I stand nervously in the courtroom, clutching at my brother’s sleeve. I look up at the tall podium at the judge, who stares down at us with contempt. This had all been my fault. I decided to steal the blueprints, and now we all would pay for it.

  “Jacob and Evelin Vance, this court has judged you guilty of causing damages to New Hope LLC. The total cost of these damages runs up to 4 billion and 34 million credits. All your assets will be seized to pay off this fine. The remaining amount will be added to your debt and paid off by working in indentured servitude.” The judge's voice announced, booming through the entire room from the speakers.

  My brother stiffens and gres up at the judge. “How is that fair? They killed our parents? Where is our compensation?” Jacob shouts at the judge. His face looks weird, angry. I don't think I have ever seen him like that.

  “Compensation? They got in the way of justice and had to pay for that, so compensation is unnecessary.” The judge says. “Guards, take them away. I have more cases to worry about.”

  “Entering now, Brussel Central Station,” an electronic voice announces.

  I jump as I wake up, hitting my head on the widow of the Maglev train. I rub my head trying to calm myself down. I take a look around, but none of the other passengers is paying any attention. I stand up, ready to leave this train. What a dream. I try my best to remember my brother's face, but the details are hard to remember. It has been such a long time since I saw him.

  I scratch the back of my neck, rubbing at the scar from my impnt. It took me three gruelling years in a disassembling pnt, taking apart dangerous Samurai equipment before people learned about my skills with computers, and I was promoted to cyber security. The price for all my effort was a bomb impnted at the base of my skull, rigged to explode whenever I would betray the company.

  I catch the first elevator down to the lower floors of the mega city. Its construction could be seen as beautiful in its own right. Being at the edge of the flood zone means that people tend to build up in the impressive spiral building structures. If you live at the top, the risk of flooding is smaller, and that is where all the people are, leaving the bottom levels avaible for cheap storage units. Sadly, this is where I was heading. The R and D department wanted to look at some old Samurai gear specs stored on a server here, only to find out they could not connect to it.

  It has been seven years, and I am still messing around with Samurai stuff. Only now, I get to wear a fancy suit while I do it. Once the elevator reaches its destination, I get out, heading to the next one. To my continued annoyance, most people are still unwilling to build an elevator all the way down to ground level. I guess they are afraid the unsavoury types from the underbelly using it to come up. Like hover cars are not a thing. I am brought out of my train of thought by the incessant beeping of an incoming call.

  “Hello, Mister Le Mond. How can I help you?” I answer, trying to make it sound like I am actually happy to receive the call.

  In the top right of my vision, a little box opens, and my boss in his well-ironed suit appears sitting in an office looking out over the city skyline, which was probably Strasburg or Stuttgart. I really did not know since all the cities in that area had just merged together at some point, making the howl differentiation rather pointless in my mind.

  “Evelin, I remember telling you to have the Etro Corp security audit ready this morning, so where is it?” he says in his best I am your boss, and you better have not fucked up voice.

  “yeah, right, the Etro Corp job.” A few eye twitches in my augs and I have all the documents open and ready. “You want me to expin it or send it over, sir.”

  I see his eyes twitch. “And why are you not giving me the report in my office then? Do you think you won't be repced just because you are good at your job?”

  “Oh no, sir, I would never think that. I got sent to Brussels for repairs by headquarters,” I say, doing my best innocent girl impression. “I will come to your office as soon as I finish here, sir.”

  “Hmmph, you better hurry it up, I don’t have all day,” he says.

  “I will, mister le Mond,” I say, and with that, the call gets disconnected.

  Well, that is what this day needed a fucking timer, great. I have to keep myself back from cursing. As I leave the st elevator, I see the small yer of water that has been formed on the street. Water damage is never good. Not only is the equipment wet and most likely broken, but you also have the added risk of electrocution now. I hasten my step, determined to see how bad the damage is. A loud bang resounds beside me, and I jump up in surprise. I look to the side, trying to still my rapidly beating heart. The only thing I see is some kids dumpster diving, and I let out a sigh of relief.

