The world is ending.

This is a problem.

It is specificially acutely a problem for Lauren because Toronto has been mostly overrun since this morning, she hasn't seen another living human in six hours, she is beginning to think about the pros and cons of preemptive suicide, and she cannot find a working car. She's not going to be precious about stealing from the dead, or even from the living who don't happen to be around; the moment she has functioning transportation, she is out of here. But she doesn't have functioning transportation and it's starting to look like she's not going to get it.

Well. Time to check the next street.

That car over there looks promising; there's a body slumped over the steering wheel, that'll mean that the keys might be with it. The window's broken, but it looks like whatever killed the person has already left. Or hidden.

If there's a body slumped over the steering wheel, the driver's seat is probably not going to be in good condition, but she can't really afford to be precious about that either. She double-checks the immediate vicinity for obviously out-of-place objects, and then, finding none, approaches the car and prods the former driver with the end of her crowbar.

The body doesn't move. Probably safe, then.

There's an obviously out of place object in the car, though. There's an empty drink in the cupholder, and the very same empty drink on the floor of the passenger seat.

She glares at the duplicate items, opens the driver's side door, and hooks the corpse's shirt with her crowbar to pull it out of the car. Not at all incidentally, this involves having a two-handed grip on her crowbar perfect for smashing horrible little aliens if one should suddenly pop out at her.

Gosh, it sure would be unfortunate if a horrible little alien popped out at her. Like that one.

(It was the second cup.)

Smash. One less horrible little alien for the world to worry about.

It is summarily smashed into black goo. Take that, alien mena-

Quick as lighting, a tendril snaps out from under the car, grabs her by the ankle, and yanks.

—she shoves herself backward as best she can, curling her legs up toward her, and brings the crowbar down flat on the ground over the tendril as hard as possible, since it's the only part of the new alien whose location she can clearly discern right away.

The tendril is smashed, and there's a soft hss of discomfort from under the car.

Usually, a Typhon retreats a bit after being hit. This one does not. A second tendril snaps forward and grabs and yanks the crowbar.

That is her crowbar, thank you very much—but she's hardly going to wrestle a Typhon over it—she lets go, scrambles back, heaves herself to her feet and bolts.

It turns out to be pretty fast, and thinks it should introduce itself to her other ankle. Hi, ankle. Yank.

Down she goes again, landing worse this time.

She pulls a mechanical pencil from its home tucked into an exterior pocket of her backpack and attempts to stab the Typhon with it. When you get right down to it, a good mechanical pencil is not that different from a really big needle.

The Typhon catches the hand armed with the mechanical pencil with perfect precision, then twists and adds pressure just so in order to oh-so-delicately break her wrist.

It's bigger than the little shapeshifting aliens, and clearly it's smarter, too. Though she might not be in a position to appreciate that right now.

She hisses with pain, but is undeterred from violent resistance. Kicking it away from her is probably not going to work but at this point it's hardly going to make things any worse.

It doesn't work.

The alien attempts to do the standard 'force mouth open, shove self down throat' trick that the aliens maybe shouldn't be participating in if they want a PG-13 rating.

If the alien has been paying any attention, it should not be surprised to learn that Lauren bites.

It's hard to read surprise on an alien monster, but it doesn't seem particularly surprised. Unfortunately it's kind of hard to win in a direct physical confrontation with a Typhon, even with biting.

It wins.

She was expecting it to be really unpleasant, but wow, it's really unpleasant. It's like—like hitting your funnybone, except everywhere, all at once, nonsense sensations shifting and twisting through her body, and then coming unmoored from her body entirely and existing in a space built out of random sensory noise without structure or location—

With what little control and awareness of her body she still has, she tries to grab the creature and drag it out of her, but it's a lost cause. Probably would be even if she had two functioning hands.

Yep.

The sensations magnify, and then it's probably started messing with her brain, because everything feels very funny and it suddenly becomes much harder to think.

Then darkness swallows her.

Her last thought is well that was awful but at least it's over now.

It is not over.

Consciousness returns, more suddenly than it left. She's standing in a different street in the same city, in the same clothes, in what feels like perfect condition. Her wrist isn't broken anymore.

Her backpack is missing, but she has a familiar crowbar in her hand.

"—there were useful things in that!" she says, annoyed, resettling her shoulders uncomfortably in the absence of the familiar weight. Where is she, how far from where she... did not apparently die... and why, that's also a very good question—

Wherever she is, it's not south of the university anymore. Not downtown at all, in fact. She doesn't recognize any of the available street signs. Looks vaguely suburban, maybe. How long was she out? And, again, why?

It's hard to tell, but if she guesses from the scenery, it doesn't look like she was out too long. Nothing's fallen to pieces or been overgrown. Things are a bit of a mess, on account of the alien invasion, but that's not really indicative of much.

As to why, there is no answer. She's alone in a street. With a crowbar.

...she eyes the crowbar. Having been eaten by a Typhon once, she's really not eager to do it again. But on the other hand, she still doesn't have an answer to the important questions about her continued existence, so maybe she shouldn't try to do anything about it just yet.

She looks around again. Useful objects? Lurking mimics?

There's an abandoned car over thataway, but there aren't any useful objects lying abandoned on the ground. Just some empty bottles of booze and similar litter. Maybe one of the houses would have better objects.

Nothing egregiously stands out as a mimic, but there are a number of places one might hide. Mostly the discarded litter.

Well. Fine then. Into a house to see what she can dig up. She can check out the abandoned car once she has replaced her backpack.

The house looks to be in a bit of a mess, exactly like a family packed up and left in a hurry with everything they thought was valuable. There is a backpack available, but it's small and pink and doesn't have very many pockets.

No mimics jump out at her.

