The city of Bridgeport was almost impossibly vast: a collection of ever-expanding structures reaching out and growing across southern Connecticut without any clear reason or final goal. It just grew, ever-evolving, ever-changing, and yet somehow always the same.

However it appeared on the surface, though, it presence in the Illusion was greater. That was not unique to Bridgeport, though. This was just one city of countless thousands like it that dotted the world, each one different and each one just as complex in their own right. The size of it all in a physical sense was mind boggling and incomprehensible- -but in every city the size of the Illusion was infinitely greater.

There had been studies done, although none of any real value. They were no more than debates between academics that inevitably turned out to be nothing more than more cultured fist-fights over how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. In truth, the Illusion- -the technological aspect of the world, the virtual aspect to it, the heir to what had once been the internet- -was far larger than any of them could have imagined. The amount of space it contained was billions of times larger than the surface area of the entire earth and all the lunar colonies: endless tracts of land populated by countless billions of people living in squalid apartments only big enough for a desk and for an interface linkup computer.

The Illusion was even so vast that it had begun to bleed over onto the physical world. No humans- -or very few- -saw the world as it truly was. To the select among them, it would have seemed a dirty, industrial place: sterile, threatening, and dull. To those whose brains lost the distinction between the Real and the Illusion, though, it was ariot with noise and color. The computers took away the dirt, and painted the environments in ever-changing colors. Advertisements and signs swam amongst the colors, ever-beckoning. The world was full of such horrible noise.

It was over this city of merged Illusion and Reality that the technomacer sat, looking down on it all. No living being could comprehend all of it, either the physical or the illusionary, but that did not matter. Such was not the role of a technomancer: they were not meant to understand or perceive, but to accomplish tasks. They were sorcerers tasked with manipulating the Real using the Illusion. The Illusion- -the network, as the uninitiated called it- -was after all meaningless in the end. Such was the ironic state of the machine wizards: that they had dedicated their lives to the study of the Illusion, and yet had only come to see that it was utterly pointless. Only the things in the real world truly mattered.

This particular technomancer used the name LilithZero. It was not the name her parents had given her, if she had even ever had parents to begin with. Like all technomancers, she had chosen it. It was the name people used to contact her, when they wanted things done.

Her task in this particular situation had been delayed, which was why she now found herself perched high above the city on scaffolding around yet another pointless spire. Her target in this case was notably difficult to capture. Unlike virtually every individual alive in the modern age, this one was unmodified. He had no machines in his body to track. LilithZero had known that going in to the mission, of course. It would not have paid so well if it was so easy.

What she had not expected was that the target would have literally no devise on him. Having no implants was one thing, but there was no signature at all from any device. He had no external system, portable computational device, not even a cellphone. All LilithZero had seen on him was a half-visor that for some reason she had not even been able to detect. She had come to assume that it was a decoy of some sort. This man had gone to great lengths to hide.

She had also not expected him to defeat her drone. It should have been able to kill him within seconds, but somehow he had proved more resistant than he had expected. There was no way she could have known that a Fluttershy- -the softest, most peaceful type of pony- -would be carrying a robot-slaying firearm under her uniform. LilithZero recognized this as her mistake; she should have checked the area for weapons beacons before starting. At least she had come to the conclusion that this man was more dangerous than she expected.

She swore to herself in a language that probably did not exist anymore. The mission parameters had said nothing about an experienced soldier. Then again, he was from one of the most powerful and moth ruthless vassals in the world, Monsanto. It was impossible to predict what this man was capable of.

In any event, the mission was not yet over. He was still out there; LilithZero was keeping tabs on all of the main exits. Her eight arms had reached out to various places in the city, feeling and waiting for leads. While her physical body sat still and silent, kept functioning by the support systems in her suit, she reached out with her mind, listening and waiting. If she could not hunt, she would trap.

Suddenly she received a signal. It was from a familiar that she had planted in Aetna-Cross’s enforcement mainframe. Getting it in there had not been easy, but its growth had not been difficult. Their security was laughable.

LilithZero reached out toward her familiar and it whispered to her. The information it brought was a communication that had been flagged as significant. It took a moment for the message to escape through the extremely tiny amount of bandwidth that the familiar used, but the information still came out whole and complete.

