Sandra’s police training kicked in, and she immediately dropped prone to the floor, as the sizzling hot beam of light singed the air above. She arched her head upward, and beheld, stomping towards her, the silhouettes of three Lurge assault bots, the barrels of their cannon-arms glowing orange and already charging up for another barrage. Sandra glanced around wildly for cover. There was a stack of crates some yards off to her left, and she began to scramble for them, though she knew she was unlikely to cover the distance before the volley hit, and instinctively closed her eyes, bracing for painful annihilation.

At that instant, she felt a powerful force seize her by the back of her jacket, lift her off of the ground, and, with a speed that felt as though she were being hurled through the air, deposit her safely behind a stack of metal boxes. The next thing she was aware of was a hand sweeping across her torso and seizing her pistol from its holster.

Falling on her hands and knees, gasping, Sandra looked up to see, silhouetted in the nearly-blinding blaze of the laser beams, the figure of Venus, in a perfect combat stance, and returning fire with her pistol. At first, it seemed suicidal; surely she would be cut to ribbons by the deadly beams. But then, a translucent mist shimmered into view around Venus, deflecting the energy away from her, and she stood her ground, firing again and again with calm control. Sandra could not see over the boxes, but she could hear the rounds hit home with repeated metallic thuds. Shortly, the clanking of the assault bots ceased, as did their cannon fire. Venus lowered the weapon, turning to look at Sandra.

The two stared at each other for a moment, breathing heavily.

“Military cyborg enhancements,” Venus said finally. “They gave them to me when I was in the Service. Experimental; top secret thing. ‘Operative of the future,’ they said. Then, a couple years later; new government, new priorities. They RIF’d me, and outlawed all weaponized robotics. So I couldn’t get work anywhere—nobody was willing to hire me and risk all the lawsuits. So,” she said furtively. “That’s my deal. Sorry I didn’t tell you. I just didn’t know if I could…”

“Don’t apologize. Ya’ll just saved my bacon. Thank you.” said Sandra. She paused. “And. . . that was awesome.”

“Anytime. You hurt?” Venus by now kneeling beside her and gently prodding her torso for injuries.

“Whoa, this is so hot,” came the voice of Charlie, who was standing in the doorway of the stairwell, peeking out at them.

Venus rose, turned, briskly crossed the yards between them, picked the young man up by the waist, twirled him around over her head blindingly quickly, and plunked him down unceremoniously where he had stood.

“Thank you again,” said Sandra. “Now we need to figure out what the hell is going on with these robots. Didn’t chucklehead say,” Sandra nodded at Charlie, “that these things had to be activated from the main office—where he just was?”

Venus leveled the pistol at Charlie. 

“I swear, I didn’t do it!” he protested. He had been shaking his head to try to clear it, and now raised both hands in the air. “I didn’t touch a thing! Maybe it activated automatically when you logged in as Mr. Lurge!”

“Why on Earth should that be?” 

Charlie made a motion halfway between a shrug and a twitch. “How should I know? All I’m saying is, I didn’t do it, okay?”

Venus glanced at Sandra, but kept the weapon aimed at Charlie’s chest.

“Tell ya what, Chuck,” Sandra said, a slight smile curving one side of her mouth. “As I recall, you said something to the effect that, even when the robots are activated, they respond to the voice of Lurge personnel, isn’t that so?”

“Uh, yeah… yeah, I guess so.” 

“Well, then, I reckon you can lead the way , and talk down any more of these things that we run across.”

Charlie swallowed hard. 

“She’s right,” Venus added. “I can hold my own against these things, but I can’t cover the both of you at the same time. If we run into a bunch of them, we’re in trouble.”

“But…”

“It’s our best bet for getting out of here. C’mon, let’s go find that back door that Lurge used.”

Reluctantly, and still shaking his head, Charlie followed as they walked towards the rear of the factory. They stayed close together, with Venus in the lead, pistol drawn. The distant percussion of more infantry bots patrolling echoed all around them, making it difficult to tell from which direction the sound came. They kept close to the walls, creeping between different points of cover.

“Okay, we’re coming up on the door,” Venus hissed at last. “And there’s seven, no, eight of the damn things guarding it.”

“How—?” Sandra began, squinting into what appeared to her to be complete blackness. “Oh. Retinal enhancements, right. Dumb question.” she muttered.

