...but the building was empty. A noise above her made her look to the ceiling. Something arachnid and pyuter-metallic scrabbled through a hole in the roof, then, like an aerician, spread polythene wings and flew. She knew it must somehow have created the illusion they had just experienced, or at least been the channel along which the illusion had passed.
Rhannan walked out into the street, Subadwan and Aswaque following. Rhannan looked up at the flying device. “Some pyuter spy,” she said. “Bat spawn most likely. Well, that is the last time any of us will have contact with the Archive of Safekeeping. They are a cult of lunatics. Aswaque, you will return to our Archive and instruct all systems to repel any network tainted with the Archive of Safekeeping. Subadwan, return home and prepare a report for internal viewing.”
Subadwan respectfully placed her hands upon Rhannan’s shoulders, then dropped them, and asked, “What happened?”
Rhannan hesitated, then said, “Doubtless some trick of Tanglanah’s. We may never find out.”
“Tanglanah is a bully,” Aswaque echoed.
Subadwan saw then that neither of her superiors had any understanding of the brief period they had just spent in an artificial country, and the realisation made her feel both frightened and emboldened. She asked Rhannan, “What will you do now?”
“I am going straight down to the Archive of Noct to demand a meeting with the Reeve. This anti-human harassment has to stop. I won’t leave until I have assurances, whether he likes it or not.”