more processing power for the others, so she looked at the corner of the elevator and tried reciting an old poem from memory she'd loved as a child.

It worked for a little bit. But then the vorpal blade went snicker-snack, and she could feel her stomach twist up inside her.

She'd been watching the EV-209 announcement stream when it happened and she'd seen more than one person have their head separated from their body. Thinking about it now, she could feel herself on the verge of throwing up. It got worse every time the video looped and she could see that close-up of Thaddeus's blue eyes, his silver hair, his confident smile.

The elevator finally dinged, and Ayaka rushed through the door, gasping for air. She bent over at the waist, her hands on her knees, her messenger bag with her portable terminal in it sliding around her body and dangling above the floor. Once she'd calmed down enough, she looked up to find the other RoboCorp employees in the company cafeteria staring at her.

Thankfully, it was early enough in the day that there weren't very many people here; just a handful of engineers starting their day early or working late, a few account executives on the verge of collapse from late nights of managing customer relationships, and the cafeteria staff.

Ayaka walked up to the counter and nodded at the older woman behind the register. She was vaguely aware that the woman was giving her a look of concern and worry, but she didn't have the emotional energy to even feel properly embarrassed right now. Instead, she just glanced up at the menu.

Nothing quite looked good, but she knew she hadn't eaten in twelve hours. Maybe she'd just get coffee and a croissant. Drink the coffee, save the croissant for later.

By habit, she was about to order the executive special on Chad's account, but she stopped as she opened her mouth to speak. Had his account been frozen? Would security descend on the cafeteria and hold her at gunpoint, demanding to know where Chad was and what she knew?

"Miss?" the cafeteria worker asked. "Are you alright?"

Ayaka shook her head, forced a smile to her face. "I'm fine. May I have a Stomach Soother tea, please?"

Ayaka took her mug of tea and went to sit a few tables away from anyone else. She closed her eyes and tried to think of the work she had to do today, of reaching out to her parents and talking to them about the guilt and self-doubt she felt over what had happened, or maybe the_salesman.

No, not the_salesman. She knew it wasn't his fault, but she'd been with him instead of preparing for the presentation, double and triple-checking everything she could. She didn't have a name for what it was she felt when she thought about that morning together, but she knew she wasn't ready to face him yet.

The voices of the people around her began to seep into her thoughts. The account executives and business specialists were loud, like they were the only people in the world and they were free to say whatever they pleased.

"So. You think he did it?"

Ayaka opened her eyes. Four men in suits sat at a table, drinking coffee.

"Fucking obviously. Son of the CEO wants the throne for himself and knocks off Daddy to get it. That's basically how the Corporate Wars started."

"So this is, what, the opening shots of the Second Corporate War?"

"God, I hope not. My grandpa died in the Corporate Wars. I don't want to get killed for Thad Biggins's bottom line."

"Well, you won't anymore. Chad took care of that."

"Ugh. I bet someone at Globokhem promised him a sweetheart deal if he knocked off the old man. He's probably laughing it up somewhere in the Schengen Empire right now."

One of the men shook his head. "Nah. I don't think he did it." He took a sip of his coffee.

"Why not?"

"He doesn't have it in him."

"Because he's a good man?"

"Oh, I don't think he's a good man. He's just not a killer."

"You don't think he wanted Daddy's seat at the head of the table?"

"Oh, I'm sure he did. But I think he figured it was owed to him. Why do something reckless and stupid like organizing a hit on your dad-slash-boss when you can just keep partying it up while you wait for the old man to give you his job all nice and gift wrapped?"

Ayaka stared at the four men, her stomach twisting up in a different way this time. How could they talk about Thaddeus and Chad like that? People were dead, and they were just speculating on why, like they were talking about who they thought would win a smashball match or something. Ayaka could feel heat rising in her cheeks.

Then one of the men glanced up and noticed her staring. "Hey," she heard him say. "We're getting stares."

"Who? Her?"

"Yeah."

Ayaka shrunk down into her seat. But it didn't make her invisible. "You know," one of the executives called out, "it's rude to eavesdrop." The others chuckled at that.

Ayaka felt heat rising in her face. They were laughing at her. At Thaddeus. These… these ghouls!

Ayaka stood up, her fists clenched at her side. "Well, I think it's rude to joke about your coworkers getting murdered! People are dead! And you're what, nursing last night's hangovers and joking about whether or not Chad Biggins is responsible? What is wrong with you!"

