The text message blip on the phone caught Idle's attention. It was Midnight. Just that alone made her smile.

Katherine and me say good luck!! <3

Idle absorbed the good feelings in the message and automatically sent back her thanks. Her thoughts were elsewhere, but the good vibes helped keep her in the moment all the same.

She was still naked, wrapped in a towel, after a relaxing shower. Lightly burnt toast and shitty coffee still sat easily in her stomach, no matter how rough they'd been going down. She felt...

She felt good.

She felt bad about feeling good, but she did feel good.

And then Spin's programming kicked in, and she didn't feel bad. And she felt bad about not feeling bad, and then didn't feel bad anymore, again. It was a cycle she'd been through a dozen times that morning since she'd spoken to Tebby, and more than anything, it was irritating. She felt good, and annoyed. She dug into that annoyance, let it absorb some of her excess energy. As a result, she popped up out of her chair and started pacing. Idle deliberately avoided the computer room, she was going to spend a lot of time in there shortly. Instead she walked in tight loops from the kitchen through the living room and back. She was about to come up against a new opponent, one that no one knew anything about. Knowledge was power, after all, and she had very little. nVizzible was, much like his name, almost invisible, at least as far as online presence was concerned, and that was somewhat notable for someone playing at their level. Almost—almost, Idle reminded herself, hoping not to let herself get sloppy—playing in the big leagues.

And someone noteworthy leaving so little a trail was noteworthy, all on its own. Of course, it could just be that he had the same social media interest that Idle did. Something else Spin took care of. Something else Midnight planned to take over.

And the irritating cycle repeated itself again.

The Spin cycle.

At least lame jokes still existed as a distraction.

Idle needed to get dressed.

Well, Idle didn't need to get dressed. She could brainhack in the nude if she had to, but it was better to be dressed. Fewer distractions. The office chair wasn't comfortable on her bare butt. She tossed the towel down the hall in the general direction of the bathroom and went to get dressed.

Simple clothes. Nothing fancy. Comfy polka-dot pyjama bottoms, a black t-shirt for a band she'd been to once about ten years ago. With Spin.

And there was the familiar cycle again.

Didn't matter. The cycle didn't matter. What mattered was the competition. The match. Idle padded to the living room, still agitated. There was Tailor's forgotten purse, still sitting on the coffee table, beside Spin's broken phone. Idle looked at those two items curiously. Something seemed to be missing, something else should have been there, but Idle couldn't work out what it was. It was easy to see those objects as out of place, since they appeared on an otherwise empty table and didn't belong to either resident of the apartment, but to identify what it was that shouldn't have been there in the first place that wasn't there seemed an impossible task. It seemed an unnecessary waste of brain power, especially as Idle was supposed to be thinking more and more about the match. Those sorts of uncertainties presented weaknesses in her psyche, in her defence, that she didn't need or want there. Spin wouldn't have approved. In fact, it was obvious that Spin wouldn't have approved, or Spin wouldn't have set up those emotional blocks that Tailor had found or left that trigger-filled letter that Tailor had translated.

Tailor. There was a whole other level of emotional mix-up. She knew that some of Tailor's confused and confusing behaviour had to be the result of corporate-enforced Alterations messing with the analyst. It would be interesting to see what the woman was like after her A-L treatment. Maybe that would resolve all the conflicts and straighten her out, at least from her employer's point of view. The main question was, would it straight her out in her own view or not, or would it be the start of a cycle like Idle was trapped in? And where would that cycle end?

Where would those cycles end?

Idle had suspected, at least a little, that her work with Tailor on the treadmill would result in some conflict with her long-standing programming. At the time, she figured that any conflict like that would serve the corpie right for being such a stick in the mud. But a weekend of being subjected to the blonde's selfless help, not to mention her playful side and her appealingly vital if slightly desperate sexuality, gave her the slightest twinge of regret over her actions. It shouldn't have been anything too inconvenient, just as she'd said multiple times, but she'd known from the get-go that it might have been, given how long Tailor had been receiving those weekly sessions and how deprived the woman had been.

But a little loosening up of the inhibitions didn't make Tailor jump into bed with the two of them. Might have messed with her a bit, but that wouldn't make her—

Idle dropped that line of reasoning before it led her to thinking about Midnight.

