There was some benefit to being in the company of the team troublemaker.

Nosedive knew with exacting detail where all the cameras spread throughout the Pond were, and happily disabled each as they went with a blaster. This created its own problem, as the trail of broken feeds would be a signal of life in the corridor just as clearly as an active one. There was a steady stream of attacking security bots as he led Winterwing and Emily along, though the attacks became less frequent as they worked away from the main elevator shaft.

They had to force open the armory door, as it would no longer open at the press of a button, claiming to not recognize Nosedive’s authority. They pulled out wall panels, ripping out hydraulics of the sealed door until finally a section fell free. They ducked in, and Emily was tasked with watching the open panel of doorway as Nosedive inspected the arsenal. Occasional groups of bots swarmed the opening they made, but soon enough their corpses were clogging the hole, stalling the rest. Nosedive disabled three cameras inside the room.

There is a certain image that the word ‘armory’ conjured. What was there in actuality was disappointing, because it was not an overwhelming show of force. It was, instead, row upon row of lockers, with specialized equipment for nearly every occasion. Winterwing could not have guessed what some of it even did, the labels were so specific, yet the fact that an item was there was indication that it had been used in the past and, as such, was kept in case of a need arising again in the future.

Winterwing did not move to acquire any of it, and instead peered down the rows and skimmed over the tags. Nosedive, meanwhile, seemed to know exactly where he was going, and made a straight line for the back wall.

“Is there something in here that just shuts all the angry robots off?” Winterwing inquired.

Nosedive paused in his fumbling with a keypad, “Well, they wouldn’t be very good security bots, then, would they?”

“I’m going to hazard the observation that they’re already not very good,” Winterwing said.

“It’s fine, we’ve got this,” Nosedive chirped, and pulled a pair of rather large firearms from the locker, offering one to him. “You know how to use one of these?”

“Nope.”

“Awesome, don’t point it at me,” Nosedive instructed. “The last time was way worse.”

“Last time?”

“Oh sure, last time we nearly left a crater in the middle of the city, this is just a little robot uprising. All good.”

“I’m not trying to be argumentative here, but you are not filling me with confidence,” Winterwing took the rifle with a weary sigh.

Nosedive looked through the arsenal and tried to decide what was relevant. There was a real physical limitation to what three people could carry. The rifle was mostly self explanatory, after a few hours of Mallory’s weapons training. But the rest of the room was specialized enough that there seemed to be a real possibility it would never have relevance. Nosedive would read a label, look at the two newbies, and dismiss it, and fussed more and more with his hair as he did so.

“Just grab a few things and lets go,” Winterwing prompted. “The thing you’re up against is an intelligent personality. It likes to talk philosophy and history.”

“You think that explosives work different if you can talk your way out of them?” Nosedive snapped.

“Nosedive, at some point it’s going to remember that we need air.”

Nosedive looked around the arsenal, doubtfully, and mumbled, “I guess if we survive this I’m going to recommend we add oxygen tanks.”

“For someone that’s supposed to be me, Wildwing doesn’t spend a whole lot of time thinking about every terrible thing that can happen in this stupid base,” Winterwing concluded.

“How about this one?” Nosedive said, tapping a label on a locker door. “Shoots six pucks at once.”

“That sounds obscenely dangerous,” Winterwing said.

“Exactly,” Nosedive agreed, punched a code into the pad, and was met with several short angry beeps. He kicked the locker. “Come on! The one time Wildwing comes up with a real code!”

Winterwing glanced nervously at the door, concerned about the wasting time. The bots had not tried to clear the obstruction yet, but there was a series of metallic taps sounding through the door panels and walls, as if they were impatiently searching for something. Surely the little army wasn't going to let them take full inventory of the armory before bursting in.

“Try 1-3-9-7,” Winterwing said.

Nosedive blinked, and punched the code in. The locker opened with a single beep. He did not reach in, rather, turned slowly to Winterwing. “How did you know that?”

Winterwing opened his bill to answer, and then stood there, confused. The digits had been there, clear in his mind, and now vanished as he tried to recall their significance.

“I’m….not sure,” he said at last, and the admission made him so uncomfortable he could not help but change the subject. “What are you going to do with your new toy?”

“Shoot at least six things,” Nosedive said, brandishing the weapon in triumph. It's two rows of barrels were so preposterous Winterwing was dubious it would actually fire.

“Yes, but whats our goal?” Winterwing gestured at the door. “How do we stop more than six robots?”

Nosedive shrugged. “I don't know man, these are all Tanya problems!”

“Tanya problems,” Winterwing repeated.

“The robots are haywire. Tanya problem. The haywire robots are controlled by Drake One. Tanya problem. Drake One is being controlled by the head in Tanya's lab. That's like, double Tanya problem. Maybe triple.”

“Tanya problems,” Winterwing echoed again, “Okay, we know she's going for the lab. Do we go for Drake One?”

Nosedive considered this, and eventually shook his head. “I don't think anyone but Tanya could even do anything with it.”

“Then what to we do?’ Winterwing pressured. “If BRAWN knows she's that valuable maybe we make our way to protect her.” He turned, intending to get Emily's opinion, as she had been silent through the whole exchange.

