A cold, metal hand gripped Crypto by the throat. His back was pinned against a concrete wall- to his left, an automated turret mounted to the ceiling locked onto his center mass. There was nowhere that he could escape to.

"Cease and desist all operations!"

The hacker glared defiantly at the robot patrol officer in front of him.

"End simulation."

The robot flickered out of existence, followed by the turret, then the oppressive concrete walls around him. He pulled off the visor that rendered the virtual world and exhaled forcefully. This was the farthest he'd gotten so far, and he'd made it through less than half of the prison- the way this was going, Revenant was right. He'd be killed long before he found Mila in that building.

He needed to move faster, he thought- be away from that corner before the patrolling robot rounded it. That was assuming the robots followed the same routes that the simulation defaulted them to. There was still so much information he didn't know- too much that he had to extrapolate from the limited data he had available. If the algorithms - his series of educated guesses - were wrong, his failure might be determined before the mission even started.

Crypto tugged at the fabric of the haptic feedback suit around his neck. The training simulator that the anarchist faction used was quite advanced- not surprising, given the number of tech-savvy individuals with too much pent-up energy who worked out of this building. After the amount of combat, pain, and death that the hacker had been a part of these past couple days, even the most detailed simulation didn't feel real anymore. The quality of those visual graphics and auditory feedback were so precise as to be indistinguishable from reality to human senses, but the programming couldn't capture the finer details- the tension in the atmosphere at the beginning of a potentially deadly operation; the way that the air felt… charged, as if by a bolt of lightning. It captured the viscosity of spilled blood with striking accuracy, but failed to convey its warmth as it flowed from a wounded body, or the way its texture changed from slippery to sticky. The computer couldn't begin to touch the cold silence that came after a fight had been won.

Of course, a virtual reality which relied on visuals, sounds, and haptic feedback also couldn't accurately convey the smell of gunpowder or exposed organs- both of which were among the things that stood out strongest among Crypto's memories of the battlefield. All of those things were in the moment; a computer couldn't replicate them.

"This virtual reality system is amazing," Wattson gasped excitedly. To a person looking at her, the visor that covered her face was transparent, which allowed the hacker to see her expression of enthrallment. She wasn't focused on the simulated mission, however- instead, she was walking around the computer-generated building, running her fingers over the brick walls and steel bars. She looked disappointed when the program shut down and returned her to the dusty, gray room in which they were preparing for the operation. A computer terminal to one side allowed users to enter the data that they wanted the simulator to build off of. Additional visors and haptic feedback suits were piled in one corner.

"It is so much more detailed than the one that goes with our video game consoles at the Legends' complex- and to think that it was put together from second-hand parts! What these people have accomplished here is- it really is something!"

She pulled off her visor and turned it over in her hands, examining the wiring with awe. Crypto smiled at her for a moment. In the middle of this long, hard fight for survival against the Syndicate, Wattson's excitement over small things reminded him of better days. It brought much more peaceful memories to the foreground of his mind- and it also made him wistfully aware that he could never go back to that time and place. He might succeed in his mission to free Mila from the Syndicate, escape from the Outlands, maybe even overthrow the corporate network- although judging by how these simulated training exercises were going, none of that seemed likely… He'd still never be able to get back the person he was before all of this had happened.

The innocent and ignorant Tae-joon Park was gone. Hyeon Kim, Hyojong Ryu, Crypto- false identities that he'd built to hide from the Syndicate, but they were as much a part of him now as that young programmer with a bright future to look forward to. Would anything ever be exciting to him again, he wondered- or would anything unexpected feel like a threat and set him on edge for the rest of his life?

"Crypto, are you okay? What are you staring at?"

The hacker inhaled sharply- his head snapped toward the sound of Wattson's voice. She shuffled a half-step backward in surprise.

