From behind the gas station came Medic, charging forward with his medigun out and already spitting out a brilliant red shield that snapped into place moments before Scout and Heavy both would have been torn to shreds as the Scoutbots and Soldierbots let loose; the barrel of his minigun was all that jutted out from the shield as Heavy spun it up and began spraying bullets back at the robots.

Pyro and Scout were then suddenly flanking him, Scout firing as fast as he could reload and pull the trigger, and with Pyro using targeted air blasts to send the incoming pipe bombs flying off in harmless directions. Under their combination onslaught - with Sniper picking his shots from where he was pressed against the rock wall - three of the Scoutbots went down, with the others seeming no worse for wear despite the bullets slamming into their metal forms.

After the first Scoutbots fell the remaining robots abruptly spread out, trying to get around the edge of Medic's shield; the mercenaries began to slowly back up to try and keep the robots in front of them, the Engineer's sentry gun finally adding to the return fire even as the male hurried to attached the mini launcher to its top.

"It is too much!" Medic shouted over the gunfire. "The shield will fail in moments!"

"Get to cover, Doctor! Behind me and ready charge!"


Soldier had long since put his launcher down and pulled his shotgun and shovel free; any time he managed to get the dark-clothed man in his sights he had simply disappeared and reappeared within punching range, and he seemed exceptionally determined to strike Soldier with that weird silver gauntlet.

"You listen to me you maggot!" he screeched into the empty air as once again the man teleported away. "You will stand still and I will kill you! Do not make this harder on yourself, son!"

The man, as usual, appeared behind him and Soldier spun to deflect away the man's strike. "You impede me," the man said softly. His voice was low and gargled, like he had a mouthful of water. "You may walk away if you deliver to me the woman, and the man in the suit. I require them."

"That is our Spy and I am not handing him or our woman to anyone - you are wasting my time and I do not appreciate that!" Soldier swung with his shovel at the man and managed to just clip the brim of his hat with the swing; the man's face moved in an imitation of a smile before he faded from view. "Damnit! Stop doing that!"

Soldier spun, expecting the man to appear behind him again, but instead found nothing behind him, or around him at all. Had the man finally just teleported away? Teleporters weren't that long-range, or at least the ones he was used to weren't; that man had to be around here somewhere, and by god Soldier was going to find him.

...right after he made sure Spy was at least still brea-

His thoughts ground to a halt, as did his movement toward Spy, when the man was suddenly back and almost in his face, the fingers of that gauntlet ripping through Soldier's right sleeve and into the bicep beneath it in an instant; Soldier swung with his offhand and slammed the edge of the shovel into the man's face, sending him staggering back and then scrambling back as Soldier rushed at him with the intent to tackle.

His arm felt weird, though...numb, sort of. And his hand wasn't listening to the orders he was giving it - the entire limb in fact seized up suddenly enough that his own hand about hit himself in the face as his arm's muscles contracted. It was uncomfortable, painful, and that man's gauntlet had somehow done it, and now Soldier couldn't even fire his shotgun; the weapon now hung from its strap at his side, partly pinned against his ribcage with his own unresponsive elbow.

"Hyaaargh!" Soldier launched himself fully at the man, his good arm extended and with the shovel tightly clenched in it; the man raised his other hand, the one without the gauntlet - a heavy, ornate ring with a turquoise-colored jewel and an inner glow, like a tiny lightbulb, was prominent and prominently pointed at the leaping male.

Soldier's forward progress immediately halted and then he found himself hurtling backwards to slam shoulderblades-first into the edge of the rock wall with the air blasted out of his lungs with the impact. With a groan Soldier rolled over to push himself to his feet; his arm still wasn't working, and he'd dropped his shovel when he'd hit the rock. He could see the man approaching him at a slow walk as he tried to find his feet and his shovel, and then the man was tumbling away as a glass bottle struck him in the face and shattered, sending scrumpy everywhere.

"Suck on THAT you prancin' nancy!"

Demoman dropped down from the wall above Soldier, stumbling a bit on loose rock but regaining his footing and leveling his grenade launcher at the prone figure of the man; he had fallen onto his back, his stupid hat covering his face, shoved there from the impact of his fall. Coughing and sputtering could be heard faintly from under the hat as Demoman stalked slowly toward the man, Soldier finally finding his feet and looking about for his shovel.