Small pink backpack will have to do. She checks that the water still works, drinks some on principle even though she's not thirsty, and starts methodically replacing all the things she kept in her first backpack. Water bottle, notebook and writing utensils, is there such a thing as a Swiss Army knife in this house and if not at least a letter opener or something? She has definitely been carrying an insufficient quantity of easily accessible weapons.

There's a notebook that'll do if she rips out the first few pages of algebra notes, and writing utensils are easy enough to find. Bottles of water are in the pantry, and there's even some abandoned nonperishable food if she wants it. Granted, it's all canned, so this is perhaps not practical to carry. There is no Swiss Army knife in this house, and there aren't any letter openers, but she can have a knife from the kitchen if she wants one.

Carrying a kitchen knife loose in a backpack full of other items she values seems like a losing proposition. And even worse if it's in a pocket. But then again so is being eaten by aliens. But then again, if she runs into a second instance of the one that got her, a kitchen knife is probably not going to help much. Decisions, decisions.

There are some sharp looking metal pens available if she'd like to branch out into that instead.

That might work out better. And a pack of tissues, you can always use a pack of tissues.

Okay. New backpack: adequately supplied. Time to go check out that car that almost certainly doesn't work.

Nothing attacks her on the way there.

As predicted, the car doesn't work. It looks like part of the engine was ripped out. The car itself is packed with supplies, though, someone was probably attempting to use this as an escape vehicle before the engine ripping occurred. Whoever it was that had been using it, they're definitely gone now. There aren't any bodies, though there is a dark stain of dried blood in the backseat.

Well. She can raid their supplies, then, if they've got anything useful that she can carry.

There's some more bottled water, a lot of food of varying types, clothes (some of which could maybe fit her), a plastic map of the city, and a first aid kit, all carefully organized. From context, how well supplied this car is, and some suspiciously empty spaces where they don't make sense, there was probably at least one other bag with the more immediate survival supplies. That bag seems to be gone.

The first aid kit is useful. Some of the food is also useful. The clothes could be useful, and conveniently come with a small suitcase to haul them around in. All right, onward with the quest to find a working car.

Onward!

... An almost human voice echoes down the street.

"- got to get out, they're everywhere, what are they, why can't I find a working car?"

Almost human, you say.

It echoes unnaturally, and sounds a little garbled. Sort of like someone took a poor recording of a human and then played it back on terrible speakers.

"... has to be some reason for it, secret military project, area 51, can't just be random..."

...

Yeah she's just gonna go the other way.

That's probably a wise move.

The other way does not have any creepy echoing voices! There are a few more houses, if she'd like to try to raid any of them.

She would!

The first she tries is locked up pretty tight and cannot be entered without breaking a window. The next house's back door is unlocked, though.

She can try that one, then.

This house smells like death. Like something died in here a while ago and then was left to rot.

Would she like to continue inside?

...not really, no.

Then she can leave this house behind.

She can get into the next one through an open window, and it does not have the death smell problem.

Oh good. What about useful objects, does it have those?

There's a better backpack than the small pink one! Also a flashlight, and some matches. Food and water, too, but she probably has enough of those for right now.

A better backpack! Good. Yes. She will take these things.

As she steps out of the front door, a dark shape to her left twitches -

- and her head moves without her permission to look at it.

She freezes for a moment, then steps back inside and slams the door.

She is now inside the house.

She looks at the crowbar in her hands.

She feels—not right. She should be terrified, and she is, but there are - sensations missing, distortions absent. And she did not imagine what just happened. She saw something out of the corner of her eye and looked at it, but she moved differently than she'd meant to.

It's absurd to think - but it's absurd that she was eaten by a Typhon south of Queen's Park and woke up standing in the middle of a residential street somewhere in the suburbs. She can't dismiss that as 'unexplained phenomenon, not enough information to speculate' anymore. Her thoughts and emotions and sensations work a little differently than they used to, as though she is running on a different substrate. She moved her head wrong, as though she wasn't the one moving it. She's - being mimicked. She's a disguise, a lure, a coffee cup.

...and the fact that she had this thought and then didn't immediately black out and wake up five miles away with no memory of having thought it means that the Typhon almost certainly can't literally read her mind. Yet.

This might mean she has the opportunity to kill a Typhon, if she's clever about it.

Should she?

...she isn't sure. Chipping away at the alien menace has never been so neatly and purely at odds with her own survival. And she doesn't know enough - doesn't know what it wants, doesn't know how often it's going to use her this way, doesn't know if it has alternate disguises available or how she might communicate with them if it did - no, on second thought, if it had had a human disguise when it met her it could've walked right up to her and eaten her as soon as it got close, no need for a fight. And now that it has her it cannot do that, at least not while using her personality for verisimilitude, because she is not going anywhere near another living human being if she can help it.

Okay. She is tentatively in favour of continuing to live. But she needs a better understanding of the parameters of her new existence. ...and she cares somewhat less about survival than she did before she was eaten by an alien.

She opens the door again.

The dark shape is still there. It stands on two legs, and is vaguely humanoid shaped, but taller, broader, with seething limbs that twist like they're made of smoke, and a pair of glowing eyes. It looks at Lauren, then flickers in place and re-appears several feet closer.

The Typhon moves her body again, this time to take off the backpack and deposit it next to the doorframe. Her eyes move to assess the area, and then -

- Lauren's location jumps, abruptly.

She's outside of the house, but there's no sign of the other Typhon.

...hm.

And where's the backpack?

Right where the Typhon left it, next to the doorframe.

She puts it on again.

That... definitely looked like her Typhon just killed, and possibly ate, another of its own kind. Lauren is tentatively in favour of this development.

She starts walking in an arbitrary direction. If she was still herself she'd be making an effort to go north, get out of the city, but now she thinks she'd rather stay in the danger zone where her new friend's available meals are mostly other Typhons.

