“Hmm...” Meow Mx. mused. Their pupils, thin slits in the ample lighting of the Society headquarters breakroom, fixing on the dwindling deck at the centre of the table, back to the cards in their hand, back to the deck, over to the sizeable stack of chips at their side and back to their hand again. “Hmm...” they repeated.
“Slow rolling is bad etiquette, you know?” said Silver Siren, leaning back in her chair.
“Hmmmmmmraise,” Meow Mx. said eventually, ignoring their friend and keeping their poker face. An easy feat for them, considering most regular humans had trouble pinpointing their expressions past their feline features. They picked up a chip between thumb and foreclaw and flicked a chip into the air, landing it neatly on the small stack that represented their bet.
“I-I’m sorry... slow rolling?” asked Emcee.
“Ah, right,“ Silver peeked over her cards at the mousey lab tech in the white coat to her side. “It’s when you pretend to take your time choosing when-“
“When the outcome’s fixed and you’ve already decided, I know,” said Emcee. She smiled sheepishly and added “I eh... I looked up the fundamentals before we started.“
“Then why did you ask?” Astra, owner of the smallest stack of chips, failed to hide the boredom and irritation that had been creeping into her voice all game. Since finishing her field assignment with Silver, she’d left her corset and hat behind and had returned to her normal work clothes, a lilac shirt and black cardigan.
“Well... there aren’t many cards left, the suits are roughly equal and all of the face cards are out, there aren’t many easy winning hands for them to have.”
“Hang on, you’ve been card counting?” said Silver, bringing her chair back down to all four of its legs and straightening her posture. “I thought you said you didn’t play poker.”
“I don’t!” she said, holding her arms up defensively, “I’m just... you know. Pretty good at memorising these things, I guess.”
“You should see her play BQG, she is positively monstrous.” Astra smiled thinly.
Silver laid her cards face-down on the table. “Anyway, I fold. I heard that little purr in your fake hums, you’ve got a winning paw.”
Meow Mx. grinned smugly. “Hmmmmaybe I do, maybe I don’t,” they said. Then, turning to Emcee, they added “So what’s this BQG you’re so good at?”
Emcee looked away. “It’s eh... it’s Battle Queen Galaxian?” she half-muttered. “It’s... an anime thing, I suppose. It’s silly. Don’t worry about it. I’m not even that good.”
“Not that good,” Astra scoffed. “You’ve received tournament invitations. Sponsorship mails!”
“Oh hey, I think I have a hacker friend who used to play that!” said Meow Mx., “It’s one of those games where all the cards look like pinup girls, right?”
“Call!” Emcee slammed another chip down on the stack in front of her so quickly that the table wobbled. “There’s no way you have anything good in there, Meow Mx.” She turned to her left. “What about you, Astra?”
Astra put down a card in front of her. “Five... instability, flux. I believe clubs are... wands? So that would point to conflict. One cannot read French-suited cards as upright or reversed...”
Emcee sighed. “Astra, if you’re going to be a sore loser and play your own private minigame, at least do it without revealing the cards. You’re giving me an unfair advantage.”
“Now now, no need to be so harsh” said Silver, “it is kind of unsporting, though, Astra.”
“Right. Sorry.“ Astra blushed and took her card back. “I shall... call, I suppose?”
“Going by the rules, you’re disqualified,” said Emcee.
“Let the girl play, she’s had a rough evening going up against Little Mx. Goodluck and...” Silver gave Emcee a sideways smile, “a wunderkind, apparently.”
“Right,” said Meow Mx., putting their cards on the table. “Let’s see what we have. You were right about those limited options, by the way, Emcee.” They grinned, revealing a hand of all diamonds. “Unfortunately, they did leave room for a flush.”
Emcee clicked her tongue and revealed her hand. “Two of the last tens. Statistically, that should have netted me the round.”
“You should know better than to rely on statistic shoulds when Meow Mx. is at the table,” said Astra. “Ten of hearts, I believe that translates to cups. Completion, fulfilment and renewal in one’s heart and connections.”
“That sounds positive,” said Silver.
Astra shrugged. “It could be reversed, we have no way of knowing.”
“High card for Astra, then. That means I win,” Meow Mx. started gathering up chips when Emcee narrowed her eyes at Astra.
“Hey... have you been cheating? That card’s not in the deck.” She pointed at the hand of cards Astra had laid out on the table.
“hm?” Astra looked down. “That’s unusual. I never brought my tarot deck.”
“You didn’t?” asked Silver, “Then how did that get there?”
Astra smiled a thin, faintly confused smile. “The tower...” she chuckled, “how ominous. Did one of you put that there?”
“Why would I?” said Silver.
“I don’t know anything about fortune telling other than it’s fake,” said Emcee.
“I can’t say I brought any of your tarot cards,” said Meow Mx.
“Wait... could that mean...?” Astra looked down at the tower card, then at Meow Mx., then back at the card. Her smile faded and her eyes widened. “Meow Mx., cards behave strangely around you, don’t they?”
“I’d say they favour me, if that’s what you mean...” Meow Mx. smirked, “why?”
Emcee raised a finger to object to this notion, but before she could get a word out, Astra got up from her chair and grabbed her satchel from its hanging position on the coat rack. “We should run. Meredith, can you check the security cameras?”
Emcee gave her a confused frown. “What? Why?”
Astra grabbed a heavy-looking tome she’d left on the break room’s counter and shoved it into her satchel. “I believe my impossible draw may have been Meow Mx.’s fortune power giving us advance warning of something.”