“Okay, Charlie,” Venus said as they moved closer to the door, concealing themselves behind a stack of scrap metal. “Do your bit.”

Charlie took one glance at the pistol in Venus’ hand and swallowed hard. He peered hesitantly over the pile of metal, and called out to the lumbering machines, “Attention! Um, attention! This is Charlie Bradler, ID number 410-D.”

The machines all turned as one, the red cores of light that glowed within their metal-mesh skulls pulsating ominously. 

“Um, that’s right. Charlie Bradler. 410-D. Please stand down and assume passive stance for human inspection, please,” he said, trying his best to strike a tone of authority.

The machines did not obey the command however, instead raising their arm-mounted cannons and firing. Venus leapt in front of Charlie as he dove behind the metal pile, raising her arm to again create a barrier.

“This won’t hold up long,” she said. “Start running!”

Together, the three retreated back into the factory, dodging stray lasers as the infantry bots mounted a pursuit. 

“What the hell, kid?” Sandra shouted at Charlie as they clambered and scrambled across ancient manufacturing equipment.

“I don’t know!” he cried, “It should have worked!”

 Venus continued to fight a delaying action as best she could, but soon the pistol ran out of ammunition. 

“You got any more ammo?” she called to Sandra, blocking a laser blast with a flick of her free hand.

“In the car,” Sandra replied grimly.

“Damn. Okay, let’s make a break for it,” Venus ordered. Quickly, she closed the gap between herself and Sandra, striding across the floor with incredible speed. She raised her arms as if holding an invisible shield behind the three of them, and then gripped both by their collars. Lifting them off the ground, she accelerated, hurtling through the maze of boxes, machinery and roaming assault bots. The gargantuan machines tried to draw a bead on them as they sped by, but Venus’ moved much too quickly for the powerful but lumbering battle platforms to deploy their weapons accurately. Errant lasers struck walls, stacks of boxes, and even other robots, but none hit the three fleeing people.

At last, they came in view of the door by which they had entered, and Venus was beginning to slow down. Her grip on the other two slackened, and they stumbled on their own feet the last few yards—Sandra managing to slap the control panel as they slipped through to shut the door behind them. All three collapsed to the floor beside Charlie’s desk, Venus from exhaustion, Sandra and Charlie from motion sickness.

“Must… recharge…” Venus panted. 

“We can’t stop here,” Sandra said, gasping for air herself, and trying to desperately to keep the contents of her stomach down. “Those things will get through the door eventually. We need to get to the car.”

“We can’t!” Charlie groaned. 

Sandra shot him a look. “What do you mean?”

“Look!” He gasped the word, pointing a shaking finger towards the glass doors and into the parking lot beyond.

At first, there seemed nothing noteworthy about the scene. But as they watched, they perceived the light of the lamps seemed very weak. Only about half were lit at all, and soon, these too began to flicker and die out. 

“It’s the Eidolon!” Charlie whispered. “It’s coming!”

“What?” Venus exclaimed, looking around wildly.

“He’s talking on our comm sets,” Sandra said, tapping her ear piece. Her momentary surprise had given way to annoyance. “It’s his favorite trick; you’ll get used to it eventually.”

“Really, Sandy; so cynical!” Max clucked in his velvety baritone. “The fact of the matter is, I wasn’t able to get through to you for quite some time.”

“The factory floor must have blocked service,” Venus mused.

“Quite possibly. I have some news for you. I’ve been ‘following the money,’ as they say, and I’ve found a bit of a bombshell. It took a surprising amount of digging, but I’ve learned that Lothar Lurge was no longer the owner of the Lurge family robotics factory, effective September 30.”

“What? Then who was?” Venus asked.

“Mrs. Lurge, of course. The company transferred to her sole ownership on that date. And that’s not all I found, either. Are you ready for this one? The Lurges’ divorce was finalized on that same date!”

Venus and Sandra exchanged a look.

“Well, I guess that isn’t too surprising, uh, given what we just read.”

“No, indeed. But you can see this casts Mrs. Lurge in quite a different light.”

Venus nodded, and then remembered Max couldn’t see her, and added, “Sure does. Find out anything else?”

“I did! Before he, ah, ‘passed away,’ Mr. Lurge had wrapped up a deal with the state to let them take over running day-to-day operations and receiving revenues from events on the grounds.”