Her new friend has no commentary about this state of affairs.

This arbitrary direction has more cars that almost certainly don't work; all three of them are in a rather nasty looking pileup. The door to one is ajar, with a corresponding pool of long-dried blood that implies someone managed to drag themselves out of the car, then probably died. There's no body to be found.

Well that's not something Lauren wanted to see, but she's seen a lot of things in that category this week. She goes around, keeping a careful eye out for mimics.

There's a bit of car debris that's got a mysterious twin, does that count?

Yes.

Well, there's a pretty good route to sneak around it, if she wants.

Yeah she's gonna do that. Not that she couldn't take it, but why risk a fight if she doesn't have to?

Someone disagrees, because without any warning her location jumps. To where the car debris twin was located. The bit of car debris is now an only child.

...okay then. That definitely just happened.

Note to self: mimics are snack material, apparently.

Apparently!

Up ahead there's... something that's glowing orange? And floating in the air?

What.

It's spread out and... web-like. It's like something a spider might make, if a spider did not need to moor its web on anything and wove it out of orange light. One of the larger, messier webs that a large colony of spiders might make between trees, not the little neat ones found in corners or windowsills.

But to learn any more, she'd have to get closer.

...yeah, speaking of unnecessary risks...

On the other hand, she's curious. And who could possibly be better placed to learn about the aliens than she is? Or worse placed for long-term survival, for that matter?

She cautiously approaches the floating web of orange light.

The entire light web is several meters long, though most of it is faint and wispy. At the central points the web pulses faintly and regularly, in a way that's almost reminiscent of a heartbeat. The web doesn't otherwise move, not even by the breeze. It's like it's frozen in mid-air.

Her Typhon doesn't try to steer her away, but as they approach, it borrows her eyes to scan the surrounding area. It doesn't kick her out entirely, but it seems that it wants to be very sure that something isn't there before it lets her go any closer.

It seems to be satisfied by the answer, because it returns control once it's done.

"That's really annoying, just so you know," she mutters, although she's fairly sure it can't understand her.

She examines the light-web, circling it to get all the angles. It's... well, alien. Pretty, though. What's it for?

Nothing pops up with an explanatory pamphlet, and there's no obvious purpose to it.

There's more of it in larger abundance up ahead. It practically covers the street.

...hm.

What happens if she tosses a rock at the edge of it?

It passes through without disturbing the web at all.

Hm.

What happens if she pokes it with a stick?

It feels exactly like poking perfectly innocent air with a stick, and the web is visually unaffected. No reaction or movement, and no space spiders popping out of it to eat her.

Okay.

What happens if she touches it?

There's no direct tactile sensation from it, but her fingers tingle a little when they pass through it. Like if she encountered something with a very subtle electrical charge. It's hardly even noticeable, if she weren't watching for it she might miss it entirely. Otherwise, it's like moving her hand through air. The web is completely undisturbed, and there are still no space spiders.

She keeps an eye out for space spiders, but plays with it a little more, running her fingers along the intangible lines.

The almost-feeling is definitely more concentrated where the light's more concentrated. If she pays very close attention, she can feel it ebb and flow at the brighter points, in time with the subtle pulsing.

Hm.

Well. She can't think of any obvious further experiments. Time to move on.

No space spiders accost her while she departs.

There are some duplicate items up ahead.

She stops, some distance away from them.

Her new friend eats mimics, apparently. How good is it at spotting them, though? Does it have mysterious alien senses that make them obvious, or does it have to rely on pattern recognition like anybody else? If the latter, it probably has some trouble with all this human nonsense. Whatever environment it's used to, there can't have been broken beer bottles there.

Feeling a little silly, she points at the broken bottle, then at the suspiciously similar half-bottle a few feet away. (This is one of those times when it's really obvious which one is fake.) Then she approaches, crowbar in hand.

She's a few feet forward, and the suspicious half-bottle is no more.

Well. Onward.

Onward!

There are some more abandoned cars, if she'd like to salvage from them. These don't have any of the bloodstains the other set do, though one's got a completely shattered windshield.

Abandoned cars without bloodstains! Why, that's her favourite kind!

Oh, good. The cars have no opinion on whether she's their favorite, but nobody asked them, anyway.

There are a pair of hiking books that are only half a size too big for her, a bottle of hand sanitizer (ocean scented), a pocket knife with a fold out blade, a lighter (with a packet of cigarettes), and several different types of alcohol. Also some trail mix.

Still no corpses! This is starting to get weird.

She tries the boots on and manages to get them to fit comfortably with a bit of patient re-lacing. The alcohol and cigarettes are of no interest to her. The rest of the stuff she distributes to pockets. Her shoes can go in her backpack, in case something turns out to be wrong with the hiking boots.

The world is her oyster! Would she like to follow the larger road that leads deeper into the city, investigate more of the strange orange glow down one of the smaller roads, look through some more houses, or do something else entirely?

Hm.

...deeper into the city, she thinks. It is no longer in her interest to leave it.

".... Let me go. Let me die. I-I can't, I can't, s-stop -"

That voice doesn't sound 'almost' human. It sounds very human.

Okay, she'll investigate that.

As she approaches, more voices echo along with the first. A whole chorus of strained, pained voices.

"- fucking, piece of, of s-shit, n-not your, not your puppet -"

"- let him go, he's - he's only seven, please, please -"

"- has to be a way to f-fight, how do I keep you out, how -"

"- hurts, hurts, stop, stop please stop -"

It's hard to pick out how many there are; many of them are sobbing.

Hm.

Her Typhon friend doesn't force her to stop her approach.