Now that he wasn't focusing entirely on the man Soldier could hear what sounded like one hell of a gunfight echoing up the road; the others were actually fighting something that probably was standing still, easily hit, and not teleporting around like a stupid cheater. He envied them and cursed his useless limb - there were things that needed shooting, and here he was stuck with just a shovel and a headache.

"-what the bloody hell?"

As before, the man simply disappeared; Demoman blinked at the empty space a moment, then fired three bombs into it - all three struck the ground and exploded, leaving behind no traces of a dead man, or even proof that anything but dirt and rock had been there at all.

"He is cheating, he is teleporting around. He can't have gone far - let's find this maggot and send him to hell."

Demoman turned, looking Soldier up and down a moment. "Looks like you got the stuffing beat out of you, lad. What's with your arm?"

Soldier used his good hand to grasp the wrist of his other and tried, unsuccessfully, to forcefully wrench the injured arm straight again. "I cannot straighten my arm."

"I'm not hunting with a gimped sissy, go find our Medic and have it put to rights. I'll find this-" Demoman's attention had finally found Spy, still laying where he'd collapsed. "What the bloody hell did one man DO to you?"

"I told you, he was cheating."

Demoman opened his mouth to reply, then tilted his head at the road. "...sounds like the lads are having a round up there. Get him and get back to Medic, I'm going to find this scrumpy-wasting cheating bastard and then come join the fun with the rest of you."

Grumbling but not arguing, Soldier shuffled over to Spy and awkwardly lifted him with his good arm; the Frenchman hung limply against the male, not even recognizing that he'd been moved, still weakly breathing and staring blankly at the ground.

"What happened to him anyway?"

"The man with the hat had him by the throat with the same hand that made my arm stop working."

Demoman gave Soldier a look - the sort of look that had a capital L and all but screamed 'are you an idiot?' at its recipient. "And you just left him laying there?"

"I was busy."

"C'mon, the man will have to wait until we can get him as a team." Demoman came over and looped an arm under Spy's to help Soldier carry him. "He won't make it far, not without his truck, and he can't teleport away without leaving some sign of it."


"And what the bloody hell happened here?"

Soldier and Demo, with Spy suspended between them - and still unreponsive - had just come up the road; the gunfight ahead of them had died down, the two mercenaries hurrying as best they could manage while carrying what amounted to dead weight, and now that they were down the road and near the gas station they could survey the aftermath of the gunfight.

There were bots everywhere - or, more accurately, pieces of robots everywhere. Pyro was seated with his flamethrower across his lap, staring intently into the burning wreckage of a robot; near him both Heavy and Engineer were applying a splint to Medic's leg, the German grimacing and with his entire front half soaked to the skin in blood. The medigun was laying next to him, backpack and all, and it was strange to see the man not using it. Heavy and Engineer were bloodied, bruised, and sweaty, but whatever wounds they might have gotten were already seen to.

Engineer looked up from tying off the splint as the three approached. "What got you boys? Is Spy even alive?"

Demoman eased the unconscious Frenchman to the ground next to the medigun. "Not even sure, the man in the hat got him with something. Soldier, too - his arm's buggered. Can you fix 'em up, Doc?"

Medic shook his head, hissing through his teeth as he resettled his leg on the ground. "No...I cannot. Not right now - the medigun is overtaxed, overheated. It needs recharging or we risk destroying inner components."

"Where's our Sniper?" Engineer asked, glancing up toward the road and the wall where the man had been during the gunfight - or at least that's the last place he remembered seeing Sniper standing.

"We thought he was with you."

"No, he was standing over there in the road...shit," Engineer grunted. "Fine time to be out of sight."

"I'm up here you bloody idiots," came the faint but audible response from Sniper. It was getting dark and so the male wasn't immediately visible against the rock above them, but there was a shuffling and clattering as loose rock fell and struck the road, and then Sniper's silhouette could be seen against the sky. "This is it - there's nothing else around. The man's gone, if he was even here to begin with."

"Oh he was here," Demo snorted.

"He was here and he has pissed me off," Soldier growled. "Running and teleporting like a coward...I will kill him and enjoy doing it. Fix my arm, Doc."

