When I stumbled out of bed the m I was surprised to find not my family, but all my friends sitting at the diable.

  “What are you all doihis early?” I grumbled as I trudged past them into the kit.

  “Evelyn, it’s Eleven in the m. I’d hardly call it early,” Hel sighed. “As for why we’re here, we wao start making pns on what to do about the cil. We actually wao start earlier, but when we called, Nyx intercepted our calls and refused to wake you up so we had to e here.”

  “I’m a growing girl, and I need my sleep,” I mumbled, grabbing some sort of sandwich out of the fridge and taking a bite. The chy leaf and tangy sliystery meat on it had too much fvor for my taste, but I still choked it down. “So, did we e up with a better pn?”

  “Unfortunately, no,” Sharron replied quietly. “After some quick research st night I lear would be pretty easy to remove the board from power, but it would leave a power vacuum that would leave the city iy rough shape.”

  “So? The city will survive. Probably.” I grumbled before taking a bite of my sandwich.

  “As much as I like anarchy ireets, how about we call Stalking a her expert opinion before we make any decisions.”

  “Fine,” I said as I wandered over and slipped into a chair o everyone else. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Angeline pulled a small hemispherical device out of her jacket and pced it in the middle of the table, then tapped the middle of it ohe speaker on it beeped twice, before Stalking Shadow’s silky voice emerged. “Wide-Eyes, darling, what I do for you today?”

  “I’m here with a couple others. Hel, Humboldt, Hoppy and Teddy, and we wao talk to you about something,” Angeline said. “Do you have a couple minutes?”

  “Of course. What I help you with this m?”

  “We need someoo take over the city when I destroy the cil!” I decred, mouth still half full.

  Stalking sighed. “Teddy, my dear, it’s good to hear your voice again, but you really o work on your subtlety.”

  “Blunt is faster,” I grunted.

  “Indeed. I take it that the informatioa has been disseminating, along with the rumors my owwork has been passing me are true then? The cil attempted to use dession protocols on an occupied area?”

  “Indeed,” I said, popping the st of my meal into my mouth. “I have no problem with inpetence, but wholesale sughter of civilians crosses the lihey have to go.”

  Stalking was quiet for a moment. “That would be difficult. It’s not just that the cil is incumbent, but they’ve spent years putting policies and practices to entrench themselves. Most of the city's information and trol systems gh the cil. Not so they monitor the situation, but so they could cripple the city if aried to overthrow them.”

  Hel narrowed her eyes. “How did they get away with that? Didn’t anyone question what they were doing?.”

  “They kept the lights on, and money ing in, whiriched the other corps. That’s all the ‘important’ people cared about. Despite how corrupt and screwed up the system was, it was w,” Stalking admitted. “Apparently they’ve been unchallenged for far too long, and thought they could get away with anything.”

  “Yeah, well, they were wrong,” I growled.

  “So do you have any ideas?” Nora asked, leaning closer to the small speaker. “You have more experieh this than we do.”

  “The trol system o be secured before anything else. The cil has threateo destroy it when their position was threatened before,” Stalking said. “Ohat’s in your hands, we’d need a new gover body ready to take their pce.”

  “That’s kind of why we’re calling. We didn’t know about the system, so that’s good information, but we were really hoping you might have some ideas on who we get to repce them,” Angeline said. “We don’t really have any experieh goveral stuff.”

  “Darling, you’re not going to find ah experience around here, no matter how hard you look. The big five have just been in power for too long,” Stalking said. “The best you do is put together a framework, and make sure you get the support of the different fas before you make a move.”

  “You meaizens, and the different mega corporations?” Sharron asked. “Because I think the citizens are already on board. The news feeds reported protesters gathering outside the cil building within minutes of Zetta releasing the news.”

  “Oh, I’m not talking about them. The truth is it’s been so long sihe people held any power, and they’re so used to being pushed down, that ohe cil is removed they’re really not going to care who’s in power. Sure, there’ll be a few enterprising individuals that will want to take power, but that’ll be entirely for their own be. It’s the same with the corps. I’m talking about the samurai fas,” Stalking expined. “There’s a number of people that have vested is in making sure the corporations have power, and anroup which believes the city shouldn’t be under corporate trol. They’ve been tent to s each other, and push for new reforms up to this point, but if you remove the cil you set a pret. Putting a corporate group in charge would probably drive the anti-corporate group to take a. Likewise for a civilian gover.”

  As I listeo the discussion I sunk further and further into my chair with eaplication. After Stalking talked about the bination gover, I finally decided I’d had enough.

  “Look, I uand that finding a rept gover is important,” I said jumping out of my chair, “and we o sider a ton of plicated issues, but I think we’re losing sight of the most important thing. The cil. It o be removed. They just tried to kill thousands of people to save their own asses. We ’t wait until there’s a full w rept. If we do, they may try something stupid before we stop them.”

  “Evelyn…” Sharrht up a hand and pihe bridge of her nose. “Weren’t you paying attention? If we drive the cil into a er, they may decide to cripple the city. We need a pn first. Please don’t be difficult.”

  “I’ll be whatever I want to be!” I decred loudly, raising eyebrows around the table. “Stalking didn’t say it couldn’t be done; she said we o secure the system first. So that’s the pn. I storm the cil building, secure the system, and then we collect the cil at our earliest venience.”

  “And then what?” Nora asked. “We ruy in their stead?”

  “Absolutely not,” I decred, throwing my arms up in front of me like an X.

  “Evelyn actually brought up a good point earlier,” Angeline admitted. “We don’t need a perma solutiht away. We just need a stopgap to keep the city running until the rept is ready.”

  “It shouldn’t take that long to throw together some ideas for an interim cil,” Sharron added. “Although it wouldn’t be an ideal solution, it would buy us enough time to e up with a more perma solution.”

  Nora nodded. “And if almost all the systems gh a tral trol ter, then some sort of ma AI may be able to hahe day to day operations, at least for a little while.”

  “See? You’re already ing up with solutions. I’ll leave the anization part to you, just leave the seg and up part, to me,” I said as I headed towards the garage.

  “Hold up Teddy!” Hel called from behind me.

  “What now?” I moaned. “Haven’t I made my stance clear? You guys ’t talk me out of this.”

  “I’m not going to stop you, I’m going with you,” she expined as she caught up with me. “I’m not from around here, so I don’t feel fortable dealing with local gover matters. Plus you need someoo watch your back.”

  “Wouldn’t removing the cil also be cssified as a local gover matter?” I smirked.

  “That’s pletely different. Removing a tyrant and proteg the people, rather than choosing a new king,” Hel said, pletely straight faced.

  I snorted. “Sure, whatever. I have an idea how we get close to that system without the cil being aware. Follow me.”