"Jeez, alright! Calm down! We're just joking around. Black comedy, you know? Gallows humor?"

"Well. I don't think it's funny." Ayaka turned and walked to the elevator, her back straight and her head held high with what she hoped was confidence. Steam from her mug rose into the air, and the hot tea sloshed over the side and burnt her hand. She waited for the elevator doors to close before she uttered a soft curse and blew on the burn.

The elevator opened on the 40th floor, the sound of office workers typing and talking hanging softly in the air. Most of her team wouldn't be in for another hour or two, but Rishab was already here, looking over papers in his cubicle and frowning. His eyes were tired, his hair greasy and flattened and sticking up at weird angles. He looked up and gave her a gentle wave. "Ayaka," he said. "You look like I feel."

"I… excuse me?"

"Tired. You look tired."

"Oh. I suppose so. I didn't sleep well last night because… you know."

Rishab nodded. "Makes sense. It's weird for all of us that he's gone, but you were working especially closely with him. It must feel extra strange."

Ayaka thought of the men in the cafeteria, laughing and joking. Maybe some people handled the weirdness of mortality and of workplace violence differently than others. Maybe some people were just jerks. "It does," Ayaka agreed.

Rishab was silent, his eyes darting back down to the papers spread before him. He glanced back up at Ayaka and said, "You know, you don't have to be here today. If it's too hard for you."

Ayaka shook her head. "I know. Thank you."

"It's a little unusual to extend bereavement leave to non-nuclear family, but then, Thaddeus wasn't a usual kind of guy. Really, half the team is going to be out today."

"Thank you, but that's not necessary."

"The other half used their bereavement leave yesterday. You can–"

"I'm fine," Ayaka said, smiling wanly. "I just want to work and keep my mind off of everything."

Rishab stared at her in silence, and Ayaka began to look around nervously. Was he going to order her to go home? To tell her to see the company psychologist? Instead, he just said, "Yeah, I get that. Business never stops," and turned back to his desk. Ayaka stood in silence for another few seconds, then moved to her own cubicle and booted up her portable terminal. A few minutes passed in silence.

"So… Is the investigation into the EV-209's malfunction being handled internally?" Ayaka asked. "Maybe by us? I have some theories on–"

"Rapid Response is handling it," Rishab said, typing away at his terminal.

Ayaka blinked, her own fingers going still. She stood and looked over her cubicle wall at Rishab. "The RRT? Are they imaging the cybercore and working off the copy to preserve the original? Have they asked for any of the footage from the–"

"Couldn't tell you. Above my paygrade."

Ayaka frowned. "You didn't ask?"

Rishab sighed. "Ayaka, look around. We're down half our team this week, we're already behind on our Q4 quota, and everyone in the company is on edge. Murini Media ran an hour-long special last night on which RoboCorp products can be trusted not to shoot their owners. So, no, I didn't ask for more work for our already understaffed team."

Ayaka nodded and sat back down. "Right. That makes sense."

Business doesn't stop.

An hour passed before more of the team began to show up. Ayaka nursed her Stomach Soother tea, long since gone cold, and she spent the time alternating between staring blankly at her portable terminal and logging into PlayLand and failing to do anything productive there, too.

Instead, her mind was preoccupied with the murders, the things she could have done differently. Should have done differently. Would never forgive herself for not having done differently.

She could have reported the suspicious deliverymen in the security footage. She could have gone and inspected the EV-209 herself. She could have taken some initiative and installed a remote shutdown into the thing's cybercore.

Now Thaddeus was dead. Half of RoboCorp's top executives were dead. Two Panoceanian politicians were dead. And it was all her fault. And the crushing guilt and shame she felt were not conducive to being a valuable team member, so that was her fault, too.

***

The morning turned into the afternoon. Rishab and the others asked Ayaka if she wanted to join them in the cafeteria, but she just politely declined. Instead, she ate at her desk, a quick meal of junk food and an overly caffeinated drink she got out of a vending machine. Her eyes burned. Her stomach was sour. Her legs and her back ached from sitting too long.

After lunch, exhaustion had set in deeply enough that she was too tired for self-recrimination. Productivity came slowly, but at least it finally came. She spent an hour analyzing data breaches on her portable terminal, sorting the amateurish attempts from the professional ones. As the early afternoon began to bleed into the evening, the analytical work was finally complete and she was ready to venture into PlayLand and observe the code in a proper testing environment.

