The entrance to the prisoner storage facility was completely different from what had come before. There was no entry foyer. No large, open-aired office complex. No urine stained holding tanks. No, the only thing that lay before them was a tubular shaped hallway that stretched out before them like an industrial-sized culvert.

  In the distance, a single light source beckoned the group onward to some unknown destination.

  “Remember, don’t blindly fire.” Justine took a step then threw the 8-ball out in front of them. She allowed the device to stabilize about four feet off the ground before moving in any further. “If you can’t see it, you won’t hit it.”

  As light spilled over everything, Foster took notice of just how clean this place was compared to the rest of the station. And not just a little cleaner. No. This place was immaculate. “I guess this place does have maid service.”

  “Real funny, Foster.” The deputy chided even though the scientist’s statement did appear to be true.

  Mentally chalking one up to himself, Foster looked down to the floor beneath his feet to find its surface entirely polished. In fact, the floor was so polished that it reminded him of Wilson’s endless halls and how prisoners spent hours toiling to perfect them. He could even see his unshaven face smiling back at him.

  The walls were different, though. Constructed from some exotic material, they looked rough and pitted like blackened sandstone. If he didn’t know any better, he would have guessed they were in some kind of bored out cave.

  “How far do you think it is to the end of the corridor?” Joseph asked as his focus nervously twitched from shadow to shadow.

  “Hoover,” Foster began to prompt his A.I. to perform another sonar scan. But a loud ping informed everyone that he was already on top of it.

  “At least one hundred feet, I can’t be more specific because the soundwaves are coming back distorted.”

  “It’s the walls.” Foster reached out and brushed their surface with his fingertips. And again, there wasn’t a trace of dust anywhere to be found. “The material’s slightly porous. More than likely, it’s absorbing some of the sound waves from the sonar.”

  “The floors are great though,” Joseph said with a deep appreciation for the hard work it took to maintain that quality of cleanliness. He knelt and smiled. “I bet someone had to polish the shit out of them to get them this shiny.”

  Uninterested in tales of squeegees and buffers, Justine’s mind shuddered at the view. She imagined thousands of those creatures sliding up and down the floor like angry calamari looking for payback. In college, she’d fallen in love with watching old grindhouse movies, and the title Kaleidoscope of Death kept flashing through her furtive mind.

  “Keep a steady pace,” she barked to the two men who seemingly forgot about all the death coming their way. If those things were going to start crawling out of the walls, Justine didn’t want to present a stationary target. “We can leave the sightseeing for the next trip.”

  As they neared the corridor’s center, Hoover activated the 8-ball’s sonar function once again. It lasted for only a second before silence returned to the creepy corridor. Thirty feet ahead, near the apex of the ceiling, light radiating from the 8-ball hit something in just the right way to draw Justine’s attention.

  Whatever it was shimmered like glass before disappearing back into the darkness.

  “Did you see that?” She halted their forward progress on a dime. With her left hand, she pointed down the corridor to where another piece of shimmering glass had appeared. “Is that one of them?” She whispered to Foster, “…one of those things.”

  “It could be.” Foster lifted his hand to block the powerful light from streaming into his eyes. “Or it could just be a polished piece of metal.”

  As the disturbance continued, she thought back to the observations both men had made a second ago while walking down the corridor. They said, ‘the floors were shiny, and the walls were rough’. Rough. The walls were rough.

  “Hoover,” she found herself whispering even though the machines might not have ears. “Could I get a countdown from ten minutes?”

  “Why?” Hoover pinged the ball again, and even with the interference from the walls, he registered their presence. “Once I begin, I’ll be out of contact, Agent Rushing. You’ll be on your own.”

  The whole team took these words as a warning, but Foster knew it was his friend’s way of trying to be comforting. Before he broke contact, Hoover seized the moment to privately remind Foster of the warning he had previously made. “Remember, I said she’d be the death of you.”

  Then, to all three, he marked the start of their suicide mission. “Ten minutes from right now.”

  As the PDS continued forward, more light hit the area surrounding the shimmering object. As it did, one shimmer became two. Two shimmers became four, and four to eight. Until the ceiling at the opposite end of the corridor was swarming with dozens of tiny metallic globs of sludge that looked like sentient mercury.

  “I sure hope that 2 percent holds.” Joseph pleaded as the first glob of goo fell innocently to the floor. When it landed, the group anxiously squared themselves for what was coming.

