Chapter Text
Glitch sat in his lab, spinning in his chair angrily. Even Mack was giving him space, which was unusual, but then again, he was unusually angry. He could see—well, 'see'—right where V was. His sensor node was just one among the new network he'd already acclimated to, like a web of new eyes and ears, right at the edge of connectivity with the others. For a few minutes Glitch had been worried that V was going to go out of range, but V knew the specs as well as anyone, and despite his being wifi-blind, he stayed just in contact.
V. X. Whoever he was. Kathy hadn't needed to take it nearly so badly, he thought, fuming again. She was in her office, refusing to talk to anybody, and so he was in his lab doing the same, because what else was he going to do? V had asked him to not follow him, and so he wasn't, even if he could have disassembled his own legs with his teeth from anxiety about it. He was in no shape to be out by himself, Glitch thought, but surely he knew how to stay out of trouble. That was all he had to do, right? Both of them, really; they just needed to stay out of trouble for twenty-four hours.
Tall order, Glitch thought. Trouble is like both of our middle names, I'm pretty sure. Not that I had a middle name, because I'm Japanese and we don't do that, and V just only has the one name so it'd be a last name by default, but whatever. It's the right idea anyway.
After some time, Glitch got bored of spinning and kept his hands busy piecing together broken busters into training weapons. He'd had a pet project of trying to make an ammunition pack recharger, but it had a tendency to explode spent packs instead of charging them. Then again, for the mood he was in, maybe a few explosions wouldn't go amiss.
Glitch pulled the project out from the box he'd stowed it in and began working. Maybe if he trickled the charge instead of treating it like a normal battery, since it wasn't…they were, technically, rechargeable, but the setup to do so was a whole electrochemical process, and he didn't have the chemistry side of it, nor any way to look up which chemicals were involved, short of cracking one open and sniffing it. Well, what was stopping him? He could do that if he felt like it. He just needed to figure out how to do it without lighting his hair on fire. Having to actually regrow it was such a pain in the panels and a waste of nanomaterials that he could have been using for anything else.
A slight noise from V's sensor node distracted Glitch entirely from his thoughts, attention pivoting instantly and fully to listen. He bumped the sensitivity up remotely. V was…talking to himself, Glitch realized. He was probably asleep, as the few snatches of speech he could make out sounded like nonsense. Well, good, the poor man could use some peace after the treatment he'd gotten. The sensor's batteries reported that all was well, so he left the sound sensitivity where it was, and settled back down to work on his project. Carefully, Glitch picked out a depleted ammo pack and began to pry the outer casing apart. Maybe the inside would have some nice, self-explanatory warnings.
Glitch worked in his lab. Kathy…did whatever she was doing in her office. At some point Hammer went in, and Glitch could faintly hear through the doors that they were conversing, but he didn't feel like getting into it until he'd let Hammer talk to her first. He had A Way with managing her nerves that Glitch did not, and he knew it. If they could have recruited Hammer to address the whole issue of V's real identity…well, no, they couldn't have, because he was the one who'd killed Alderman, it turned out, and that would have just been opening the other end of the can of worms.
The sun fell, and the rain began. Glitch finally left his lab, but he still didn't want to talk to Kathy, so instead he wandered to the edge of the garage, crossing his arms over the edge and staring into the early evening.
This sucks, he thought. I could walk right over there, right now, and just bring him back. And I should, except he asked me not to, so I'm not, which is stupid, but it's his stupid, so I'm going to go along with it, Glitch followed himself up, feeling uncommonly dutiful. He hadn't felt that particular emotion often. Really, only towards Mack, and V, and to a lesser degree, Kathy and Hammer. Everyone else here, well, he liked them, but he didn't feel any obligation to listen to them if they ordered him around. That was asking a lot.
Glitch heard, through the network, V mumble something in his sleep, and then there was an audible shift of fabric. Probably just woke up, Glitch thought. Shoulda stayed asleep until morning. He watched the rain for a few more minutes, under thermal imaging for variety. It looked much the same as it did under visible spectrum imaging: like nothing at all.
A loud thumping made him jump out of his paint job, and it took a few processor cycles for him to realize that it was coming through V's sensor, and a few more to realize it was in Morse code, however slow and clunky the medium made it.
