In the opposite corner of the building, the hero climbed behind a stack of cans. A spray of flechettes punctured the paper with no resistance—there was no tin to the cans, only the labels and the haphazardly perched tops. The machines had already collected everything and then put things back so it looked like it hadn’t been touched.

The heroine fell and hit the floor. She had been darted, punctured across the face and shoulder.

You die too, Dot observed.

Against all odds, though, the heroine had managed to hold her breath. She got to her feet and she ran.

Dot climbed carefully, avoiding suspicious surfaces as she navigated the piles. She kept one eye out for things she could use and one eye on the heroine.

A box cutter, left on the surface by a past employee. Useful. Dot grabbed it.

One of the machines shifted position. Two legs on the ground in front of it, backside resting on the ground. Its face opened wide, and a salvo of missiles fired forth. Ten, twelve, metal canisters with streams of vapor painting the air in their wake as they flew in lazy arcs or even tumbled through the air before getting their bearings.

However haphazard they looked, they didn’t hit anything they weren’t supposed to. They traced courses between stacks of pasta and boxes of cereal, through the struts of metal shelves, and through the two-inch gaps between shelf and the floor below.

The heroine shot at shelves, bringing down the contents in showers that might block the missiles. Some missiles detonated. Others navigated the falling debris, and the heroine shot at those next.

Some missiles didn’t detonate, but they weren’t missiles in actuality. They were tricks.

The heroine backed up, then saw the two new arrivals, two more of the big ‘soldier’ machines. She ran for the door.

But the machines had had her since she had let them know she existed.

The heroine made it to the door, and then a metal skewer harpooned her hand.

Blow it up. Lose the hand, Dot thought. She realized she was rooting for the heroine despite herself.

The heroine fought, and she’d had to stop running to fight. More skewers impaled her forearm, then her other hand.

She used her power, she shot at shelves, but she lacked the angle. The machines reeled in, using the wires attached to the skewers, and the heroine was hauled into the air, arms out to either side, legs dangling.

Dot sat, and she waited. She ate more gummy multivitamins and she observed the machines. She watched as the mess was slowly cleaned up, boxes pulled back into position, products lined up, and sections of floor that had been shattered by missiles were fit together like jigsaw pieces.