Zeta left early, an hour before the museum opened. He hoped that arriving before schedule would give him the advantage of observing his surroundings, scanning for possible escape routes, and watching the gathered crowds for some sign of his contact. In leaving early, though, he missed more than he observed.

First, not long after he left, a man arrived. He had covered himself in a partial hologram, just enough of a disguise to keep from alerting the public to his rusted cybernetic arm and the circuitry that covered half his face- a face featured on many wanted posters, easily recognizable to a well-informed civilian. He loitered around on the sidewalk and watched the hotel doors intently, waiting for Zeta to reappear. Zeta, or his little blonde accomplice. He wasn't picky.

There was a noise soon after that, a faint grinding like an engine that wouldn't start in an antique car blocks away. It grew steadily louder, drowning out the everyday sounds of the city street, and it was accompanied by the arrival of something else on the sidewalk outside the hotel. Zeta, not being human and therefore not restricted to the limited perception of humans, might have noticed it, but none of the people passing by that day paid it any attention. They knew, in a very vague way and in the very backs of their minds, that something significant was happening, just as it had happened before and would continue to happen in the future. They even saw it, just out of the corner of their eyes, the sudden appearance of a foreign and anachronistic structure. It simply did not register with them on a conscious level.

Even Roden Krick, inconspicuous in his hologram, didn't see.

Ro wasn't sure what woke her from her peaceful sleep. She imagined, for just a moment, that she had been disturbed by the deep metallic whirring of Zeta's snore. But Zeta was gone. His chair was empty. The wall that she had stacked around him, not quite soundproof but close enough, had been separated into its individual pillows and comforters, folded and stacked neatly on the other bed. Wherever he had gone, he hadn't left in a hurry.

She rose, reaching for the lamp and the note that she knew he had left. That was Zee- always so courteous, always leaving little explanations for his absence if he so much as stepped out to buy her breakfast. She had panicked the first time he disappeared without warning, and so he made sure to keep her informed now, so she would never have to worry that the NSA had stolen him away in her sleep.

She unfolded the paper. "Ro," he had scrawled in his unpracticed handwriting, "I left to investigate a new lead on Doctor Selig. If you have to find me, I'll be at the National Museum of American History, but please don't follow me unless it's necessary. Try to stay at the hotel until I come back. Zee."

Zee, she thought, setting the note aside, was getting sneaky, leaving before she woke and not even giving her the chance to ask where he got his information. He was probably going to walk right into a trap. She stood, sighing deeply, and reached for the bag with her change of clothing and holo-emitter bracelet. It wouldn't hurt just to drop by the museum long enough to make sure Zee wasn't surrounded by agents. And if nothing had gone wrong, maybe she could fit in an hour or two of shopping without the input of a fashion-deficient robot.

The note, evidence of their stay that she couldn't afford to leave behind, was the last thing to go in her bag after her clothes and the hotel shampoo. She checked it again before folding it and tucking it into a side pocket. The National Museum of American History. She had no idea where that was, but she could get directions.

"Well," she said to the empty room, "he said to try to stay at the hotel." It wouldn't be the first time that she just didn't try hard enough.

Ro paused outside the hotel, stepping into the shade of an old vidphone booth. She scanned the morning rush for likely disguises, loading the holo-emitter with as many new faces as it could hold, just in case she needed to hide in plain sight.

That was a frightening idea, that anything could hide right out in the open without being seen. Synthoids like Zee with no moral objection to killing, or humans with holo-emitters, or anything that could be easily disguised, imperceptible to the human eye. Ro was suddenly nervous. She realized, better than any of the people walking by that day, that there was something wrong with the sidewalk outside the hotel that day. She'd seen a lot of weird things on her journey with Zee, and she knew better than most how to tell if something was off, and something was definitely off. The idea of it nagged at the back of her mind. If she just stayed a little longer, just looked a little closer, she might see it. Something right in front of her eyes, hiding in plain sight…

"Don't move."

Ro had fortunately not been held at gunpoint too many times in the past two years, but she knew what the barrel of a gun felt like when pressed against her back, and there was no mistaking that feeling now, nor the gravelly voice in her ear. "Don't try to run, and don't even think about calling for help, or you'll be dead before you open your mouth."

"Krick," she said, her voice low. She didn't doubt for a moment that he'd keep his promise if she attracted attention. "Who let you out of your cage?"

"Got out on good behavior," he said, "and I thought I'd pay a visit to some old friends. But our reunion is short a synthoid, isn't it? Where's Zeta?"

"Hey, don't ask me. He left this morning. I don't know where he went, but he's long gone by now."

"But he never gets very far from you, does he, Miss Rowen? I'm sure he'll come running if he thinks you're in danger." He leaned in closer. "And you are in danger. I haven't forgotten that you're as much to blame for what happened to me as Zeta, and I don't mind messing up that pretty face to get to him." The cybernetic implant in place of his eye clicked faintly beneath the hologram as he focused on each individual pedestrian, scanning them for holomorphic disguises.

Ro reviewed her options. She could try to run and be killed. She could put up a fight and be killed. She could call for help and be killed. None of those choices were particularly appealing. No, her best bet was probably just to lead Krick right to Zee and hope for the best, hope that he could get them both out of this situation. "All right," she said, "I'll tell you where Zee is. He-"

Her answer went unfinished, because at that moment, the door to the vidphone booth opened.

How had she ever thought that it was a vidphone booth, anyway? It looked nothing like one. It was too big, too old, made of wood and painted blue, and while it did have something that bore a passing resemblance to a phone- an old one- the lettering across the top identified it as a "police public call box." Great, she thought, that was just what she needed. The police.

The man who stepped out of the box didn't look like a cop, though, not even an undercover one. He looked more like somebody just back from a historical reenactment of a time when people still wore pinstripe suits and old-fashioned neckties. He sauntered out in front of them, hands shoved deep in his pockets. "Oh, hello!" he said, beaming at Ro.

Krick's holoviewer eye clicked furiously, but Ro could tell already that this wasn't Zee. Zee would have already known that she was in trouble, and this guy didn't seem to notice. She tried to catch his eye, frantically mouthing "help me," but his attention was focused on Krick now, and he leaned forward and squinted as if he could see right through the disguise.

"Look at that," he said. "Low-level holomorphic projection shell with limited solidity. Haven't seen one of those in years! And-" He leaned sideways, looking around Ro. "Oh, arm-mounted plasma cannon. That's not very nice. Put that thing away before you put someone's eye out. Although…" He straightened up, peering inquisitively at Krick's face. "Might be a bit late for that, eh?"

"You're not helping!" Ro shouted as Krick, with an angry growl, pulled her further away from the man and the blue box. He moved his cybernetic arm, still concealed, from the small of her back to the side of her head. The people in the street and on the sidewalk paused, noticing for the first time that something was wrong.

The man, most definitely not Zee, made no move to stop him. Instead, he rolled his eyes and rocked back on his heels, looking as if Roden Krick was just a mild nuisance in his otherwise perfect day. "They don't listen, do they? They never just listen." Faster than Krick could react, he pulled an object about the length of a pencil from his pocket, aiming it directly at his holoviewer. There was a flash of blue light and a shrill buzzing sound, and suddenly Krick was crying out in anger, staggering away from Ro and clutching his face. His hologram fell, and the crowd scattered as he blindly fired the plasma cannon.

The man in the pinstriped suit grabbed Ro's arm. "Come on," he said. "Run!"