“What!”

‘That’s right—you remember, Mrs. Lurge said the state had been trying to buy them out for years.”

“So what about the whole thing with McIntyre?” Venus asked.

“Most likely a red herring,” Max finished, “Thrown in to put us off the trail.”

“You mean… Mrs. Lurge was lying to us?”

“Let me posit a hypothetical series of events,” said Max. “See if you don’t agree that it has at least a better than 50/50 chance: Mrs. Lurge finds out about her husband’s infidelity, and she is outraged. She further finds that he intends to effectively abandon the family business by turning the proceeds over to the state. That’s the last straw. So she seizes control of the family firm, and brings old Lothar here, unsuspecting, and has him murdered in the night by his own machines!”

There was a long pause, broken only by the rumbling of the thunder. 

“But then why would Mrs. Lurge hire us? She’d already committed the crime and gotten away with it.” said Venus.

“Why, to assist in the final masterstroke: the framing of Mr. McIntyre for the crime! She wanted to settle the old score with the McIntyres along with everything else. So, she contrived things, told us stories of the McIntyre’s interference with operations, to plant the suspicion in our minds. She wanted us to come here, find what we were supposed to find, and point the finger at McIntyre.”

Another pause.

“What do you think, Sandy?” Max asked at last.

“I dunno… maybe.” She murmured. “I just feel like… feel like…”

She whirled around suddenly.

“Like somebody’s staring at our asses instead of standing guard like I told him to,” she barked at Charlie, who had advanced into the room and had been hovering behind the two women.

He yelped and leapt backwards. “No, no,” he insisted, “I heard a man’s voice in here and wondered what was going on.”

Venus shook her head. “C’mon, let’s see what else we can find on this machine.”

Sandra locked eyes with Charlie and pointed firmly to the door, and he grudgingly retreated.

“Hey, look; here’s a message with the kid’s personnel file,” Venus said loudly enough to be heard in the hall as she scrolled through the menus.

“What!” Charlie huffed.

“No worries,” she said cheerfully. “Looks like your performance reviews are all strong… let’s see… ‘perfect for the job,’ ‘sensitive to company’s needs,’ a note from Mr. Lurge saying ‘hire this boy at once—he’s perfect.’ Wow, all that, and not a harassment complaint in sight, who’d have thought?”

Sandra chuckled. “What else you got in there?”

Venus continued scrolling through with incredible speed. “Well, there’s a long email exchange here with Mr. Lurge’s lawyers.”

“What’s it about?”

“Arguing over the terms and conditions of his agreement with the state… ‘the party of the first part agrees…’ ‘herewith the party referred to as the ‘operator’ shall agree to…,’ ‘if, after a period of less than 60 days, the goods are found to be faulty, the party referred to as owner shall recompense…,’ blah blah blah…”

Sandra nodded. 

“And then there’s this,” Venus continued triumphantly, continuing to read at an incredible speed. “Some emails between Lurge and McIntyre. It’s a thread that goes back quite a ways, but the last message is from the day of Mr. Lurge’s death. It’s from McIntyre—it says:

‘I’m confirming what we discussed this morning at the Chamber meeting. As we agreed, I’ll meet you on your premises this evening. I’m not sure what you believe will come of this, but you have my word, I’ll be there, as planned.’”

The two investigators exchanged a glance. 

“That’s a bit of a—I mean, why would Lurge have invited him?” Sandra asked.

“Maybe he didn’t. Maybe McIntyre just sent that message to make it look like he had.”

“Could be, I guess. Still, something doesn’t add up.”

“There’s still one more angle we need to investigate,” Max chimed in. “Mrs. Lurge said that her late husband had entered by a back door. Have you been able to find that?”

“No, not yet,” Sandra answered. “Charlie!” she barked.

“Still here, guarding the rear.”

“Where’s the door that Mr. Lurge came in the night of his death?”

“Oh, um, it’s back down in the factory. At the very back, near where they keep the scrap metal.”

“Right, got it.” Sandra turned to Venus. “Can you download those emails? I have a data stick in my purse—”

“Don’t worry, got one right here,” Venus interjected. “You go ahead; I’ll catch up.”

Sandra shrugged, and made her exit. She and Charlie began to retrace their steps back down to the factory floor.

