Penny woke with a start. Where was she? It was so dark. There weren't any real lights here. Just... torches?

The place felt oppressive and almost swelteringly warm, except for the icy cold manacles that bound her wrists and ankles to a stone slab.

"Where have you taken me?" Penny whimpered. "What are you going to do to me?"

No one responded. She realized that there wasn't anyone else immediately in the room, but she wasn't completely alone down here. There were others nearby, in adjacent rooms or corridors. She could sense them, moving about, feeling dark emotions.

"Where am I?" Penny said softly. "Where is my dad?"

She had to get out of here, somehow. She had to go and save her dad from whatever terrible fate they might have planned for him. Saving herself was just a secondary consideration in that. But she didn't know what to do. Still, she had to dosomething. Even if the effort was ultimately futile, she had to try.

Terrified, Penny clenched her eyes shut and tried to make the world go away.

Sarah swung across the gap between two buildings and slipped in through the window to Yin's apartment. The window had even been left open, although she supposed the only burglars likely to be breaking into an apartment on the thirty-fourth floor weren't liable to be stopped by a simple window anyway. Or just come in through the door.

The place was smaller and simpler than she'd expected, aside from the machines of designs she didn't recognize all about the room. The floor was all faux wood, the walls all painted an austere off-white, and the furniture, while comfortable enough looking, was hardly plush and luxurious extravagance. Hmm, were all places really so easy to break into? Maybe she should consider taking up squatting if she wound up getting evicted for being unable to pay her bills.

Yellow lights on one of the machines flared to life as she moved past it, and a synthesized voice stated, "Intruder. Intruder alert. Unauthorized presence detected. You have one minute to vacate the area, or you will be removed by force."

Okay, maybe squatting wasn't such a good idea. Or at least, she should restrict it to places where corporate engineers didn't live. Sarah scrambled out of the robot's line of sight in hopes of fooling it into thinking she'd left. The workroom opened into a hallway with a door on either side of it leading into bedrooms, and she ducked into the one on the left.

"Intruder not in line of sight," the robot's voice stated from the next room. "Scanning. Intruder detected within second bedroom."

Crap, it wasn't that easily fooled. She was going to have to disable the thing if she was to get any investigation done here. Sarah stepped out of the bedroom and slipped back over to confront the robot.

"Time's up," the robot said ominously. "Intruder still present. You were warned. Forceful removal routines authorized."

The robot lunged at her with surprising speed for something that looked so bulky and unwieldy. Sarah nimbly danced out of the way, and looked to examine it more closely for some sort of weakness. Standard humanoid design. Two arms, two legs, head. Inbuilt weapons in the arms, unless she missed her guess. Fortunately, it didn't appear to be using them at the moment.

As the robot clanked after her, Sarah leapt over behind it and climbed up onto its back, trying to get a closer look at its circuitry and see if there was a way to shut the thing down without damaging it too badly. Mr. Yin would probably be somewhat cross if she destroyed his robot, after all.

"Intruder apprehended," the robot said. "Removing from premises." It began to walk down the hallway toward the entrance to the apartment.

Sarah flicked out a small blade and tried to pry open a panel on the back of the robot. It was solidly built, however, and she could hardly find a chink in it.

"Attempted tampering detected," the robot said. "Lethal force authorized."

Ah, crap. The lights on the robot switched to red. That was never a good sign. It spun around, flinging her from its back and sending her hurling into a door frame. Sarah grunted, ignoring the pain and scrambling to her feet quickly.

"Rocket launchers armed," the robot said.

"Didn't anyone ever tell you not to use rocket launchers in the house!?" Sarah exclaimed.

She ducked back into the smaller bedroom, but she doubted that could stop a rocket launcher. How paranoidly insane was Yin if he had this sort of defense on his apartment?

"Rocket launcher disarmament command initiated," the robot said. "Please state authorization code."

"Authorization code..." Sarah replied slowly, looking around the room frantically.

This looked like a girl's room, what with the pale pink sheets on the bed. Brightly colored posters adorned the walls, along with - what's this? A birth certificate? Penelope Yin...

"Authorization code, Penny!" Sarah called out.

"Access denied."

"Authorization code, Penny-12-13!" Sarah said.

"Access denied," the robot said.

"Penny-13-12!" Sarah said.

"Access denied."

"Penny-12-13-1999?" Sarah said quickly.

"Access denied."

Crap, maybe it wasn't his daughter's name and birth date. Maybe he'd actually used sensible codes some random person with a modicum of information couldn't guess. "Penny-1999-12-13?"

"Rocket launcher disarmed," the robot said.

Sarah laughed softly. Okay, so he had used his daughter's name and birth date, he'd just used the ISO 8601 date format.

"Intruder still present," the robot said. "Removing from premises."

"Robot, shut down," Sarah said. "Authorization code Penny-1999-12-13."

"Access denied."