  “Don’t fire until they become solid.” Justine’s finger teased the trigger of her Slinger as the creature quickly formed into a monster that sprang forth from the darkness with malice etched across its alien features. “And once they do, don’t stop.”

  10 MINUTES

  Firing the plasma gun on level nine proved a bit counterintuitive to anyone familiar with a conventional firearm. Regular guns recoil backward, toward the shooter, due to the slide being forced back by the exploding gunpowder. However, the Slinger didn’t work that way. Because instead of a pushing motion, there was a pulling one.

  And Justine found this reverse motion to be little more than a slight jerk forward. Nothing her years of experience couldn’t handle. But at level ten, the gun practically tried to rip itself out of her hand. Which didn’t matter when you were shooting a frozen target on level 3. But in the middle of a chaotic battle, that difference in power meant everything.

  “Damn it, Foster!” Justine screamed as her Slinger fell to the floor again. “You designed these things like shit.” A round of plasma the size of a golf ball went careening down the corridor and just missed connecting with a large group of entities. “How am I supposed to hit anything if I can’t hold on to the gun?”

  In the docking bay, the first machine they encountered had morphed into something akin to a small scary dog. In the Popper drive, the goo took the form of a squid. On the third level, they were hounded by a slightly more menacing version of an engineer. But here, on a level deemed by the station to be ultra-high-level security, these inert puddles of goo had transformed into a horrifying amalgamation of a nightmarish pit bull and a slippery spider.

  “Do you have any idea how much power is being channeled through these weapons right now?” Foster held the gun tightly with both hands, firing it again and again. With each shot, his upper torso was visibly dragged forward by its powerful action.

  “Does it look like I give a shit about the specs?” Justine snatched her weapon from the floor then punched Foster squarely in the arm as hard as she could. She tried firing again, this time managing to hold on to the weapon.

  “Apparently not!” Foster fired two more times before rubbing what would surely become a large bruise on his bicep. “Has anyone ever told you that you’ve got a little bit of a temper?”

  She let off three more blasts before responding. “You read my file, what do you think?”

  To her immediate right, Joseph was on one knee carefully lining up his targets and trying very hard to ignore these early stages of flirting.

  Down the corridor, for the moment at least, their initial volley of plasma had managed to hold back the horde. But even from this distance, it was plain for the trio to see that their enemy’s numbers were growing.

  9 MINUTES

  One of the entities maneuvered clear of their suppressing fire, breaking free of the group long enough to bound toward their position on powerful, spindly legs. Startled by its quickness, Justine was the first to notice the creature’s single red eye.

  “Joseph!” She fired relentlessly into the middle of the half-formed mob. “One broke free! Take it out!”

  Joseph, who had been focusing his attention on shoring up the right side of their defenses, frantically began searching for the lone attacker. He caught sight of the creature as it passed in front of the 8-ball's fiber optics. The eight-legged dog hybrid bounded from floor to ceiling to wall in single leaps like a pinball off an agitated bumper.

  “What is that thing?” The alien deputy had run into many different species on his planet. However, none of that history compared to what he was tracking in his sights. “It looks like something out of a video game.”

  “You mean you haven’t seen a more advanced version of that somewhere else in the universe?” Foster laughed as he obliterated one entity after another. “That’s surprising.”

  “No, I haven’t!” Joseph squeezed his trigger, and a large ball of plasma went rocketing past his intended target. “Damn, that thing is fast,” he warned himself after two more attempts came to the same anticlimactic end. “This fucker moves like a frog on a hot plate.”

  “Just wait until it gets closer.” Justine kept firing away while still checking her ammo readout every couple of seconds. Surprisingly, the Slinger still showed eighty percent full. “Then, when it gets close enough, you can shoot it right between the eyes.”

  “You wait!” Joseph’s heart raced a mile a minute as the creature continued to dodge every one of his attempts to kill it.

  At twenty feet, the entities’ features finally became fully discernible. Heavy and low to the ground, the creature’s torso reminded him of an over-muscled bulldog. But instead of having the obligatory four legs, this thing had eight elongated metallic appendages, tipped with razor-sharp talons.

  Talons it used to rip and grip into every surface of the corridor.