She sat in her reclining chair and fired up her PlayLand connection. A few more hours and she'd go home, she reasoned. Truthfully, she'd rather sleep here than go back to her empty apartment and sit alone with her thoughts, but she knew Rishab would say something if he caught her napping in the office.

Ayaka shut her eyes, put on the sensory blocking headset, and sighed as the Broma logo went through its start-up animation. When the RoboCorp server finally loaded around Animar, it was an idealized version of the corporate office: uniformly bright, spotlessly clean, with just enough ambient sounds of other employees talking softly that it became a sort of natural white noise.

Her inbox was full of the standard assortment of project updates, check-ins, requests for more information, and junk. Nothing she felt like even opening today. Or ever. She opened a private connection and checked her personal account, too. She knew it was a bad habit, but it wasn't as though she got any–

There was a single voice message, heavily encrypted. No one ever messaged her private account except for the_salesman, and he always sent text or video. She'd never even heard his voice before.

Animar opened the preview. The message's subject was: "Hi, sorry to use your personal account, I need your help."

Animar frowned. She scanned the message for malicious code, checked that the waveform wasn't going to blow out her eardrums or carry some sort of signal that would hack her equipment. But it was harmless. Analysis said it was just a single male voice and some ambient noise.

Fine. Why not? For the first time all day, Animar felt engaged and intrigued instead of just aching and uneasy. She opened the message.

"Hey, Ayaka. I wanted to talk to you, and I remembered you mentioning your personal username once, and–"

Animar recoiled like her connection had just given her an electric shock and stopped playback.

It was Thaddeus. That was absolutely Thaddeus Biggins's voice.

No. No, that was impossible. Thaddeus was dead, dead-dead, and whoever this was, they sounded scared and desperate in a way she couldn't ever imagine hearing from Thaddeus. Which meant it could only be…

"Chad?" she whispered aloud. She cursed under her breath and pulled her headset off to look around her, trying not to get nauseated by the strange overlay of the PlayLand office and the real one.

Good. Nobody had heard her. She put the headset back on, gave her body a few moments to adjust, and resumed the message.

"Um… Look. I need help. A lot of help, maybe. And I didn't know who else to turn to. So, I'm sure you've heard the news. Or seen the footage. Or…

"Oh, God, are you okay? I hope you're okay. Shit. Um. You're probably okay, right? You weren't in the auditorium, I don't think. I didn't see you. No, you're fine. You've got to be.

"Anyway. I'm sure it looks pretty bad, like I killed everyone, but I swear I didn't. And I can prove it! But I need your help. I know that's asking a lot, and maybe even me contacting you puts you at risk. But I know you can help me. You're a genius. And dad trusted you, so I trust you.

"Please, contact me back. I've had to disable a lot of my devices, because, you know. But if you reply here, I'll get back to you, like, instantly.

"Thanks, Ayaka. I'm counting on you."

Animar unclenched her jaw. What was she supposed to do? She wanted to help. It was her first instinct, to reach out to him and ask what she could do. Chad had been nice to her. He was kind. And handsome. But now she had to ask herself, was Chad a murderer? Did Chad murder the man that had believed in her?

She didn't know. Maybe. At the beginning of the week, she would have said no, never. But at the beginning of the week, she didn't live in a world where people were brutally killed while giving presentations on building a better world. That kind of thing wasn't supposed to happen anymore. Those were the nightmares from before she was born, from the Corporate Wars. And Chad might be the person bringing them back.

But maybe it didn't even matter what she believed. The CCPD and the RRT were already after Chad, and for at least one good reason. She'd seen the headlines. "Wanted tech executive maims veteran detective." Even if Chad hadn't been responsible for what happened to Thaddeus and the others, he'd definitely done that. There was footage from a dozen handhelds. Chad and the detective had thrown each other through the thin walls of that Play cafe, and Chad had finally stabbed the older man with something, twisted his arm, and snapped it like a twig. Then run away.

Animar took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Well. Maybe he was, maybe he wasn't. Regardless, she could hear him out and trace his location. Whatever Chad was using to connect to PlayLand, its defenses probably weren't better than her offense. If she thought he was innocent, maybe she could help him. And if not, she could turn him in.

Animar sat in her plush office chair, her connection to her personal server obscured behind a spiderweb of connections and virtual private networks and relays. So long as she didn't do something silly like say Chad's name aloud again in meatspace, she had as much privacy as she could want. She opened his message and replied simply, "Okay. I'm ready. Let's talk."