..--- / -.. .-. .. ..-. - . .-. ... / -- --- ...- .. -. --. / - --- .-- .- .-. -.. ... / -.-- --- ..-
"Oh, no. Shit. V, don't do anything stupid," Glitch said, under his breath, knowing that V couldn't hear him. He dashed back to the main building, colliding with Cirocco and continuing to run straight through her at top speed. She'd be fine, probably, even if she was now snarling and bristling at him.
"Kathy," he started, bursting into her office without so much as knocking. "We got a problem."
"Glitch," Kathy began, but upon hearing his tone she must have decided to save the lecture for later.
"V signaled me through his sensor. Two Drifters, at his location, moving towards us, except I think he's going to—"
'Who's there? Show yourself.'
"—ah, shit, he's intercepting. Idiot!" Glitch slapped the wall nearest him in frustration. "Of course he is. We have to go out there, Kat, he's not even armed, he's going to get himself deactivated."
"And if we open hostilities with them right now, while we're hardly armed and barely trained?" Kathy asked. "We're at least defensible right here. In fact," she paused verbally and switched to diagnostic broadcast. '>I.40904-INT: High attention priority. I.40904-INT: High attention priority. I.04053-REC: Home region registered. E.00186-CMB: Engage. W.18901-POS: Decrease distance. I.00186-CMB: Engage. I.52634-POS: Assigned location. I.00023-LOG: Boolean: NOT. I.10299-CMB: Training exercise.' Kathy got to her feet, as well, and headed for her own assigned station.
"I know," Glitch groaned, following her. "But he's—hang on. I can tell you exactly what he's hearing, I'll just…" He rerouted a few processes quickly and began to simply speak whatever he heard through the sensor, as he heard it, in a very close approximation of the voice in which it was spoken. He'd coded that for fun, once upon a time, and never thought he'd find any use for it. "Big words from someone who won't show their face. They're nearby somewhere. Keep looking. Why don't you tell us who you are first? It's only manners." Then, in his own voice, "Goddamn, V, when I see you next, I'm going to install you a new port myself for giving me this kind of coolant pump malfunction."
"To your station," Kathy ordered, and then, "wait, no, I want to hear what's going on."
Valentina and Siobhan were on either side of her within earshot. "What's going on?" Valentina asked, in a loud whisper.
"Drifters," Kathy said. "And…V is trying to keep them away from us."
Glitch switched into the unknown reploid's voice again. "You're new here, right? How about you come out and we talk this over like civilized reploids?" Then, in his own, "He must be hidden pretty well, but he can hardly walk on his own. There's no way he can stay hidden for much longer. I'm going," he declared, placing a foot onto the edge of the barricade. He almost jumped over the edge of the garage, but Kathy slammed a hand onto his shoulder and pulled him down.
"You are not. Keep us updated on what's going on."
"Fine!" He cleared his throat and spoke again. "Well, now, that's going to be a problem, because we've got some business here. But we can talk here, can't we? After all, you're right…here, somewhere…surely you don't mean to inconvenience us. That would be unneighborly."
"Kat, they're going to find him," Valentina hissed. "We should do something!"
"Do you remember the first thing he taught us about combat stations? We do not leave them under any circumstances, because everyone else is counting on us to be there," Kathy returned, though her resolve was clearly wavering.
"Maybe we should—" Glitch said, in a different voice.
Then, in the first, "Shut up."
"—sir," he said in the second voice..
"We are not here to play silly little games with Mavericks," he said, in the first voice again, seemingly talking to the owner of the second voice, and then a bit more loudly, "Especially ones that shouldn't be so far from home alone. Where are your friends?" A pause, and then, ominously, "Come out, come out, wherever you are…"
Glitch hesitated, eyes unseeing as he focused entirely on the sensor in V's jacket, and then, unexpectedly, he laughed, just once, and sharply.
"Was that…uh…who said that part?" Valentina asked, trying to keep an eye out in the dark and one on Glitch at the same time.
"I said that. There were some sounds like a plasma cutter or something, and then that guy just…screamed bloody murder. I have no idea what V did to him, but…wait, wait." He began speaking in V's voice, which was uncanny even to him. "He can be repaired. Whatever you're doing, I don't want to have to hurt you, but if you're here to cause trouble, I will do what I have to."
"Oh my God, V," Valentina said, free hand covering her mouth, which was fixed somewhere between a delighted grin, and hanging open in horror. "That's…badass."
"Wh-who," Glitch stammered, relaying the second unfamiliar reploid's voice, "wh—what the hell are you?"