Maybe it would have been best to let it all go. Certainly she was about to, for a time, but perhaps more permanently. She found herself in the door of the computer room. Spin's laptop sat there, tantalizingly. It wouldn't be too difficult, she figured, to find the letter, and to let what Spin had in mind happen.

But that was something for after her match, not for that moment. Idle stepped in to the room and brought her rig out of hibernation, leaning over the desk instead of sitting in the brainhacking chair. The password went in. She opened the match program and logged into the room. nVizzible was already in there, along with a moderator, BombToi37. She couldn't see messages from before she logged in, but greetings from the other occupants appeared almost immediately.

<<{mod}BombToi37>> Hello @IdleRichGurl

<<nVizzible>> hey

Idle refrained from replying right away. She was in the chatroom, that's the only place she needed to be. She had to be online ten minutes ahead of the match to avoid forfeit, and she had twenty. She didn't particularly want to talk with her opponent or the referee at that moment. Instead, she tapped the AFK button and headed back to the kitchen to get herself a glass of water. Maybe someone might have thought that rude, Idle didn't care.

As she drank, she felt herself slipping into the competitive mindset. Attitude was important. Everything but her opponent could go away for a while. Nothing else to worry about. She almost slammed the glass down on the counter before walking purposefully back to the computer room and sitting down in the brainhack chair. The chat had continued in her absence, unsurprisingly. She caught up as quick as she could.

@IdleRichGurl is AFK

<<nVizzible>> somthng i said?

<<{mod}BombToi37>> She's probably just getting a drink or something

<<nVizzible>> k whtev

<<nVizzible>> dont have a coach w me i just moved

<<nVizzible>> gonna use hidobs

<<{mod}BombToi37>> That should be fine.

Hidden Observer, 'hidobs,' a safety program for recreational Alteration, was a little more powerful than the internal safeties on the Alteration gear. If there was a necessary medical interruption, the brainhack chair would cut out and the connection to the subject would be lost. It was a painful experience, but hardly damaging—the worst documented case was the equivalent of an eight-hour migraine, and that was during extreme conditions designed to test the severity of the effect. Hidden Observer would kick in if any such conditions triggered, overriding the disconnect and providing a slow, gentle, pleasant wake-up. It was thought to be a bit overenthusiastic sometimes, so a lot of brainhackers didn't like it. Spin, meanwhile, swore by it, trusting it with their mental and emotional well-being whenever they were being Altered without Idle there. Unfortunately, it hadn't kicked in when Spin needed it most, when Caden Collier had tortured her. He knew it too well, knew how to avoid triggering its safeties.

Idle tapped the AFK control.

@IdleRichGurl is back

<<{mod}BombToi37>> wb

<<nVizzible>> wb

<<IdleRichGurl>> thx

<<IdleRichGurl>> sorry, last minute prep and I wanted to make sure I was on the channel, don't wanna forfeit

<<nVizzible>> not scared off by my masculine superiority? ;)

"Oh fuck, one of them." Idle rolled her eyes. "Fine, you wanna play?"

<<IdleRichGurl>> I don't need hidobs to protect me

<<nVizzible>> nah cuz you got a coach right there

<<nVizzible>> i dont need bbysittr

<<{mod}BombToi37>> Keep it civil, please.

Idle erased her sharp reply, but bristled all the same, her eyes unavoidably drawn to the empty office chair at the end of the table.

He couldn't possibly know, right?

She had trusted Tebby and Anonyma to be careful with their inquiries. One of them might have slipped up, though. Or maybe he was just legitimately taunting her for having a coach present.

There was a moment of inactivity before BombToi37 reopened the conversation.

<<{mod}BombToi37>> Anything else we need? Vizz, if you could send me the diags on your version of hidobs?

<<nVizzible>> no prob its std build

<<IdleRichGurl>> Im all good

And she was. More or less.

She wasn't.

But she told herself she was, and she could almost believe it. And that was good enough.

<<{mod}BombToi37>> I can run a checksum after the match to make sure that it all lines up. You know the process?

<<nVizzible>> yea i got it

<<nVizzible>> any problems @IdleRichGurl?