A minute later, a generic avatar popped into existence in the chair in front of the desk. Its face and body buffered for a moment, then loaded a placeholder texture. He must have been on an exceptionally cheap PlayLand handheld.

"Animar, thank you so much for talking with me. We're going to figure this out and clear my name, I know it."

"Chad," Animar said softly. "Tell me what you want."

Chad was silent. "Yeah. Yeah, okay." He cleared his throat, clasped his hands, and slipped into his presentation persona. "So, I didn't kill anyone. I didn't reprogram the EV-209. I didn't sabotage it. I didn't do anything like that."

"If you didn't do it," Animar said, carefully avoiding the actual request, "then who did?"

"I don't know. But it definitely wasn't me, and I can prove it!"

At the edge of her awareness, she could feel the trace tick forward. Three relays. Four. "How?"

"I've been talking it over with Mimsy, and it's simple: Evie's cybercore. I've been thinking about it, trying to figure out how it was hacked, and we don't think it was. We think it was replaced. So I just need you to get it so we can prove it."

Animar considered this for a moment. Without a RoboCorp cybercore, the EV-209 was just a heavily armed frame. The cybercore housed the neural network, the processing cores, the visual and language identification matrices. It was the machine's heart and brain all in one.

Obviously so. Which meant this was too convenient, even for an amateur like Chad, and whoever this Mimsy was. "Chad, you're asking me to, what, steal the biggest lead anyone investigating the rampage could have. Or the most damning piece of evidence left at the scene of the crime. You could have easily planted false evidence in the thing and you're asking me to retrieve it so you won't get caught."

"What? I didn't plant any evidence because I didn't do it!"

"I can't know that, Chad," Animar said.

"You would if you got the cybercore and we looked at it together."

"Or you could kill me and wipe it to hide evidence of how you programmed it. Hypothetically speaking."

"I don't even know how to program a stupid cybercore! And I'm telling you, someone didn't just reprogram the thing; they rewrote all the code! I bet it's so changed that they just replaced the unit with a custom one!"

Well. It was probably true that Chad didn't do the programming himself. But still. "How do I know you didn't replace the cybercore, if that's what really happened?"

"Because that never even would have occurred to me! Mimsy's the one who came up with it!"

"...okay. And why does 'Mimsy' think that the cybercore was replaced, not reprogrammed?"

"Because of the handshake!" Chad shouted.

Animar blinked. "Excuse me?"

"Okay, look. Have you seen the footage of the… the attack? Did you see Evie shake that one guy's hand?"

Animar thought about that for a moment. She could picture it. It had happened before everything went wrong. Everyone looked so happy and amused at the handshake. "What about it?"

"Evie can't do that."

"But it did."

"Right! Because someone changed the programming on, like, the most basic level!" Chad's legless avatar rose from its seat and floated back and forth as if pacing. "Early in development, there was a whole thing where we were trying to get Evie to do fine detail work with the right attachments, and we just couldn't nail it. We eventually gave up completely and just figured, well, it's supposed to do large-scale environmental remediation, not wipe chemicals off of baby ducks or whatever. But Evie shook that guy's hand. That's not our code! You can check all of the project notes if you want; we couldn't get Evie to do that in time for the demonstration."

Animar sighed. Seven relays. Eight. Still no source. "So, you want me to access the cybercore and audit the code? How will that prove you're innocent? How will that find whoever did this?"

"I don't know, but I know it will. You're the best cybersecurity specialist in the company. Dad said so. If there's anything to find, some trail that didn't get covered up, you can find it. I know you can."

Animar felt her cheeks go warm with pride at that, then she shook her head. Flattery wasn't a reason to put herself, and potential evidence, at risk. "Chad, you're asking a lot. If you're lying to me–"

"I'm not lying!" There was desperation in Chad's voice. Frustration. Maybe even anger.

"...if you're lying to me, it's so you can hide evidence. And Chad, I want to see justice done. I want to see your father's killer brought in."

"So do I!"

"Unless you did it. Unless you're trying to trick me into exonerating you."

Chad sighed. When he spoke again, he sounded exhausted. "Look, I obviously can't make you do anything. And I can't stop you from going to the cops or the RRT and letting them know I contacted you. But I promise you, if you look at the cybercore, you'll see something's not right here. I don't know who set all this up, but maybe you'll be able to figure it out. Then you can get your justice."

Animar was silent for a long time. The trace had resolved. She had him. "I'll think about what you've said. Goodbye, Chadwick."