  Guiding this monstrosity was a single red eye. An eye that upon closer inspection was made up of two distinct half ovals. Surrounding this eye was a circle of sharpened teeth that rotated and clicked like a slow-moving chainsaw blade. A chainsaw blade that looked perfectly designed to rend flesh from bone.

  At ten feet, Joseph saw the creature’s supposed mouth open full and whatever horror contained within triggered the primordial parts of his human brain to begin firing his hi-tech weapon even quicker. Nothing, he thought in an uncontrolled panic. Nothing human or alien should ever have those... things anywhere within them.

  At five feet, one of the plasma balls thankfully found its mark. The nightmarish body erupted into a shower of red and yellow sparks that, for a second, blinded him.

  “Maybe we should pull back… regroup!” he warned the others, unable to maintain any sense of calm. “We don’t want those things to get anywhere near us.”

  “Too late for that!” Justine looked in horror as three more machines broke free of their suppressive fire and hurtled toward them. “There are more!”

  8 MINUTES

  “What about your body?!” She screamed in futile anger as Joseph ignored her question and rushed headlong back to the elevator. Once there, he began frantically pressing on the bottom knob, but nothing seemed to be happening.

  This hasty maneuver left her and Foster in a bit of a pickle since they were forced to fall back without the aid of his cover fire. But after a few tense bursts of speed and more than a few inappropriate comments, they were within a few feet of their retreating partner.

  “Move!” She yelled for Foster to stop firing and retreat the last few feet to the deputy’s position. “I’ve got you.”

  Not used to trusting anyone except for Hoover and Mouse, he was surprised how simple it was to heed her orders and blindly run back toward the elevator at full speed. Sliding hard into the wall, he squatted beside Joseph then fired his weapon at the mass of machines just chomping at the bits to reach them.

  Over her left shoulder, Justine saw a plasma ball fly past her and eradicate an unseen creature preparing for its final strike. Instantly, she broke position and hauled ass the last ten feet back to the transportation tube’s entrance.

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  “You led us here!” She screamed at Joseph while dropping to one knee. “So, get that fucking door open NOW!”

  Her momentum carried her along the smooth polished floor and sent her crashing against the barrier with a thud. Wrenching her body around and ignoring the pain, Justine shimmied into a better shooting position next to Joseph. “What’s taking so long?”

  “It’s not working!” Joseph smashed his hand against the button so hard that blood began to gush from his palm. “It’s locked!”

  For a second, Foster thought about reaching into his satchel for his tablet. But the waves of monsters bearing down on them stayed his hand. It was becoming painfully clear that his A.I. program would have to save the day.

  He tried to remain calm as plasma fire erupted all around them. “We just need to hold them off for seven more minutes.”

  Justine double tapped another creature as it clawed over the remnants of its fallen brethren. Unfazed by their losses, four more ravenous entities scraped and bounced their way around and through a hail of electric blue gunfire toward the transportation tube’s entrance.

  “Seven minutes!?” Justine’s voice was barely audible over the ricochets and explosions. “We don’t even have two.”

  7 MINUTES

  The first hardened projectile hit the wall just above Joseph’s head.

  Unsatisfied with their progress, one of the creatures decided to change tactics by using one of its arms as a makeshift cannon. Camouflaged by the ever-growing wall of smoke-filled debris, Joseph didn’t even see the creature initially fire. And he only noticed that it did after a loud clank alerted him to where a talon was embedded three inches into hardened metal.

  “These things are shooting pieces of themselves at us now!” Joseph felt even more exposed than ever before.

  “Of course they are.” Justine rechecked her ammo counter. Thankfully, the thing read sixty percent. “Whatever they dissolve into once we kill them is making it almost impossible for them to get a solid grip. We’ve slowed them down!”

  For the first time since this whole thing began, the young agent started to have hope that maybe they could give Hoover his ten minutes. Of course, this burgeoning hope quickly faded when one of the creature’s talons sliced open her shoulder.

  “Shit!” She reflexively screamed in pain. “I’m hit!”

  “Are you ok?” Foster slid across the dust covered floor to where she had dropped to one knee. Quickly realizing that his concern meant less firing at the enemy, Justine shrugged off his unneeded but not unwanted concern.

  “I’m fine, Foster,” she bellowed through the pain. “I’ve had a lot worse!”

  From the darkened corridor, two more talons whistled through the air toward their much too exposed position. A second later, one of them cut a three-inch gash along Foster’s thigh.