Medic shot him an annoyed glance. "I just said-"

"-I'm going to disarm my stickies," Demo interrupted. "Can't be blowing up the civilians. I think we're done here tonight, boyos."

Sniper came scaling back down the rocks, plodding over to stand with the others; the remains of the truck were scattered across the ground and almost unrecognizable as having been a vehicle, interspersed with segments that had once formed robots. They'd made a mess and had nothing to show for it except for bloodstains and empty casings littering the ground.

Feeling a tickle against his cheek Sniper raised a hand to scratch at it and came away with fingertips coated in blood and fine dirt - something had opened up a deep gash across the bridge of his nose that dipped down below his left eye and he hadn't even noticed in the midst of the chaos. A quick pat down found that he wasn't injured anywhere else beyond some bruising, most likely acquired from clambering up and down the damn rocks.

He came back down and looked his teammates over; they were all alive, so that was something at least. Engineer went to bring their truck around as Heavy supported Medic with Sniper and Demo supporting a still unresponsive Spy; there was a long drive ahead of them back to base, he hoped Spy would continue breathing that long to make it back.


The sun was rising when they limped their way back to their base and even though he was visibly exhausted, pained, and limping on what Sniper assumed was a broken leg, Medic set to the task of using conventional first aid to tend to the rest of them, instructing Heavy on how to hook up the medigun so it could recharge its inner cells.

He wasn't sure when they appeared but suddenly Miss Pauling and Shiloh were among them; Miss Pauling was attempting to get an idea of what had happened out of Soldier, Demo, and Engineer, and to his surprise Shiloh stepped up beside Medic and asked where she'd be most useful. It ended up with Medic instructing her on cleaning out cuts and removing anything that shouldn't be there, with her starting on removing shards of metal from Scout's chest and hip as the male laid on a cot in the corner and for once had nothing to say but an occassional grunt of pain.

Shortly after packing into the truck whatever had caused Soldier's arm to seize up released, which gave them a bit of hope that Spy's breathing would even out if given time; as it was, all they could really do for the man at the moment was settle him into the one bed in the infirmary and keep a close eye on him. Miss Pauling had made it a point to conduct her conversation with Demo and Soldier right next to Spy's sickbed, and the three of them hardly looked up as Shiloh moved over to Soldier and began carefully cleaning up the gouges in his shoulder.

She had steadily worked her way from man to man, with Soldier being the last one she'd reached before finally coming to him; Sniper held up a hand to stop her.

"I'm fine, don't need it."

"Have you looked in a mirror? Sit down and at least let me check there's nothing stuck in this."

With a sigh, Sniper hooked a foot under a stool near the wall and dragged it toward him before sitting down and looking over toward Spy and the others (conveniently moving his face from Shiloh's hands in the process). "How is he?"

She grabbed his chin and firmly made him face forward again, then began to lightly dab at the crusted and congealed blood around the gash across the bridge of his nose. "Breathing still. His neck is one big bruise...looks terrible, but he's not dead and your Medic doesn't think he'll die now. I...take it you guys didn't get the man?"

Sniper shook his head and Shiloh again grabbed him by the chin to hold him still. "He got away, messed up Spy and Soldier pretty good - Soldier couldn't even move that arm at first. He was saying something about how the guy was able to just teleport all over, and then when Demoman joined in the man just poofed away like a damn spook." He grit his teeth as Shiloh used a pair of slender tweezers to extract a very small pebble from beside his nose. "It's like he knew we were going after him...the truck was a trap, and how'd he sneak up on Spy like that? Spy is the hardest person I know of to sneak up on."

She made a noise of acknowledgement and didn't reply beyond that, carefully and steadily cleaning grit and dirt out of the gash until she carefully begin pressing the torn edges of the gash together. "I think this would require stitches normally, if you didn't have access to a magic gun that fixes things," she said, lower lip gently held between her teeth as she tried to ease the skin a bit more together. "I don't think it's going to stop bleeding otherwise."

"Since when did you become a doctor?" he snorted, though it came out sounding more sarcastic than he'd intended.