"Wait, you've got to–"

She ended the call. She silenced the number.

***

Outside the 40th floor windows of RoboCorp One, the sun sank into the depths of the Pacific Ocean, the oranges and reds of its fires giving way to the indigos and violets of a fresh bruise. Ayaka stood and watched the sun give up the last of its light as she chewed mindlessly on a protein bar and sipped a canned energy drink. She'd been in the office for nearly 12 hours. She should go home.

Instead, she thought about Chad. Whether he was innocent or not, there had to be some evidence of tampering buried in the cybercore. Maybe Chad's tampering, maybe someone else's.

Ayaka finished her drink, crumpled it up, and threw it into the trash. She watched with satisfaction as it bounced off the trashcan and fell in. That was a good sign, she thought. Most times it didn't go in.

She knew Rishab was right; RoboCorp was still here, even if Thaddeus Biggins wasn't. She was good at her job; there was no reason for Ms. Fox or Mr. Carlson or whoever the next RoboCorp CEO would be to get rid of her. She could even give Chad's location to the RRT and be done with it. She could just walk away from this whole mess, go back to her desk, keep her head down, and keep getting paid.

But if she did, she might never know the truth. Maybe the RRT wouldn't complete their investigation. Maybe they'd hand Chad over to the CCPD, content with an easy answer. Maybe she'd never know who had killed Thaddeus Biggins.

And she needed to know. More than anything, she needed to know.

It was RoboCorp policy not to turn any evidence over to the CCPD until internal investigations were complete, so Ayaka knew what was left of the EV-209 would be in the HQ's on-site underground storage facility. Technically, any employee could access storage since it housed everything from spare batteries to experimental prototypes, but employees weren't allowed to just wander around and examine things at their leisure. So Ayaka gathered up some random detritus from her desk, threw it into a box, sealed it, labeled it for short-term storage, and got into the elevator.

On the ride down, she thought of the story she would tell the guard posted outside the storage entrance. Something about dropping off material from Thaddeus's office. She still had the clearance, and she could insist that the material was confidential and couldn't be inspected.

Ayaka was rehearsing the conversation in her head, when the elevator door opened and a friendly and familiar voice boomed out at her.

"Ms. Kaneko! You're still here? You got in before me this morning!"

Ayaka blinked. Behind the security desk that barred entrance to the storage facility sat the weathered, round face of Don the security guard.

Ayaka smiled genuinely for the first time all day. "Don? What are you doing down here so late? Don't you work the morning shift?"

Don smiled and shrugged. "Just picking up some extra hours. Bits don't go as far as they used to, it feels like. Plus, if I work two shifts in a day, I get more hours towards my pension on top of the overtime. You can't beat that!"

Ayaka laughed. "No, I suppose not."

"I tell you, Ms. Kaneko. I've worked for three of the Big Four, and Mr. Biggins is the only CEO I ever thought really gave a damn about his people. He wasn't a softie, but he cared about more than just making money, you know?"

Ayaka thought of Thaddeus's special plan for the city, and she smiled, a warm feeling in her chest. "I do."

"Anyway! Enough prattling. You checking in some goodies?"

Ayaka hefted the box as an affirmative. "I was working on a project with Mr. Biggins and I wanted to put a few things from his office into storage. Just small personal effects."

Don frowned. "I thought the RRT already catalogued and documented everything in his office."

"These weren't in his office," Ayaka said, looking away. She didn't know how to make herself blush on command, but she thought the gesture would be enough to convey a certain sheepishness in her demeanor. "They were… gifts… that he gave me. But I thought it was only fitting that they be put into storage in case Chad ever returns to claim his father's effects."

Suddenly, she was blushing for real. That wasn't what she had rehearsed. Had it even made sense? What was she going to do if Don pushed her at all?

Fortunately, he didn't. "I see, I see. You were pretty close to Mr. Biggins, huh?" Ayaka nodded, her head still down, refusing to make eye contact. "I suppose. We worked closely the past few weeks, and I came to… appreciate his perspectives. I could see that he cared about the city the same way he cared about RoboCorp's employees."

Don nodded. "He was a hell of a man. He'll be a tough act to follow, that's for sure." He stood up and walked to the colossal security door that cordoned off the storage facility. "Let me buzz you in."

The storage facility was massive, but meticulously organized. The wreckage of the EV-209 was set apart from the more mundane items in a high security section with its own locked doors. She was grateful that her elevated access from Thaddeus hadn't yet been revoked. The door would log her access, of course. If anyone questioned her, she'd think of something.

