Wildwing found Tanya alone in the kitchen, sitting at their round table and having a meal to herself.

He had finished debreifing Nosedive and Emily. There was no driver in any of the cars that had crashed through the storefront, but there was a noteworthy observation that those vehicles that had joined in the fray were newer models, that were now being manufactured with computer chips that regulated steering, engine operation, and breaking systems.

The attack fit the pattern of Droid’s modus operandi, complete with his callous disregard for anyone else in pursuit of his goal. The creep himself still remained no where to be found. The only sighting of him remained the video message sent as a taunt.

“That the sandwich?” Wildwing asked Tanya, half in jest.

She nodded absently, chewing on it with a halfhearted zeal. “I wouldn’t call it to die for, but it s-seemed weird to send them after it and then not eat it when they brought it back.”

He walked by her, past the kitchen island and worked his way to the fridge. It was not quite time for an evening meal, but something small and light seemed in order. He took it as a good sign that he had appetite at all, after weeks of struggling to find motivation to eat.

“I do feel pretty awful about it,” she added.

“I don’t think either of them blame you for it,” Wildwing said, pulling out a container of sliced cantaloupe that had been leftover from breakfast, selecting a fork, and slapping himself down next to her at the table. She made a face.

“What?”

“You’re just going to eat it like that?”

He shrugged. “Less dishes.”

“Every so often you betray that you and Nosedive are actually related.”

“Well, I won’t tell anyone if you don’t.”

They sat and nibbled at their meals, until neither had food left and there was no more pretense for the extended silence. Tanya picked up her dormant blue pad and brought up the video message from Droid, and rather than letting it play, worked through it one frame at a time, advancing it carefully. She frowned as she worked, scrutinizing each individual frame before moving on.

“What are you looking for?” Wildwing asked.

“I’m not sure,” she admitted. “I don’t understand why finding him has been so difficult.”

He leaned back in his chair and looked toward the ceiling. “That does seem to be how everything is, lately.”

Tanya put the pad down, frozen on a frame of the message, tapping her fingers on the table. “This was the most obnoxious man I’ve ever met,” she said.

“Worse than Phil?”

“Phil’s background noise,” Tanya said. “Droid was…loud.” She played the message again, in full to demonstrate her point, and when it was finished, seemed to ponder it long after it was done.

SQUABBLING INSECTS

I HAVE IDLED LONG ENOUGH

Wildwing nodded, “Sounds right.”

“It’s not though,” Tanya shook her head. “Last time it was the entire city. This-this is just centered on us. Why is it all so small?”

“Maybe it’s limited resources. Last time he had the aid of two androids and a supercomputer, maybe this time it really is just him starting from scratch.”

“Then taunting us instead of building strength is foolish.”

“Like you said, loud.”

“Sure, but there was some s-subterfuge there,” she said, and played the message again, pausing it in the middle, walking it back a few frames, and then letting it go again.

REMEMBER WHAT YOU TOOK

“He waited until he thought he had an advantage,” Tanya continued. “This is… I don’t even understand the targets this time. He’s been focused on eliminating organic life but p-previously that’s meant building himself an army or his own cute mech. This time he’s just. I don’t know, menaced a mall, broken a plane, and run cars into a storefront.”

“The man was always erratic. Maybe there’s something fundamentally wrong with the copy, or he was more damaged from the last battle than we thought.”

She fidgeted in her chair. She did not have a response, but this explanation clearly did not satisfy her. She looked at her still video image again, and said aloud “We went back to the factory.”

“The hole in the ground,” Wildwing agreed.

Tanya stared at him, and then looked back down at the still image on her pad and uttered the noise of every sentient being that has had a revelation. “Huh.”

Wildwing thought that this would result in a sudden dump of information as she began thinking aloud, but this did not happen. She looked again at the pad, sitting in silence for a long minute, before pushing back her chair, standing up, and gathering her plate. She set it in the sink, and turned on the faucet, and then selected a mug from the cabinet. “Where….where do we keep the coffee these days?”

“Same place as always,” Wildwing said, with mild amusement.

“Show me,” she said. She nodded at his questioning look, and he relented and stood up, and joined her in the preparation area. He bent down to rifle through the supplies of open food items, pulling out several different strengths and flavors to set upon the counter top next to the smaller of the drip machines.

She picked up the grinder with the expression of someone who had never seen one before, and the theater of it was so enticing and baffling he could not help but watch. Absently, he noticed the faucet still running, and instinctively reached out to turn it off.

“Don’t turn around,” Tanya said, quietly.

“What?” Wildwing said, frozen.

“The only camera in here is the one in the far corner over the entrance,” she said, putting down the grinder. “That video. There’s something wrong with it.”

Wildwing, sensing the tension in her voice, carefully let his hand drop to his side. “Wrong?”

“It’s not spliced, I can tell that much. But nothing on this planet is advanced enough to c-con-convincingly fake a person. There isn’t evidence of ch-chr-chromakeying around his hair, and it’s not dubbed over with new audio.”

“You think it’s fake?”

“It has to be. He’s sent us one before, remember?”

“Sure, you showed it to us again.”

“And I keep the copy in Drake One’s database for safekeeping.”

“I don’t understand, what’s the problem?”

“The background,” she said, looking at him out of the corner of her eye, as she grabbed the coffee beans, apparently in an attempt to make it appear that's what they were still talking about. “The background’s the same. It’s the same factory, the one that we just saw isn’t there anymore. I even said so before, remember?”

“It was a recording, it could have been made before it was demolished.”

“Why would he make a video targeting us before we stopped him? Just in case?”

“Who else could it be? Who else is going to have the ability to make the machinery around the city turn homicidal?”

She ran the grinder for a moment, pausing the conversation, and then tapped the grounds out dutifully into a fresh filter. “I need to get to my lab.”

Wildwing stopped her, leaning in. “You think this is BRAWN?”

“I-I don’t know. Maybe. He was there when I told them to get the sandwich, he’s heard me talk about Lectric Land. The real message was in my files. He wouldn’t have known the factory wasn’t there before the fake message was sent. The parts used in the an-antenna were all identical to ones in my st-storage, and if he’s in Drake One it isn’t hard to find at least partial bank details to track down my cards.”

“He can do all that?”

“He was built by the most sophisticated species in our galaxy. If anyone could break into the Aerowing’s nav computer, they could.”

“But he’s our friend.”

“He’s been r-re-reprogrammed multiple times now, maybe there’s something ma-malicious in there that not even he’s aware of.”

“If he’s in Drake One then he might have access to the security system.”

She nodded towards the camera hovering in the corner over the door. “The comms are on their own network independent of the Pond. You can probably get one short message through before it’s blocked, and-and then I think we are going to have to run.”