Tanya flexed her fingers once, twice, and let the pen roll from her palm into Assistant's waiting grip.

"Alright," she muttered. She blinked, suddenly aware of how heavy her eyes were and the stiffness in her back. "No more messin' about for now. My ribs are gonna mutiny if I even look at that thing again."

She stood, tucked the notes into a plastic folder she'd scavenged from a pile of random papers in the hairdresser's, and nudged Assistant toward the door with her knee. It stretched like a cat. Tanya used the motion of placing down the folder to stretch her back, that turning side-to-side twist she'd seen old men do before running.

Assistant paused to look at her and grabbed some paper, scribbling: Ar you allright.

"Huh, real close one. You're gettin' the hang of those gh's aren't ya."

She didn't need to rewrite this time, just crossed out an 'l' and added an 'e.'

Tanya passed the pen back. "Yeah, yeah. Just sore. I've had worse from fallin' off my bike."

The truth was more complicated. She could feel the strain in her bones like echoes of a bell still ringing. Three designs down, one half-made doppelganger to go, and it still felt like she was testing blind. She needed to talk to someone who got it. Or if not got it, could at least look at the same mess and say, 'Here's where it bends, here's where it breaks.'

It was lucky she'd basically arranged what she needed already.

"Come on then," she said, pulling her jacket tight across her chest. "Let's go see what your new best friend's been up to."

Assistant paused, then dashed a note as it trotted after her: she liekes me now.

Tanya raised a brow. "Does she, yeah?"

She said she cood see why you'd wonted an xtra hand.

"High praise."

The shop door clicked behind them.

"So, where's she at then?" Tanya asked, looking left and right in the street.

Assistant floated, turning back to check Tanya was following. They passed Mrs Eceer's flat and the ruined bakery below, then some run-down shops. One of them must have been the launderette. She vaguely knew the lady there and had seen a visiting family sign in both Korean and English in the window for the last couple of weeks before the apocalypse hit. She could barely tell what a couple of them were beside it, with the buildings torn down so completely by the vines of the Boss that she had to rely on her memory to identify them. One of them must have been the chippy and the other the block of makeshift offices with constantly rotating tech startups. It wasn't clear where one ended and the other began; the scrap metal of some sort of cooker or fryer had slammed into an office chair so hard they were more one item than two.

I dunno about this…

Right as Tanya was about to ask if this was safe to be this far out, Tanya saw the shimmer.

Tanya followed it to gleeful finger wiggling from Assistant.

It wasn't obvious at first—just a flicker of broken glass or the edge of a street sign where the paint had worn down. But then she started looking, and once she did, you couldn't stop.

Shimmering lines ran like wires through the gutters, traced with burn marks where the wards had caught something wrong. The wrecked chippy-office mix had new metal fixtures bolted into the front, etched in spirals that bent the light wrong if you stared too long. Everything looked the same until it didn't.

Cat got your tung? Assistant wrote, walking beside her. Its handwriting was a scrawl—spiky, too fast, like every word was racing the last—but the voice was clear through the slate it carried. Tanya could tell when that fucker was smug.

"Don't be cheeky," Tanya muttered, brushing at the stain anyway. Her head whipped towards it. "Wait, where did you even learn that?"

Assistant mimed zipping something shut.

Tanya kept walking, following the lines around the back of the broken building. "Don't tell me then. Doesn't take a genius to know it was Mrs Eceer."

They crossed over by the uniform back alley fences, just before turning towards the next street over. Assistant soared ahead, floating directly upwards like it had somewhere to be. It did. Tanya spotted the ladder behind it.

Huh, goin' up then are we?

It was mental to imagine a 70-something-year-old woman climbing that rickety thing, but she supposed Mrs Eceer probably had more Dexterity and Strength than an average 20-year-old had before the apocalypse.

Tanya smiled to herself, adjusted her jacket against the chill, and followed at a slower pace.

Mrs Eceer was already on the rooftop, coat flaring in the wind, hair tied back into something sleek and tight and unmoved by the weather in her familiar satin scarf. She didn't look up.

"You're later than I expected," she said.

"Didn't know I had a call time."

"You always have an expected call time. You're just never told it."

Tanya snorted and leaned her hip against the nearest vent. "Nice to see you too."

Tanya looked out across the street. From here, she could see some of the next streets over. In her mind's eye, they were still like before. She supposed without a new image, it was easy to forget this expanded beyond just her small world. The reality and her memory clashed before her eyes.