"He might actually pull this off," Siobhan whispered.
"There's more combat sounds now. The other guy just went 'eep!' too, but I don't think he's hurt like the first was. Come on, V, you've got this. Take him down." Glitch paused, grinning wildly, but his face fell. "Oh, no, I don't like the sound of that. I think he just tripped. His sensor isn't moving now. Wait, it is. No, it's not again. Did you just hear something? Here, I mean. Like something metallic falling on the ground?"
"I definitely heard something," Siobhan confirmed. "Sounded like it bounced, too. It's too dark to see, though."
"Oh. Oh, no. Oh, no, no. Not this. I don't like this at all. Wait, let me catch up." Glitch next spoke in Seren's voice. "None of that, now. Feral little thing, aren't you? Not so great now, though. Ric, take Faraday. See if we can't get him patched up. Maglev, Analog, this one's yours. Careful he doesn't bite you, he's feisty. Who knows what sort of diseases he's got."
"She's here?" Kathy breathed, eyes wide with dread. "And Analog?"
"We have to do something, they've got V," Glitch said, grabbing Kathy by both shoulders. "Come on, Kat, before they leave sensor range. Wait, they're still talking."
"Now what did you have to go and do that for?" said Glitch, in yet another voice, and let go of Kathy. "You made a hell of a mess out of Faraday. You shouldn't have done that, you know. He holds grudges about that kind of thing. See, Ana? He's not so scary now, is he?"
"What are we going to do about this many of them?" Kathy asked. It sounded to Glitch that she was arguing with herself more than anything else. "They're trained better than we are and armed better than we are. Even if we charged them in numbers, we could take casualties we didn't need to, because we left our defensible position. But then we're just leaving V to…no, this is exactly the kind of decision he warned me in training that I might have to make. We can't break our line."
"But, as entertaining as this is, we don't have all night. Now, pay close attention, little Maverick, I've got a very convincing argument for why you should calm down and behave," Glitch continued, and then, in V's voice, cried out pitiably.
"Oh, no." Glitch leaned heavily on the barrier at the edge of the garage, sick to his circuits. "The sensor input just scrambled too. I don't know what they did to him. I've lost audio, and they're…moving away. They're going to go out of range. Kat, hold the line, I have to…I have to know where they're taking him." Glitch abruptly ran away to the housing building. He came back with a bag slung over his shoulder and his own brown tarp thrown haphazardly over it. Glitch plucked the buster out of her hands on his way past and leapt off the edge of the garage with no hesitation, firing his matter repulsors and landing lightly.
"Not without me you don't," Mack declared, running in Glitch's wake as fast as its two little feet would carry it over the concrete floor. It leapt to the edge of the barrier, then jumped without even looking, trusting that Glitch would catch it. He did.
"Hey! You both get back up here," Kathy ordered, shouting under her breath as much as was even possible and leaning over the edge. "I'll…this is insubordination. Glitch! Mack! Do you hear me?"
"Nope," Glitch responded, Mack perched on his head like a sentient helmet. "We'll be back. Keep the lights on for us."
"Kathy is going to kill us," Mack said, from its perch atop Glitch's head.
"Yeah, well. She can kill us. We'll survive. V might not, and that's the real problem. Now shh, we don't need them spotting us."
Glitch had lost the sensor's signal, but not by much, and he at least knew the general direction it had gone. He headed southwest, keeping to the deepest shadows and making very little noise, and soon enough he felt it again. It wasn't moving quickly, likely because V couldn't walk that fast or well in the best of circumstances.
While the Drifters surely were watching their backs, they couldn't have known that they were being electronically tailed from a distance. Their route took them nearly two miles away, into the very heart of downtown. It had been hit the worst of anywhere, but paths had been cleared beneath the rubble, through buildings and subway stations, and anywhere that one could walk without being spotted from above. Glitch himself had never risked going this way. The Drifters' tag was sprayed all over here, though it seemed to have had the same update they'd seen heading up Fifth Street. It took him a moment of analysis before he realized that they'd combined their spiral tag with the Maverick Hunters' emblem.
What a bizarre thing to do, Glitch thought. He filed the detail away for later. He was in unfamiliar territory in the dark, and keeping up without giving away his and Mack's presence took his full attention and then some.