Emcee sighed. “Meow Mx. doesn’t have a-“

“I know you don’t believe in it, but... please, Meredith.” Astra extended a hand and a careful, tentative smile. “Indulge me?”
“...fine,” Emcee took her hand and stood up, grabbing her tablet. “But if you’re wrong, you’re paying for karaoke, next date night.”
“Alright,” Meow Mx. nimbly pounced off of the couch they were single-handedly occupying and over to the coat rack, taking a dark, single-breasted men’s blazer that may or may not have been theirs and putting it on over their pale yellow camisole. “Off to the security control room, then.”
The security control room was an unassuming chamber behind a grey door in a dead-end corridor on the second floor, tucked away between a meeting room and a set of cubicles for the Society’s bureaucrats. Meow Mx. arrived there first, carried by their light, effortlessly quick tread. Not too long after came Silver, her boots thunking with the steady rhythm of her well-honed sprint. Astra and Emcee both arrived a short while after her, panting, Emcee leaning on one hand against the wall to catch her breath and Astra leaning her hands on her thighs.
“You gals needs to take up some cardio,” Silver chuckled, “especially you, Astra, what if we need you in the field again?”
Astra raised a finger and tried to say something, but it got lost in her breath. Silver raised her eyebrows and grinned. “Case in point.”
Meow Mx. punched a code into the simple electronic lock and walked inside, the rest of the group followed them. “Hey guys, don’t mind me, we’re just checking for some-“ they started, then trailed off. “Ah, they’re out for lunch. Typical.”
Old CRT monitors lined the walls of the little rectangular grey room, showing a smattering of images from cameras placed in key locations around the Society’s headquarters. Two slightly more modern early-model HD flatscreen monitors sat at the pair of desks that the security guards were stationed at. One of them displayed a game of solitaire in its early stages, the other had a small yellow sticky note on it that declared their lunch break.
Meow Mx. walked over to a minifridge in the corner and took out a can of energy drink. “Oh hey, they have Cherry Charge. Emcee, you want any?” They casually tossed a pink can over as they joined Silver in examining the camera feeds.
“So,” said Silver, “what are we looking for, Astra?” Astra recognised the tone. Silver was indulging her with patience. It wouldn’t be limitless.
“I am not entirely certain,” she admitted, “The tower symbolises collapse and ruin, so... a crisis, I suppose?” She could practically see the effort Emcee was making not to roll her eyes.
“That’s not a lot to work with...” Meow Mx. said, letting themselves fall into one of the office chairs and minimising the game of solitaire on the station’s monitor. “let’s see... well, nothing’s on fire. There’s some folks taking an early lunch break...” they muttered, glancing over the black-and-white images in turn, “there’s a van outside... Lacey’s Pastries? Huh, must be someone’s birthday. One of the white-collar gals is dozing off, but that’s hardly a crisis.”
“Wait, is that...” Emcee said, leaning in to look at one of the monitors, “that’s Susan!”
“Who?” asked Meow Mx.
“Wait, Susan from R&D?” Astra leaned in next to Emcee, following her gaze. “that sounds... off.”
Silver and Meow Mx. exchanged confused looks.
“Of course it does, she’s the most locked in person at the department,” Emcee said. “Hang on, let me...” she fished a phone out of her lab coat’s pocket, swiftly tapped past a lock screen depicting a buxom anime sorceress and scrolled through her contacts.
“Is it ringing?” Astra asked, anxious.
“It is on my end,“ said Emcee, phone to her ear, eyes still fixed on the security monitor “but I can’t tell if anything’s happening.”
It rang again, again, again, until one of Susan’s colleagues, a woman with freckles and a pencil skirt, walked into view of the video feed and said something. There was no audio.
Emcee clicked her tongue. “It’s gone to voice mail.”
“Looks like her friend found her, though,” said Meow Mx., who had raised their feet up onto the desk and was leaning back in the chair.
Susan’s colleague said something else, then leaned in and shook her shoulder. Susan remained slumped in her seat, staring at her workstation’s desktop. The colleague, noticing this, turned around to have a look and... ceased to do anything. Her posture stooped, and now there were two people staring. Looking at the other monitors, there were now several cubicles whose occupants were staring slackjawed at their screens. “Crap,” Emcee whispered, “crap crap crap we’ve got a digital cognitohazard attack. Everyone put your phones on airplane mode, do not use the Society’s wifi!”
“W-what?!” Astra stammered, looking around her, “What does that mean? Is someone using the screens to attack us?”
“It’s more complicated than that, but...” Emcee grasped for words, then sighed and groaned “yes, basically.”
“B-but we are surrounded by monitors!” Astra started breathing heavily.
“Relax, Astra,” said Meow Mx.,“ our security uses a closed-loop intranet. Low-tech but reliable. Tested it myself.”
Emcee sat down at the station not occupied by Meow Mx. and turned on the pc. “It’s not letting me zoom in, but I can at least bring up a full-screen feed here... I’m going to see what we’re dealing with so we can find a solution.”
The wall of screens now showed a smattering of Society employees stuck in slack-shouldered poses, staring at phones or workstations. “People are getting affected all over the building, we don’t have time to wait!” Silver said firmly, turning to the door behind them. “I’m getting to the breaker and cutting the power. Now.”
“Stop!” Meow Mx. held up a finger, spinning their chair around to face Silver, who turned her head just enough level a single eyeful of impatient glare at them. “This had better be good.”
“It could be a diversion,” Meow Mx. said. “It’s a corporate espionage gambit. Glue the screens of a facility in the hopes that someone gets desperate and turns off the power, then use that window to sneak something in or out of the building.”
