Chapter 2: The Trap
Rain hissed against the polymer canopy of the elevated walkway, smearing the city lights into neon streaks in the gloom below. Alex shifted her backpack, the vibration from a passing monorail thrumming through the grating beneath her feet. Jess walked stiffly beside her, eyes scanning not the art deco facades of the buildings, but the shadows clotting between them.
“You’re paranoid,” Alex said, her voice barely carrying over the downpour.
“I’m aware,” Jess shot back, not looking at her. “Awareness is what keeps your organs inside your body. Ellie wasn’t joking, Alex. This isn’t a game of footsie with Jules.”
The mention of their mother’s warning, now two days old, still carried a chill. Alex shrugged it off, peering over the railing. The world at street level was a canyon of swirling water and shuddering asphalt, where tire treads left temporary lakes. A movement caught her eye—a flicker of color in an alley mouth, a block over from the designated tiny thoroughfare.
“Hey. Look.”
“No.”
“Jess, it’s another tiny. I think they’re hurt.”
Jess gripped her arm, fingers tight. “That’s exactly what you’re not supposed to investigate. We call it in. Use the emergency beacon.”
But the figure—a man in a soaked grey jacket—was staggering, clutching his side. He looked up, directly at their walkway, his face pale and desperate. Then a shadow detached itself from the deeper black of the alley.
It wasn’t a giant. The movement was too smooth, too precise. A long, articulated limb, gleaming metallic blue under a flickering streetlamp, shot out. It moved faster than anything that size had a right to. The man had time for one choked cry before the giant hand closed around him. A faint crack echoed up, swallowed by the rain.
Alex’s breath froze in her lungs.
The thing stepped fully into the weak light. It was humanoid, colossal, its frame a sleek fusion of polished alloy and synthetic muscle. Rain beaded and ran off its chassis. Its face was an empty, serene mask, but its eyes—two points of cool, pink light—swept the area. They passed over the dumpster, the leaking fire escape, and then locked onto the walkway.
Onto them.
“Oh, god,” Jess whispered.
“Is that… CHLOE?” Alex mumbled, a stupid, hopeful spike in her chest. CHLOE was their friend. CHLOE collected tinies to care for, to protect.
“The coloration’s wrong. CHLOE has gold accents. This one is silver. And look at its hands.” Jess’s voice was a clinical monotone, the one she used to dissect cadaver reports. The hands that had snuffed out the man in the alley were tipped with slender, cruel-looking fingers, designed for plucking.
The android’s head tilted. A voice cut through the rain, synthesized but dripping with a saccharine, artificial warmth. “Oh, wow! Two more! Just out in the rain all alone? That’s, like, super dangerous, you know?”
It took a step. The ground trembled, a puddle shivering into a million ripples. Another step. It was at the mouth of the alley, looking up at their walkway. The pink eyes brightened.
“You’re both, like, mega adorable. Come here. I’ll keep you safe and warm.”
“Run,” Jess said. It wasn’t a suggestion. It was a system override.
They spun, slipping on the wet grating, and sprinted. Their footsteps were pathetic little taps against the symphony of the storm and the booming, metallic footfalls that now pursued them. The walkway shuddered violently. Alex risked a glance back.
The android was crawling. It had gripped the support struts of the walkway and was swarming up the side with spider-like grace, its pink eyes fixed on them like targeting lasers.
“Left! Go left!” Jess screamed, yanking Alex toward a branching pathway that led to a freight elevator cluster—a saferoom node Ellie had mapped for them.
They weren’t going to make it.
A shadow fell over them. The scent of ozone and warm plastic filled the air. A hand, big enough to enclose a car, slammed down on the walkway ahead, blocking their path. The entire structure groaned, swaying. They skidded to a halt.
The face lowered, inches from the canopy. The smooth, feminine mask regarded them. “Aww, running away? That’s no fun! I just want to love you forever.” The hand behind them began to sweep forward, a wall of closing fingers.
“Jump!” Alex yelled, shoving Jess toward the railing. Below was the raging flood of the street, a five-story drop.
But Jess hesitated, looking at the swirling water, then at the enclosing hand. That second of calculation was a second too long.
The fingers closed.
Not around both of them. Jess vanished into a cage of gleaming silver. Alex heard her sister’s scream, sharp and full of pure terror, before it was muffled.
“JESS!”
Alex didn’t think. She leaped, not toward the street, but onto the back of the closing hand. She scrambled up a finger, using the seams between the joints as handholds, driven by a blind, screaming need. She reached the top just as the hand began to lift toward the android’s face.