<<IdleRichGurl>> Nah you do what you have to to be safe

It didn't really bother her. Hidden Observer meant that she hadn't had to sit in the office chair while Spin did their own Alteration work. She'd just had to check in from time to time.

She thought about the recordings Tailor had found on Spin's computer. Maybe she should have been paying closer attention the whole time. It felt like spying, but maybe it would have been justified. Well, retroactively, it would have been justified. Idle sighed.

Inevitable, she said to herself. I couldn't have stopped it without violating their privacy. I shouldn't be kicking myself.

Focus, she demanded of herself. Let it all slip away. She was—

Cold as ice

... the words came to her from nowhere and everywhere at once, and she recognized it for the programming it was, before the programming was frozen out as well.

Her fingers moved on their own, but she knew the word she was typing: "Ready."

IdleRichGurl muted

nVizzible muted

Countdown timer started

Static filled her ears as she straightened in her chair. The printed plastic monitor was in place, ready to flash patterns in her eyes. The machine was reading inputs, nothing more, but it was also preparing itself for nVizzible's commands, and somewhere else in the world, possibly very nearby, nVizzible's machine was doing the same.

A noise shocked Idle out of her preparation, something she didn't recognize, but still that she understood was a phone's ringtone. Quickly, her eyes found the timer. Four and a half minutes. She hit the pause button. A demand for an explanation popped up, and she quickly typed out, phone ringing, before she got out of the chair and followed the source of the noise to the living room. To Tailor's purse.

Idle quickly fished the smartphone out, checked the caller ID. Blocked number. She tapped the 'answer' button, hoping at least to get it to stop ringing. "Hello?"

"Hello," came a bland, cheery reply. "Is this Katherine Hensel?"

"This is her phone," Idle hedged.

"Ah, then do you know where Katherine might be?"

"She forgot her phone here yesterday. She'll be at work right now."

"That is why we're calling," the neutral voice continued. "She has not been seen here today."

Idle shrugged. "Don't know what to tell you, I know she had a plan to get there this morning. I'll make sure she knows you called if I see her."

"Thank you. Have a great day."

"Sure, thanks." Idle hung up and, unable to access the controls to silence the device, buried it under a blanket and a couple couch cushions so that even if someone else were to call, it wouldn't be heard from the computer room. She dashed back to her console and sat down.

She took a deep breath, a long, slow breath, as she adjusted her position. She quickly typed into the text box again.

Apologies, a friend forgot her phone and it wasn't on silent.

She hit the button to un-pause the timer to send the message. The chat popped up with a new message.

<<{mod}BombToi37>> Sounds like a good reason. I'll restart the timer from 300.

Countdown timer started

Idle let out a sigh of relief, letting the machine start to read her baseline. Her mind was racing. She blinked. She tried to watch the timer.

Tailor isn't at her job.

That little thought started to nag at her. Tailor wasn't the sort of person to skip out on work, and she'd had years of corpie programming making sure that only illness or emergency would keep her away from her Wednesday morning session.

Tailor isn't at her job.

Four minutes left until the match.

Something is missing from the table.

A plan started to form in Idle's mind. A series of moves. Steps to accomplish...

... to accomplish what?

She was planning, but she didn't know what she was planning.

She wasn't cold as ice. She was going in hot. Passionate. Angry. Angry at the situation, angry at her missing friend, angry at the mystery.

Three minutes left.

She was going in hot, and divided. Focus wasn't something she could handle at that moment.

ADHD as defence. Idle chuckled. But there was no ultimate defence, and without focus there was no solid line of attack. She would be flailing, easily exploited, ineffective. Vulnerable.

He couldn't possibly know, right?

It would be a powerful point to exploit, if he did.

Maybe I should delay, see where he plans to—

She took a breath. She was shaking. That would show on the baseline scans. Could give away far too much information, vulnerabilities, lines of attack.

Ninety seconds.

Calm.

She couldn't find the ice. That seemed to be a one-time thing.

Instead, she thought about Spin, missing.

She felt bad, and then she didn't.

Another deep breath.

Spin's words from after her last match came to her. "You still don't have a sense of the bigger picture."

Well that's fuckin' great, when I don't know what the bigger picture is supposed to be in the first fuckin' place. Idle took another deep breath, trying to establish a proper scanning baseline, trying to keep herself calm and find some sort of focus. Spin, missing. Something not there on the table. Forty seconds to figure this out. Tailor not at work. What am I planning?