  One of the bigger kids walks up to me “What are you looking at, suit? Get lost.” as he pulls out some kind of rusty knife out of his pocket.

  I pause for a second before I shrug and keep going. Everyone needs to do their own thing to survive, and at this moment, I do not have the time or money to care for others. As I keep walking to the warehouse, a feeling of dread starts to form. The water level has risen to my ankles. Guess I am not keeping my suit dry and cleaning it is going to be expensive. Can this day get worse.

  When I make it to the warehouse, I need to ping the lock a few times before it registers me and opens up. I make it through the front door only to be hit with the smell of damp mould and the coppery stench of rust. Well, that says more than any error measure ever could. I start exploring the different sections. It looks like water has been seeping through a crack in the wall and wreaking havoc on anything that could touch it. This is going to take forever.

  I slowly make my way through everything, repairing what I can and boxing up everything that is broken. Most of the data on a broken hard drive can still be recovered. It just takes a while. So my time is better spent turning on all the parts that still work and sending the data to a different server. I also wrote a strong email suggesting that we abandon this site.

  Bang! The crashing of metal can be heard in the distance. I frowned. Vermin? are not particurly uncommon, but if there were any here, you would expect that there would be more chewed-through cables. Then I remember the kids. Did I close the door behind me? I was not sure; I was in such a hurry dealing with everything that I might have forgotten. I stand up, walking in the direction of the noise. It is coming from one of the other rooms. I quickly unlock the door.

  “Okay, kids, listen up, put down the stuff you took, and we can all pretend nothing happened. Trust me, you don’t need a Corp on your back!” I shout into the room as I open the door.

  Unfortunately for me, what I find in the room is not thieving children but a group of pnt aliens, triple hinge jaws and small legs, which means green muscles spread over their entire dog-sized bodies. Model 3’s a small voice in my head informs me. All four of the monsters instantly snap their gaze at me. I sm the door shut, telling the lock to re-engage. Almost instantly, dents started to form, and I decided to run. If I wanted to survive, I needed to get out of there and into a shelter as quickly as possible. Then a warning pops in my vision

  Incursion Detected!?

  “For fuck sake, you are te!” I shout at the stupid warning message.

  I start to run away heading for the open door. Hey, would you look at that? I did forget to close it after all. As soon as I got outside, I ran into a little girl. We both tumble to the ground, and I look around in surprise. The kids, this is where they were. I look back at the door, no antithesis yet. I quickly stand up and pick up the small girl. The other kids looked at me with wide eyes.

  “RUN! ANTITHESIS!” I shout.

  This seems to put them back into gear as they start running again as I follow behind them. A few eye twitches ter, I have a map of the city dispyed on my augs. I overy the locations of all the known shelters on it to find which one is the closest to us. I find one only one block away, and we are already heading in the correct direction. Guess good things can happen to me after all.

  Then I hear it, the sound, spshing of feet hitting the water behind us. I look behind me only to see that the floral quintuplets have made it out of the building. And that they are gaining on us fast. I do a quick scan of the map again, only to come to one conclusion.

  “Into the alley!” I shout. “Third door on your left, follow the lights!”

  I hack into the building's security systems, unlocking the door and turning off all the lights except for a small path that will exit the building on the other side and onto the shelter. It only takes me a couple of seconds to set it all up.

  Luckily, these are street kids, which means that they are smart. The front one rushes into the alleyway. They open the door and hold it open for the rest to come in. I am the st one to make it inside, and I sm the door behind me as I put down the girl. I quickly re-engage the lock and drag one of the heavy cabinets in front of it. Then I turn back to the hall to see the st of the kids disappear in the distance. Good, they will be fine now.

  I decided to follow their example and run after them. I hear gss shattering in the distance. I quickly try to pull up the security footage but I am blind. Only a few of the cameras in this building are still working. I release a string of curses as I try to get the camera footage from the street to at least have a guess at what is in here. Then I hear a loud boom and the crackling of stones falling down.