A large dark mass of tendrils floats in the middle of the street. Surrounding it is a modest crowd of people, the likely source of the voices. Most of them are clutching at their heads. None of them look like they're in good condition; many look more than a little unsteady on their feet. There are a few that have fallen, some of which are still clutching at their heads in vain, some of which are completely still. Possibly dead, though she'd have to get closer to tell.

Okay. Can she convince her Typhon friend to eat this one, she wonders.

On the other hand, it might not stop there...

She stands indecisively on the street corner.

The mass of tendrils turns, and it looks at her with a single giant, glowing white eye.

If she had any means of communicating with hers...

But she doesn't.

...she could try to bring them food. But she's not sure that would even help them any.

She walks away.

The floating Typhon doesn't stop her.

A few of its victims have noticed her, however.

"- Yes, run, get away, go -"

"- No, no, come back, come back, help us, please -"

"- How are you immune, it should have caught you, how -"

She does not have the means to help them. She is busy being a coffee cup.

Any abandoned houses around? She would like there to be an abandoned house around.

There are a few. One of them has an open front door.

She can try that one.

It looks like the people that lived here just got up and walked out, dropping everything that they were doing partway through. There's a bit of paper with a half drawn family in crayon, and one long smear in bright green.

She is meticulous about examining the vicinity for mimics as she looks through the house, finds a blanket, finds a box of Kleenex, pours herself a glass of water, and curls up on a couch to cry.

Nothing lurks in the house to accost her. Her Typhon doesn't interrupt. She's free to cry.

Okay. She feels better now.

She gets up and drinks her glass of water and leaves without checking the house for useful objects. It's doubtful whether food and so forth are actually much use to a coffee cup, and if she pillages this particular house she is going to have to cry again.

There are other houses, if she wants to look through those. Or she can continue exploring the city.

She thinks she will continue exploring.

It's a pretty big city. She's got a lot of it to explore.

There are a few more abandoned cars - more car crashes. It's hard to tell, but they also look bereft of corpses. There's also a gas station, its once large glass window in shards, though it's not really clear what broke it.

Perhaps the gas station contains useful supplies.

It looks like it's already been raided, though not by someone that was as good at it as Lauren is. The cash register is empty, the aisles are a mess, and worst of all, the power's out, so all of the ice cream in the back has melted.

There's a good amount of food if she wants it. Water, energy drinks, and Gatorade, too. Notably, the drug aisle is pretty undisturbed. Most of what's there is meant for dealing with head colds and allergies, but Tylenol and Ibuprofen are both present.

Potentially useful. She stashes a few more things in her backpack and moves on.

... It soon becomes clear that more technology's on the fritz than just the power. The streetlights are sparking in an alarming sort of way.

Hm. She frowns at the sparking lights, and proceeds cautiously.

Her Typhon doesn't stop her -

- but maybe it should have.

There's a loud sound of twisting metal and a synthesized scream, and something large and floating and unfriendly soars around the corner, heading straight for Lauren.

—this is an appropriate moment to run away.

Now her Typhon intervenes. It seems to agree that this is an appropriate moment to run away, but it decides to take control of her arms in order to retrieve the water bottle Lauren stashed away in her bag. Her hand morphs to a black tendril that punctures it with ease, and then her Typhon throws it at its peer with perfect accuracy.

There is another synthesized scream, but this one sounds distorted and angry. From the light show and the clanking sound of metal impacting concrete, that probably just slowed it down.

And now Lauren is somewhere else. Unharmed.

Why the water bottle—

"I really don't like it when you do that."

Somewhat predictably, her Typhon doesn't reply.

Well. Onward.

Onward!

Navigating after being shunted somewhere completely different is a bit tricky, but she's not actually too far away from her last conscious location. She's near the orange web stuff. It might be possible to retrace her steps to retrieve one of the water bottles she found but didn't take, but it also might not be worth the trouble.

It's not like she has an urgent appointment elsewhere.

Then she can retrieve a water bottle after a bit of trouble!

Now what would she like to do?

Head south again, by a different route.

There's some more orange light stuff by this route, and another garbled not-human voice.

"- eggs, can't forget the eggs, she's still on that baking kick -"

Unsettling. She avoids the voice.

...

No she doesn't.

She abruptly changes locations, but the Typhon bothers to put her back in roughly the same area.

And now there isn't a voice to avoid!

—hm. So her Typhon eats those too, whatever they are.

Apparently so!

One of the available ways south involves passing through a lot of the orange light - it covers the entire street. It'd be a bit of a detour to go around it, but she probably can if she wants to.

The orange light has seemed mostly harmless so far. She goes that way, cautiously.

It still subtly tingles a little when she passes through it, but no space spiders make themselves apparent.

... Her Typhon seems nervous, though. It doesn't stop her or turn her around, but it keeps borrowing her eyes to check the area.

... If she looks around really thoroughly herself, can she get it to stop doing that.

She can! It stops doing that.

The orange web of light is getting bigger and bigger, now. It's kind of hard to continue without being entirely engulfed by it. Would she like to proceed?

She's more concerned about visibility than about being engulfed. As long as she can still see through it, it's probably fine.

It's not so thick that it's impossible to see through, though visibility might start to become an issue soon.

As her head passes through an orange wisp, she feels - something. An echo of something, a flutter of sensation that flows through her. She feels - not her vocal cords, but a set of phantom vocal cords that aren't attached to her - hum. She can hear an echo of the sound itself, but it's not coming from her ears. Instead it's like a memory, or a dream. The phantom vocal cords experimentally change their pitch, and the phantom sound changes with it. The result is almost pretty, in a haunting sort of way.

What.

What happens if she walks through more of it—?

More un-sounds, more arrangements for vocal cords that she doesn't have. Some of the sounds and arrangements aren't things humans could make, and the arrangements of vocal cords aren't things humans have. She can feel the configurations in more detail than she can feel her own set of vocal cords, feel every vibration that reverberates down the phantom appendage, feel how each slightly different arrangement changes the sound.