Silver hesitated, but didn’t move.
“Look. Silver. We need to assess our options first. I may not know too much about cogni-whatevers, but-“
“I do,” said Emcee. “It can’t be anything too sophisticated. It’s running on phones and old office equipment, so it can’t have any effects that’d require anything high-end or specialised. At first I thought it could be a Snake Eyes or a Deer In The Headlights attack. The effects are similar, but...” Silver, Meow Mx. and Astra all gave each other looks to see if the others were keeping up.
“...I can look at it indirectly through the security feed without suffering any ill effects, which rules out Dizzy Chain malware... though I can’t tell if it’s the angle, the resolution, the lack of colour or sound... either way, it doesn’t fit into any pattern I’m familiar with, I think it might be some kind of proprietary software...” Emcee was hunched over, staring intently at the screen, chewing her right thumbnail in-between muttering observations to herself.
“Say...” Astra said, pointing at one of the other feeds on Meow Mx’s station, “is that... ordinary behaviour, for pastry deliverers?”
One of the images on the station’s split screen showed an image of the footpath outside of Society HQ, where a figure in a thick black coat, facemask and sunglasses was standing with perfectly straight posture and staring at the building. Behind them, the delivery van with the words Lacey’s Pastries emblazoned on it in a prim-looking cursive font had opened up in the back and several more figures in identical getups were getting out and lining up next to the first, one by one.
“Well…” said Meow Mx., “that’s ominous.”
“That certainly lends credence to the notion that those screen attacks are the digital arm of a two-pronged offence,” said Astra.
On the security feed, the line of figures, now counting a dozen or so, started moving at a pace that might have seemed casual if it weren’t for how eerily well-synchronised the steps were. The line of figures fanned out and approached the Society’s headquarters. One of them tried the front door. When nothing happened, they tried it again.
Silver clicked her tongue. “That’s not good. There’s definitely something wrong here.”
“It can’t be that simple…” Emcee continued to mutter at the screen, “…can it?” She stood up, snapped her fingers to herself and said “The cognitovirus! It hasn’t made anyone reach for a headset to monopolise other senses. It must be purely sight-based!
“Is that… good?” Astra asked.
“It might be!” said Emcee, opening up the door and moving out of the security room and into the hallway beyond, the rest following shortly behind her. “It means a good chance that we’ll be able to snap the victim out of their daze with a big enough shock to a different sense.” She stopped for a moment to consider. “We’ll need something strong though.” She looked around the hallway.
“Oh, like so?” Astra asked, pulling the fire alarm.
“Good thinking, Astra!” said Meow Mx.
“Say…” Astra said, looking around and pulling the lever again, “why is nothing happening?”
Meow Mx. scrambled back into the security room. One of the feeds showed one of the figures withdrawing a large, bladed implement that somewhat resembled a pair of garden shears and somehow stowing it in one of their sleeves. It took Meow Mx. A second to realise that the blade had somehow cut straight through the brick wall and into part of the building’s wiring. “Shit…” they hissed to themselves, before yelling “They cut the wires! They’ve got cybernetics, High-end stuff!”
“That’s it… cover your ears, I’m using the big guns!” Silver said, activating the spring-load mechanism in her guitar case, slinging the instrument across her chest and playing a deafeningly loud set of notes that resounded throughout the old building. Everywhere around them, people started to jolt awake. Emcee and Astra, seeing what happened, darted off in opposite directions to start spreading the warnings to turn off devices, to avoid any screens and to get ready for an attack on Society headquarters, picking up pens and paper to get the message out while everyone’s ears were still ringing.
Silver brushed a stray lock of hair out of her face and let out a long, whistling sigh. “I think that took care of the cognitovirus.”
“WHAT?” shouted Meow Mx. from the security room doorway, hunched over, one hand still covering one of their ears.
“I SAID THAT SHOU-“ Silver waved off the question. “Doesn’t matter. It’s fine.”
“ANYWAY,” Meow Mx. got up and looked around, seeing people around Emcee and Astra scramble to spread the warning to others, “THAT SHOULD TAKE CARE OF THE COGNITOVIRUS!”
“That’s what I just-“ Silver sighed, “never mind.”
“We should send out a mass alert!” Emcee said, gradually reverting back from shouting to her inside voice. “I’ll go over to the comms sta- no wait, the comms station is definitely going to be compromised…” she looked around, bringing one hand up to her mouth and starting to chew her nail again, then grabbed Astra’s shoulder. “Wait! You carry retro phones, right?”
Astra nodded and went for her satchel. “Yes. Smart phones are still beyond me, but I can handle a clamshell design, these days… ah, there it is.” She fished an old-fashioned flip phone with a tiny mecha phone strap from among a mess of scrolls and reagents. “How… does one send text messages again?”
Emcee sighed. “You’re awfully stupid for how smart you are, you know that? Just give it here, I know most of the numbers by heart.”
“So you do think me smart,” Astra said as she handed over the phone.
Emcee rolled her eyes and suppressed a smile, “not the time, witch girl”
“Not a witch,” Astra said offhandedly. Emcee’s thumbs started to dance nimbly across the number pad of the little black device.