"Ha ha," came the response, along with a frown. "I know some first aid, thanks, just mine is more along the lines of 'oh crap I fell off a cliff and shattered my ankles, now what?' I know enough about cleaning and bandaging to handle this." She took a few steps away to pick up a cotton pad from the little rolling table the Medic was pushing around as he followed behind her to pick up where she'd left off; Sniper found her grabbing his wrist and shoving the pad into it. "Here, hold that to it, I'm going to see if Medic has anything else I'm capable of."

"Right. Uh...thanks," he muttered, pressing the bandage to his face as instructed as she stepped away to wash her hands and then stood at Medic's side, talking quietly to him.

After sitting there for some time - he wasn't sure how long, as the face of his watch had been smashed in at some point - at last Medic began going around with the medigun; he seemed to be using the bare minimum to get them functional again, closing up the worst of their injuries and leaving the rest bandaged until they could be fully tended to - as it was, Medic wasn't even bothering trying to mend his leg yet, leaving Sniper to guess that maybe Medic really shouldn't be using his medigun at the moment, but...well, he supposed the doctor knew his own tools better than anyone else.

The gash across his nose and cheek mended fairly quickly, a good thing as the adrenaline rush from the gunfight had long since worn off and the mending process stung like a bitch once Medic finally got to him. One by one the mercenaries began to head out of the room, some more quickly than others depending on where and how many bruises they had, but seemingly in no time at all the only ones left in the infirmary were Sniper, Medic, Spy, and Pauling.

Miss Pauling and Medic were talking in quiet tones when Sniper walked up behind them, and Miss Pauling immediately turned to grab his arm and pull him toward the door.

"I need your account of what happened during the gunfight, I know you won't embellish it needlessly."

Tired and not willing to argue at this point Sniper allowed himself to be dragged from the infirmary, giving Miss Pauling what amounted to the short version of the fight. "-and I don't like it, not one bit. It's like he knew we'd be there, waiting for him."

"That IS alarming," Miss Pauling said, her free hand fidgeting with her glasses, adjusting and readjusting them on her face. "I don't see how this gentleman could have known... And it raises more questions that we don't have answers for."

"Ain't that the truth... Where do we even go from here?"

"I don't know, not yet. You gentlemen are some of the best men out there, and this guy tossed two of you around like dolls and duped the rest of you. I don't think I like not knowing what you're up against...we do at least have something this man is looking for, however. He won't go to ground while we've got a target for him.

At mention of 'target' he had a sudden, niggling thought in the back of his mind of something being missing. "Where IS Shiloh?"

Miss Pauling stopped mid-step, Sniper awkwardly pulled to a stop with her. "What do you mean? Wasn't she in the infirmary?"

Sniper thought a moment. "It occurs to me that I didn't see her as we left, but if this wanker is still out and about and looking to kill her I doubt we want to let her out of our sight for any reason."

"I'm right here..." Pauling and Sniper turned as Shiloh rounded the corner, drying her hands on a towel; her arms from her fingers to her forearms were bright red - freshly scrubbed, by the looks of it - and there were droplets of water dripping to the floor off her elbows. "Or do I need to ask permission next time I need to use the bathroom?"

"Where are you going now?" Miss Pauling asked, blowing out a sigh.

Shiloh nodded her head toward the infirmary door. "Back in there, to help Medic plug that gun of his back in - he's not in any shape to be doing heavy lifting. Before you ask - no, I'm not going to be running anywhere, since it seems like you fine gentlemen are the only things that're going to keep me from a heaping helping of 'murdered.' ...it's kind of in my best interest to be as helpful as possible since I guess I'm here for the long haul." She cleared her throat and dried off her elbows. "I'd like to speak to you in private later however, Miss Pauling."

"Later, then," Miss Pauling agreed, then turned to look up at Sniper. "I'm going to call the Administrator, make sure everyone gets some rest in case she sends you all back out again - and Shiloh?"

"Yeah?"

"Be careful, try to stay within sight of someone, all right?"

"Considering the circumstances that sort of goes without saying."

Miss Pauling hurried off down the hallway, disappearing out the door that led outside, leaving Sniper and Shiloh standing in the hallway. Shiloh sighed, then offered him a weak smile. "Seems like you fellows have adopted this stray dog for the time being."

Sniper shook his head, lifting his hat to scratch above his forehead. "I'm sorry, getting you tied up in this."