That wasn't a good sign. Did this thing have multiple authorization codes on it? All she'd managed to do was disable its weaponry. Well, at least she wouldn't have rockets flying at her, if nothing else.

"Robot, has anyone been in this apartment in the last week?" Sarah asked, evading its arms and darting into the master bedroom.

"Wu Yin and Penelope Yin left the premises at 08:14, March 29th, two days ago," the robot replied. "You entered the premises at 23:03, fourteen minutes ago, and you are still present. No other access has been logged."

The robot was still coming after her, but she was faster and it was only attempting to throw her out rather than actually attack her now. Maybe she could evade it long enough to get a good look around the place.

"Do you know where Wu and Penelope went?" Sarah asked.

"Accessing logs," the robot said. "Recorded voice." It then switched to a man's voice. "Come on, Penny, you'll be late for school." A girl's voice came on next. "Coming, daddy."

Sarah wondered whether the authorization code she'd given had unlocked access to these logs, or if it simply didn't have sensible safeguards. Considering the thing had rocket launchers, she didn't think she was going to make any assumptions about what Mr. Yin considered sensible or not.

The master bedroom was larger and more spacious, but it looked like it used more often as an office than for sleeping. The desk was neatly arranged with stacks of papers divided into layered trays, and a large filing cabinet sat beside it. It seemed Mr. Yin was in the habit of taking his work home with him.

"Intruder," the robot said.

"Yeah, yeah, I know, I know," Sarah said.

The robot had followed her far enough into the room to get to the door. She nimbly darted around the machine and down the hallway, into the living room. A comfortable beige couch faced a large screen, and on the far side of the room, a half-wall separated the living area from the kitchen and dining area.

Today's newspaper lay on the coffee table, blazoned with a headline about a recent corporate hostile takeover. On top of it sat a small mobile device set into a charger. On impulse, she snatched it up and ran for the door, robot still on her heels.

"Intruder has exited the premises," the robot said. "Warning: Missing property detected."

"You're making it very difficult to search for clues," Sarah muttered. "But thanks for the logs. I'll just be going now. I'll bring this back later or return it to its rightful owners, once I can find them."

Sarah headed off down the hallway, glad that there didn't appear to be anyone else out and about at this hour, and doubly glad that it seemed nobody heard her scuffle with the robot. There was a window at the far end of the corridor, looking out over the cityscape. Giving a wave back at the robot, she slid open the window and took a flying leap out.

Hopefully, it would not attempt to pursue her beyond the building. Geez, if it weren't for the robot, she wouldn't have needed to remove the phone from the apartment at all. All she'd wanted to do was look for evidence, and now she was a thief.

Once back in her own apartment, she pulled the phone out from her belt pouch, grabbing a towel to dry herself off with. It was still raining and she wasn't sure if it would be waterproof, and didn't care to take the chance of it.

Looking through the phone's address book, she came upon a number for Penelope Yin. The girl might be missing too, since she certainly wasn't in her bed tonight, assuming she wasn't just out visiting a friend or something. Just to see, she called the number, only to discover that it was a text-only address. Alright, she'd just have to send a text message, then.

Sarah went over to her desk and hooked Yin's phone up to her computer. She didn't want to try to type on a phone if she could at all help it.

"Penny, where are you?" she typed.

She hoped that, wherever she was, the girl was alright. It would be terrible to rescue the father only to discover that something awful had happened to his daughter in the meantime.

A message popped up on the screen momentarily. "Dad? What happened? Are you alright?"

"I'm not your father," Sarah replied. "I'm a hero trying to find the two of you and rescue you. What's your status?"

Another message came after a few more seconds, "A hero? Oh, good. I'm okay, more or less. It's dark, and I'm chained up. Let me send you my GPS coordinates."

"How were you captured, and by whom? Tell me what you remember."

Penny texted back, "Dad came to pick me up after school. He came in to talk to the teacher, but on the way back to the car, we got attacked."

"Did you get a look at your assailant?"

"There were three of them, boys, older than me. Like, late teens, early twenties, about? They were dressed like thugs. Black and red, with tattoos. One had a leather vest. And their shirts had like, evil symbols on them."

"Hellions," Sarah replied, scowling as she typed the word. "Alright, Penny. Hold tight. I'm coming for you."

"Don't leave me," Penny texted. "Keep talking, please."

"I can't very well type on a phone while looking for you and fighting Hellions," Sarah typed. "For that matter, they left you your phone when they captured you? And you're using it while chained up?"

"It's an implant, silly," Penny replied. "They couldn't very well remove it from my brain."

"Ah. That would explain why the contact was text-only. Alright, I'll try to keep you appraised of the situation, but don't panic if you don't hear from me for a bit, okay? I'll be there soon."

"Alright..."

Sarah tucked the phone away again and did a quick check of city maps on her computer, matching the coordinates Penny had given her to a building just east of Keyes Park.