Silver, now secure that the cyber-attack was being taken care of by the eggheads and the security specialist, went into the monitoring room and took stock. It had gone completely dark, the mystery attackers must have cut the power here as well, hoping to cut off all means of communication. Luckily for her, parahuman powers worked just fine without any electricity. Silver grabbed a small integrated stalk mic from one of the security stations and ripped it out. She usually preferred a dynamic stage microphone, but she wasn’t the type to be picky about what totems she channelled her psychic powers through. “Heads up, capes!” her husky voice skipped her mouth entirely and resounded clearly throughout the entire headquarters.  “We’ve got unknown attackers at the gates. They’ve got us surrounded. Everyone with the powers or moxie to fight back, group up and get to it. Everyone else, make yourselves useful, get to barricading.“ She took a deep breath, ready to give some specific directions, but before she could, a loud crash and a rumbling of the floor threw her off her rhythm. Dust and debris filled the dark little security room, followed by… daylight? Silver drew back the arm she’d thrown up instinctively to defend herself and looked. The light from outside poured in through the dust cloud in little rays, outlining the shape of a person stepping into the second-floor room, gently brushing aside a CRT monitor on its way in. The figure bowed and fixed its eyes on Silver. The flicker of integrated cybernetic microLEDs passed swiftly through its eyes as it took in her features. “Miss Sylvia Brace. Good afternoon,” it said in a calm, bright and polite tone, taking another step into the room. The figure took off its coat and mask, revealing a classically styled black-and-white maid uniform, complete with headdress, strangely untouched by the settling dust. Where her porcelain skin was visible, it was marked by thin lines, as if it had been fitted onto her part by part from out of a mould. “Please forgive the intrusion,” she went on, rotating with the mechanical smoothness of a turntable to continue facing Silver as she made a retreating sidle along the wall. “Congratulations, Sylvia Brace. You and your colleagues are cordially invited to join the maid staff of LACE. Please do not resist.”
“So you’re Doctor Darkmoon’s secret cybernetics project? Silver put on a smirk. “You’re a lot daintier than I expected.”
“You are attempting to stall,” said the cyborg maid, maintaining her implacable smile. “It will not avail you. This unit’s propensity to monologue has been removed entirely.”
“Wrong answer…” Silver Siren grinned wolfishly past her nerves. She’d seen Darkmoon’s lab, he’d been working on some seriously dangerous tech. “Have it your way, broom bot!” she struck a chord and sent a sonic blast straight at the maid’s artificially perfect face. Her head snapped backwards as she received the blow, the rest of her body remaining eerily still. Slowly, mechanically, she tilted it back to its former posture. “Such violence is unbecoming, miss Brace,” she tutted. Before Silver could say anything in response, the maid had closed the distance between them and grabbed her by the lapels with a deceptively powerful grip. “No matter. You will be taught proper decorum soon enough.” The maid lifted her free hand and held up an index finger. It bent backwards far further than a human finger should and split open along the phalanx, revealing a small syringe inside. “Welcome to LACE, miss Brace.” She said, her smile unchanging.
Silver wheeled around in her grip and met the smile with a combat boot. A manoeuvre that would have been a resounding success, had Silver’s goal been to bruise her own toes. She grimaced through the pain. The cyborg maid had her. There wasn’t anywhere to run. She sent her needle-tipped hand forward in a swift, mechanical motion, eyes fixed on Silver’s neck, and… poked the wall above her head? It took a precious fraction of a second before Silver realised that it was gravity pulling her towards the floor, below the needle’s trajectory. The next instant, she noticed the scrap of leather, painted gunmetal grey, in the maid’s other hand. The lapel of her jacket, cut free.
“You must be lost,“ said Meow Mx., cheshire grin on their face, plucking a leather shred from their extended claw. “Janitor’s office is a floor down.”
The maid trained her cybernetic eyes on Meow Mx., holding them fixed for a second as those lights flickered behind them. “You are not on the list,” she said, Another flicker. “But that can be amended.” Silver picked up a loose brick from the debris and went for a hit. The maid swatted the attack aside with a motion that almost looked casual in its deliberate calculation. “LACE would be happy to have you, miss.” She kicked Silver to the side and lunged at Meow Mx. “Our database states that feline girls have a rich history of maid service.”
They narrowly avoided the blow to their head by catching the arm with hand. “Not a girl, clean freak!” they hissed, grabbing hold and digging their claws into the pale carbon-like shell of her wrist.
The maid flexed her hand and a small aperture opened up in the centre of her palm, revealing a blue, crackling glow. “Don’t worry. That will be rectified,” the maid smiled as a telescopic mechanism extended her arm beyond the reach of a human’s and made contact with Meow Mx.’s shoulder. Every hair stood up straight. Their nervous system screamed in protest as the electrical discharge shot out and surged through their body, then stopped just as suddenly when Silver, smashed the body of her guitar straight down into the maid’s forearm. Somewhere in the back of Silver’s head, the musician in her recoiled as she watched two of the strings spring loose, a volume knob shoot out and the body dent irreparably, but the maid’s cybernetically enhanced grip broke along with the instrument and freed Silver’s friend. A worthy trade.
The maid retracted her extended arm and looked at it with an expression that was hard to place. There was still a small dent in the smooth outer plating. “Damage report sent,” she said to no apparent listeners. Then, she looked to Silver and Meow Mx. with a smile that almost betrayed an emotion. “expanding acceptable damage parameters for prospective service staff.”
“What’s that supposed t-“ was all Meow Mx. managed to get out before the maid was upon them. They narrowly dodged an industrial-strength kick to the side and the only thing that stopped the follow-up from hitting its mark was the interference of one of Silver’s sonic blasts, which seemed to do little more than disorient the maid for a moment.
