Bina tries not to think about the storm for a second. She needs to be practical. If she's right, and - no, practical first. Then she can properly freak out.

"What are you doing now?"

"I assume you mean in regards to those local assets we spoke about earlier?"

"Yes."



"After we lost contact with the tactical team we pulled everyone back outside the incident area," says the Director. "This is making the local police rather unhappy, but Agent Miller said the threat is at least partially memetic and feeding it more minds seemed like a bad idea."

"That's… good." It was what Bina had been about to ask her to do.

"Are they dead then?" asks the Director, sounding, for a moment, almost like a human being. "The SWAT team and the two interns?"

"I - "



" - don't know," says Bina. "That hasn't been decided yet. The box is still closed."

"What does that mean?"

"I'm not sure," says Bina, feeling nauseous out of nowhere and not knowing why. "I'm sorry, I don't know why I said that."

Notes