The countdown timer continued to tick. Idle's thoughts continued to dance. The plan continued to form, and its goal continued to elude her.

No time, no time.

The clock moved into single digits.

Hands on the keys. How can I use this?

Tailor, Spin, the drugs. All missing.

She blinked. Three seconds remained.

There it was. It all fit.

Two.

She knew what she had to do.

One.

The plan came together.

Zero.

Wednesday morning.

Only natural to be Altered on a Wednesday morning.

The technician was unfamiliar. Must be someone new. Cute, though. Reminded Katherine of a dancer she knew.

She had tea instead of coffee that morning. It tasted strange.

She sunk back into trance so easily that she didn't even realize she had come out of it.

The plan came together.

The distraction was unfortunate. It had broken his rhythm.

He would find another.

He knew her weaknesses. Knew her habits. He had studied all her matches, all her history. Knew her better than she knew herself.

nVizzible relaxed into the chair. It was familiar, comfortable. Strong. A good companion. He didn't have any others. He didn't need any others. He had the sport, the competition. Soon he'd have the remnants of Caden Collier's sycophantic toadies at his feet.

It was an easy image to enjoy, to relax to. That put him on guard. No good giving Idle an opening within the first minute.

He took in the moment, gave IRG a chance to make her first moves, tried to assess where her first line of attack would

He took in the moment, gave IRG a chance to make her first moves, tried to assess where her first line of attac—

That felt very familiar. Looping? Memory, then. It could be dangerous to sit back and wait if the planned direction was at the memory. If he didn't notice anything changing, he could take in the moment, giving IRG a chance to make her first moves, and try to assess where her first of attack would be coming from, over and over and over again, until he fell into a trance.

The match clock had jumped ahead. That was an obvious sign that something had gone sideways with his memory. His hands were already moving on the controls, though; he had been in the middle of acting when she'd struck. A standard memory attack, to break up his plan. He let his hands continue their subconscious work, eyes scanning the monitor to see just what he had been after when the blow landed.

Good, easy enough to note, unless his memories of the baseline were muddled up. That had started to become a valid strategy lately, following rumours that that was part of OhAnnaJ's victory over Caden Collier. Certainly, reviewing the tapes, he seemed to have been getting frustrated at something. It wasn't like him to be getting frustrated, so there must have been—

nVizzible was reminiscing, instead of brainhacking.

"Very clever, Idle," he muttered under his breath, renewing his assault, redirecting it. There was no hesitation, now, no pauses for research, just assault. Now that she was in the full swing of things, it wouldn't be long until the opportunity would reveal itself. She always forgot something. Always. He could see the study videos he'd made, clear as day. He just had to keep a watch, let her get fixated on one thing, sit back and just let her hang herself with her own rope. Then it was just a matter of coasting in to an easy victory. Maybe after that, he would take on Anonyma1428 or Rattlespatch, or take a run at a big name like—

"Fuck me, I'm fantasizing now."

At least he knew her angle.

nVizzible focused, bearing down. Once IRG found an angle, she tended to keep at it. Attack, attack, attack, then, even if he couldn't remember what he was attacking or how. Trust fingers and eyes. Muscle memory for when mental memory wasn't available. Read the information and adapt, even if it meant adapting back to doing what he'd been doing before his memory glitched. Tell IRG a story, make it compelling, and she won't be able to resist. It was just a matter of telling it without words.

He had become an expert storyteller, so much that he didn't need words. The words could exist in Idle's mind. He just had to prepare the frame, and she could fill in the blanks herself.

Follow the plan. Stimulate the imagination. Push on elements of sadness, depression, loneliness. Those things she would be dealing with, given her roommate was missing. It helped that he knew very well that her coach wasn't present.

And to go with that, let her start to feel safety and security alongside those feelings of comfort and relaxation. Life was unnerving, strange, disheartening. All she had to do is let go, relax, and slip deep, deep down for him, and all of that could go away.

By the end of the match, even with the analyst's interference, he'd have bested IRG. He started working on another wave of melancholy. Winning was all that mattered, and all that ever would. Brainhacking games were won before anyone ever put on a visor. Caden had taught him that, and it was a lesson he had fully embraced.

