The room was filled with the ghosts of the dead. A mechanical sphere that hovered in the center of the room was white with projected light, throwing images on every wall and object, bathing the apartment in history. Colette walked as if she was underwater, barely breathing as she assembled the few objects that would accompany her into the next life. She bathed, tucked her hair up out of her face, dressed in her most sensible outfit for fleeing for her life, all to the ghosts of the past; photographs of her parents, their parents, and their parents milled around silently acting out their lives.

“Servo, stop the projection," she said once she had her fill of nostalgia. "then delete all non-essential data.” There was no room for nostalgia, in the bot's database or in her heart. Obediently, the luminous sphere darkened to its former golden hue. Servo, she had named it, floated before his mistress. The bot was constructed from a fusion of Fae Magic and Cimmerian technology. It was the finest encapsulated sentience that money could buy. The robotic shell was a top secret domestic model. As soon as it had arrived she had scooped out the software and reknit the esoteric programming that bound the soul to its vessel. Everything had to be reconstructed. Her initial fear had been that it would relay their lives back to the Corporation. In reflection she identified those fears as the first seeds of doubt that had now blossomed into her treason.

Servo hung motionless before her, soft light pulsing from the seams. She turned it in its orbit and with a finger; she traced a ritual pattern; half computer program, half fae magic to reinforce the privacy screens.

Colette, previously soft and gentle, hardened like amber as she tapped into this great well of power. Her turbulent emotion drained from her psyche at the brush of the great pool of magic just outside her grasp. Those fragments of emotion were now frozen in the light of introspection. She dismissed the sentimentality, the longing, and embraced the relief of escapism. There was no going back for she had sold her soul to the devil and the devil was on his tonight way to collect.

She had failed again and again to produce an heir for their great houses. Her marriage to a Cimmerian was the family’s last attempt to buy some time and influence in the changing world. Not just the Outing. These were trends going on for decades. The Waymire’s Empire of ancient secret networks was nothing compared to machine learning algorithms at the disposal of the Cimmerians and their new corporate friends. The Corporation was the perfect expression of their lust for power and the perchance for violence.

Her next steps had to proceed perfectly, or she would be at the forefront of every ounce of ruthlessness and barbarism she’d seen her husband devote to his work over the last decade. He had killed to get where he was, and he would kill to protect it. “Access Corporation database under my husband’s personal encryption key, and download the folder, “One World Trade Excavation Data” into portable storage. Check the file for errors and then delete the original”

“Accessing and Downloading “One World Trade Excavation Data” the bot echoed in a synthesized voice. She had seen the files many times before and imagined the photograph of the muddy pit, and the construction workers crowded around ancient worked stone. She remembered the plans and sketches of ruins as they were uncovered. Everything about the project would soon be stored only in her little companion.

Artemis had worked rabidly on the excavation of what was discovered entwined with the foundations of the World Trade Center. When the charade could go one no longer and the building had to be erected. He made sure the Corporation had its command center at its heart. “Give the humans their monument” she recalled him saying with a snarl. It was the project, he hoped, that would send him straight to the top. He’d let nothing stand in his way. The Executives above him had given him a good deal of command and had a couple hundred loyal officers under him that would obey him before the next in the command chain.

She had to get out of the city tonight and surrender the data to the Elven Council of Ancients. Even in their weakened state, they were the only organization that could mount a defense. If the Cimmerians had really discovered the Foundations of the World…and if her husband’s team was as close to accessing its power as she feared, then the entire world was in more trouble than they could fathom. Her contact with for elves, her transport out of the city, was due to call any second with the instructions for her flight. How long would it take the Corporation to begin to notice the data was missing, one minute? five? She gathered her jacket and a bag big enough for her bot as she considered her options. If the elves betrayed her she would have to make her own way into the night.