As she descended the steps, she fancied she heard a distant clanking noise echoing from a distance. Probably hail on the metal roof. As she exited the staircase, it seemed to become more pronounced, as if it were all around her. She felt slightly unnerved by it, but shook her head. It’s that stupid kid’s ghost stories, getting to me. Grow up, girl! she thought to herself.

With that thought, she turned on her heel and walked deeper into the darkness. But when the clanking persisted, she stopped and spun around just in time to see an eerie red glow looming out of the blackness, follow by a high-pitched whine and a sudden blaze of light roaring at her head.

Charlie’s eyes widened as the implication dawned on him. “Wait… you mean… me?”

“I didn’t say that,” Sandra replied. “But at the same time… You were the only one here that night.”

“No… absolutely not!” Charlie protested. “I didn’t—like I said, I was holed up at the front.”

“Until your alleged ghostly entity forced you to come back this way, according to your story.”

“What? No; look, that’s what happened, I swear. I came back here, and I found Mr. Lurge. It was the first I saw him or knew he was here! I would never have done anything to him, anyway—he was a good boss! He gave me this gig and he was always nice to me.” 

“Calm down,” said Venus. “We’re not accusing you.”

Charlie seemed not to have heard. “I’ll tell you what happened—it was the ghosts! Samuel, I guess. Maybe something else. But that’s the only way it makes sense—they must have brought the robots online and had them kill Mr. Lurge. Probably to get revenge on the family, I guess.”

He paused to catch his breath, and Sandra seized her opportunity:

“This ghost business has got to stop, okay? I’m not saying you’re implicated, but spouting nonsense won’t help your case, understand? Just be cool, kid.”

Charlie nodded, still looking quite frantic.

“You said the bots have to be activated in the main office—where’s that?”

“It’s in the center of this building. We’ll have to go further into the factory and then go up a couple floors. But it’s—“ he paused abruptly, seeming not to know what to say.

“It’s what?” 

“Uh, well, I don’t know how to… that is…”

“It’s something else about ghosts, isn’t it?” said Venus.

“Uh, yeah.”

“Look, we can handle any ghosts, okay?” Sandra said firmly. “Take us to this office.”

Charlie swallowed hard and then pointed the way. Together, the three continued past the long, silent line of mechanical warriors, which were sporadically illuminated by the blue glow of lightning flashes. The storm outside was drawing near, and the narrow window slits where the wall met the ceiling rattled in the increasingly violent wind.

At last, they reached a sort of central pillar made of huge concrete blocks, inside of which was molded a stairwell leading up into blackness. The three went inside and up the winding stairs, advancing slowly, sweeping the beam of Sandra’s light before them. Once, Venus abruptly held out a hand, pressing it into Sandra’s chest to bring her to a halt.

“What are you doing?” Sandra demanded.

Venus nodded upward, and Sandra raised the beam of her light in the direction indicated, till it fell upon a huge, hairy spider scurrying into a crack in the wall. 

“Whoa, thanks. How did you know that was there?”

Venus shrugged. “Sixth sense, I guess.”

They began to move forward again when a muffled noise from behind made them turn around. Charlie remained on the landing, staring at the wall. 

“I hate spiders, okay?” he said. “Can’t we just blow this haunted pop stand and come back in the daytime?”

“We’re going to the office,” Sandra said. “You wanna stay down, be my guest.”

Considering this, Charlie reluctantly followed. “Sure, you two probably feel safer with me.”

 At last, they came to the top of the last flight, and a battered red door that opened into a long hallway. This hall was more luxurious than the industrial, unpainted metal-and-concrete of the lower levels. It was carpeted with avocado-green shag and the walls featured vintage Lurge adverts depicting bots in alien landscapes or space stations. There were doorways every few yards, leading to vacant offices.

“These are the executive suites,” Charlie said. “I’ve only been up here once, for my interview. That’s when Lurge told me about the control panel in his office. It’s at the end of this hall, on the right.”

And indeed, as they reached the end of the corridor, they saw to their right a large wooden door, with a brass nameplate bearing the words, “Lothar Lurge, President and CEO”

Charlie stepped forward and inserted his key into the lock. He turned it hesitantly, and the door creaked open.

“Look at you, with a key to the boss’s office,” Sandra remarked.