They finally arrived at what had to be their destination, an old Maverick Hunter base, and Glitch hid in the shell of a nearby building, getting a vantage point so that he could watch them. They had V between two larger reploids, and Glitch breathed a proverbial sigh of relief to see that he was at least trying to walk under his own power, even if they mostly carried him by the arms. They'd black bagged him. Of course he couldn't walk like that. Glitch thought fondly of murder.
The other two reploids carried what must have been their comrade that V had taken apart. How had he done it? Glitch wondered. He hadn't been armed, and yet, he'd definitely heard the unmistakable crackling hum of a plasma weapon. It wasn't the most important mystery at the moment, but it was something to ask about later.
The five of them entered and disappeared through the guarded front door. Glitch frowned deeply. "I do not like the implications of this. Seren talking so much shit about Mavericks, their little rebranding effort, and now finding out they're living in one of these things…hey, you know much about Hunter bases?" he asked Mack.
It hopped down from atop his head and gave him a deadpan expression. "Where and when would I have learned that?"
"Just hoping. Hmm. V, buddy, you're gonna be awfully hard to break out of there. All I know about them is they're designed to keep Mavericks out, except for where they're designed to keep them in. Either way, they're not screwing around, and if we slip up, we're equally fucked, except we're probably not gonna be interesting enough to keep alive."
"I wonder if it's got maintenance conduits," Mack mused. "If it does, I bet I could find where they take him, at least. I might be able to try and keep an eye on things on the inside."
"Shit, I hope so. I hate this."
"Well, we've got his location, and I'm small enough I can stay hidden forever if I have to. I'll work on getting in. Might be able to slip in from underneath, or maybe from above. Damn, though, we should have painted me black."
"If you're sure. You aren't the one who promised you'd go anywhere he went, you know."
Mack gave Glitch a dry, level look. "No, but you did. It's all the same to me. If he's that important to you, then he's that important to me, no further explanation required. And you'd do the same if our positions were reversed."
"In a single clock cycle," Glitch agreed, with a shrug of defeat that was far too casual for the situation.
"Besides, I like him. He's even older than me," Mack said.
"I probably should have asked you first, but man, you should have seen how sad he looked."
"I can imagine. Are you heading back or staying here for now?"
Glitch squinted at the old Hunter base. "Staying here, unless you think I shouldn't, but I'm not gonna feel right leaving you both in a place like this."
"Then stay. I won't be more than an hour."
"Give me your sensor. I can set it to vibrate if it makes contact with V's." Mack flipped its helmet open like a box, and lifted the phone out with one jointed, thin mechanical arm, handing it up to Glitch. After a few moments of intensely and sightlessly squinting at it, Glitch handed it back, and Mack made ready to climb down the collapsed building.
"Hey. If you take more than an hour, what do you want me to do?" Glitch asked it.
"Wait another hour." It hopped down the rubble, found a suitable mud puddle, and took a roll in it, darkening its helmet until it looked like nothing but another clump of dirt. It had been barely visible at all in the rain to begin with, and now even Glitch, who had watched the process, struggled to follow it.
"Be careful," he said, mostly to himself, then settled down under his tarp to wait and watch.
Mack decided to begin underground, since it didn't expect much resistance there, and the odds of anyone having secured the service conduits were low unless they actually had a reploid that could fit into them. Finding a way into the substreet maintenance conduits wasn't at all difficult. A missing manhole cover let it into the main corridor, and from there, working in night vision, it found a hatch into the Mettaur-sized tunnels it had hoped to find. The hatch was locked, but a quick slice of Mack's laser cutter fixed that problem, and with no electricity to the alarms, it popped open without complaint. Mack pulled it closed behind it, with a little extendable arm and three-pronged grabber.
Opposable thumbs, it thought. Who really needs them? I do alright.
It quickly double-checked that its measurement systems were calibrated and set off. If its estimates were correct, the old Hunter base should be in this direction by a few hundred feet. Well, it would see if it could even access the base from below. It was entirely possible that the base was isolated from the main maintenance grid, though it doubted that it was completely cut off. Mack's best guess was that it had emergency utilities of its own, but connected to the city grid like anything else, which meant that it had to have a connection point somewhere.
If it did, Mack would find it. It was built for this, quite literally. Its low profile, night vision, and selection of tools were ideal for the tiny spaces crammed with wires and pipes that it had been designed to service. Mettaurs were purpose-built for any number of specialized, small tasks, and Mack specifically was an infrastructure model. It was at home here, and it made good time, scuttling down the tunnel like a mole in a mine.
