Thirteen tracks from a world before time stopped.

The chants of the monks in her ears grew louder as she exited the trunk line and made her way down the electronic offshoot that would take her to her destination. When she came to the gatekeeper, whose sigil was a rotating multi-faced emoji cube, she slotted the icebreaker into the virtual console. Immediately, the gatekeeper began to dissolve from the inside out, like a large yellow Menger sponge.

She began the search for the data record she came for, filing through three million records before coming to record HYWAPFTSE12. She accessed the record, stashed the contents into her mobiRAM unit, and began the process of backtracking through the network.

She made a sharp turn at the final trunk network on her return and sensed the something was off. Her clock was off by 9ms compared to the base time on her console, which confirmed her fear. Somewhere on her entry she had connected to a resonance link, which had proxied the last nodes of her access through a hollow node. She couldn't be sure of which point it had happened, but her access point was likely burned, and every moment she spent here was another moment wasted for her escape topside. They were likely closing in on her corporeal location now, and there was a good chance the resonance link was actively shifting her return path. It was probably less cat and mouse now, more like tiger and mouse, but if she focused, she knew she could make her way back. She shifted all resources from her defense processor to her navigation processor, exposing herself to tangential attacks, but upping her game in finding her way back home. Twisting back repeatedly through a series of nodes in alternating order broke her out of the influence of the link.

She gasped and sat up, yanked the plugs from the console, stuffed it into her bag, and dashed out the door, into the hall, past the reception desk, and out onto the street, making an immediate right turn into a narrow dimly lit passage in between the buildings. She passed the young man from the food cart she had visited on the way to the motel, who was apparently on a vape break. He exhaled as he turned, hearing her approach on the path of thumb-sized river rocks, giving her a nod. She winced, wondering if he was one of them, and ducked through the thick cloud of vapor, which smelled of nutmeg and cinnamon.

She made her way to the end of the passage, and onto the narrow tourist street with all the restaurants. Was she safe? She gripped the pepper spray in her pocket in her right hand tightly. She had assumed she would have run into someone waiting for her either inside or outside the motel. Was the resonance link left over from prior stings, like an abandoned mine? After walking stiffly for another ten minutes, she recognized the motsunabe place where she was supposed to meet Maurice. The glow of the nearly human sized red lantern bathed the front of the restaurant in a warm red glow. She adjusted the bag on her shoulder and opened the door. "Irasshaimase!" announced the man behind the reception stand.