“Naturally,” he said, some of his old bravado returning. “Old Man Lurge knew I’d need a master key since I kept the whole joint secure at night.”

Lurge’s office was fairly spacious.  An area at the front, separated from the main space by avocado-colored dividers, had a desk and filing cabinets, was presumably for a secretary — Miss Ritter, according to the nameplate.  The larger, executive desk sat at the rear of the room, in front of a massive bank of windows against which the rain continued pounding. 

“So, where are the controls you were talking about?” 

“I think they’re at Mr. Lurge’s desk, but I don’t know exactly”

“Okay. Stay just outside in the hallway and  guard the door,” Sandra commanded, as she and Venus hurried to the desk, and started looking at the panels of monitors, buttons and switches arrayed there. 

“It wants a password,” said Sandra, opening a window on the largest terminal. “Do you know it?” she called to Charlie, who shook his head.

“Hey, I’m pretty good at guessing passwords,” said Venus, resting her fingers on the keypad and closing her eyes, as if concentrating for a moment. Then her fingers flew, and immediately, the words “Access Granted” flashed on the screen.

“How’d you do that?” Sandra asked in amazement.

“Something I picked up in the FES,” the other woman replied with a shrug. “Here, let’s do some digging.”

Together, they read through the messages on the mail client, which was automatically displayed on the screen. Most were uninteresting reminders, alluding to meetings and deals they had no knowledge of. 

“What’s this here?” Sandra said, pointing at one message, from Mr. Lurge to Miss Ritter. Venus opened the message and read aloud:

Babe —

I need to expedite matters. She’s been looking daggers at me every morning, and it gives me the creeps. I think I’ve got a plan.  I’ll give you the details — and a whole lot more — when you get back.

–L.

“Ewww!” said Sandra and Venus in unison as they exchanged shocked looks. “Well, I don’t like the sound of that!” said Venus, with a scandalized expression.

“Neither do I,” said Sandra.

“Me neither, ladies,” the voice of Max concurred, causing both of them to start.

They rode in silence out of Gelunbu and onto the outer beltway. The sun was sinking low in the sky, and the clouds gathering on the horizon were deep blue against the blazing orange of the autumn light. As the towers of the city receded into the distance, they found themselves racing into a multicolored world of the splendid autumn leaves, punctuated at intervals by signs indicating off ramps, and occasional neon advertars—huge, semi-transparent three-dimensional figures, drawing glowing letters in the air with messages like, “Hughes’s Groovy House of Hovercars: Lease A New Myra With No Money Down”  and “A New Age Dawns: Buy From Katie’s Acrylics Now!”

Finally, Venus broke the silence: “You know, I told you my background, but I didn’t ask yours. How did you come to be here?”

Sandra kept her eyes on the road. “I was a cop. Then I quit and started doing this.”

There was a pause, until Venus realized she wasn’t going to continue. “So… any family?”

“I have a brother lives outta state. Haven’t seen him in years. He’s some kind of manager at a rocket lab, I think.”

“No boyfriend? Girlfriend? Cat? Dog?”

“Look,” said Sandra, finally jerking her head around to look at Venus. “I’m not lookin’ to be buddies, okay? For some reason, Max brought you aboard. I don’t know why, he didn’t ask me, and I don’t like it. I’ll work with you, ‘cause that’s what he pays me for, but—”

Venus interrupted. “Look—it’s a long story; we probably don’t have time for it right now. But I’m not replacing you, not at all. Max had to hire me for a very specific reason, and it’s not about you. Well, I guess it is kind of about you, in that Max won’t shut up about how awesome you are, and that I could learn a lot from you.”

Sandra was more than a little taken aback by this, and was tempted to ask her to say more, but at that moment, the Exit sign for “Lurge Robotics” appeared, and the car veered onto the off-ramp, and the huge exhaust towers of the factory loomed up over the trees like a battery of cannons, surrounding a huge cooling tower with the single word “LURGE” across it in fifteen-foot-tall letters.

The two women wound their way down the narrow road that ran behind the sprawling complex, gazing across the open field that separated the road from the chain-link fence at the edge of the factory yard. In the light of the setting sun, the orange glint in the windows of the long, rusty-red buildings made the old plant seem as though it had sprung into action again, once more forging armies like those that had waged the Great Robot War of ’57. 