She shrugged again, silent for a moment before shaking her head. "The way I see it I'd be dead either way. I hate being stuck in one place too long, but it's better than being stuck in a pine box." She brushed passed him, heading back toward the infirmary. "You should probably do as Miss Pauling said and get some rest, I'll stay with Medic in the meantime."

He turned to watch her walk, waiting until she'd gone through the infirmary door, before he plodded down the hallway in the other direction, heading for the barracks. Most times he didn't sleep in this bed, preferring to utilize his van, but at the moment the thought of being caught out alone in a small and cramped space didn't appeal to him.

Caught out alone... Had they been followed? The idea hadn't even occurred to him until just now, but it made a lot of sense - this man had somehow known they were coming, what if he'd somehow tracked them to their base.

...rest, he'd been told. Hell no, there'd be no rest today.

Sniper abruptly turned from the barracks and hurried to get to the main watch tower.


"I am surprised you possessed the skills required to assist me."

Shiloh huffed some as she stood on her tiptoes to clip the medigun into its bracket above the surgical table. "And why - heh - is that?" She finally got the latch the close and lowered herself off her toes, blowing out a breath as blood and sensation rushed back into her hands as she lowered them.

"Few know or care about such manners." Medic was easing himself up onto the table, grimacing, and Shiloh moved around to offer an arm for him to brace himself against. "Fewer still are willing to apply them."

"Like I said, I know some things about first aid. I kind of have to, since I'm out on my own a lot and there aren't any hospitals in the desert or out in the woods. There's going to be some things I can't handle, obviously, but cleaning something out? Even an idiot ought to know how to clean a cut."

Finally up on the table, Medic began to undo the splint around his leg, with Shiloh reaching the straps down near his ankle. "The assistance was appreciated, regardless. You made my job considerably easier and more quickly completed. Grab my pantleg, there."

Shiloh did as he instructed and grabbed his pantleg, then with her lifting near his foot and him supporting himself near his knee, they carefully lifted up his leg and Shiloh slid the splint out from under it.

"Now...there are two levers on the side of the bracket, one controls vertical movement and the other horizontal. I require you to loosen them until you can angle the medigun to my leg."

Shiloh moved back around to the other side of the table and found the levers in question, manipulating them until she could almost freely swing the medigun down and get it adjusted so it was pointing at Medic's knee. "Like this?"

"Gut, now throw the switch - see it there, under the handle?" Medic pointed as he laid back on the table, and Shiloh obediently flipped the switch.

As before, when Shiloh had been on the business end of the medigun, the barrel spat out a brilliant flare of red light that coalesced into a beam; she saw Medic stiffen, saw him grit his teeth, as the beam hit his leg and the energy sank into his limb. She winced as there was a crackling noise - the bone mending, she assumed - and then the Medic was gesturing for her to turn the gun off.

She did so, and manuevered it back out of the way as Medic stood, carefully putting weight down on his newly healed leg.

"Ja, this will do. Now we see to our Spy."

Shiloh looked over to the other side of the room where Spy was laying limp in a bed, then back up to where the medigun was hanging from the bracket. "...are we moving him, or moving the gun?"

"Gun."

She gave him an annoyed look. "I just got this thing up here you son of a bitch."

Medic's grin in response was part amused, part sinister. "Yes, and now we move it again."

Her look in response was scathing, but she set about unclipping the latches and lowering the medigun from the bracket once more; Medic at least came around to take the gun and the accompanying backpack from her once she had snapped all the connectors back together and reassembled everything. Grumbling quietly she then followed him over to Spy and watched in silence as the unconscious male was treated with the red energies.

"How does that thing work, anyway?"

"It interacts with the body on a molecular level, as the most simple of explanations."

"And why does it hurt?"

Medic pulled the handle back on the gun, momentarily stopping the energy flow so he could lean down to peer at the Frenchman's neck. "Adrenaline is good pain blocker without interferring with the healing process. Adrenaline itself is very fascinating - it is often the key to seemingly superhuman feats of strength and endurance. I have studied it extensively and still it surprises me."

Shiloh crossed her arms. "...so why did it hurt? Because I wasn't hopped up on adrenaline?"

"Precisely."

"I'll keep that in mind for next time." She edged up behind the doctor, looking over his shoulder down at Spy.