What she could see was a jumble of shattered glass and crumbling brick, graffiti peeling from boarded-up shops like old scabs. Burnt-out cars leaned crookedly in the gutters, their metal bones rusting under a sky thick with smoke. She couldn't quite see the tarmac, but the overturned bins and smoke-coated shop entryways hung heavy. There had been at least some rioting whilst she was passed out that day with Adder.

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Assistant was already over by some ward junction-looking thing at the far edge, pointing excitedly at the way the lines wound together with shapes. It really did look like a circuit from up here. It pointed at one—then another. Then it held its note up. Thohse are miyn. She didnt even fix them.

Mrs Eceer finally turned. "They worked. No need."

She said it like she hadn't made the choice three times before coming to it. Tanya didn't call it out—didn't have to. The air said it for her.

"Right," Tanya said, rubbing her hands together. "Let's see what you've built while I've been busy nearly gettin' myself launched into a wall."

She stepped closer to the edge.

"Let me just…" Mrs Eceer began. She held out her hands before the maze of shapes up here, and they all lit up.

It looked like someone had carved a circuit board out of a London block. Wires, wards, anchors. Not neat. Not symmetrical. But purposeful. The kind of thing that didn't need to explain itself to work.

Tanya whistled low. "That's… more than I expected."

"Isn't it," Mrs Eceer said.

From here, she could see where the field began. The faint shimmer that caught on the corner of metal, the slight resistance in the air when she leaned too close to one of the junctions. Every building along the street had some part of it rigged into the system. A back gate reinforced with shimmering runes. Broken antenna dishes were repurposed to catch noise, or maybe movement.

It reminded her of invisible ink—like Mrs Eceer was shining UV light onto all of these notes and patterns, far more expansive and complex for her to understand.

"You must be such a fuckin' good trapper now," she joked, but she couldn't hide the awe in her voice. "It's beautiful."

"Level 14," Mrs Eceer said. "Let my barrier fall to the wayside, but I believe it was worth it."

She couldn't look away from the sight. The longer she stared, the more she saw. Some of these rune-like shapes repeated she noticed, a strange angular spiral was normally on the edge of buildings, but the triangle with a thing sticking out seemed more random.

"Feels like we could hold out here a while," Tanya murmured.

"You could," Eceer said. "If you don't keep throwing yourself into cannons."

Assistant tapped the page again. She said "good work" earlier—followed immediately by she said it quiyet.

Tanya grinned. "She say it with a grimace?"

"Don't fish for compliments," Eceer warned.

"Weren't for me," Tanya said, watching Assistant puff up regardless. "Still. Bit of a shift, innit? You two getting along like a house on fire."

Mrs Eceer sniffed. "It's a hard worker. I respect that."

Assistant, rather than respond, crumpling its paper against its palm like it might combust from satisfaction.

Tanya leaned back on her heels, letting the wind pull at her jacket. The tension in her shoulder still flared from time to time—ghost of the recoil—but she ignored it.

"Alright," she said finally. "You gonna explain to me how all this works, or do I have to poke it and hope it doesn't bite?"

Mrs Eceer raised a brow. "Try it and you'll learn exactly how many teeth it has."

Assistant tapped its fingers against its palm in rapid succession. Tanya could tell just from the warm sensation in her chest, it was Assistant's form of a laugh. It wrote something and immediately moved it out of Mrs Eceer's eye line.

Tanya caught part of it: She missed you.

Tanya didn't say anything. Just looked out again at the quiet line where safe ended and the unknown began.

"So?" Mrs Eceer asked.

"Huh?" Tanya replied, snapped out of her daze, staring downwards.

"We arranged this chat for a discussion on your tattoos. I believe a trade is in order. Tell me everything, and in return, I'll show you how this works without you needing to trigger it." The smile on her face was somewhat sadistic.

Tanya cackled. "Alright, gotcha." She began with the broach on her forearm, summoning the small moon into her hand and feeling a wave of calm wash over her that was weak enough she wondered if it was a placebo.

"4 Vitality," Tanya said.

Mrs Eceer's eyebrows shot up to her forehead, and she took it from Tanya's hands, holding it up to the light.

"It's slightly off, isn't it?" Mrs Eceer commented.

"Whatcha mean?" Tanya asked, looking at it over her shoulder.