But only for a moment. Then the angle changed and the reflection vanished, and the sprawling industrial campus appeared once more as it really was—dead and desolate.

The hatchback pulled up to the front gate, which lifted automatically and allowed them to enter.

“This certainly looks inviting,” Sandra muttered as they pulled to a stop and the car settled to the ground. They climbed out of the vehicle and walked across the eerily empty asphalt of the parking lot, the chilly breeze whooshing against them as they went. Sandra pulled her red leather blazer tighter, her hand brushing the strap of her shoulder holster as she did so. She stopped abruptly and turned to Venus, who was clad only in a dress slacks and a thin grey sweater.

“You got a gun?” Sandra asked.

“No, I don’t.” 

Sandra sighed impatiently. “Ugh; well, you better get one soon. Get yourself a JEK-17; there’s nothin’ else like it. It’s heavy, but it packs a punch.” She patted the holster under her jacket.

“I’m sure you can cover me if it comes to that,” said Venus, her mouth twitching a bit. “Besides, are you really expecting to get in a shoot-out here?”

Sandra shook her head. “I dunno what kinda training they gave you in the FES, but I don’t want to argue about it now; it’s freezing out here.” 

They walked briskly to the nearest building, the only one that was lit. An electric glow illuminated a sign that read “Visitor Check-In” There was a wheezy chime as the door slid open, and they entered a dimly-lit waiting room. At the desk was seated a skinny young man of about twenty, wearing an ill-fitting uniform, with a police-style hat perched backwards on his head. He had been engrossed in something on  a small tablet device, but glanced up and set it aside on hearing them enter. 

“Geez!” he said, standing up and straightening his dark green tie. “I mean—whoa!” He stared at them wide-eyed, mouth curving into a smirk.

“Hello,” said Venus, extending a hand. 

There was a pause of a few seconds before the dazed guard reciprocated the gesture. 

“I’m Venus Miles, and this is Sandra Darcy. We’re private investigators.”

“And our eyes are up here,” Sandra said sharply, keeping her own hands at her sides.

“Sure thing,” the young man said, blinking and re-focusing his gaze slowly, “Charlie Bradler, chief of overnight security for Lurge Robotics.” He paused as if to divulge something significant.  “Keepin’ it going all night long.”

Sandra fought the urge to roll her eyes.  She continued evenly, “You were on duty the night of October 1 of this year?”

 “Uh, yeah; I was. Manning ‘Control Central’ as usual.”

“You discovered Mr. Lurge’s remains?”

“Sure did.”

“Walk us through your exact routine, please.”

“Well, um, I came in 7PM, checked out everything, activated the security system, and then took up my position.”

“How does the security system work?”

Bradler shrugged. “Dunno  exactly; she’s a state-of-the-art, proprietary system.” He jerked his head in the direction of a rather old-fashioned panel on the wall behind his desk. “I just enter codes into that panel to turn it on every night. Mr. Lurge said activating those motion sensors was the most important part of the job; he had the whole thing installed special, and he told me it was my responsibility to keep it running.”

“Do you ever patrol the premises? Check things out?”

He smirked. “Oh, yeah; I check things out, that’s for sure.”

Sandra rolled her eyes again. “Just answer the question.”

“Every couple of hours yeah; I go on my rounds, sure. That’s what I was doing when I found him.”

“But you had no idea he was in the factory prior to finding his remains?”

The young man fidgeted with his clip-on tie. “Right… I… um… heard noises… but I didn’t… I figured I should keep monitoring from The Bridge.”

Sandra’s gaze hardened.

“You’re the night watchman. You heard strange noises, and you didn’t investigate?”

He looked down furtively for an instant, then tried to resume his previous cocky manner.

“Old Man Lurge told me about some stuff that might go down here.  Gave me a real good handle on what needs to be looked into, and what needs to be let alone.”

Sandra continued to stare him down. “What kind of a guard are you?”

“You don’t understand!” He blurted out. “The factory is haunted! There have always been weird noises at night, and it’s not from anything alive or natural. It freaks me out, and I keep away.”

Sandra shook her head. “Seriously, kid?” 

“It’s true!” he insisted. “You must have heard the stories—you know, they play it up like it’s all fun and games for the little kids, but this place is weird! Old Man Lurge knew; he told me about it, too. When he hired me, he said ‘Son, there’s stuff in there I don’t understand. You’ll hear it late at night sometimes. You just leave it alone.’ And that’s what I was doing,” he finished in a rush.