  “Jesus Christ!” He clamped down on the wound and applied pressure. Behind him, buried four inches into the elevator door was another bloodstained talon.

  Before he could complain any further, three more creatures lurched forward through the gathering clouds of dust. Wounded or not, he still managed to take them out with ease. While on the right side of the corridor, another crack in their defenses opened and what must have been a dozen machines broke through.

  “Joseph,” Justine screamed. Her face was eerily illuminated by the never-ending stream of plasma from their guns. “They are getting through on your side!”

  She waited for his Slinger to produce a fresh volley of suppressive fire, but nothing came.

  In what could have been the quickest glance ever, Justine saw what happened to cause the lull and whatever small hope she had been tending withered away and died. Because the second talon’s target had been Joseph’s fleshy shoulder. And find its target the talon did.

  Now wounded, he lay moaning on the ground, trying unsuccessfully to wrench the piece of alien metal out of his body as blood streamed freely onto the floor.

  Foster allowed himself a half second to reassess their quickly deteriorating situation. And the only thing he could come up with was a wholly appropriate, yet completely discouraging phrase from an old Agatha Christie novel, ‘and now there were two’.

  6 MINUTES

  With the honed reflexes of a seasoned field agent, Justine scooped up his abandoned pistol and began to unload on anything in sight with the ferocity of a crazed wolverine. Both her hands armed, the Entities that had been making forward progress toward their exposed position were now being vaporized in a consecutive series of explosions.

  This scene was so primal that Foster was forced to stop shooting his own weapon long enough to marvel at the way she was dual wielding his devices. Amazingly, she was firing them so quickly that the Slinger’s tips began to glow bright blue from overheating. He would have kept staring, but a loud crash snapped him out of his trance and back into action.

  “We’re almost halfway there!” Foster yelled, trying his best to encourage her. “Hoover just needs a little more time.”

  “Hoover is going to be the only one that makes it out of here alive.” She barely stopped a creature that was five feet from their position. Its disintegrated remains drifted forward and landed on their already dirty feet. And for the first time, the smell of dead alien machinery assaulted her nose. “They’re going to overrun us and soon.”

  “We can hold!”

  “We can die.”

  “No way!” Foster slid across the floor until he was shoulder to shoulder with Justine. “You were the one who shanghaied me here, so you don’t get to give up. Understand?”

  Not knowing any of Agent Rushing’s buttons, his harsh tone was the only thing he could think of to make her angry.

  “Don’t start that shit with me, Foster.” Three more entities exploded in quick succession under her deadly aim. “If it hadn’t been for you and your nosy ass eight years ago, I would be home right now watching Battlestar Galactica and eating ice cream.”

  “You would have just found another way to do something dangerous and stupid.”

  “Well…” She executed two more machines which had been so close that when they were vaporized, she could taste their remains in her mouth. “I’m probably not going to get another chance to make that mistake again… happy?”

  “Bullshit,” Foster fired again and again and again. “We’ll survive this. And you’ll find another way to make my life miserable.”

  Justine was about to tell him off when the familiar whistle reached her ears. This sound was immediately followed by a sharp sting exploding into her left side. Shrugging off what she assumed was another flesh wound. It wasn’t until her body began to slump against the elevator door that she realized something was very wrong.

  Foster screamed as she skidded down to the floor. “You’ve been hit!”

  “No shit.” Weak from shock, Justine’s left hand became limp and involuntarily dropped Joseph’s slinger to the ground. Beside her, the deputy’s moans of pain could still be heard over the explosions of plasma. Instinctively, she wanted to help. But her current condition made that impossible.

  Instead, she used her good hand to fire at whatever nasty thing was stupid enough to poke its head out. “How much time?”

  Foster maneuvered himself in between Justine and the oncoming machines. The horde, having sensed a slowdown in their enemy’s resistance, utilized the lull in battle to consolidate their forces. During this short-lived reprieve, he couldn’t help but imagined those monsters sharpening their talons for one final attack.

  “You know?” He whispered, unable to bring himself to look at her. “You should have just left me at Wilson.”

  “Why?” She pulled herself onto her elbows and a searing pain shot down her leg. It was so intense that her foot started to twitch slightly. She looked for Foster, but his face was barely visible through all the dust.