The two capes quickly found themselves on the backfoot. Meow Mx. was used to relying on raw, natural speed and found themselves scrabbling to keep up with graceful parry after clockwork precision blow. Silver had seen her fair share of brawls, but when up against supers and augmented humans, she usually had to rely on a concussive sound burst and try to mitigate the damage, but even without worrying about her opponent’s safety, nothing she did seemed to faze the maid. Before long, the two of them were driven back into the hallway. As Meow Mx. took glancing blow after glancing blow and Silver had to run herself ragged just to keep up with the breakneck pace set by the other two, it was becoming increasingly clear that they weren’t getting any real hits in, or even finding space to retreat. Things were looking bad. Meow Mx.’s concentration started to slip. The maid noticed. She drew out a reckless dodge to the side with a feint, wound up for a palm strike and, before she could deliver the strike that would’ve taken her feline opponent out of the fight, jumped back, creating distance as an arrow came zooming through the space she’d just occupied.
“Earshot!” Most hero associations fielded at least one resident archer, and Silver pumped her fist at the timely arrival of Hepatica’s.
Earshot finished the descent she’d made on the rope of one of her rappelling arrows and came crashing through a window on the other side of the hallway. Her costume was simple: she wore camo pants, bandages across her chest and a wolfish grin on her blindfolded face. “Sorry to keep you waiting,” she said. Her back muscles flexed as she nocked another arrow and took aim at the maid. “Need some help with the help?”
Her target looked over and swept a lock of platinum hair out of her face. “Mission parameters expanded,” she said, tone unchanged, “Number of recruitment targets increased to three.” She stepped neatly out of the way of the oncoming arrow… and into a large metal rocket fist that knocked her to the ground.
“I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say you can make that four!” X-Tremity yelled from out of the window on the other far side of the office, jet spurts from her cybernetic legs keeping her aloft just outside. She was holding half of her right arm outstretched, the other half of it lay far down the hallway, next to the maid whose face it’d just punched. The little actuators in its fingers activated as it started its slow journey back to the quadruply augmented hero, who was already priming her other metal fist and aiming it at the maid. X-Tremity’s costume consisted mmostly of a simple purple leotard, but sporting four cybernetic limbs that she kept polished to a mirror sheen at all times helped her stand out regardless.
“Looks like the cavalry’s here…” Meow Mx. said, getting up and stretching their shoulders. “feel like giving up yet?”
In lieu of an answer, the maid grabbed her wrist and detached her own forearm, throwing it off to her side at full force.
“Wait, what are you-“ Meow Mx. said, eyes wide in confusion.
Silver noticed that she’d sent it flying straight at X-tremity and yelled “X, watch out!” but before she could do anything, the maid’s arm had already attached itself to the open socket left when she’d launched her fist. Her eyes widened. She grabbed it with her other arm and started to pull, but there was no give. She crashed into the window and started convulsing on the floor. “It’s… some kind of malicious software. It’s taking control of my limbs!”
“What?!” Meow Mx. looked on in horror as the maid got up again, tossing X-Tremity’s fist to the side.
“Earshot! EMP arrows!” yelled Silver. The blind archer immediately nocked a pair of arrows with small cylindrical devices for arrowheads and shot them across the hallway, hitting both the maid’s body and her separated arm attached to X-Tremity’s shoulder.
“Heh,” she slung her bow over her shoulder. “Bull’s ear.”
The maid lunged forward one last time, reaching for Silver. She adopted a defensive stance and braced for an impact she knew full well she wouldn’t be able to resist anyway, but before anything could happen, the maid spasmed and fell to the floor, motionless.
“It… it worked.” Emcee crawled out from behind a nearby desk. A trembling Astra, holding her hand, followed shortly after.
“Sure did,” said Silver, surveying the ruined office hallway, the maid lying still in the middle, a mess of frills and cybernetics. “That took care of the roomba. But she took out X-Tremity on her way out.”
“There are more of them,” Meow Mx. made a face, plucking at a large tear in their camisole, “what do we do?”
“First, we go upstairs,” said Silver, considering this. “They came in at the ground floor. If any of them are up there, they’ll be thinly spread and likely already engaged. If I dampen our footsteps, we can take them by surprise and group up with any capes in the building.”
Meow Mx. and Earshot both nodded.
“Emcee, Astra, I need you to take X-Tremity, round up any non-capes and head for the lab. It’s the most fortified place in the building. The rest of us will go and- EARSHOT! WATCH OUT!“
Without looking, Earshot turned sideways, nocked an arrow and loosed a shot behind herself, where a second of LACE’s maids had begun to climb through the window. She snatched the arrow out of the air with little apparent effort, shrugging off one of Silver’s attacks while she was at it. This all kept her back just long enough for Earshot to make some distance, take another arrow out of the quiver on her lower back and- promptly get grabbed and restrained by a third and fourth maid who’d just made their way up the stairs.
Earshot started kicking wildly and flung her head back in an attempt to headbutt her captor, which just resulted in a loud clunk. “Let me go, you frilled freaks! Let me go right now or I’ll-” was as far as she got before the golden-haired maid behind her unfolded her fingers, revealed a syringe and slid it into her neck, injecting a clear substance. “Welcome to LACE, miss Orion.”
Earshot’s pupils dilated, her whole body tensed up and then she slumped over, a thin trail of drool trailing down the side of her mouth. One of the maids produced a pristine white kerchief and cleaned the trail off of her chin before taking Earshot’s limp body from her sister and heaving it over her shoulder as if it weighed nothing. She looked up into the air, considering something as a light flickered on and off irregularly in her cybernetic pupils for a second or two. “The central LACE unit installation is in progress. This unit will transport our prospective staff member for processing.”
“Thank you. The rest of the new staff will be with you shortly,” said the golden-haired maid. “Miss Brace?” she said to the empty hallway left behind by Silver Siren and company.
