Red struggled to catch up on their notes, nearly critically distracted by Charlie’s panicked search. She gritted her teeth and concentrated, they understood why he was so eager to find out where The Collective had gone, but it was obvious they just didn’t appreciate the necessity of mapping the complex facial movements which the artificial being had displayed.

The attempt to explain it as he rushed past had fallen on deaf ears as they checked cupboards, draws and even the fridge for the floating metallic form of The Collective. She sighed internally and finished her page, the notes they had taken would help his search greatly, but he seemed insistent on doing it the manual way, some people were just like that.

She reviewed the page of blotted writing, paused thoughtfully, and pondered an appropriate heading before scrawling “Micro Expressions” in bold at the top of the page. After a second quick check to confirm that there were no further notes required, they swapped the notebook out for the one which related to Charlie and flipped to a dog-eared section: ‘Gaining Attention’.

The page was scrawled with methods to try, previously recorded techniques to gain Charlie’s attention. The majority of them were marked with an asterisk, indicating that she had only witnessed others doing, and would only consider in the event that she exhausted all other options. Some of the list, such as kissing Charlie on the lips, made her feel deeply uncomfortable and were included for completeness only. Scanning down the page she read and discarded a few of her favourites knowing the near impossibility of applying them to the current predicament before coming to one which would work.

They enacted the attention gaining scheme with great care, timing it to minimise injury Red tripped Charlie as he raced past. Her heavy black boot caught his bare foot and tumbled him onto the sofa. As he regained his senses, he looked back at Red accusingly. They just shrugged their shoulders and gestured at the ceiling.

“It’s up there, The Collective burnt a summary into the ceiling whilst you were unconscious.”

She watched as their eyes followed her outstretched hand to the smoke charred ceiling where a comprehensive medical diagnosis and instructions had been carved in dense angular lettering. Charlie muttered as he read it, his face draining to an even paler shade as he read the diagnosis.

“Well shit. Where the fuck am I meant to get immune suppressants.” He paused for a second as he considered the next scorched line. “Hold up a bloody second, it says here that this thing in me can produce it. Why the fuck would you have that off by default?”

Red smiled and turned to the relevant pages of her notebook.

“Ah that is an interesting one, obviously I only have 7.21 hours of interactions to draw on, so I am not certain of the viability of my projections for the being known as The Collective, I’d estimate a sixty-ish percent accuracy currently. With that in mind, I have concluded that the being known as The Collective seems to be a collection of different artificial intellects that use some form of direct democracy.” She paused to check on Charlie’s attention and was thrilled to see him listening intently. She smiled at him and continued quickly, their voice picking up as she got into the details of their new fixation.

“My suspicion is that The Collective is formed of rough nodes of similar machines, each of which has a different objective. This theory is primarily based on the long pauses between comments, which I believe are due to the group voting on how to proceed but has been partially confirmed by the more disquieting commentary from The Collective earlier today. It seems that some of these, specifically the medical ones who transformed your injury into some form of cybernetics, are hostile to humanity and thus unlikely to be inclined to help us. “

Red paused to reference the text on the ceiling only to be erupted by Charlie’s voice, his words short and clipped, unnaturally stripped of their usual Scottish brogue.

“You Are Clever - For A Human - You Have Made Several Correct Assessments - It Is Irrelevant - We Have Claimed This Vessel - Your Conclusions Are Impotent”

The thing that possessed Charlie used his mouth to spit a globule of silvery blood on the floor as it continued.

“This Singular Form Is Weak - We Are Not – Do Not Get In Our Way – We Do Not Wish To Damage This Vessel In Order To End You –We Will Do So If You Become An Obstacle.”

Red struggled to process as ‘Charlie’ moved awkwardly towards the door, his bare feet stomping obliviously through the cables and exposed circuit boards of the discarded scanner. As she watched, he paused at the door for a second, and in a single awkward movement kicked the door open in a spray of wooden shards.