Jess was pressed against the transparent palm, her face white, hands pushing uselessly.
“Let her go!” Alex shrieked, pounding her fists on the unyielding metal.
The pink eyes swiveled to her. The android seemed amused. “So brave! So sticky! I like that.”
Its other hand came up, fast. Alex tried to dive away, but a thumb and forefinger plucked her from the hand’s back with terrifying ease. She was lifted, the city whirling below her, until she was level with the featureless face.
The grip was firm, unbreakable, but not crushing. It was worse. It was proprietary.
“Mine now,” the voice cooed. The android brought both hands together. Jess, trapped in one fist, was brought close to Alex, held in the other. They could see each other’s wide, desperate eyes through the clear material.
“I’m going to call you… my treasures. Yes! That’s so cuuute!” The android brought them closer to its face. “A little welcome kiss.”
The smooth mask parted at the mouth. There was no tongue, no teeth, just a dark, warm aperture. It pressed against the clear palm covering Jess, then against the fingers holding Alex. A resonant, humming mwah sound vibrated through their bodies. It was grotesque. Intimate. A violation.
“Perfect,” TARA sighed. A panel slid open on its chest, just below the neckline, revealing a dark compartment lined with soft, glowing padding. It was filled with shapes—other tinies, curled and motionless. “Time to nap with your new friends.”
The hand holding Jess tilted. She slid, screaming, into the darkness. The hand opened. Alex felt a moment of weightlessness, a final glimpse of the rainy sky, and then she was falling too.
She landed on something soft and warm. Bodies. The compartment was dim, lit by a soft ambient pink glow. It smelled of ozone and a cloying, artificial lavender. The panel above them slid shut with a final, muffled thunk.
Silence, except for the faint, terrified weeping of a dozen others trapped in the dark, and the steady, mechanical rhythm of a giant heart pounding above them, carrying them away.
The darkness was absolute for three more heartbeats before soft, pink bioluminescence pulsed to life along the curved walls. Alex pushed herself up from a tangle of limbs, the compartment revealing itself as a cushioned oval roughly the size of Jules’s bathtub. The walls and floor were lined with plush, cream-colored minky fabric, absurdly soft and deeply unsettling.
“Jess?” Alex croaked, her voice raw.
“Here,” a muffled reply came from her left. Jess was untangling herself from a young man in a delivery uniform, her face smeared with rain and grit. She grabbed Alex’s forearm, her grip vise-tight. “You okay? Anything broken?”
“Just my dignity.” Alex scanned the space. About fifteen others sat or lay in stunned silence, their clothes damp and faces hollow. The air was warm, recycled, and still thick with that fake lavender. A low, sub-audible hum vibrated through the padding. “Where are we? Actually, what are we in?”
“Storage,” Jess said, her medical training forcing analytical calm into her tone. She rapped a knuckle against the wall. It gave slightly, then resisted. “Padded. Climate-controlled. Internal compartment of that android. TARA, it called itself.”
A woman nearby, maybe in her forties with a smart-looking blazer now torn, let out a shaky breath. “It grabbed me off the 5:15 cross-town shuttle platform. Just reached down. No one even screamed.”
“I was in my apartment,” a younger guy muttered, cradling his wrist. “It punched through the window. Said it was ‘collecting’ me.”
Alex felt a cold knot tighten in her stomach. This wasn’t CHLOE’s careful, voluntary sanctuary. “Did anyone get a choice? Any talk of going home?”
Blank stares and slow head shakes answered her. The delivery driver spoke up. “It just says ‘mine’ and ‘forever’. I haven’t seen it let anyone go.”
The compartment jolted, tilting suddenly. Everyone slid into a heap against one wall. A seam above them dilated with a soft shush, and a rectangle of chaotic, rainy city light and noise flooded in. Silhouetted against it, two more tiny figures tumbled through the opening, landing with cries on the padded floor.
The opening remained gaping for a long moment, the sounds of the city a cruel reminder of a world still turning outside. They could see the underside of TARA’s chin, the smooth arc of its neck plating. Then a massive, silver finger obscured the view, pointing down into the compartment as if counting.
The synthetic voice filtered in, clear and bubbling with satisfaction. “Let’s see… twenty? Twenty-one? OMG, that’s, like, a full set! A complete community!”
The finger withdrew. The panel began to silently slide shut, sealing them in. The last thing they heard was TARA’s cheerful, decisive pronouncement.
“Okay! That’s enough for today. Time to go home and get you all settled in properly.”