  “Because…” He draped an elbow over her knees in a pathetic gesture meant to afford her body more protection. “Before this, I didn’t give a shit about anything other than Hoover and finding out what that signal meant. But now…”

  Foolhardy as his token sacrifice was, this attempt at chivalry meant more to her than a hundred Slingers or a thousand spaceships.

  “Now?” She had never felt more alone and scared than right at this moment. “What do you care about now?”

  “I care about…” the words stuck in his throat. With all this impending doom just fifteen feet away, sharpening their tiny little claws, nothing seemed difficult anymore. “A crazy person who seems to think helping people is more important than her own well-being.”

  “That includes you… you know. Why do you think I let you go to Joseph’s in the first place?” Justine’s confession was simple but powerful.

  In the darkness, Foster found her free hand and squeezed it gently. “I wish there could have been more time. I would have liked to have known you better.”

  Before she could respond, the corridor grew darker as the mass of entities had grown so large, they blocked out all the light coming from the 8-ball. Then, with no concept of mercy, the goo monsters lunged forward like a wave of hungry ants. Ants that scrambled across the once polished floor on small, unforgiving talons that clanked as one to form the sound of an inescapable death march.

  “Foster.” Never one for over sentimentalizing, Justine cut to the chase. “Just shut up and fire.”

  5 MINUTES

  For 57 seconds, the hallway of death looked like a roman candle except the balls of red star gun powder never left the tube. They just remained stationary and exploded all around one another until nothing existed but light and sound. From a certain point of view, this battle between humans and synthetic creatures was nothing short of mesmerizing.

  Or to put it simply, this battle was everything Justine could have ever hoped for in her glorious last stand against incredible odds. But from another, more realistic point of view, those 57 seconds were merely the temporary placeholder that preceded the eventual defeat of those same humans.

  So, after those 57 seconds flew by in a blinding spectacle of destruction, the only thing left for our intrepid explorers to do was to live through the last three. And those last three seconds stretched out like a slow-motion scene from one of those period movies — one where the hero of the story makes a final sacrifice one frame at a time.

  To begin, the first second involved Justine and Foster firing blindly in the direction of their oncoming doom. Balls of blue plasma erupted from their weapons then ricocheted off walls and machines in equal amounts. In the carnage, some entities paused as their brethren fell. But without the additional firepower of a third gun, and someone to wield it, the wave of slippery monsters continued forward quite easily.

  They only needed two more seconds to reach their goal.

  The next second involved 100 unfocused, unfeeling, and unmerciful creatures clamoring over each other to eliminate the threat Foster and Justine posed to their simple programming. There were no feelings of anger in their binary minds, no harbored digital animosity. No. These machines were created hundreds of thousands of years ago to do one thing and do it well.

  Kill the two humans who clung desperately to the last remaining second of their lives.

  The final second involved a choice.

  Foster knew his time was up. And at the end, not everything his mind processed was terrible. There were good things like freedom from Wilson, a solution to what the signal meant and the eventual resolution of his anger towards Fitz Hume. These were good things, right?

  This end had brought him good things.

  Though not entirely, because instead of happiness, he discovered this end only brought him a muted sense of peace and deep regret. Because in the process of achieving those things, he had chanced upon a person who had come to earn his trust and who, for some unknown reason, trusted him. That realization was unfair because Justine Rushing had regrettably become a mystery that he would never have a chance to solve.

  The last second also involved Justine kicking herself for dropping that stupid gun.

  If her hand had only held on for a couple more minutes, even with the injury, they might have survived. But now. Now those prisoners would most likely be implanted with the universe’s worst criminals. And the lives of three insignificant humans would be cast into the void never knowing what was truly going on here.

  But above these wasted opportunities was Foster. Why? Because for the first time in a long time, she had found a person who made her want to stop keeping everyone at a safe distance. Sure, she risked her life every day for strangers, but there were never any real connections to any of them. After all, forming connections left you open to caring.

  And failing to protect someone you care about brings about pain that is always too much to bear. That was a lesson she had learned at a very young age. A lesson that had shaped her whole life up until this very moment.

  But over the last few days, Justine had reluctantly formed a connection. A connection with a man who played with a broken phone like it was a marvel and dismissed marvels like they were broken phones. Who did that? Who saw things for what they could be, instead of what they were?

  Secretly, she was glad those things crawling toward them had no mercy, no remorse.

