Sam barely registered Nora's words over the clash. She grabbed her bag and whipped around to face the drone which, to her horror, had now disengaged multiple sections for individual targeting. Even worse, as her eyes swept across the length of the hall, she came to the realization that her attack hadn't just damaged their attacker. Boxcar's pitiable yelping and Ashley's roar of surprise now made much more sense to her. She let the bag's strap slide through her fingers until it slipped to the floor.

[i]"I can't risk doing that again."[/i]

Now, where had [i]that[/i] thought come from? In a house full of perfect strangers, more than half of them better equipped than to kill her with a gesture, the thought of continuing her sonic assault seemed somehow...wrong. It felt excessively sentimental to her, but she went with it. The plan, now, was to reach the others and regroup. There had to be a club, a wrench...[i]something[/i] Sam could use against these technological terrors.

But there was a problem. Through the confusion of battle, for which Sam again "thanked" Adrenaline, she could pick out at least three sections of the drone skittering down the hall...directly toward her. One target was bad enough, but three? She stopped in her tracks. Her mind went blank.

[hr]

Sam saw herself in that chair, again. It was terribly disturbing, being outside of one's body, but that feeling yielded to curiosity and anxiety. For a moment, she wondered if the drone had been a dream. This, then, would have been just another scene in the play her mind put on for her. Nightmare imagery was certainly not rare for her. But it didn't [i]feel[/i] like a dream.

As she drew closer, again examining the exposed brain matter at the top of her head, she observed the tiny metal spiders again probing her neurons. They seemed to be focused on the back half. Stranger still, Sam could [i]feel[/i] their pointed legs crawling around inside her head. It...was not painful.

One of the spiders seemed to be calling the others. It faced them, then set to work on a specific lobe. The others joined it. Sam could feel something change. She felt...

[hr]

Sam's dilated eyes sharply refocused. She clenched her jaw and, leaving the bag behind, ran out into the hall. Nora still had the only weapon she could safely use against these things. Ashley had been throwing lightning-charged punches at the thing, and with tremendous success. Her shock gloves did not carry as intense a charge, but with the werewolf temporarily incapacitated, they would not have the luxury of relying on her to recover quickly.

The spider-like drone segments briefly reminded her of the creatures from her dream, but...they were different. These things were a clear and present danger. The dream had been frightening, but she hadn't gotten the feeling that she was [i]unsafe[/i] with them. These attackers were another matter entirely.

She pumped her legs and charged. The three drone segments crouched in anticipation, no longer advancing. They appeared to be calculating a safe angle of counter-attack. Sam, knowing that an electronic system would never feel the pain, instead relied on the blinding effect of her capsaicin ejectors. She shoved her left sleeve upward and raked the device across their diminutive phalanx, splattering a thick, foaming substance across their sensor eyes. She leapt over them, trying for a Hollywood-style tuck-and-roll, but achieved only an unflattering bounce-and-slide.

"Doc!" She emptied her lungs with the effort to maximize volume, as she picked herself up. "[i]Gloves!"[/i]