  I make a snap decision. Not enough time has passed for the kids to make it out of here yet, and something big has definitely made its way inside, and I can’t have it finding the children. I start activating random arms, sprinklers, and another security subsystem on the outskirts of the building to lure whatever monster is inside of here away from us.

  It sounds like it works somewhat. The noise of destruction is getting farther away from me. At the same time, I feel my legs heat up as I push them further. The amount of noise is disconcerting. More than ever, I wish that HR would allow me to carry a gun or a knife, not that it would do me much good, but it would help calm down my rapidly beating heart, at least.

  Then I spot it on one of the street cameras. The children have made it out safely. I smile. That is good; I am still only halfway. I really should exercise more, but at least the kids are safe and just in time, too. There is a loud collision, shaking the building slightly. And all the noise in the building stops. I guess the Xeno has hit something vital and turned off all the equipment. It was going to happen sooner or ter anyway, but I really had hoped I would have made it out by then.

  I have a new problem now, not only has the noise of the arms stoped but so has all the other noise. No more walls colpsing or the shattering of gss in the distance. The only sound is my own breathing. This unsettles me more than I would have thought. It is a simir feeling to when it was discovered that I stole a whole bunch of company secrets as a kid. I just had the feeling of waiting for the proverbial axe to drop, but instead of being dragged to a courtroom, I would get my face eaten off this time. And it is only Monday, so I can’t wait to see what the rest of the week is like.

  Maybe it is time to slow down. If the creatures are not making any noise, I should not start making noise either; I don’t want to attract them after all. It's like this that I discovered a giant hole in the wall, and all that is left of someone, or the carpet has always been red in that particur spot. Who knows? The hole is concerning. it is big, like a van drove straight through the building.

  Just as I am about to walk away from the hole, there is a loud sound, and I see a cloud of dust coming out of the corridor behind me. I wish that I had paid more attention to the antithesis research channel because, at this moment, I would really love to know how good their sense of smell is.

  I vote for good and start to sprint away. I make it a good part of the distance before the ground starts shaking. I take a look back and see a rge dark green shadow rapidly approaching. I make a quick decision, opening the door to a random room, and head further inside. Running between racks of stored equipment, trying to create space and make it lose me in the mess of dust and boxes.

  As I run between shelves filled with car tyres, I fire off a quick prayer. I am not particurly pious, but I could do with a Samurai now and could care less about how they got here. Then the door behind me explodes as the big pnt comes through. Its big tree trunk limbs, carrying it forward. A Model 6, I think, but it could also be a 5. I should have really been paying more attention.

  I take a quick look around to check if there is anything I can put between me and the overgrown pnt. Sadly, the only thing around me is car tyres, and I don’t think a couple of centimetres of rubber will save me. . I am exhausted from all the running. I know it is over, but that does not mean I want to give up. Too bad for me that the oversized spruce sees the concept of stamina more as a suggestion than a rule.

  As the rumbling comes closer, I jump behind the st thing that can give me even a bit of cover, a big pilr about the size of a small car. As I slide into cover, all I hear is a massive explosion as small bits of rock pelt me. I look up only to realise that I have probably used up all my remaining years of luck as the creature has jumped past me without taking my head off.

  I y there for a second, stunned, and then I heard the groan of metal as the building started to vibrate slightly. I looked up to the roiled-up confer. It had gotten up, but it did not make that noise. Of course not what am I thinking these fuckers never make any noise. Then I hear it again: the creaking of a building as I see the ceiling sink a couple of centimetres. Then the proverbial LED in my head turns on.

  “I ran the bull into the load-bearing pilr,” I whisper to myself.

  In the next moment, the room explodes into motion. The antithesis tries to run at me only to be speared by a falling girder. Then, more things start to fall. A part of the ceiling comes down and hits the floor pte I am sitting on, unching me up into the air and smming me into something as I lose conciseness.