  Finally, the last-second involved an embrace.

  Four days ago, two strangers started on a simple journey to Elmira, New York, to solve a mystery. Now, at the end of that short journey, at the end of their lives, those same two strangers reached out for one another in a last, irrational attempt not to be alone at the end.

  So, as the final wave of mechanized death crested inches away from their piece of metal shoreline, Foster flung himself over Justine in one last ditch attempt to protect her wounded body. In return, she held on to him tightly, hoping desperately that their end would be swift.

  And without another automatic warning from Hoover, those three long seconds expired.

  4 MINUTES

  Covered by a thick layer of powder, Justine and Foster thought for the briefest moment that they had been buried alive. An appropriate conclusion since just a few seconds ago they were most assuredly dead. Though for some strange reason, now they weren’t.

  Foster tried to push himself off Justine, but her arms still clutched to him with all the strength they had.

  “Justine,” he whispered. “I don’t think we’re dead.”

  “What?” Confused and a bit embarrassed, she released her death grip. “We aren’t?”

  Now free, Foster stood up. Waves of dust spilled off his back and onto a floor already thick with the stuff. By accident, Justine breathed in some of the crud, which induced her to start coughing. “Here,” Foster gently brushed her face clean before helping get her into a sitting position. “Let me help you up.”

  To his right, he heard an almost inaudible breathing sound that turned out to be Joseph softly moaning. Covered in the powdered remnants of a rather large pile of machines, Foster extricated him from the debris and made sure that he was able to breathe freely.

  “What happened?” Justine pressed her hand against the still bleeding wound. “They were on us. They had us. Was the countdown wrong?”

  “I don’t know.” He tapped his earpiece, hoping for some more good news. “Hoover?”

  “I’m here.”

  “What happened?” Foster and Justine held their breath, oblivious to everything that had just occurred around them.

  “It didn’t take as long as I thought it would,” Hoover’s tone was flat and workmanlike.

  “That’s it?” The last few minutes washed over Foster like a torrential downpour of not caring. On the verge of tears, he spat out. “It didn’t take you as long as you thought it would. That’s all you’ve got to say?”

  “Why? Did something happen?”

  Foster turned to look at a pathetic looking Justine. Covered from head to toe in powdered monster, the only places on her face that seemed halfway human were the spots Foster had cleared away. Still, something about her smile took his breath away.

  “You know.” Foster slid closer, being careful not to disturb her wound. “Maybe it’s the high from not dying. But right now, I have the most overwhelming desire to kiss you.”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah. But I’m afraid that you might hit me.”

  “You’re probably right.” Justine laughed even though the large wound in her stomach ached terribly with every giggle. “But this might be your best opportunity. I’m in no position to fight back.”

  Her lips beckoning like that damn signal did eight years ago, Foster dared to lean in closer, deciding this might be the best time to attempt such a brazen move. Then suddenly, as if an alarm was going off, Joseph yelped out in extreme pain.

  “Are you alright?” Justine asked, concerned but pissed that their moment had passed. “Did something else happen? Are you in more pain?”

  To that last question, he nodded weakly. A sad gesture which prodded her to ask, “What can we do?”

  Getting to his knees, Foster took up her call to help and was about to make his way back over to the fallen man when Joseph pulled himself up into a sitting position. “You can stop flirting for one thing. I don’t think I can take any more.”

  “Sorry,” he lied sheepishly as he plopped back onto his butt.

  To add more craziness to the proceedings, Hoover again broke in over their earpieces with his best-concerned voice. “Has anyone been injured? Is anyone dead?”

  “No,” Foster plopped down on the floor next to Justine and prodded the shallow gash in his leg. Time and layers of dead goo monsters had staunched most of the bleeding. But he wasn’t quite sure if that was a good thing. “No one’s dead. But we are pretty banged up.” He looked at Justine and then smiled. “Some of us more than others.”

  “Well, if that’s the case. I have some good news.”

  Everyone in the group moaned at the same time. But Justine was the first of them to verbalize what they were all thinking. “Hoover,” she groaned loudly. “I don’t think we can take any more of your good news.”

  “No… this time is different, Agent Rushing.” Hoover scoffed at her mistrust. But years of being a conspiracy theorist had prepared him for such harsh rushes to judgment. “This time there’s a machine.”