She finds herself humming softly, trying to capture the tune.

The tune is a semi-systematic scale through available sounds, with occasional breaks in the scale that can probably be attributed to her head not entirely engulfing all portions of the orange light, or a change in the vocal cord arrangement. It's more like something is studying the process of making noise with vocal cords instead of using them with any real intent.

She shifts the timing slightly to turn it into something more memorable and hums it as she leaves the patch of light.

...

The patch of light grows, slightly. The web becomes a little bit larger, right near her head.

She pauses in her humming and walks through that particular bit.

The echo from this one is of the tune she made, with the exact same timing and tone.

That's... almost cute, really.

"So was that you," she wonders, "or...?"

There is of course no answer. She keeps walking.

No space spiders jump out at her!

There is a dark smear of Typhon black on a nearby building, though. Several tendrils attach a large nest-like structure to the wall.

She stops and looks at it. It's not a kind she recognizes.

After several seconds, her Typhon asserts itself.

Quickly and efficiently, it leans down, picks up a stray bit of litter, and throws it so it sails past the nest-thing. The nest explodes into a swarm of little black pulsating spheres that fling themselves after the thrown empty beer bottle -

- with kind of shit aim, actually. They miss, and instead impact the asphalt of the road without even getting close to the beer bottle. There, they explode in orange fire.

The nest doesn't look depleted, only a few of the angry flaming flung themselves after the bottle, but her Typhon returns control. That seems to be all it wanted to do.

She blinks.

"Well, they don't look very edible," she observes. "So maybe I'll just go around."

And she proceeds with this plan.

Her Typhon seems to be on board with this! In that it doesn't seize control and make her do anything else.

There's a second nest of exploding Typhon further into the light web, but it's not in her way. She's on its outer edges, now.

Up ahead, there's another abandoned car that probably doesn't work.

She is no longer in the business of car theft, particularly since she doesn't especially want to give her Typhon that much mobility. She does pause to see if it contains any useful objects, though.

There are a number of supply-looking things haphazardly piled in the backseat. Nothing on top of the pile looks particularly useful (unless she's in the market for new gaming systems) but there might be something she can actually use underneath it.

She'll poke through the pile. Although the thought of teaching her Typhon about video games is kind of entertaining.

This person had a lot of tech, but maybe not much in the way of good priorities. The packed food doesn't look very nutritious, and there's not much in the way of water, but at least this person has their simulation headset. Can't survive the apocalypse without that, clearly. There are a few offline operators, but it's not clear what any of them are programmed to do. They don't have any distinguishing labelling. Maybe there's a medical operator in here somewhere or something, but she'd have to turn them all on to find out.

Notably, there's a TranScribe casually abandoned in the front seat cup holder. Didn't TranStar make a big deal out of their revolutionary 'cellphone killer' finally being released to the general public a few months back? That might be a good replacement for her lost phone.

Oh, all right, she'll steal the dead person's TranScribe. ...and there's room for that gaming system in her pocket so why not, she can take that too.

It looks like the version of the Nintendo Slim that has the attached extendable charger cord. If the TranScribe is half of what it was cracked up to be, it should have a compatible port - yep, there it is. The TranScribe's tiny expandable solar panel should be able to keep both devices powered, provided the aliens don't also eat the sun.

Well, then, let's hope the aliens do not eat the sun.

She takes a moment to rearrange the contents of her pockets to better balance the weight before she moves on.

A mimic attempts to stealthily creep closer in order to eat her while she's busy. It turns into a discarded McDonalds bag and purposefully rolls towards Lauren, crinkling all the way. With no wind to disguise its movement whatsoever. It's not very good at its chosen task.

...

She points at it.

Yeah there was never any way this chosen task was going to work out for the mimic.

Her Typhon conscientiously puts her back next to the backpack after it's done committing cannibalism.

She puts on the backpack and keeps walking.

Another two mimics attempt ambushes as she walks. The first is just as easy to spot as the wayward McDonald's bag, but the second is much better at it. A crumpled soda can, half hidden by a stray bit of paper and perfectly ordinary-looking, morphs into a mimic and leaps at her before any pointing can be done.

This does not work out for the mimic.

But Lauren is introduced to the unpleasant sensation of her arm moving without her permission, then morphing into a black tendril that deftly catches the mimic out of the air. She can still feel the arm, and gets to feel it mercilessly squish the hapless mimic, which screeches in something like pain, or perhaps surprise. The tendrils then expand and swallow the Typhon whole. Lauren can feel the mimic-blob squirming, and then it falls still. Her sense of her own body then expands to the mimic blob itself, the once-mimic integrating itself to match the structure of the surrounding limb.

Once all of the mimic is fully integrated, her arm turns back to normal and her Typhon returns control.

...she blinks at her hand, turns it over, opens and closes her fingers. It just feels like itself. The bizarre sensations have entirely subsided.

"I wonder if I could learn how to do that."

Her Typhon doesn't offer commentary. Or lessons.

There are a few abandoned commercial buildings she can explore if she'd like to. A McDonalds, a Starbucks, a Tim Hortons, probably more if she explores further.

She goes to the Tim Hortons. It's probably been looted out but she's not stopping by for a donut, she just wants somewhere to sit.

First, check the area for mimics...

Yep!

Her Typhon dispatches them easily enough, though. They are not hard to locate.

Eating mimics is a bizarre sensation.

She sits somewhere with a good view of all the entrances and exits, and unpockets the Nintendo Slim and checks its charge and game library. As she suspected from the general state of that car, it's almost fully charged and has lots of interesting titles available. She picks a physics puzzle game she recognizes and plays a few levels.