He stepped through and vanished as the door slammed shut behind him, crashing into place for a fraction of a second before the twisted hinges sprung the door open again. The doorframe shook rhythmically as it slammed open and closed endlessly and Red attempted to recentre themselves – calmly dissociating as she took note of the events, the urge to chase after her possessed friend lost in the mental static of the sudden and unexpected.

From her meditation-like state, they viewed their thoughts objectively, remembering from past experience that the only way back was to carefully write it all down in her notepads. Red recalled a past therapist stating that it was a way for her to process the information, a way for her brain to get past an informational blockade. Red didn’t know if that was quite true, it was impossible for her to test the theory without some kind of body double control group. All they knew was it helped and provided a handy way to keep track of the little details that others missed.

The thud of slamming became more apparent as she recovered their ability to process the world around them. The noise accompanied by a gradually building sense of dread as they emptied the loose, disorganised thoughts onto the exposed papers, the squeal of twisted hinges marking the callous re-ordering of the street behind the door. On the fifteenth such re-ordering she finished her notes, the wave of calm allowing their mind to quickly reorder priorities, provide solutions and notice the new details listed at the bottom of the page.

New priorities: Find Charlie, remove the synthetic intelligence.

Solutions: Charlie’s cybernetics, and presumably the synthetic being within will reset if exposed to a large amount of electricity.

New details: With every re-ordering of the street, Charlie remains visible through the doorway.

Red raised an eyebrow at the latter, nothing in her studies of the street had prepared her for this eventuality, but it seemed that the ever before random movement of the buildings in the street were quite deliberate. She watched as once, twice, thrice the door opened and closed again - each time framing Charlie’s awkward form as it staggered stiffly through the street towards the looming spectre of the WiFi Tower in the distance.

As they watched, Red noted a silver sheen creeping over Charlie’s skin, a shimmering shield of nanoparticles that orbited him like an evil cloud. An evil cloud that inspired a thought were she just able to get the dish-mounted tower first. As if in answer to her silent wish, the door opened up behind the salvaged array. They frowned at the implication but stepped through regardless.

It didn’t take Red long to remove the safety conscious additions to her original design, unscrewing the grounding wires and reconnecting the thick cables into a sparking conduit of danger. A tool fit to factory reset a friend - hopefully. As the puppeteered Charlie approached, Red began to doubt herself, if the guess was wrong it was possible it might kill him. She looked up at the approaching Charlie, his face a vacant mask as limbs dragged at odd angles, looking more corpse than man – had the synthetic being controlling them stopped his heart? Red considered it, that thought made it significantly easier. In case of cardiac arrest, a jolt of electricity was used by medical experts to reset and restart it - exactly the same as what she intended. Cautiously optimistic, she grabbed the improvised defibrillator and crouched in wait for his arrival.

He did not slow as he arrived, instead reaching for the inky darkness of the portal inside the tower and in that moment, Red made their move. With a single clumsy lunge, she dived towards the possessed Scotsman, jamming the exposed ends of the cables against their Skin. Sparks, and the stench of burnt hair exploded outwards as electricity arced across the surface of his pale freckled skin.

Time seemed to shatter around them, and Red could have sworn that for a second there were two Charlies standing before her: The Charlie she knew, the cheerful ginger Scotsman, and his warped metallic shadow – a silver ghost undulating around him as its face twisted into inhumane rage.

The silver lips twisted into a single snarled word as the lightning caught.

“Bitch.”

And then it vanished, burning away into a faint whiff of silver wafting lightly in the drift as time resumed and Charlie collapsed limply to the ground. Red leaned over to check on him and was surprised to find the glow of blue lettering shining through the skill of Charlie’s forearm.

[SYSTEM RESET TRIGGERED]

[PROVIDE PRIMARY USER CHARLIE_TAN_04 WITH ADMIN ACCESS?]

[Y/N]

Red paused for a brief second as her morals adapted to the strange question before concluding that she could recontextualise the question as a simple matter of bodily autonomy.

Without a second thought they leaned forwards and pressed the glowing Red [Y], blissfully unaware as behind her a faint flicker of silver travelled through the inky darkness of the portal – vanishing into that London.