Emily had slumped against a row of lockers, and while she diligently watched the door to the hallway, weapon drawn, her forehead was covered in sweat, and she appeared to be straining to stay upright.

The parasite got upset when she got upset, he remembered.

He decided not to call attention to her, and instead turned back Nosedive. “How is one person the center of everything? Why isn't Tanya in charge?”

“Okay, genocidal robots first, let's do the mutiny after,” Nosedive said.

Winterwing made a noise of annoyance. “We can't do anything directly, can we cause a distraction?”

“A distraction?” Nosedive asked. “You're going to distract a sentient hard drive?”

“It's digital but it has physical limits just like us, if you give it enough input it will seize up.”

“I'm not sure how much more input you could give it. We're in the armory and it doesn't seem concerned enough to just open the door to stop us.”

“You’ve got a gun that shoots six pucks at once, does that make you equivalently dangerous to Tanya?”

Nosedive blinked, but had no answer. He appeared to be in distant contemplation, as though he had been asked a riddle.

“I was wrong,” Emily murmured, her voice more a strained breath than a complete thought, surprising them both.

“Emily?” Winterwing said, cautiously turning.

“Smart, small, burn plastic, wire, smashing, thinking, twisting, little thing,” she babbled as though she had not heard him at all. She dropped her puck launcher to the floor, and it landed with a clatter. It didn’t seem that she had heard it at all. Her face was contorted in pain, and her gaze was distant. “Bright light, purple, yellow, notes, thoughts, orange peel.”

Nosedive stood up straight, but did not move from his spot. “She has picked a really bad time to freak out on us.”

Winterwing took a cautious step. He tried calling her name again, more urgent, and she still gave no indication that she heard him. Instead the frantic babbling continued, faster, with greater intensity. Her voice had an underlying buzzing quality, like a speaker that had blown out. Black lines began to trace along the exposed feathers of her arms, her face, and Winterwing found he could do nothing but stand, transfixed.

The lines ate into her armor, there was a sound that reminded him of the cracking of a shellfish, wrenching and brittle. The babbling stopped, instead she spewed one long syllable that caught on an inhale and became a scream on the exhale.

Winterwing’s own breathing seized, because he already knew what came next.

A mass of black and bright blue pushed out of her breastplate, just as it had burst through the other victims. But while those parasites had turned dry and dusty, dying with their host, this mass was wet and slick entrails, that curled back and enveloped the rest of her. It tore her skin off, peeled the muscle below, and snapped bones as they watched.

The writhing hungry beast glowed fierce blue as it devoured, shrank back into itself, resolved into the shape of a person again, and finally relented, splitting open as a cocoon. Instead of Emily, on her hands and knees on the floor, there was the undeniable shape of Tanya. Still visibly in pain, but a complete perfect copy, with glasses and purple jumpsuit.

It was Nosedive who moved first, reaching for his communicator.

Winterwing was able to grab his arm to stop him. “Don’t.”

“You can’t be serious,” Nosedive blurted, trying to wrench away.

Winterwing remained firm. “Wildwing said she gets one chance, right?”

“This is absolutely not what he meant,” Nosedive protested, but he gave Emily another glance, and after some unknown mental calculus, sagged, relenting.

Winterwing let go of his wrist, and knelt down next to Emily on the floor. He was unwilling to touch her, recalling the parasite’s stinging grip, but he tried his best to sound calm. “Are you okay?”

“No, but I’m not sure I can change back,” she said, looking down at her own hands, now a pale yellow instead of white. It was still Emily’s voice that answered.

“Should we, I feel like we should tell someone,” Nosedive murmured.

Winterwing stood. “Better chance of working if we don’t give anyone any warning. If BRAWN has access to everything we have a momentary advantage. There’s no documentation anywhere that she can do that. We might not be able to stop it but if we present it with two identical targets it might be enough to draw a force away and help the others do what they need to.”

“Do you think you can really walk into a room with three people and have him think the same three people aren’t walking out?” Nosedive asked.

“Stand up,” Winterwing said to Emily, gently. She did, uneasy on her feet, and he nodded. “If it’s in everything it has access to our biometerics. Tanya’s taller.”

Emily looked down at the floor, dubiously, before remarking in wonder, “Huh.”

Nosedive paced around in a tight circle, grasping at the air, before coming back to face them. “Okay, fine, whatever, we’re all going to die anyway.”

“Is the only way to regain control of Drake One to get up on that platform?” Winterwing asked.

“I don’t know, that’s a Tanya problem! I guess not if you’re her, but probably if you’re the rest of us.”

“Why not just unplug it? He can’t use it if it’s not on,” Emily asked, and when they both looked at her, added defensively, “Well it’s not like there’s a battery in here big enough to run it, is there?”

“I… is that a thing that can be unplugged?” Winterwing said, trying to imagine the master computer plugged into the wall via a single extension cord.

“No, no, it’s a good idea,” Nosedive said. “We’re not on city power. If you turn off the fusion generator there’s nothing to power it.”

“Do you know how to do that?” Winterwing asked.

“Not a clue. But Tanya does,” Nosedive said, giving a sideways nod to Emily.

Winterwing thought about this for a few seconds, and nodded. “Okay. Let’s try.”