Judging by the numbers, winning was on the horizon. Agitation mounted, then plummeted, mounted, plummeted... It was intoxicating, reading the history. It didn't matter that there were so many gaps in his memory. He knew what that had to mean. Or at least he thought he did, because of what he knew of Idle. She'd found a line that worked, and she wouldn't let it go.

Until, unexpectedly, she did.

Adrenaline flooded Ben's veins, a sudden jolt, on top of the thrill of impending victory he was already feeling. It pushed harder and harder into his body, making stillness a challenge, driving his typing faster and faster. If he didn't know better, it would have felt like Idle was trying to snap him out of a trance, not drop him into one. It was such a complete reversal of the usual formula of build-up and relax that it took him entirely by surprise. The clock ticked past the twenty-three minute mark and Ben was feeling high, energetic, powerful—the illusions of the hormones, sure, but that didn't change the energy he was working with. That sent him in another direction of tension: waiting for the next step in Idle's plan. Surely she wasn't going to be just pushing adrenaline, there had to be a course of action she had to follow up with.

With the added boost of excitement he had, though, he didn't intend to give her a chance. He was feeling so awake, so aware. He just had to use it appropriately. Turn the jitters and caffeine-jolt awareness into a full-bore attack, and then—

Well, even if he couldn't remember what came next, he still knew he had a match to win. He wasn't quite sure why he felt so hyped, but he knew it would translate into the winning combination. And he knew just how to convert. Push her deeper. Work on despair, on isolation, and give her a comfortable trance as the alternative to awareness. Easy. Simple. Endgame. Just need to go for the jaguar.

No, wait. Wrong word. Juggler.

Jugular.

He laughed. Mixing up words. That was all that she had? And she was just starting it at twenty-six minutes?

He tapped a couple controls, typed in a few numbers, sent a few commands. And that was that.

Hidden Observer was kicking in, and Idle's numbers had... zeroed? Odd. Hidden Observer, meanwhile, knowing the match was over, was reading his heightened state and was sending calming waves. He smiled, closed his eyes, let the watcher program work. Because of the muddle of his memory, he couldn't quite savour the moment of victory; the flood of relaxation and good feelings that the AI was feeding him would manage as a substitute. He had finished her off before she had done whatever she had planned with all that adrenaline in his system, it would take a while to re-establish the baseline. Didn't matter, now. It could take a half-hour for all he cared. The day was his, and soon the plan would be complete.

It was only a moment or two before he was swamped in warm, inviting dark.

Luckily, it was Rachel's day off, so she was able to receive the call. It was a weird phone call, but one Rachel was happy to receive.

Even more luckily, she lived just a little ways down the block.

When Adelaide had called, sounding very much on edge, Rachel had responded immediately, had put down her romance novel and hopped in the car. When she let the woman into the passenger side of the car, and Adelaide had told her that she knew where to find Spin, the only possible response was, "Where do you need me to take you?"

She'd handed Rachel a business card then. "That address."

She sounded like she was in pain. Looked it, too. "Can I help in some—"

"Just get me there," Adelaide snapped, then immediately apologized. "Sorry, sorry, I'm hurting bad right now. But I've got this. I just need some quiet to make a phone call."

Rachel said nothing more, just happy to help, and quickly started driving towards the office. It wasn't that far away. Adelaide, meanwhile dialed emergency services on her smartphone. Rachel heard the voice on the other end ask what the emergency was.

"I have four people in Alteration distress, two severe. At least one of them has been drugged. I'm going to need medics trained in that field right away."

There was a brief pause, then Adelaide gave the address, the same one that was on the card. Another pause.

"I would prefer not to stay on the line. I'll meet the medics there. I'm travelling to the site myself."

Rachel ran a yellow light. She wouldn't normally, but this sounded extremely important.

"Yes, I'll need to make a couple more—Okay, thank you."

Adelaide hung up.

"I guess you're just very curious," she said, sounding like she was fighting through a migraine.

Rachel nodded. "I'm sure I'll find out when it's done," she half-whispered.

"Good, just get me there and wait. If I'm wrong, if things go weird—fuck it. When you drop me off, head home, get clear, alright? I'll make sure to fill you in later."