Even non-functional and violently disassembled, the EV-209 was unsettling. Bullet holes and blast marks from the RRT's attempts to take the thing down scarred its surface. Its "seed cannon" lay next to it, separated from the main body when an anti-tank rocket finally felled the machine. The thing smelled of oil and… rotting meat? Ayaka's stomach lurched when she saw that there were still flecks of blood and gore in its buzzsaw and its hydraulic breaker.

This monstrosity would never function again. Good.

Ayaka removed the cybercore from the wreck, connected her portable terminal, and set to work examining it and cracking the thing's encryption.

Visually, it was pretty unremarkable, just a standard cybercore. All of its components were either RoboCorp made or sourced from reputable suppliers. There were a few tooling marks here and there that suggested that the hand of a very skilled machinist had been involved in its creation, but Ayaka didn't know if that was a sign that someone had tampered with the thing or not.

Ayaka's terminal beeped, its task complete. She glanced at the cybercore's file architecture and frowned. The code was quite good. Maybe even inspired in places. But not everywhere.

Some of it was strictly utilitarian. There was nothing wrong with that, but some of it was downright amateurish. Worse than anyone working for RoboCorp should produce. Did Chad code parts of this himself? She copied the whole thing to her terminal for deeper review later and moved on to a deeper layer of the machine, the lowest levels of code that told the components of the cybercore how to identify themselves, how to talk to each other.

Embedded within the cybercore would be code identifying it as a single unit made up of discrete parts, complete with a single serial number. All numerals, mostly 0s, to signify that this was a prototype and–

Wait. No. That didn't make sense. The serial number for the cybercore had the same format as a production unit, not a prototype. Ayaka pulled up the documentation she'd read that afternoon, looking for the section on numbering conventions and…

Yes. Right there. "Cybercores for prototype devices shall use a placeholder serial number as outlined in Section 32A. Until a device is finalized, all components of a cybercore must be tracked individually alongside the placeholder serial number."

"Okay, well," Ayaka muttered to herself. "Let's look at the components." Within her terminal, she navigated to the neural net, dug in, and…

Nothing. No serial number at all.

Weird. Exceedingly weird.

She checked the memory sticks, the processing units, the visualization matrices. None of those had serial numbers either. Just the manufacturing dates and model numbers.

Ayaka snorted. Whether someone had hidden the details or tried to overwrite them, the information was there somewhere. She could solve this. She opened up the neural net again. Once she reached the level of its machine code, she found what she was looking for: a serial number baked into the hardware at the time of its manufacture. She'd just cross-reference that serial number with RoboCorp's database and…

The neural net had been reported missing from a warehouse months ago. Ayaka felt a shiver run down her body.

She checked everything else. All of the parts had been stolen.

Ayaka closed her eyes and thought. Okay. The cybercore was made up of stolen parts. What did that mean? Why would Chad steal them? This was his project. He could simply source them as needed. There was no reason for him to do it.

So he probably hadn't.

The custom tooling. The stolen parts. The lack of familiarity with RoboCorp's internal procedures.

Someone outside the company really had built a replacement cybercore.

A surge of excitement welled up in Ayaka's chest. She was closing in on whoever had built this thing, and when she found them, she'd find out why they'd killed Thaddeus.

She opened up RoboCorp's server logs and cross-referenced them for any mention of the serial numbers she'd found in the cybercore. Some device in the core should have pinged RoboCorp's servers. Everything with an antenna gave itself away at some point.

Ayaka paced around the EV-209 waiting for the search to complete. She glanced toward the door. Any second, Don could walk in. Or another employee. Or the RRT.

Her terminal beeped. She rushed over to it and looked at the information her search had returned: a handful of connections from official RoboCorp manufacturing centers. Those all made sense. But there was one in the middle of the Lows, too, from a neighborhood without any RoboCorp presence.

"I've got you," she whispered.

She pulled up a holomap of the area on her handheld. The connection could be traced to a two-story building, an old machine shop by the look of it. The building was in disrepair. The property was littered with junk, with outdated equipment and metal parts of indeterminate origin. It was the only thing on its block that wasn't housing, a small storefront, or condemned.

It certainly didn't look like the hideout of some criminal syndicate scheming to bring down RoboCorp. It didn't look like much of anything at all, really.

Ayaka squinted at the screen and frowned. "What in the world is Shrapnel Systems?"