The dark teen is standing in a dark alley looking down at his blue-lit screen, rain falling gently off the hood of his parka. The screen is a radar grid with a feint dot in the top left corner. More blips appear, the original becomes less faint, and each dot begins moving quickly towards the center. Pierre spins and runs.

An unshaven, disheveled man with an infected leg, splinted, is muttering to himself on a bare mattress with a recently cleaned, blood soaked sheet beneath. A gaunt 19-year old girl is washing a scalpel and pan in a small sink ten feet away from the foot of the bed. A clean-shaven energetic young man is standing by the steel door, covered by plastic sheeting held by a dozen round magnets. The entirety of the small apartment’s walls and windows are layered with a spray-on rubber coat. A computer monitor, left of the door, is the room’s sole source of warm, blue light.

There is a loud, single knock on the door followed by a rhythmic tapping. Christopher quickly removes the round magnets holding the plastic sheet to the door, tosses the sheet left, unlocks and opens the door to a shaken Pierre hopping in, slamming and locking the door shut while Christopher resets the plastic.

Christopher lifts his eyebrows. “Wasps or Nighties?” he asks in a pristinely academic London accent. 

Pierre locks eyes with Christopher and exhales: “Wasps. New behavior.” Pierre spoke with the crisp pronunciation of an earnest intellectual learning English. He had moved from Peru five years earlier after landing a youth scholarship at the University’s micro-robotics department.

Christopher shifts his eyes up and left, nods his head, and begins pacing the room, rubbing his chin. Pierre attends to the plastic sheeting, meticulously covering the cracks in the door , replacing the magnets, cursing.

“So, that was *quick*, Pierre. Not your expedition, although that was also a nice surprise, I did drink too much tea before you left, but you state that their behavior changed … empirically, I assume?!”

“Yes. There will be logs. I believe that they are - ”

“WASPS!” The man in the bed interrupted. “WASPPSSSS!”

Christopher casually walks towards the bedroom, a few feet past the bed on the right side, and Pierre follows. Josie joins from the sink, leaning tiredly into the door frame. 

Christopher nods at Pierre, who continues. “I know what they’re doing. They’re moving slowly, super slow, to a location just adjacent of the target..” He pauses, going inward for a moment, “… and they’re … sprinting from there.”

“I assume you’re out of breath because you caught the sprint … just in time?” asked Christopher, giving Pierre a look that of respectful acknowledgement. 

“Yes.. Fuck! Maybe he isn’t so dumb. Maybe they tricked him.” They looked toward the man writhing on the bed, muttering and slowly pissing himself.

“Right.” Christopher said, nodding then tilting his head and staring at nothing. “Thats… troublesome.”

“I’ll broadcast it.” said Josie in her assertive but soft Kentucky accent, leaving the doorway. At the computer,  she picked up a thumb-drive labeled “2030/Oct”, inserted it into a hub on the desk, and began typing:
```
NOACK//3Amigos//WaspSprintObservation//Oct.03.2030============================
The wasps have shown new behavior.
They slowly grouped 1.5 miles from Amigo, then “sprinted” to him.
Will send numbers once parsed.
Any related obs?
```