It was the first time she'd seen him unmasked, noting he was older than she'd initially thought, with gray hair at his temples and very slight wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. His neck was a solid mass of purplish bruises, from just beneath his chin down to his collarbone; his breathing was still shallow but was at least steady, though the male had yet to awaken.

"I wish I had witnessed what had assaulted our Spy," the Medic commented absently. "Soldier had said he was being throttled by the neck, but the bruising is too even - there are no individual finger marks, nor marks where the fingertips were. Bruising is consistent with solid object having wrapped around his throat, but that does not match Soldier's accounting."

"Could he have gotten something around Spy's neck?"

"Doubtful. Soldier said Spy was facing his assailant and I sincerely doubt our Spy would have permitted someone to seize him by the neck if he were looking at them."

Shiloh watched as the Medic again brought the medigun to bear; the bruising was slowly losing its angry purple hue and was fading out to a greenish yellow, and as the bruises faded Spy's face seemed to relax and, with a loud inhale, his eyes fluttered open.

His voice was barely above a whisper, only his eyes moving, first from Medic and then to Shiloh. "Où suis-je...?"

"Light, fetch the light," Medic snapped, sending Shiloh scurrying over toward the counter and picking up a small penlight, bringing it back and placing it into the Medic's impatiently waiting hand. He clicked the light on and shined it first into Spy's left eye, then into his right; whatever he saw there seemed to satisfy him as he turned the light off and handed it back to her even as Spy began to try and sit up.

"Well, how do you feel?"

Spy was silent a moment, focused only on the task of sitting upright, then once he'd managed that he sat hunched over in the bed, holding his head in his hands. "Like I nearly died." Again his voice was barely above a whisper - Shiloh winced a moment when she considered what talking with such bruising must be like.

Medic checked a gauge on the side of the medigun, then moved to go hook it back into its bracket. "The medigun requires more time to recharge, and I must check inner components. Can you endure for now?"

"I can endure," Spy whispered, coughing weakly. He mimed drinking something at Shiloh and she moved over to the sink, located a cup, and brought him back water; he had peeled his gloves off by the time she had returned and began sipping at the liquid, each swallow visibly painful. "Was anyone killed?"

Shiloh shook her head. "No, everyone made it back-"

"-did we get him?"

Again she shook her head and he frowned, shaking his head. "...how long?" he directed at Medic. The man shoved the medigun on its bracket up toward the ceiling, dusted his hands off, then shrugged.

"Five hours, at minimum. It will give it time to recharge and give me time to make repairs if I must."

Spy nodded very slowly at that, then handed Shiloh the half-empty water glass and began to ease himself toward the edge of the bed. "I am returning to my own quarters to rest and will return in five hours."

Medic did not respond nor did he try to stop Spy from leaving; Shiloh trailed along in his wake, leaving his water glass sitting on the floor by the bed. Just outside the infirmary Spy leaned against the wall and slumped down it, sucking in a shuddering breath.

"Are you sure you should be leaving-"

Spy held up a hand to silence her. "I must speak with Miss Pauling immediately, Engineer as well. They must know...know what happened, so that we may devise a way to counter it."

Shiloh studied him for a long moment, silent. "...can you make it there on your own?"

"I will manage."

"Then I'll go find Dell, I guess. Are you sure?"

"Yes, now go - hurry."

She found Engineer in the barracks and felt bad as she roused him; he hardly knew his left from his right as he tried to get his feet back into his boots, but he managed to get himself halfway presentable before following Shiloh out of the barracks and then leading her to the little office Miss Pauling kept on the ground floor of the eastern building block. Spy was only just now lowering himself into a chair in front of the desk behind which was Miss Pauling; she offered Shiloh a small nod as she entered behind Engineer and then shook her head when Shiloh went to leave.

"Engineer, Miss MacKenna, please have a seat. Spy...what exactly happened?"

Engineer nearly missed the chair as he tried to seat himself beside Spy; Shiloh opted to stand behind them, leaning on the wall and feeling rather out of place.

Spy took a breath, then coughed into his hands. "I do not know how he got behind us...he was not in that truck. He was quite suddenly behind me, and before I could react he had something at my throat - he had a glove on, of some sort. Silver...with something set into the palm. He did not touch me, but had me by the throat regardless." He fell into a coughing fit, entire body shaking with the effort of suppressing it; Shiloh moved to put a hand on his back and one on his chest, crouching in the floor beside him to keep him upright.