It was a non-emergency call to the Enforcement tip line. The content was anonymous-encrypted, and concerned a man behaving suspiciously near the Bridgeport International rail line. He was apparently yelling to himself and gesticulating wildly. Attached to it was a file that showed the individual’s face. LilithZero smiled. There was no mistaking it: the man that had been called in was her target.

She had already started moving. Normally she would have gone through the trouble of attempting to unwind the anonymous encryption in an attempt to backtrack on the location, but there was no point. This call had come through with a location already included, and there was no reason to waste the energy. Time was of the essence. Aetna-Cross would most likely ignore the call, as they always did, but that was not a guarantee. In fact, if they had any intelligence at all they would run the picture and be on their way within minutes. LilithZero had to hurry if she wanted to both kill and detach his head before they arrived.

Motion in the real world was not nearly as fast as it was in the Illusion. Had LilithZero had secondary bodies, she would have used them. Unfortunately, they were prohibitively expensive in her situation. This meant she was forced to travel on foot or through whatever transportation methods she could acquire.

Fortunately, the international station was not far. LilithZero was able to get there relatively quickly and take up a station high in the towers overlooking the facility. She once again chose a seat high in a tower, too far to be seen. The station below was a sorry sight: Four hundred billion vod of taxpayer money, all disused and empty. As it turned out, no one wanted to travel, especially internationally. Even if people had the time off, there was no reason to. Now the farthest tip of the station shipped high-speed freight underneath the Atlantic on its way toward Nigeria, but even that was dying. The only good thing to come of it had been the station’s only true purpose: the governor who had ruled while it was built had been promoted to Transportation Secretary on a national level.

LilithZero crouched on her chosen ledge and reached into her coat. She produced a handful of small spheres the size of marbles and threw them into the air. They did not fall, but rather sprung to life with the almost silent sound of tiny motors. They hovered in the air for a moment, growing accustomed to the wind, and then fanned out. They were LilithZero’s eyes; she did not intend to approach her target until the entire situation was established. She had resolved that her mistake the last time would be her last one.

The eyes moved quickly and filled the streets, placing themselves on sheltered parts of buildings where pigeons or bees would normally roost. Then they watched.

It was not hard to find the target. Instantly, LilithZero found herself realizing that his escape was purely due to luck than skill, a thought which encouraged her. The streets below were busy and packed with people of all types, but one stood out simply because of his blatant lack of security. The target was just too tempting not to reach out to.

There was indeed a man there. He was dressed in a dirty brown coat identical to the one LilithZero had seen on her target a few days ago. Instead of wearing a fake visor, though, he wore a relatively new looking operator mask. Unfortunately, he apparently had no idea how to set the security walls on his own. Not that it mattered; LilithZero would have penetrated them anyway.

She easily accessed the system. Images from the internal camera clearly indicated what she had already expected: the man in question was indeed her target. They also showed that he was currently in the process of trying to call Monsanto’s question hotline, which- -as any reasonable person would anticipate- -got him no response. This seemed to agitate him greatly, as he looked profoundly nervous.

LilithZero reasoned that he had come to the international station in an attempt to board a train. Not being a local, he would not have realized that it had been closed to passenger use for years. Now that he knew someone was trying to kill him, he was attempting to get out. LilithZero laughed at this, knowing that he never would. The situation was clear. She began to move herself into position.

The target began to move, but LilithZero never took her eyes off him. For a moment she thought he had somehow detected her and was trying to lose her again, but that made no sense. He was not nearly tech-savy enough. Instead, it looked like he was just walking- -right toward the support infrastructure for the railway. That entire area was automated; there were far less people there.

As he moved, a pony got up from a nearby bench and followed him. LilithZero hissed under her breath, thinking that someone else was trying to scoop her contract. As she watched, though, the white Pegasus started to walk beside him, demonstrating that the two knew each other. LilithZero supposed that she was either a hired bodyguard or a prostitute. To be sure, she checked the pony’s metadata.

There was not much to see. She was primarily an AvtoVAZ chassis with added Suzuki upgrades. It was an odd choice to say the least, but nothing to be concerned about. Her processor was horrible, and LilithZero assumed that she would barely be able to speak anything but simple declarative sentences without overheating let alone be any match for a technomancer. She was quite obviously a prostitute.