“They appear to have fled upstairs,” her pewter-haired sister chimed in, “how rude.”
“The central unit will address that shortly,” said the golden-haired maid, turning to the stairs and letting her movement flow into a flawless sprint.
“Naturally,” two of her sisters said in tandem, following suit.

“Crap crap crap crap crap crap,” Silver haphazardly threw an office chair into the stairway behind her, hoping it might slow their pursuers down. “run for the lab!”
“Don’t need to… tell me twice…” Emcee panted, following Silver as she turned right into a hallway, past the training rooms, where Touchdown was directing a number of the society’s new recruits in setting up an ambush. “That’ll keep one of them busy,” Silver said to Meow Mx. as the other two trailed a little ways behind. “Think we can take the other two?”
“On our own? Hell no.” said Meow Mx., “But we might get lucky.”
“I shall… swing by my office…” Astra panted, “I can help.”
Silver looked back at her.
“It’s by the labs, it might work,” Emcee jumped in. “I’ll jury rig something in my workshop.”
Silver nodded as Meow Mx. dashed ahead to open the heavy sliding doors to the Society’s in-house laboratoty. They punched in the security code and impatiently ushered the rest of their little group inside.
“Come on, come on, come on!” Meow Mx. said as they repeatedly pressed the ‘close doors’ button while Silver pulled a thoroughly out-of-breath Astra into the lab. Meow Mx. let out a relieved “Finally!” as the thick metal doors started to slide closed again. Two of the maids had already rounded the corner and came closing in on them at alarming speed. Silver readied her banged-up guitar, Emcee started looking around the sterile white interior of the lab for anything to use as a weapon and even Astra steeled her resolve and started going through a series of arcane hand gestures, but before any of them could put any of their last-ditch defensive efforts into motion, the doors shut with a heavy clang, immediately followed by a series of loud bangs from the other side. Silver could swear she could see a small dent or two form.
“I don’t think that’s gonna hold them for long…” Silver said, “got anything in here that’ll help against killer cyborg maids, Emcee?”
“W-Well… Not much, we don’t really make a lot of weapons, especially not lethal ones.”
“You said something about jury rigging some kind of gadget. Think you can do that while we hold them off?” Meow Mx. asked.
“It’s a long shot, but… we’ve been working on a little side project…” Emcee said. “Astra, think we can…?”
“Yes. Give me a moment and I shall be with you,” Astra said over her back as she hurried over to a small, odd-smelling side room surrounded by shelves full of old books and dusty jars.
“Well can you hurry it up?!” came Emcee’s increasingly frantic voice from the main lab as the banging on the door grew in intensity.
Astra took a deep breath, steadied her hand and took a piece of chalk from a small sandalwood box on her desk. She pushed her chair to the side and lifted a rug from the centre of the room, freeing up space and revealing the runic circle that took up the bulk of her little office’s floor. She gripped her chalk and hastily updated the coordinate sigils to account for planar shift as she started muttering the proper incantations. She didn’t bother with any theatrics this time, trimming down the ritual to its barest functional basics. “Zathrael of the Thirteenth Circle,” she incanted in the closest thing to fluent Daemonic that her human tongue and vocal chords could manage, “Lady-in-waiting of the Palace of Broken Dreams, in the name of our compact, I invoke thy counsel.”
She could feel the air change as the part of the material realm that her office occupied spent an infinitesimal moment of overlap with Zathrael’s parlour and snapped back like a rubber band. To those with the Sight, the experience was always disorienting. “Why, Astra...” came a familiar honeyed voice, “how unlike you to herald my arrival with such a lack of flair. Is aught the matter?” the false concern was put on thick, her way of being playful.
“I am somewhat pressed for time. I have arrangements soon,” said Astra, keeping her expression neutral. A technical truth, the sort her dealings with daemons had taught her to employ liberally. “I was hoping to procure your protection.”
Zathrael smiled her easy smile, unfurled a long, prehensile tail and leaned back on it, “I see… an unusual request, coming from you… needless to say this would  force me to charge a rush fee…” she said, weighing each word as she spoke.
“You drive a hellish bargain, as always, ” Astra said in her best Daemonic, “but very well, an extra five percent for your trouble.”
“Oh, you are ever the jokester, Astra, dear….” Zathrael inspected her claws, then looked up at her. “Seventy percent.”
Astra affected a groan. “Forty.” She ceded more ground than she needed to. If she could get Zathrael to focus on a smaller victory, it might be enough to- CLANG!
The loud noise rattled the little office, followed by one of Silver’s power chords. “ANY MINUTE NOW, ASTRA!” came Emcee’s panicked voice.
Zathrael’s eyes widened momentarily. “Oh, you cheeky little…” then, she Laughed with a hearty warmth reserved only for her favourite humans, almost edging into double digits on the Kelvin scale. “My, but aren’t you a little trickster today? I’m so proud of your progress, little mage… almost proud enough to ignore this clear and obvious advantage you were trying so hard to disguise…” her smile bloomed like a poisonous flower. “Almost.”
“Two hundred and fifty percent.” Astra said resolutely, staring intently into her daemonic contractor’s eyes. A scream came from outside her office.
Zathrael tutted. “No, no. That is not how this works… we are beyond these petty rates. You know that selflessness is not in my nature.”
Astra steeled herself. If you are going to stake your soul on a gamble, she supposed, the best time to do it was when you were on Meow Mx.’s side.
There are three words that any daemonologist worth their purified salt knows that you should never, ever, under any circumstance, utter while negotiating with a being from the Lower Circles. Astra took a shuffling step forward, breaking the circle of Zathrael’s salt ward, extended her hand, and uttered all three. “Name your price.”