Its task would have been easier with the grid on, as it could have made some educated guesses about the power supply, but it was a straight shot to the old Hunter base's perimeter. The service conduit wrapped around it, heavy cables feeding into much smaller conduits in the wall, and Mack would have crossed its fingers for luck if it had them and if it believed in luck. Neither was the case, so it circled the base's outer wall hopefully.
Finally, underneath what must have been the main entrance based on its estimations, Mack found another hatch. It was locked, and a quick attempt to cut through it revealed that it was shielded against such simple attempts. Well, good, Mack thought. I'd get nervous if this were too easy.
It thought, tapping its mechanical grabber arm against its speaker-mouth. There was nothing on this side that it could cut through or disassemble…and without power down here and Glitch's help on the hacking side, there wouldn't be any opening it electronically. What did that leave?
What is it Cirocco says about brute force? Mack mused, forming an idea. If it doesn't work, that means you didn't use enough of it. Something like that. It fired up its laser cutter, sinking it into the concrete beside the hatch. It slid through like butter, hot liquid stone hissing and the air filling with dark soot. Mack didn't mind. It would need a filter change, but it needed one anyway. It continued to cut away at the concrete, one chunk at a time, until it had the beginnings of a hole in the wall. Numerous broken wires that would have triggered alarms at the intrusion had they been powered laid silent throughout the concrete.
Mack worked diligently, kicking piece after piece behind it into the tunnel. It would have to push through that on the way back, but it could worry about that later. Eventually, its efforts paid off: it had a little glimpse into the Maverick Hunter base side of the tunnel. A few more cuts and it was in.
It trundled much more quietly, now. It wasn't at all familiar with the floor plan, but it could make some guesses based on the contents of the various conduits and ducts it saw. Most of them were still labeled, though many of the labels peeled from age and neglect. Well, it would guess, and with luck, V's sensor wouldn't be in a Faraday cage. It might not be on V, either, but it was something at least.
Mack wandered the tunnels in a pattern, conducting a systematic one-reploid sweep. Finally the phone in its storage compartment buzzed, just once and briefly. Glitch had likely not wanted to risk attracting attention in case Mack was somewhere audible, but it was enough.
Mack couldn't risk cutting into an air duct, since that could release smoke into the building and alert the reploids there, so it doubled back to the central circulation system. Here it unscrewed an access panel, setting it aside quietly, and stepped into the ducts.
It knew it wasn't the quietest thing ever invented, so it moved very slowly, prioritizing getting each step right over making haste. Soon enough it came to a vertical bend, taking the ducts to the ceiling. A properly-fitted HVAC Mettaur would have had both soft shoes to not interrupt the building's inhabitants and suction cups for climbing the insides of ducts, but Mack had neither, so it had to improvise. It placed both feet on the wall of the duct and two extendable arms on the other wall, pushing outward, and began to walk up, painstakingly slowly so as to not scrape more than necessary.
At the top, it reached with one arm for a bolted seam in the ducts, but the shift in weight caused its feet to begin slipping. With a desperate grab, it snapped onto the sharp metal edge, dangling from a single arm. The sound of it banging against the duct wall reverberated for what felt like a full minute, but it pulled itself up from the edge.
"You hear that?" Mack heard someone say, distant and echoing.
"Sounded like birds in the duct again," someone else replied.
"Nasty," the first speaker agreed. Nobody else spoke, so Mack decided to risk a few steps closer to the air vent nearest it. Whoever they were, they seemed to have left. It decided to continue on.
Navigation was terribly slow going, but at least that gave it time to assemble a full floor map of what it could see of the building. It had come up near what seemed to be a major service closet, likely with access into the conduits and tunnels. Mack couldn't have risked being seen, so it had entirely passed up that area on its way up. If V could have fit down the conduits…but no, he was short for a reploid, but not that small. Even if he did, he would have moved so slowly that they could have simply fished him out.
Mack found several barracks, and paused to attempt a headcount. Of course, the number of recharge pods couldn't be assumed to equal the number of occupants, or else they'd be housing a whole four reploids at home, but it could make a better guess based on how many personal areas looked used. Twenty, maybe thirty, it decided. Don't like those odds. Hate to say it, but Kat did make the right call. If they'd decided to come in numbers, draw us out, and then attack in force, we'd be defeated immediately.