Her Typhon doesn't overtly react, but it doesn't interrupt her, either. Neither does anything else. She is free to play the physics puzzle game.

She's interested in how her Typhon will react to the concept of video games, but also this is just really fun. Various objects traverse intricate obstacle courses, and her goal is to get them through the final gate without them getting stuck, tumbling into an abyss, or being incinerated by hazards along the way.

When one of her various objects is incinerated a fifth time on a challenge mode that requires some tricky timing, her Typhon intervenes.

It wins the level for her, then it returns control.

—she giggles.

"Thank you," she says. "That was very helpful."

Her Typhon offers no commentary.

... But will win other levels for her if she fails at them enough on her own.

She plays a few more - the Typhon ends up winning another challenge mode for her - and then puts the game away and starts heading south again, keeping an eye out for mimics.

There are a few, all of which are devoured by her Typhon. It's not clear if it's worse at spotting mimics than her or not, but it lets her point them out before it eats them. Keeping her 'awake' while it does it becomes the new normal. The same is not true when it devours the larger Typhon that mumble garbled sentences, but it'll put her back wherever it leaves her backpack. Aside from brief detours for its dietary choices, it doesn't interfere with her very much. It'll win levels for her in the physics puzzle game, and eventually starts helping her in other ways.

When Lauren tests the door to an abandoned apartment and finds it locked, it takes control to kneel in front of it. It peers expressionlessly with Lauren's eyes at the lock itself. After a few seconds of silent staring, it reaches towards it with her (their?) hand, turns a finger to a smoky black tendril, and inserts the digit into the lock. It's clear that it doesn't really know how locks work, but it's definitely noticed that some doors are locked and some aren't and is curious about how it works. Lauren can feel the digit probing the interior of the lock, turning to thinner and thinner tendrils to fit into the tiny crevices, and then eventually to an amorphous mist as her alien curiously probes the device.

They're there for a few minutes as it fumbles curiously at it, but eventually it figures out the trick of it, and the lock clicks open. The Typhon removes the tendril from the lock and turns it back into a finger, then tries the door.

It opens, and her Typhon returns control.

She should probably not be so weirdly charmed by her Typhon.

...

She's really weirdly charmed by her Typhon.

"Thank you," she says again. It seems only polite. Then she goes to look through the apartment. Maybe there will be some mimics for it to eat.

Nope! Maybe they couldn't get past the locked door. Her Typhon doesn't complain.

Whoever lived here looks like they've been gone a while. The only food in the pantry are things that will keep for a while, and everything's perfectly neat in the way some people make their homes before they go on a trip.

She can still recharge her devices - solar power is nice but carrying the TranScribe around so it gets sun all the time is annoying - and pick up a few odds and ends, and—

—having a shower seems kind of weird, in context. Not having a shower seems kind of like a bad long-term plan, though. On the other hand, it's getting on towards evening and she hasn't felt noticeably hungry all day. Nor has she needed to use the bathroom. Perhaps coffee cups are beyond such mortal requirements. Convenient if true, but how does she check?

It's really not clear! But the shower is stocked with soap if she'd like to have one, and there are some crackers in this apartment if she'd like to give eating a shot. They are plausibly the sort of thing that might make her thirsty, if she is not above such mortal requirements.

...she nibbles on a cracker.

It tastes like a cracker. Her Typhon doesn't screech and pull the cracker away, and she can swallow it easily enough. This is probably fine.

She doesn't feel any thirstier.

Hmm. And not tired, either. Except emotionally.

She sits by a west-facing window and watches the sun go down.

The integrity of the sun has not been affected by the alien invasion. It's just as pretty as it would be without them.

Her eyes unfocus and the sunset blurs for a second.

Then when she blinks to clear them, it looks - different. Brighter, more vibrant than anything she'd seen before - is that another color? That looks like another color.

"...did you just upgrade my eyesight?"

She blinks a few more times.

"You did. Thank you," she says, delightedly.

It looks like it gave her ultraviolet vision, and did... something... to let her see colors more easily at night. As the sunset's light fades, it's easier to distinguish things on the blue-to-ultraviolet range than the red-to-green range, but both sets are faintly visible.

Whatever it did, it made the sunset look even more lovely.

She should really be less charmed by her Typhon than she is. But here we are.

As the sun sinks below the horizon and she continues to feel absolutely no desire to sleep, she retrieves her puzzle game and plays a few more levels.

Her Typhon will help win difficult levels for her!

Evidence towards being beyond mortal requirements continues to stack up. She doesn't feel tired, hungry, or thirsty. It's pretty convenient, but it's not clear how her Typhon's pulling this off. But then, that's true of most things it does.

If it can shapeshift well enough to turn into her this thoroughly in the first place, it's not a huge surprise that it can also just - not do the 'bodily needs' parts. Especially since it also managed to mess around with her vision.

What's it using her for, she wonders. Is she really the equivalent of a mimicked coffee cup? Then why is it spending time playing cooperative puzzle games with her when it could be out hunting for more aliens to cannibalize?

She switches to another game. A platformer where you play as an anxious armadillo who curls up involuntarily whenever something startling happens, so you have to manage your interactions with the environment to make sure a sudden noise or movement doesn't send you rolling down a hill and undo ten minutes of progress. It's a cute mechanic, more fun in her opinion than the traditional kind of physically harmful game hazard, and she likes waiting and watching as the round little creature cautiously studies the terrain ahead and gets used to the behaviour of the plants and animals there.

She doesn't immediately get assistance for this game, but it also doesn't interrupt her to go hunt for its peers.

There are some similarities between the two games. Both involve objects traversing an environment from an origin to a destination. But where the puzzler has you manipulating the environment, this one has you manipulating the object, and occasionally losing - or relinquishing - control of it. (There are some levels where you need to deliberately curl up in order to roll yourself through a section you couldn't have successfully navigated in uncurled form.)