Sandra’s eyes darted to Venus, who was trying to suppress a smile.

“Okay,” Sandra said after a moment. “But you did eventually go onto the factory floor, right?”

“Sure, I’m supposed to poke my head in the door of the factory and shine a light around. So that night, around 3AM, I did that. And…”

Sandra cut him off.  “You made your first rounds eight hours after your shift started?’

Bradler shrugged.  “I was busy.”

After a moment or two, when no further explanation was offered, Sandra sighed. “Can you show us the exact place?” Sandra asked, “We need to inspect the scene of the incident.”

He gulped, then recovered some of his earlier bravado.  “Definitely!  But you know, I probably shouldn’t leave the Main Entrance unguarded for that long. You ladies are professionals,” he smirked, “and I’m sure I can trust you on your own.  I can monitor your movements from here.” He gestured grandly towards a row of security camera displays, only one of which seemed to be functional.

“But, Charlie, we need you to show us the exact spot.  We’d never find it on our own,” insisted Venus.

“What—now?” 

“‘He who hesitates is lost.’”

“Look,” he said, glancing nervously towards the long corridor behind him, barely lit by a single bulb hanging by a wire from the high ceiling. “It’s super freaky back there. Can’t we go some other time—when it’s sunny?”

“No,” said Sandra, walking past him and starting down the hall. “Unlock this door and take us back there.  You don’t want us telling Mrs. Lurge you’re holding up our investigation.”

The young man looked around wildly, first at Venus, then back at Sandra, then down at his desk, then back to Venus again, as if hoping some solution would become apparent. But he soon realized nothing would dissuade Sandra and scurried down the hall after her, till finally they reached the huge metal door at the back. He approached a small console beside the door and with trembling fingers, swiped a card and entered a passcode while Sandra watched, arms folded, foot tapping the floor impatiently.

“There you go,” he said, after finally managing to enter the code correctly. Within seconds, the thick walls, gears growled and groaned with motion, and the metal slab began to slowly rise.

“Thank you,” said Sandra. “That wasn’t so bad was it? Now how’s about you show us just where you found Mr. Lurge?”

Even in the gloom of the dark hallway, it was clear that the color was draining from his face. “You want me to go in there?”

“You ask too many questions,” Sandra said. “Yes, come in and show us where you found him. It can’t be that bad in here; after all, you came in the night you found him.”

“That was… different,” he muttered.

“How so?” asked Venus, who had come down the hall behind him, and whose sudden arrival beside him caused him to whirl about. 

“Oh, it’s only you,” he said, clutching his chest in relief. “Titan, was it?”

“Venus,” she corrected primly.

“Oops… wrong heavenly body.” This line he accompanied with a feeble attempt at his swaggering manner, though it looked more like the grimace of someone shivering in the cold. Sandra snorted theatrically, but Venus acted as though she hadn’t heard him at all.

“Now, come on, tell us what was different that night that made you go into the factory.” 

Bradler seized this opportunity to both delay and explain himself, and began:

“Here’s the lowdown: there are different ghosts around here, and you get to know which ones are acting up on a certain night. Some nights, you’ve got Samuel in the factory. He was an old line manager back in the day. They say he pitched over the side onto the factory floor one day when they were in full production. The emergency breaker kicked in too late, and he… he was crushed by one of the bots. And ever since, his ghost comes round here, rattlin’ the equipment and crying out in anger.”

Sandra said nothing—it was clear that Charlie was one of those witnesses that you had to let tell a story their own way—but she rubbed her temples and began to rifle through her purse for some aspirin.

“…there’s a couple other minor ghosts, too; like the woman in white who lives in the accounting department. She’s the widow of a line-worker who died during Mr. Lurge Sr.’s time. But,” he added, sensing he should come to the point. “The worst of all is the thing we call. . . ‘the Eidolon.’”

He said this peculiar word  with an air of great self-importance, and looked at them, clearly expecting a reaction.

“What’s that?” Venus asked.

”The Eidolon,” Charlie repeated, glancing furtively around, “Is the most horrible, dreadful, scariest, most absolutely evil thing in the whole world.”

A low, ominous rumble from somewhere above them lent weight to the young man’s words.