Zathrael’s smile widened into a razor-sharp grin. “Very well…” she willed her claw into something a little softer and more suited to shaking, then clasped Astra’s hand. “To start with, I think I shall- Wha?!” Astra grabbed the daemon’s wrist with her free hand and, using the brief moment of surprise that the sheer brazenness of the act netted her, dragged her through the broken circle and out of her door.
“What are you-“ Zathrael looked around and saw Meow Mx. and Silver Siren struggling to hold their own in a desperate fight against two cybernetically enhanced maids while Emcee sat in a corner, frantically throwing wrenches and screwdrivers in their general direction. The golden-haired maid looked over while effortlessly deflecting a wild swipe from Meow Mx. “Good afternoon, anomalous entity,” she said, the lights in her eyes blinking with computations. “LACE would be most honoured to welcome an exotic candidate like yourself to the serving staff.”
“I’m sorry!” Astra yelled, getting as far away from the maids as possible. One of them lunged at her with an extended arm, but was kicked out of the way by Silver. “If you won’t fight for them, then fight for yourself!” her hand, which she’d just broken away from her daemonic language buddy, was immediately grabbed by a livid-looking Emcee who dragged her further back into the lab. “Hold them off!” she yelled at the capes.
The pewter-haired maid tried to follow the two, but was intercepted by a flurry of swipes from Meow Mx. and kicked back away from the door that they’d fled into by Silver. “Oh no, you don’t!” she smirked, out of breath. She blew a strand of hair out of her sweat-beaded forehead and glanced over at the succubus, who was looking around the lab, nonplussed. “Zathrael, right? Here to help us?”
Zathrael smiled thin rime at her. “Most certainly not. I am going to have some stern words with my human.”
“Pardon the interruption, anomalous entity,“ said the golden-haired maid, approaching her with arms politely folded over her apron. “but LACE politely requests that you amend those plans to accommodate joining the serving staff.”
Zathrael tilted her head backward slightly to look down as she examined the maid. “I politely refuse.” She took a few of the struts that came more naturally to her than steps towards the door that Emcee and Astra had fled through.
“This unit regrets to inform you that your value to the collective staff is too high for that to be an acceptable answer, anomalous entity,” said the maid, reaching out with one hand and opening the glowing aperture of her stun palm.
The succubus raised an eyebrow in mildly distasteful bemusement. “A shame…” she opened a palm and raised it into the air in a gesture not dissimilar from a conductor’s. A magenta glow illuminated the office floor as gouts of hellfire burst out in a circle, trapping the maid inside. “Take it up with your manager.” She balled her hand into a fist and the fire converged into a bright flash, leaving behind a motionless porcelain mannequin dressed in smouldering tatters.
Zathrael dusted her hands off and made to turn around. What happened next, happened in very quick succession. The pewter-haired maid, bearing a few small scratches from her ongoing fight with Silver and Meow Mx. but otherwise pristine, sidestepped away from being hit by Silver’s guitar and tripped Meow Mx. up to put them in the way of the swing. In the brief moment of confusion this caused, she closed the distance between herself and Zathrael. Meow Mx., quick to recover, tried to come after her, but immediately had to jump back to get out of the way of a surprise attack from the charred but very much still active golden-haired maid. By the time Zathrael realised that the fight had not, in fact, had the good sense to leave her to her own devices, the needle was already in her neck.
She was surprised more than anything. It wasn’t very often that Zathrael had to resort to something as base as violence, but when she did, she was quite good at it. The injection hurt, sure, her anatomy was roughly analogous to that of a human’s when out here in the material realm, and that did include pain receptors. But far more than any pain, the last thing that really went through Zathrael’s mind, before the fog came rolling out of the hypodermic needle to clog up her mental faculties, was indignity. Surely she could have shown both of these pale little clockwork dolls that, had she chosen to confront them in earnest, she could have burnt them both to a crisp with a flick of the wrist, but she had been denied the opportunity to even prove that much, and in front of human witnesses, no less. What would her mistress think?
The small bead of concentrated hellfire-plasma died on her fingertips before she could even muster the will to toss it at one of the maids to deliver some small portion of the retribution they deserved for their hubris, and Zathrael collapsed in the arms of the pewter-haired maid. The microLEDs in the maid’s eyes flickered rapidly and arrhythmically. “The central LACE unit is installed. This unit will transport the anomalous entity for priority processing.”
“The fuck you will!” shouted Silver, but before she could reach her to do anything, the pewter-haired maid interrupted and forced her to divert all attention towards not meeting a similar fate to Astra’s language buddy. The fire damage slowed down some of the maid’s movements, but she was still in a different league than Silver, and even with Meow Mx. there, the two of them could not manage to do much more than keep up with the charred maid unit while her sister made off with Astra’s fiendish companion. Silver’s instincts as a hero kept tugging at her to go after them, but she couldn’t split away from Meow Mx. or leave the lab area that Astra and Emcee had fled to unguarded. She bit her cheek in frustration as she went back to do the only thing she could to help right now: hang back and let Meow Mx. keep up with their cybernetically enhanced foe and do what she could to slow her down with sound bursts.