...

After a few more levels, the Typhon begins helping. It takes noticeably more losses for it to begin assisting than the last game, but it does start helping get the armadillo across the map.

She says thank you whenever it helps her. It probably doesn't know what she means, but - she knows what she means, and she wants to say it.

When the armadillo has made it to the edge of the woods and is peering suspiciously through the trees at the first obstacle of the first forest level, she saves the game and gets up to resume exploring.

The city's got lots of Typhon to eat! Her Typhon resumes eating mimics that she points out, leaving her awake while it does it. It goes after the muttering ones, too, but it doesn't keep her awake for any of those.

If she seems to want to get past locked doors, it'll get them open for her. Usually, this means it'll use its shapeshifting powers to create key facsimiles out of its limbs, but at one point it's confronted with a door that has a digital lock. It stares at it for a few thoughtful minutes. Then it slices through the door's deadbolt with a razor sharp tendril and kicks it in, as if this was the most natural solution in the world.

Lauren gets in the habit of thanking it for doing helpful things.

...when it solves the digital lock, she giggles.

It doesn't start solving all locked doors with this method, even when it would obviously be faster. It fiddles with the lock and carefully makes key facsimiles; it gets pretty good at it.

"You're a problem solver, aren't you," she muses after yet another unlocked door. "I wonder if you're as curious about me as I am about you."

Predictably, it doesn't answer.

But it does let her keep doing whatever she wants, eating its kin along the way. It stops devouring mimics whole, instead draining them of something, compacting whatever's left over, and then carelessly dropping small, dense husks of once-mimic onto the ground without ceremony. It's not really clear what it's getting out of this, but it is just as happy to eat more Typhon.

That's weird. She wonders what changed. It's kind of hard to tell, with her new friend still firmly nonverbal.

It doesn't switch back to eating mimics whole. It's hard to tell if it's switched to only mostly eating the muttering ones, since it's in the habit of not having those confrontations in front of her. If she investigates the remains, they're also small and dense husks of once-Typhon.

There's a faint sound of thunder, in the distance.

Her Typhon assumes control and turns to look in the direction the thunder came from suspiciously, as if assessing this alarming sound for threats. It stands perfectly still, searching the sky with expressionless intensity without even breathing. A raindrop impacts the top of the Typhon's head. It twitches, then retreats under an awning to crouch in a small out of the way corner where it can stare with suspicion at this strange new phenomenon. More raindrops follow the first.

It stares at the weather for another few seconds, pokes its head out to search the sky again, and then it hesitantly returns control when it finds no obvious threats.

"...are you scared of thunderstorms? Well, I guess if they don't have weather where you come from..."

A flash of lightning lights up the sky, followed by a peal of thunder. Her Typhon twitches again, then... thoughtfully looks at where lightning flashed in the sky. After a pause, it reaches out a hand to feel the rain. Contemplatively, it looks at the droplets on their skin. For a few seconds it stands there.

Then it turns, delicately breaks a nearby window, and hops inside with a sense of urgency and purpose it hasn't exhibited before. Its eyes flick around the room, and rest upon a power outlet. Lauren's arm shifts to a black tendril as it slides forward and kneels beside the outlet. The reason why becomes apparent when it inserts the limb into the socket. The limb tingles a little, but there's no jolting shock, and it's very clear that her Typhon knows precisely what it's doing.

Interestingly, it keeps Lauren awake while it does this. She's even able to talk.

"Oh. Of course you can just drink from a power outlet. I can't imagine why I didn't think of that. But what are you up to?"

No answer. Instead: slurp slurp slurp, delicious electricity. That's probably not a surprise.

When her Typhon is done, it retracts the tendril, hops out of the broken window, and promptly goes full Typhon. It's - unsettling. Not painful, but it's like Lauren is made out of water, or perhaps animated sand and ever-shifting elastic, moving and rearranging itself to suit its own needs. It keeps a pair of eyes in roughly the same location, and keeps the same number of limbs, but everything else is extremely fluid and mobile. Larger, too. The Typhon appears to have been condensing itself to fit to a more human size. It's not immediately obvious how it managed this without giving it away by the dramatic change in weight.

It travels through the city with a speed that implies that introducing it to a car wouldn't be such a huge upgrade. A car could probably outpace it in a straight race on a large flat surface, but the Typhon is much more mobile. It barely ever touches the ground, using its long stretchy limbs to pull itself and leap from building to building. Clearly it has some kind of destination in mind and has been keeping track of the layout of the city itself, because it doesn't hesitate in its travel. It knows precisely where it's going, and how it's getting there, and it's doing it as quickly as is feasible.

Soon enough, it lands in the middle of a familiar street with ominously flickering street lights. Up ahead was where the metal thing attacked them.

The Typhon deposits her backpack, recondenses and reforms to Lauren's body, and then relinquishes control.

"...are you sure?"

But it's not going to answer her.

She proceeds cautiously forward.

For a little while, all is quiet.

Then - there's the floating metal monstrosity that threatened them before. It looks like it's been having a bit of a bad time in the weather, it's sparking and smoking like a faulty bit of wiring. That's not enough to stop it from eating a delicious human, however, and it turns towards them and makes its synthetic scream and begins to charge -

- and then her Typhon springs its trap.

It waits until the technology-themed Typhon is just close enough, then shifts a limb into a tendril and launches a portion of it at the charging enemy. The bit of tendril then bursts into a large electrical charge. Their enemy screeches and pitches to the side, sparking and fizzing dangerously in the rain. It apparently decides that now it would like to run, but her Typhon doesn't give it the chance.