This wasn't what it was here for, though, so once it had that estimate, it resumed its search, cautiously and very quietly disassembling a few inactive circulation fans blocking the ducts as it went. There had to be somewhere suitable for holding captives near here…and Mack soon found it, as the sensor it carried pinged again. From the narrow view it could get from the grating of the air duct, it was looking at a small area lined with evidence lockers, with a desk and manned guard post.
Getting closer was out of the question. Light angled into the grating, and the reploid on duty had a clear line of sight to it. Mack couldn't see most of the room from where it was, and from its explorations, it had a fair idea that no other air ducts ran to the cells. Well, better this much than nothing. It had almost certainly found V. It settled down silently and decided to keep watch as well, in case it had a chance to find exactly which cell V was in.
It didn't have to wait long. Seren came in, and Mack knew her voice immediately: she'd always been condescending to those she didn't think much of, which seemed to be most reploids. Mack in particular had received a lot of derision solely for being a Mettaur. Her tone was at least neutral with the guard.
"Era," Seren said, out of sight from Mack's vent.
"Captain," the guard on duty replied, snapping to attention. Mack couldn't see her well at all either, but she seemed to be mostly black-plated. She'd painted her trim red, but that was all. "Here for the new Maverick?"
"I've got a few things to say to him, yes."
"I'll let you in at once." There was a noise of a few buttons being pressed, and a door slid open. Mack caught a half-second glimpse of…oh, no, that was definitely V, on his side, stripped of everything and with his hands bound somehow behind his back. Mack thought a loud sigh of relief when he jerked awake just as Seren blocked the view, and then the door closed.
Well, he's intact, but it's not looking good, Mack thought. I wonder…can I hear the next room from here, or is it acoustically isolated…?
Mack turned its microphone sensitivity up to maximum. It couldn't make words out, but it could hear the general tone. Seren mocked V. V responded drily. Seren sounded angry…then shocked, and then…apologetic? What in the world was going on in there?
Seren burst out. "The keys!" she exclaimed. "Where are they?"
"For his cuffs? Uh, right here, sir," the now very confused guard said, handing Seren the keys. She grabbed them before the guard even had them halfway out, and retreated into the cell.
Perhaps a minute later the door opened again. "Era. Bring his things. Right now. No backtalk, just do it," Seren ordered. The on-duty guard's bafflement was palpable, but she followed orders, leaving V and Seren. Seren kept calling him 'sir' and apologizing. V seemed unimpressed, but relented a bit when she offered to let him recharge.
Well, this was all very interesting. V was evidently safer than either Glitch or Mack had assumed. What this meant for the Drifters as a whole and their goals was a mystery, but Mack didn't feel like questioning any good luck that chanced their way, even had it believed in luck. It didn't. It decided this was as good a time as any to quietly sidle out and back into the ducts.
It took some time for it to make it back through the system and out through the maintenance conduits. Glitch was where Mack had left him, already alert for its return since it had one of his sensors on it. He was so anxious that Mack half expected him to pick it up and shake it for answers like one of those old dye-filled fortune telling toys with the polyhedron inside.
"Well?" Glitch asked, crouching to talk to Mack more quietly.
"Good news for a change," Mack replied. "Seren evidently had no idea who she had, and she's entirely changed her tune for whatever reason. He's recharging as we speak, and I've got a decent idea of the building layout."
"Huh. Well, she was a Hunter, so maybe she still thinks of him as her boss. Let's hope that lasts, although I doubt she'll just let him walk out and come back to us." And then, after a pause, "Let's hope that he even wants to do that…a working Hunter base is probably pretty damn cushy compared to what we've got to offer."
Mack waggled its entire body no. "If tone of voice could kill, he'd have set himself free by now. Don't worry about that. What do we do, though? I know the general layout, but it's not going to be easy to get in or out, unless you're my size."
"As much as I hate to say it, probably head back home and make sure nothing's on fire there," replied Glitch, with a sigh of defeat. "Draw out the floor plan, as much as you know it. See if we can't put our heads together and come up with something. It's not gonna help V at all if we storm the castle and get blown up on the way in, and he's got an advantage we didn't expect, so with luck he can buy himself some time. Plus, Kat's gonna want to know how many Drifters there are, and you've got the only estimate we have." He popped to his feet, sneaking a last peek at the base around the edge of a destroyed window frame.
"Hang in there, V, we're not gonna leave you."