✴

“So did we!” you say.

“Evidently.” She points to your captured familiar. “This is not the rendezvous point. Should we compare notes?”

“Yeah we’re both here anyway. Once I found a trace of Haze’s technopathy I followed the trail until I noticed a numerical pattern, it was like 59049, 19683, 6561, 2187...” you say. “So I realized it would end up here and laid an ambush.”

“Similarly, we noticed such a pattern of directories, 282475249, 44353607, 5764801. We cut it off at 823543 and 5 neutralized its escape subroutine,” 7 says.

“I see, you caught it sooner,” you say. “But then why did you come here?”

“Much like you, I realized the pattern was reducing to 1, and assumed such a directory would exist. We decided to see what it was headed toward.”

“Then if we hadn’t caught them, they would have met up here and ‘all would be lost,’” you say.