The fight dragged on and on. The charred maid’s movements were slower and more erratic than before and, at first, Meow Mx. actually had the edge when it came to speed and movement, but their claws could only leave shallow cuts on the alabaster shell of her skin. As time passed, however it became more and more apparent that her battery life was considerably longer than either of the capes’, and as they started to slow down and slip up, the maid’s movements retained their grace and swiftness. Silver’s fingers started to cramp up and her thoughts started to slow down, leaving her with less psychic energy to weave into sound. She saw the maid flow from a dodge into a kick to Meow Mx.’s ribs, and as she tried to disrupt her focus with another power chord, she could feel her fingers slip. Without the interruption, the attack hit home, sending Meow Mx. flying into a workbench and scattering tools everywhere. The maid turned to Silver and, before she could block, struck her in the stomach with a palm strike, knocking the wind out of and sending an electric jolt through her for good measure. With her nervous system screaming at her and her senses overwhelmed, she barely even registered the cold floor on her back and her head as she was knocked off her feet and onto the ground. Her vision blurred, but she could still hear the maid’s voice get closer. “You have done much to demonstrate your aptitude, Miss Brace. LACE would be happy to accept your to accept your to accep-accep-cep-cep-“ thud.
It took a few long seconds for Silver to stop seeing stars and drag herself back onto her feet. Meow Mx. was lying limp in the broken ruin of what had a minute ago been a work benches. On the ground, the pewter-haired maid was slumped over like a marionette with cut strings. Weakly, with what looked like great difficulty, she craned her neck to look up at Silver. Her placid mask had made way for a pleading expression. One eye faintly flickered, a thin, wispy trail of smoke came out of the tear duct of the other “help…” she said weakly, her voice accompanied by something like radio static. “Please… where are they? Give them back… give them…” she made a faint popping sound and fell over to the floor, motionless.
“Did… did it work?” came a voice from the door at the back of the lab.
“Emcee?” asked Silver.
“Nyuh?” Meow Mx. grunted along, hoarsely.
Emcee gingerly took a step out of the door and looked at the maid lying on the floor. A thin trail of drool was coming out of the corner of her mouth. “Did you… you know… take her down?”
“I don’t know what happened… she just collapsed!” Silver checked herself for injuries. Nothing too bad, from what she could tell, though she’d have a hell of a bruise collection come the next morning. If she’d make it through this ordeal.
“Oh my god…” Emcee’s look of disbelief broke out into a smile. “Oh my god, it worked! We’re geniuses, Astra!” She dragged Astra over into the room, embraced her and gave her a kiss. “Our plan worked!”
“I… yes.” Astra had something of a delayed reaction to all this. She leaned into the kiss about a second in, then took a moment to catch on after Emcee broke it. She blinked twice and looked around the room, eyes struggling to focus. “Everyone… safe?”
“What happened to her?” Silver asked, giving Meow Mx. a hand to get up.
“Huh?” Astra blinked again.
“O-Oh, right! Emcee looked away bashfully. “She needs a little…” she cleared her throat and continued in a clear, stern tone “answer her properly, Astra.”
Astra jolted as if waking from a daydream. “R-right. Mana deficiency. I used up most of my reserves working the spell into our field generator. It is… difficult to summon willpower, at the moment.”
“I’m sorry, a field generator?” asked Silver.
Emcee reached into her lab coat and produced something that looked vaguely like an old-fashioned radio. “Yes! I cobbled together a basic jamming device from some comms gadget prototypes I’d been working on and Astra used them to… I’m not quite sure… but it should have disabled most of the advanced technology in the building, including those maids!”
“I can explain when I am…” Astra trailed off.
“Right!” Emcee said, “We don’t know how long this is going to last. We still need to take care of-“
“The central LACE unit! Of course!” Silver said, helping Meow Mx. onto her shoulder. “They said they installed one here. Destroying it should shut them all down, if the info we found in Darkmoon’s lair was accurate.”

The trek down to the ground floor wasn’t nearly as arduous as the one they’d made to the lab, though it was considerably longer. Meow Mx. was struggling to walk and with Astra veering off or slowing down whenever someone wasn’t holding her hand to keep her on track. The room in which Touchdown and the new recruits had been planning their surprise attack had a hole in the floor, and the matching room below housed a severely damaged-looking maid in the middle of a pile of debris, so apparently their ambush had been a success. The building had suffered some very noticeable damage in the skirmishes, and aside from the occasional lab worker or paper pusher hiding beneath a table or in a utility closet, the place was remarkably empty. That was, of course, until they got to the underground holding cells.
“W-What the hell is this?” Asked Meow Mx.
The space had been completely emptied, with several walls removed and a large hemispherical device installed in the middle. Several smaller oblong chambers, were installed on its edges, like petals sticking out from a horrible metal flower. When the group got closer, they noticed that each of them housed a person.
“Those must be the conversion pods…” Silver said, grimly. “I’m not seeing any activity. Destroying the central computer should shut these down, too… I just hope we’re in time…”
“I- eh… In time for what?” asked Emcee, sounding more worried than confused. Silver didn’t answer, instead she’d started to smash monitors and rip out wires from the central unit.
Looking around, Emcee found that Astra had wandered off again. “Astra?” she asked, walking past the circumference of the machine, trying not to look too closely at the transparent pods that housed people she knew in various stages of… she really shouldn’t think about it.
On the other side of the machine, from which sparks had started to fly, Emcee found Astra, staring at one of the pods, muttering something. “It’s my fault… she is… it’s my fault…”
“Hey.” Emcee said, putting an arm around her. “It’s okay. None of this was you. You didn’t cause any of this. Heck, you helped stop it!”
“I summoned her. I made her help us, found a loophole to have her betray her nature, and… and she…” Astra stared blankly at the pod where, connected to some unseen machinery by several wires stuck into her inhumanly perfect pink skin, lay the comatose form of Zathrael.