Lauren's body shifts and she feels herself being launched towards the fleeing enemy -

- and then she is standing in the middle of the street, over a hunk of twisted electronics, black Typhon sludge, and condensed Typhon matter.

"...well. Congratulations."

No answer. But that's hardly a surprise.

The Typhon deposited her backpack a ways away, luckily under an overhang to keep it from getting too wet. Lauren herself is not so lucky, she's a bit soaked. It's an interesting sensation, actually, the rain feels cold, but this is muted and isn't particularly uncomfortable. She herself feels perfectly warm.

She retrieves her backpack, finds somewhere indoors to sit, dries herself off as best she can, and plays a few levels of Alarmadillo while she waits out the rain.

The rain doesn't let up before night falls. Sometime around 2 AM, it finally drizzles itself out. Nothing bothers her during this time. Perhaps the other Typhon are avoiding the rain, the technology Typhon cannibalized its fellows in the area, or none of the other Typhon are willing to brave the horrors of a thunderstorm. Or perhaps something else entirely is going on, it's not really clear.

Her Typhon is strangely unhelpful with Alarmadillo; she gets absolutely no assistance at all, even with the really tricky levels.

Huh. She wonders why. But she suspects she's not going to find out.

Not unless it suddenly starts growing the ability to explain its actions to her with no prior history! It's not looking likely, but aliens ate humanity, so maybe anything is possible.

It leaves her completely alone throughout the night. No Typhon cheat codes for Lauren, apparently.

It's weirdly... lonely, actually. She'd gotten used to interacting with her host. Is it tired? Grumpy? Giving her some time to herself for inscrutable Typhon reasons?

Well, it doesn't leave her alone forever. In the morning, it pokes her head outside to peer inscrutably at the now partly cloudy sky, then packs up all of Lauren's stuff and leaves the building. It shifts to full Typhon form, then flits from building to building again, carefully shepherding the backpack along and leaving Lauren awake for the entire trip. Like before, it clearly seems to know precisely where it's going and how to get there. This time, the chosen destination is the CN Tower. It scales the building with relative ease, then perches at the very top. It has excellent balance, but it wraps its tendrils around the tower to steady itself against the wind anyway, taking great care to anchor itself properly. Apparently it doesn't want to take chances. Once this is done, it begins carefully constructing and unfurling large thin sheets that are angled towards the sun to catch light. Most of its mass is shifted into the panels or the anchoring, but it doesn't dismantle everything. Some of its torso stays intact, as does its head.

It keeps Lauren awake but unable to move until it's settled in, then lets her have control of the head. Apparently it thinks this would be a bad place to let her have full control, but will tolerate letting her look around.

...this is kind of fascinating.

She watches the water of Lake Ontario for a minute, then turns to scan the city for signs of life, human or otherwise.

It's the first time she's really felt the scale of what happened to her city. There's no lights, no traffic, just empty buildings and abandoned cars. Webs of orange light shine here and there, and smoke rises from a scattered handful of fires.

Her Typhon adjusts how they're perched, occasionally, to keep their balance or to catch more sunlight or for some other obscure reason, but otherwise leaves her alone to look at her city. The city is quiet and sad. From up here, it's hard to spot individual Typhon, but it's not difficult to see their effects. Toronto has had a tough time of it.

They're up there for a while. Nothing disturbs them while they - recharge? That seems to be what's going on, here, anyway.

When she's had enough of the city, she looks back at the water. It's less depressing out there.

It is.

Eventually, her Typhon stirs. It folds up and swallows the sheets, spends a few seconds reintegrating the mass into shapes more convenient for moving, and then summarily flings itself off of the top of the building.

She startles briefly, but—the Typhon probably knows what it's doing.

It pulls in all of its moving parts, becoming a relatively smooth black mass that has very little wind resistance, carefully cradling the backpack inside itself. They rocket to the ground at an alarming speed. Her Typhon lets them fall for a little while, then their mass shifts and it expels a burst of energy, shifting the direction of their fall. Instead of rocketing down at an alarming speed, they're speeding down and over, towards the water. It changes its propulsion just before they reach Queens Quay, shifting so that it pushes them up more than over, slowing their descent.

Even with this change, the seagulls are alarmed by a large black mass dropping out of the sky; they scatter. The Typhon shifts its propulsion system to send the both of them rocketing towards one, then sends a tendril forward to snatch it out of the air as they fall. While understandably alarmed, the seagull's struggles and unhappy cries do nothing to free it from the shifting black mass. It's pulled in for Typhon cuddles just as the three of them neatly land in the middle of the street.

Eating a mimic is disconcerting, but eating a seagull is worse. Lauren has a front row seat to the feeling of the Typhon forces itself down its throat as the seagull wriggles and tries to scream. Mimics struggle, but they don't struggle this much, they aren't so obviously afraid of their own demise, and integrating with them isn't so... messy. The seagull isn't eaten all at once, its systems don't tidily begin obeying the Typhon's will immediately. Its human passenger can feel the Typhon chewing off bits of it from the inside out, picking them apart and then putting them back together and forcing them to move. All while the poor creature struggles and tries to scream. Eventually, the seagull's struggles still. Within a few minutes, the Typhon finishes its meal.

The Typhon fiddles inscrutably for a little while after, testing out muscle structures and feather shapes, then peels off a mimic-sized chunk of itself. The blob of Typhon-self blurbles in the street, then shapes itself into a perfect copy of a seagull. For a few seconds it sits, unnaturally still. Abruptly, it cries out in alarm and clumsily flails in the street, confused. Exactly like a seagull just got switched on and is very alarmed by its sudden change in circumstances. It rights itself quickly enough, then flies off.

Her Typhon takes a little while to rearrange itself in inscrutable ways, then puts the backpack down and reforms back into a Lauren-shape.

It then returns control.