"We'll… find her, Crypto," she said in a wavering tone as she reached for his hand. The engineer tried her best to sound confident, reassuring- but she had never been good at keeping her feelings out of sight. She knew that she was making a statement of something uncertain, and she couldn't hide it. Her struggle with the façades used for social interaction didn't matter much, as Crypto remained lost in his own thoughts, only vaguely aware that she was speaking.

Wattson gave his hand a gentle squeeze before letting go and skipping over to the computer console. She looked through the data that had been used to create the simulation. They'd put some of it together just recently- the floor plan of the building and the layout of its surrounding area… Other information had been collected by the faction over a period of years, such as the routes that robot officers were most likely to take on their patrols. The people who'd worked on this program were thorough, and dedicated; both traits that she admired… Dedicated to the downfall of the Syndicate, which she'd been loyal to for as long as she could remember.

She owed them. The executives of the organization had believed her - and believed in her - at a time when no one else in her life did. The way that society was set up seemed to be an immutable obstacle, designed to prevent her from navigating its structure… interaction with other people demanded so much, so many rules and nuances that nobody was willing to list for her. How could she be expected to follow rules without knowing what they were?

That was how the world was built around her, though, and her best efforts were never enough. She couldn't present herself adequately, and was often regarded as worthless… but not to the Syndicate. Their authorities had never minded that she despised staring at another person's eyeballs while she spoke to them, that she skipped and waved her hands, came across as inappropriately excited, or couldn't find the words to explain her thoughts without using obscure technical jargon. All that mattered to them was how well she did her job as an engineer- and Wattson's work had always been above and beyond their expectations.

She worked hard for them, and in turn they protected her from the hostility of society- the noise, the chaos, and judgment. What she was doing here - helping this group of criminals destroy their property - gave her an uncomfortable sense of tightness in her chest. It didn't feel right to betray the Syndicate after all they'd done for her.

Nor would it feel right, though, to keep looking the other way while they modified her inventions to maim and kill. She couldn't stand idly by, knowing what they'd done to Crypto- and he wasn't the only one that they'd wronged so thoroughly… Her sense of loyalty and fierce desire for fairness conflicted, and it hurt. She couldn't think of any words that would explain what she was feeling to Crypto, either- not in any useful way, not with an adequate level of detail. Words were so messy and vague and interpretive. That made her sad… She would have liked to know his perspective on her situation, from the outside looking in.

Well- it was probably for the best, anyway, she decided. Crypto had enough of his own problems to worry about without the engineer tossing hers onto the pile. She put it out of her mind and focused on the simulation data. Issues with human beings, society, and communication were often unsolvable… Machines and computers, on the other hand, were orderly. Problems with them occurred for a clear reason, which could be rectified.

Her attention quickly focused on the pathing and timing used by the robots, as well as the automated turrets. Though no one in the faction had ever tried to break into this "distribution center," it appeared that they had run operations at other buildings with similar security features- the behavior of those entities was programmed into the simulation based on such past encounters.

Wattson selected a setting from the menu and put her visor back on. The security robot rendered in and stood idle in front of her. She walked around it, humming to herself as she studied every aspect of its design. Its head followed her movement, but it didn't attack- she'd turned the dynamic simulation off so that she could examine the machine they were up against. A power surge or an electromagnetic pulse wouldn't take it out of commission, not unless its shielding was compromised first…

That thought led her to an idea that might actually prove useful. The arc stars in the arena- they had microscopic spikes that pierced the surface of whatever they connected to and held them in place. Those spikes negated most shielding from electromagnetic interference, and allowed a surge of electricity to be delivered to the target from a capacitor in the arc star. It was an extremely low amperage, not enough to risk electrocution, and it was a concentrated burst that wouldn't travel through the entire circuitry of a machine and cause widespread damage.

She could come up with a similar device to incapacitate the robot guards at the prison. It could deliver a lower voltage over a longer period of time to keep the robot stunned- or a greater amount of overall power to incapacitate them permanently.