She followed them, drawing her physical body nearer and nearer until she was able to see them directly with her own primary optics from a safe distance. She watched as they turned into a side alley and into a small empty square. Another pony was waiting for them, a violet winged unicorn. LilithZero was vaguely aware of her series name; it was something moronic like Bright or Star or GlitteryRainbow. LilithZero had never seen the old show that they were based on, and assumed that she would dislike it.

In any event, she checked that pony’s metadata as well only to find that it was blocked. That was curious, but not impassible. LilithZero changed her tactics, using a passive decryption algorithm. It worked after a few miliseconds, and the metadata became available. The violet pony- -Twilight Sparkle series, LilithZero now knew- -used a body by Hawes Manufacturing. It was certainly better than the one used by the other pony, but not by much. It was a middling model known for having reasonable strength at the cost of speed. She would be quite slow.

The target seemed to stop and speak with the ponies. LilithZero was not able to listen to what they were saying because the fool had not bothered to properly configure his microphone. He was probably just yelling through the mask like an idiot.

Still, he had stopped moving in an isolated area. There was no better time to act. LilithZero sat down on a large air handling unit and removed a narrow syringe from her belt. She pushed it through a port in one of her two least useful arm and felt the cold liquid move through her: a mixture of various amphetamines and purified HIV. Both went to work quickly, and LilithZero began to laugh to herself for no reason other than because she was about to kill an idiot.

“Right,” she said to herself, reaching out with her arms toward everything that she would need. “Let’s get started…”

Never once did she question or even think to question why the face of a masked man had been reported to the Aetna-Cross Enforcement division.

Elrod and Forth approached Twilight, who was standing in the middle of a barely lit empty lot. Thin grass was growing up through the concrete under the lights, and on a better day Elrod would have wondered where it came from. On this day, though, it was taking everything he had not to look around wildly for the assassin waiting to kill him.

“Pissed yourself yet?” asked Twilight.

“Very nearly. I can’t believe I’m doing this.”

“I think it is fun,” said Forth. “I do not get to do things like this. Not often.”

“This will never work,” said Elrod. “It can’t. It just can’t.”

“It already worked,” said Twilight. “He’s here.”

An audible gasp came from Elrod, and Forth laughed slightly.

“Really?” she said.

“Yes, he’s watching us right now. There are several small drones following you. That, and he attempted to access our metadata.”

“Did she like it?”

“He never saw it. I gave her fake stats. And right now he’s preparing to hack us the same way he did Meredith.”

“But then I’ll be all alone!” protested Elrod. “I can’t deal with this on my own! I’m just the bait, you’re supposed to be the detective!”

“Relax. I’m running a pair of virtual machines. Unless he actually goes in and looks closely at the source code, he won’t notice that it’s not really us.”

“Can you triangulate his position?” asked Forth.

“Not yet. I could, I mean, but I’d be showing my hand to early. If he bolts, we won’t get a second chance at this. This is like chess. It’s his move.”

“I thought we were playing poker,” said Forth, looking confused.

Twilight turned away from Elrod. “Right. Forth, talk to me, not to him. This needs to look convincing.”

“What do you mean convincing?!” cried Elrod. “I’m not an actor! If I was an actor I wouldn’t need to be selling people’s eyes to pay detectives to make me not be dead!” He could not contain himself any longer and began looking around. “Oh Saint Isidore, I’m going to get sniped! I can feel it! Is there- -is there a red dot on my head? I CANT’T TELL!”

“Wow,” said Forth. “He sure is convincing. He looks agitated.”

“I AM AGITATED!”

“You can relax at least a little bit,” said Twilight, smiling as she lit herself a cigarette. “Trust me, this guy isn’t like the others. Human technomancers tend to shake. The drugs make their muscles shit, and their aim sucks. He won’t snipe you. He’ll kill you with machines.”

“I would like to point out that we are in an automated loading district,” said Forth. “This area has many machines. I think this will help you calm down.”

“It doesn’t. It really doesn’t.”

“Well, you’re going to need to calm down pretty quickly.”

“Why? What happened?”

Twilight flicked the ash of her cigarette. “Because we have a small army of drones converging on our position.”

“Just as planned,” said Forth.

“That was what we were planning?” squeaked Elrod.