“So you’re not mad about what I said earlier?” Jeremy questioned the AI as he went back to the console. He tried to keep a cool voice to hide his anxiousness and paranoia, to hide anything Matilda could use against him. She was right, however: He was on a razor’s edge, and he didn’t want her picking him apart when he already felt like he was going to unravel.

 

“Mad?” Matilda sounded confused, before she gave a slight chuckle at the ranger’s worry. She was not fooled by the ranger’s facade. “Please, I’m an adult, Sunflower. I can handle a little yelling. It would be very hard to do my job if I couldn’t.” Jeremy stopped his work for a second and raised an eyebrow at her claim, before he chose to leave any comments of her previous ‘work” in his mind.

 

“So than I’m in the clear right now? No one’s found out?” He asked. His voice was gentler than before, almost excited, and his heart held out for what he hoped was an affirmative from the electric gardener. He wasn’t quite relaxed - the thought of the abomination outside skulking and pushing at the defences tightened a claw around his mind - but knowing he was momentarily safe from reprisal would let him focus on gathering the intel that would vindicate his actions.

 

“They have not, and I’ve so far been withholding any updates to Mr. Grimsdale,” Matilda answered, her slightly hushed voice sounded as if she was in danger. For effect, as Jeremy knew she sat comfortably in her server battery.  “Although there does seem to be one person asking around. That Cecil fella? Big, strong, red haired? Should I perhaps take him aside-”

 

“No!” Jeremy shouted, a moment of fear broken through by rage that she would even joke about it. “He’s fine, I told him everything already. You will not touch him, and that is an order!” There’s a pause after that, with the silence made him wonder if she was shocked or amused. The lack of at least a breath on the other side disturbed him.

 

“Well, that is an order. I’ll let him be” She said eventually. “Though I might recommend you not tell anyone else? Grimsdale he’ll be quite cross with me if he finds out. I hope you know I’m putting myself in quite a bit of hot water for you, Sunflower. Think about what horrible things they could do to a poor, defenseless girl like me if they found out,” she adds, though her tone lacked any of the concern someone would have when having doubts about sticking their necks out. If anything, it sounded like she would have welcomed the attempt.

 

“Don’t get sappy on me,” Jeremy grumbled as he set up a scouting algorithm at the console. In a few hours’ time the patrol would be finished, he’d have his evidence of Mystic activity, and he’d hopefully have his custom carbine back in his hands. He wouldn’t have to be dealing with this homicidal AI, he won’t be vegetating in a rec room staring at Stars of the Heart reruns, and he wouldn’t be running for his life in the middle of a jungle while pure evil tried to eat his organs.

 

 If he was lucky he’d get to scrap that lupine’s body parts of his boot.

 

“Was that a pun?” She asked with a happy sort of bemusement. She seemed giddy for the situation, and Jeremy was just grateful that she seemed to have returned back to her normal demeanor. The horror that her being back to “normal” had become a desirable outcome was not lost on him. 

 

“So what if it was?” Jeremy snapped as he finally entered the final numbers with a few hards finger jabs to the keyboard. A progress bar flickered on screen as it compiled the program, leaving him in silence with the AI for a moment as the meter slowly filled.

 

“Oh, no reason,” Matilida answered back, seemingly unconvinced. She gave the ranger a moment to stare at the monitor with dull eyes, just enough to let the ranger put his guard down, then came back in to ask, “Do you have anything else to say?”

 

“We’ll handle that when the mission is over,” he kicked that can further down the street. The meter filled and disappeared, confirmed the pattern as viable, and machines began to whir to life. 

 

Pistons attached to the racks creaked as they adjusted from up against wall to being held horizontally above the floor with servo arms, then turned to point the drones towards the hangar doors. Clamps that held the machines down unlocked, and the tiny engines spun and began to pick up and hover in the air.

 

Jeremy waited at the other end of the hangar with a shotgun in hand, eyes watching warily as the two steel barriers parted down the middle, each half sinking into the floor and ceiling respectively. A horrible racket rattled across the room as large springs and pistons moved the doors into place. The short, natural tunnel that led outside was barren of movement, but the ranger held the stock of his weapon to his shoulder and waited with bated breath and reflexes ready to strike.

 

“Wouldn’t it be safer to do this behind the door?” Matilda asked as sunlight beamed through the crack that form, shadows cast aside as the natural light filtered in. “I’d think you’d have had enough close calls for one day. Don’t tell me you have a death wish all the sudden.”

 

“If the Mystic gets inside and breaks the drones, then I’d be up shit creek,” Jeremy explained as the hangar door’s opening widened.

 

“Because then they’d know you’re using unauthorised military equipment in a rogue mission without backup?”

 

“Worse,” the ranger answered with a grim look on his face, a scowl as he thought of the consequences of his actions. “Grimsdale would slash my paycheck to pay for anything it breaks.”

 

“Humans have such skewed priorities,” the gardener determined as the entry opened to completion. The buzz of the drones reached full speed, and with a loud clash pressurized air under the racks launched the first wave of drones out. It repeated with the second as the first set of arms shrunk back into position, and once done the door started to close again.