"Spy, are you sure you ought to be-"

Spy cut Engineer off with a sharp gesture, sucking in a wheezing breath. "He did not touch me. I could not move, could not breathe, could barely think. I do not know what his weapon was, but it incapacitated me without contact. And he moves noiselessly."

He looked up to Miss Pauling, sucking in another breath and resting a hand over the one of Shiloh's that was his chest, then looked at Shiloh with a nod before going to stand; Shiloh rose with him, steadying him on his feet.

"Thank you, I can manage from here," he whispered, removing her hand from his chest. "Engineer, we are going to be in need of some sort of counter to this...weapon."

Engineer nodded, muffling a yawn behind a hand. "Yeah, we are...I'm damn exhausted though, let me sleep a bit before I get to thinking."

"Can you counter something you haven't seen?" Miss Pauling asked, looking between the two men.

"I can try," Engineer replied, standing.

Shiloh opened the door for Spy then stood back to let Engineer out too; she watched until the males disappeared outside, the door closing between then, then looked back at Miss Pauling.

"Well, you wanted to speak to me in private," the woman finally said.

Shiloh moved around to take Spy's empty seat. "Yeah, I did... You know these men better than me - should they have gotten the crap kicked out of them like this?"

Miss Pauling was quiet a moment, then shook her head. "These men are some of the best in the world, it's a little worrisome that they were so easily outmaneuvered."

"And how is this impacting my likelihood of surviving this mess?"

"I can't tell you - not because I'm hiding something from you, but because I don't know. I'll...see what the Administrator says, but for now just...hide. Always have someone nearby. Are you armed?"

Shiloh shook her head. "I know how to shoot a pistol but I don't own one. I have a compound crossbow but that's only for hunting small game, I doubt it'd do much good against a robot."

"I'll make sure you get a weapon, but try to stay indoors for the time being."

Shiloh slumped into the chair. "All right...well, whatever keeps me alive, I guess."

Miss Pauling's look was at least sympathetic. "I'm sorry I got your hopes up about being free by now. We'll regroup and figure something out."

"Yeah, no worries..." Shiloh muttered, standing and heading out the door. She didn't find anyone in the hallways as she made her way back outside and hurried across the open courtyard; Spy was not in the barracks but Dell was, and Shiloh hoped Spy had made it to the quarters he'd mentioned earlier - she had no idea where those might be so she wasn't able to even go check on him.

'These aren't ordinary men,' she told herself, silently making her way down the rows of beds - everyone who was in a bed was sleeping, and she didn't blame them one bit - and then falling onto the bed she'd claimed as hers. 'They've probably had way worse than this, they don't need to be checked up on.' She slid under the scratchy blanket and curled up on her side, back to the door, and tried to tune out the chorus of snoring.


"Mr. Mann."

Gray Mann jumped as the speaker crackled to life before he'd even touched the button, then angrily slammed his hand into the wall beside it. "What is it now? What's happened? Fifteen units just went offline-"

"Mr. Mann, it seems my brother's obsession has gone a bit further than I suspected," came the female's voice through the speaker, tinny and distorted like she was shouting at it from across a distance. "This is worrying, he may do something rash before he completes your machine."

"I am aware of that, why do you think I came down here the last time-"

"-listen closely, Mr. Mann. This is a delicate situation...my brother now has two subjects of obsession, one of which is vital for the machine you require. We must bring him back down to a manageable level...the perfect balance of madness and brilliance must be achieved."

"What do you want from me now?"

"Remove the woman from the equation, I shall handle the man."

His teeth audibly squeaked as he ground them together. "What man?! What has happened?"

"Time is of the essence, Mr. Mann. Here are the coordinates..."

A slot beside the locked labratory door slid open and a sheet of white paper slipped through to flutter to the floor. Mann bent to pick it up, seeing it had nothing else on it but tiny numbers printed in the top left corner.

"I suggest you move quickly, Mr. Mann. I will delay my brother the best that I can."

As before, the speaker went silent, leaving Mann to stand there and fume, and stare at the coordinates in his hands.