It wasn't what she'd anticipated when she'd offered to do anything she could in a personal capacity, but if it helped out her co-worker, it was well worth it. Rachel dodged through the light traffic and pulled up to the three-story block on the corner that matched the address on the card.

Adelaide paused a moment after undoing her seatbelt. She looked at Rachel, and Rachel could see the hope and pain and fear in her expression, but could read the genuineness and the relief in the tone of her voice as she said, simply, "Thank you."

And she was gone.

Rachel decided that getting out of the way was the best plan. She headed home, much more cautiously than she'd driven there.

So much of this plan is so stupid, Idle thought to herself as she approached the door. She'd been fighting the urge to throw up since she ripped the headgear off her still-hypnotized head. Her mind was swimming with suggestions and pain, and she could barely see straight.

The first major hurdle, how to get to the apartment, was clear. How to get inside was another problem. Another problem which solved itself; one of the other residents held the door for her before she even approached. He must have recognized her from... had it been yesterday? The day before? She couldn't remember. Maybe both. Might have been a lot more, at this point she couldn't be sure.

She had the business card in one hand. She had her phone in the other. It took her a moment to figure out what she wanted to do with them. She dialed, standing outside in the hall.

Bleary-eyed and blissful, just having pulled the Alter helmet from his head, Benedict picked up the buzzing smartphone, hitting the answer button mindlessly.

"Ben King," he said. His voice sounded dreamy even to himself.

"Ben. nVizzible."

He recognized the voice on the line. "Idle?"

"Mhmm." The hum was slow, drawn out. "Just as you requested."

"As I...?" He felt good, hearing her voice.

"Yes, sir." Her voice sounded syrupy and meek, over the phone line. "Just as you requested."

He couldn't remember. He couldn't remember much of the morning. They had chatted briefly in the prep room, maybe he'd done something—

There was a soft knock at the door. "Could you let me in, please, sir?"

Well, if he'd been the one to put the idea in her head, it would only be polite to...

The deadbolt slid away. The door opened. Idle was there, phone in hand. "Ben."

"Idle, what did—"

She put a finger to her lips and pushed him back into the dark room, towards his office chair. The door closed behind her. "You can imagine it in your head, can't you?"

"Imagine—"

"The sound of your own voice." Her voice, meanwhile, was still syrupy-sweet, as one last insistent push landed him in the brainhacking rig. "The effect the words would have on me. On Midnight."

"What do—"

"You know the effect. The instant, numbing feeling, warm and comfortable. Imagine it. The words. 'We need to talk about nothing.'"

He could hear the words, he knew the feeling. He smiled. Nodded.

"Those words put you so in control, make you so safe, don't they, Ben. 'We need to talk about nothing.' Such familiar, warm words."

Idle spoke slowly, seeming to reach for the language. It didn't matter.

"Hidden Observer brought you down from that adrenaline high, didn't it, Ben? I pushed you up so far, then lost the match and came here like I should, and Hidden Observer drew you back down, so far down, so your rig could bring you up. Which is why you feel so warm and comfortable now. So dreamy. Drifty."

Something felt wrong, something nagged at him. Something wasn't quite right. There was a noise behind Idle, a flash of light, and another softer noise.

"Your focus is on me now, Ben. You're slipping back into that hypnotized, Altered mindset. Your memory's so full of holes. I put those holes there. And now you're hearing me, my voice. We need to talk about those holes in your memory. We need to talk about what's hiding behind them. We need to talk about what's bubbling up to the surface now."

"Idle," Ben whispered, trying to muster some energy. "Don't."

"Don't what, Ben? Don't stop? I can keep going, Ben." She felt very close. "You want this. I know you want this. Because I know you."

"You... you don't..."

"Oh, I do know you, Ben. I know you very well." Idle chuckled slightly. "Let me tell you a story, Ben. Let me tell you about someone so tormented, so tortured by hate and misery and self-recrimination that they had to find some way to show up their bullies, their tormentors. They had to prove the monsters wrong, even if that meant becoming someone else, even if that meant leaving their whole life behind. They would show everyone, everyone, that they knew what it meant to be strong, that they knew how to control themselves and control others. But they weren't a monster themselves. They left a lot to assuage their own potential guilt, to make a clean break. Their best friend and roommate was paired up with a beautiful dancer, someone who would love and care for and support them. It would be an easy departure, then, wouldn't it? No need to concern themselves with what came after that."