Behind the virtual reality visor, Wattson winced. She didn't like the idea of doing lasting damage to a machine, even if they weren't sentient. At best it was wasteful; at worst- the act could be harmful to something conscious in a way that the human mind wasn't equipped to comprehend or understand. Sentience wasn't required for the most basic awareness of self relative to one's environment… The development of syncording technology had brought about that discovery.

Despite that knowledge - which was becoming more and more commonplace, as were sentient machines - people remained destructive and careless. They threw away things that still worked perfectly, drawn to the allure of a shiny new replacement. They didn't bother to maintain what they owned. They just… couldn't see what she saw. The average person was hardwired to maintain human relationships, not technology. She had never understood that.

It was one of the things that drew her to Crypto. He was always absorbed in his own projects, and didn't judge her unkindly for doing the same. They could sit in the same room, each working on something different, and enjoy each others' presence- there was no demand for undivided attention, or for the social behaviors that took so much effort for Wattson to display.

She lifted her visor and glanced over at the hacker. He was cross-legged on the floor in a corner, hunched over his laptop- looking for more information on the Syndicate security systems, she figured. The corners of her mouth turned up into a smile. She loved his focus and determination- they were among the positive traits that she saw in herself as well.

Her attention returned to the simulation. She opened a computer-aided design menu, which she could use to model the device she wanted to test inside the virtual reality. The engineer figured that she'd start with a simple, relatively harmless piece of technology, similar to the arc star. It would only be designed to stun the robot guards, not take them offline permanently. If this device failed, however- she might be forced to resort to a more drastic one…

Wattson was too engrossed in her work to notice when the double doors to the simulation room opened forcefully and Revenant stormed in. She became aware of his presence only when he pushed past her, on his way toward the corner where Crypto sat with his laptop.

"Get up, skinbag," growled the assassin. He knocked the hacker's laptop aside- not forcefully enough to break it, despite the careless demeanor that caused Crypto to glare at him, posture abruptly stiffened.

"What the hell," snapped the hacker as he got to his feet. His legs had fallen asleep; his movement was somewhat awkward. Revenant held the commlink device out in front of Crypto's face and activated the holographic display- the prisoner transfer order opened. Crypto's eyes widened at the sight of his missing sister's name.

"What is this?"

He desperately hoped that it wasn't a list of captives who'd been executed- or were about to be.

"They're moving these prisoners to another facility," Revenant hissed. The hacker exhaled- a tension left his shoulders that he hadn't realized was there. It couldn't be counted as good news, but it meant that Mila was still alive.

"Why?"

"Don't have that information," the assassin replied. "Maybe she gave them whatever they were after- or they figured out how to get it some other way."

"That doesn't-" Crypto frowned, shaking his head slightly in confusion. They were after him, and as far as anyone outside of this underground facility full of anarchists knew, he'd been missing since the day they'd tried to kill him.

"It doesn't matter why," Revenant growled impatiently. "What matters is that now, we have the opportunity to hit them while they're in transit, away from their building with all of its fortifications- that's a tactical advantage for us."

"All right," said the hacker, with a short nod of agreement. His eyes darted briefly toward Wattson, who was humming and rocking back and forth as she designed the circuitry of her device within the digital simulation. In an instant, the full focus of his attention was back on Revenant.

"How would you run this?"

He wasn't sure that he'd be able to trust the assassin's answer- in fact, he found it probable that he wouldn't like or agree with whatever Revenant said next. Even if Revenant could put aside his own agenda for long enough to help Crypto with his goal - which was already a huge if - the simulacrum had a long-standing pattern of relying on reckless, borderline suicidal strategies. He'd never needed to learn any other way, Crypto figured, seeing how he'd been designed to be expendable, replaceable…

Still, the hacker figured that it couldn't hurt to ask for his feedback. Revenant knew how the Syndicate functioned, probably better than anyone outside of their organization- and at least for the time being, they were on the same side.