"The light doesn't reflect right. It's supposed to be metal, yes?"

Tanya took it back and studied it closely. "Huh, yeah. I think I see what you mean."

Assistant clambered onto Tanya's shoulder to see closer.

"It works, I think anyway. Real subtle though."

Mrs Eceer nodded briskly, perching on the chimney. "A success."

Tanya grinned despite herself. "Yeah, it is isn't it?" She placed it back against her arm and the way it recombined reminded her of drips into water. "Now there's this stealth cape. I just about wrapped this bad boy up before sleeping last night, but didn't have much time to test it. Plus, I didn't have anyone to test it on."

This one was down her right side, waves of fabric across her ribs and hip, the other side to Phantom Brand and her new cannon. She focused on it, and the slinky fabric filled her hand, so light she wondered if it was even there.

"This one was a real bitch to finish," Tanya started. "Literally threw every error in the book at me. The categories seem similar each time, naturally, I'm still not sure why that is. I had to work out that the solution was the trigger being the clasp, and the edge had to be the fabric itself; otherwise, the whole thing got real pissy."

"Fascinating," Mrs Eceer replied, studying the cloak. "It sounds similar to my traps. My current theory of this System is that it grounds everything in the world it is in. That explains why the monsters have such different Abilities to us, and also why logic concepts play such a large role in our work."

"Oh man, that makes so much sense," Tanya said, raking her hands through her hair. She thought through all of her experience for a flaw in the theory, but couldn't find one.

Mrs Eceer snorted. "System's a lawyer. It interprets what you say. Not what you mean."

Tanya let out a dry noise and shook her head. "That's generous. Feels more like a bastard compiler. Don't give a damn if it breaks you long as the logic holds."

She flipped the page.

The cannon diagram sprawled across it. It was more rushed and emotive than the other designs, more about an idea than specific logistics.

"Anyway. I got what I wanted—power. Lack of precision ain't a problem if I don't mind losin' a shoulder every time."

"Sounds sustainable."

Tanya grinned. "I'm thinkin'... Next big question is how well these things grow when they start with so little. Does it permanently hinder them or do they catch up with work?"

Mrs Eceer leaned forward slightly, hands loose between her knees.

"Nature or nurture," she said.

Tanya clicked her fingers. "Exactly."

She turned to the final set of pages, flipping over and over.

"Left this one. Doppelgänger. Didn't feel... right yet. Recreating a person, even if it's supposed to be kinda drone-like, feels risky."

Assistant had gone quiet. It was poised beside them, all attention on their presentation.

Mrs Eceer turned to Assistant, and Tanya's eyes followed.

"I believe you got lucky with Assistant," Mrs Eceer said.

Assistant's attention darted between them, shifting under so many firm gazes.

"Sentience is a dangerous thing if what holds it wants something different to you."

Tanya stared down at Assistant's alien form. Her awareness moved outwards as she became acutely aware of all of it; this creation of hers with thoughts and language, magical circuits so complex that they could somehow protect this entire little neighbourhood, the Interface she knew was just out of her vision.

"I found out somethin' weird actually, whilst I was dead." The word dead got lodged in her throat, and she had to push it out.

"Hm?" came Mrs Eceer's standard reply.

"It was one of us once, sort of. It had a loved one that died an' ended up having to complete this challenge thing to get its Class. The System was its Class."

Mrs Eceer leapt to her feet and began pacing. "Oh my—oh my—oh my…" She turned to Tanya with a determined gaze. "Tell me everything."

It took Mrs Eceer a while to calm down to sitting again after the summary, but she didn't relax again; she perched, leaning forward, eyes bright.

"What a gutsy ask," Mrs Eceer eventually said. "Any power it gave her must have been less than its own unless it could fully break logic. Even if it could, why would it? It's safer for any being to have underlings." She scratched her chin. "Asking to be given a new system—to replace the status quo they created. It's like—like—trying to take it down with a stick."

Tanya let those words sink in for a while.

"You ever think we're just pokin' gods with sticks?"

"Hmph," Mrs Eceer said. "I know we are."

There was another pause.

"Do you think ours mind? Ya know, that we are pokin' it with sticks?" Tanya asked.

Mrs Eceer thought for a moment. "I wouldn't claim to know it personally, but if I had to guess, I'd suspect challenging the status quo is exactly what it's hoping for."

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