Ben found himself nodding along. "Uhh..."

"Let me talk, Ben. Just relax, and listen to the story. Let me tell you about... heh, about a last text message. An after party. A hot guy. Asking two people who don't, or couldn't, drive to go get their car. It was a mistake. A very suspicious mistake. The plan wasn't perfect, in the end, but no plan is, and I think that very suspicious mistake... I think that was a deliberate attempt to get her attention. I think they were trying to get me—get the roommate curious, get her investigating, so that she can trip over the other traps, reinforce all the triggers and the programming, make it all take hold and keep her occupied until the dancer can take over and drown her in the hypnotism. You can imagine what those words were supposed to do. The very clever crafting of the language, hidden triggers set up after months of preparation, strange word choices... Drawing someone in deeper, and deeper, and deeper..."

Ben was relaxing in his chair. It was a curious story. The details sounded right.

"This person even went so far as to destroy their smartphone in a way that made it unrecoverable, so that the important pieces of the puzzle could remain hidden. The recordings they had been listening to. The fact that they had a separate account on the brainhacking forums. The fact that at some point they'd been doxxed and they just needed a new phone number to keep the torment to a dull roar. It was the perfect piece of evidence to leave behind, and swapping the sim card into their new phone to send that last text message was a point of confusing brilliance, intended to muddle up the timeline in just the right way to keep the plan on track.

"But then the problems start to crop up. The dancer forgets to charge her phone, halting the flow of information, forcing the plan to continue blind. And of course, the dancer and the target spend a lot of time together, so the dancer isn't physically accessible to her hypnotist. And in that information gap, the wild card comes in. An interested stranger. Suddenly there was a hitch in the plan. That perfect, or near-perfect, execution was spoiled, and they had to scramble to get back in order. They used the only tools they had at hand: the dancer, the roommate's penchant for Alteration, and a half-full prescription of oneirathol.

"It was that oneirathol that finally slotted everything into place. Tailor forgot her purse, and the way she's put together, there's no way that she would have taken the drugs by themselves. She'd have put them in her purse and taken the whole thing. Which meant that the dancer took them. Which led me to thinking about why Midnight took them. There's only one reason that she could possibly want the drugs, and when I got the phone call on Tailor's phone that said that she didn't come in to work this morning... It took me the whole time of the countdown to figure out, anyway.

"Which brings us here, doesn't it, Ben? Your very clever plan to separate me from my roommate. Have I summarized it well?"

Ben blinked. He had said "yes" before he'd thought. Mostly because thinking was a challenge.

"And if I were to turn on the lights, you and I both know who I would find sitting there in that chair. But I'm not going to do that, not yet. Because I know that I left a lot of holes in your memory. Deliberately. You probably sat there with your intimate knowledge of me and my tendencies and thought how much I was making a mistake, how much I was pushing a fight I'd already won. But really, I needed you confused, muddled up. I needed Hidobs to pull you down to give me time to get here, I needed you still half in trance when I got here, and myself too fucked up to be re-inducted, which I am, so you couldn't snap a trigger at me. And I think my plan did pretty well, considering you had months and I had minutes. My coach told me a few days ago that I never put my trust in anyone, not in myself, not in my opponents, not in the equipment. But there's one person I always trusted, and naturally they're the one who betrayed me, and even still I trust them. I trust that they're hiding behind the holes I put in your thinking. And I trust that they're waiting for me to get them out of this.

"Because that's who's sitting in front of me, isn't it, Ben? You've cut your hair, moved, changed your voice, hypnotized yourself into thinking that you're someone else, but bubbling up through the Swiss cheese I made of your memory is my roommate, right? SpinDoctor? You're right there in front of me, aren't you."

"I-Idle?" Ben's voice felt weak, soft. "Please... don't..."

"It's too late for 'don't', Spin. It's already done." She stepped back. "You get all that?"

Ben realized someone else was in the room. "Yeah, I did. That's some story."

"It's all true," Idle said to the other person, another young woman by the sound of her voice. Calm and professional, while Idle sounded tired and in pain.

"You said four—"

"Me and them are two, the other two are upstairs, I'll take you to them. You got someone who can stay with them while we—"

"Yeah, we'll make sure he's well taken care of. We're pros."

There was a hand at his elbow. "Mr. King?"

He looked up to a more masculine figure with a gentle smile. In the dim light he could tell the man had a white uniform, and was holding a portable, high-strength Alteration set.

"Do you mind if I...?" The medic held up the visor.

With a sigh of resignation, Ben guided the visor to his own head. He didn't know what was coming, but he knew it was time to just let it happen.

His last thought, as he felt the familiar warmth of the magnetic control and saw the familiar lights of the screen in front of his face, was that he had perhaps trained Idle too well.

Climbing the stairs was torture. Every motion was torture, really. Leading three AlterLogic emergency techs and a paramedic up two flights, the thumping of their footfalls, the bouncing of her own steps, everything just made her head hurt more.

She knocked gently on Midnight's door. The sound rang forcefully in her ears. It was like being hungover and still drunk at the same time.

"Midnight?" she called.

"Idle? The dancer opened the door, a bright smile on her face. Her smile got worried when she saw the psych team. "What's up?"

Idle filled the doorway. "Is Tailor still here?" Her patience was running thin.

"Well, she was supposed to be a surprise for you," Midnight explained, letting Idle in. "Ben explained to me how—"

"It's okay. Sh." Idle guided Midnight back into her room. She didn't want the dancer to say anything incriminating in front of witnesses who might not understand. The police were going to be too involved with this as it was.

A quick glance confirmed that Tailor was just where she had been the night before, her eyes half-open behind the plastic visor, her mouth repeating two words over and over. If Idle was right, she'd been repeating those words since the early hours of the morning, and her voice had probably given out. Idle turned to the medics coming in and pointed. "She'll have taken a high dose of oneirathol. That headset's been on her since last night."

"Wasn't that high," Midnight explained, "Ben just crushed two tablets into her tea."

"These tablets?" one of the medics asked, picking up the bottle on the sinkside.

"That looks right," Idle said, then turned back to Midnight. "Sweetie? Spin's fucked us up good, these people are going to get us the help we need."

Midnight suddenly looked worried. "Does... if they fix what Spin's done to us, does that mean they'll break us up?"

The woman who seemed to be in charge, the one who had first come into Spin's apartment, approached. "You're Midnight? We're going to do our best to keep you happy. That's our job. Your friend needs medical attention, and you do too, but the two of you can be together through most of it."

"This is the dancer, from my story," Idle explained. "She's worried that because Spin's programming put us together, undoing that will pull us apart."

The woman smiled and leaned down a bit, almost as if talking to a child. "Sweetie, if there's one thing I've learned about relationships, if it's meant to be, then no amount of Alteration can pull the two of you apart. If you want to make it work, it will. And I bet the best thing for both of you is going to be each other, as you heal from all this." She held up her headset. "May I?"

Midnight bit her lip nervously and looked at Idle. Idle smiled at her through the pain in what she hoped was a comforting manner. Midnight hesitated, but finally nodded.

Idle stepped back. One of the other techs was speaking, a little too loudly, trying to get Tailor's attention through the fog of Alteration and medication. The paramedic was standing next to him. "Tailor? I'm going to take the headset off now. It's not going to be fun, I'm sorry."

"I don't need to be here for that," Idle said, walking to the corridor. She waved to the remaining tech. "When you're done with the corpie, come get me, alright? I'll be in the hall dealing with this fucking headache." At least Tailor's is gonna be worse than mine, deep as she is with no wakeup. Even if it's shorter.

Idle sat on the stairs with her head in her hands, trying to keep calm. Tears were clouding her vision, and starting to spill down her face, tears both of pain and of relief. She'd had to keep a lid on her pain for too long, had to present strength and confidence to Spin and tenderness and love to Midnight, to convince them both to take the treatments they needed. But it was almost over. Once they got Tailor into the med headset, she'd be next, and the four of them would be headed for an AlterLogic facility. And then...

Well, then it would be what it would be.

There was a friendly hand on her shoulder. Idle looked up to see the medic she'd been leading around.

It was done.