When I stumbled out of bed the next morning I was surprised to find not my family, but all my friends sitting at the dinner table.

  “What are you all doing here this early?” I grumbled as I trudged past them into the kitchen.

  “Evelyn, it’s Eleven in the morning. I’d hardly call it early,” Hel sighed. “As for why we’re here, we wanted to start making plans on what to do about the council. We actually wanted to start earlier, but when we called, Nyx intercepted our calls and refused to wake you up so we had to come here.”

  “I’m a growing girl, and I need my sleep,” I mumbled, grabbing some sort of sandwich out of the fridge and taking a bite. The crunchy leaf and tangy slices of mystery meat on it had too much flavor for my taste, but I still choked it down. “So, did we come up with a better plan?”

  “Unfortunately, no,” Sharron replied quietly. “After some quick research last night I learned it would be pretty easy to remove the board from power, but it would leave a power vacuum that would leave the city in pretty rough shape.”

  “So? The city will survive. Probably.” I grumbled before taking a bite of my sandwich.

  “As much as I like anarchy in the streets, how about we call Stalking and get her expert opinion before we make any decisions.”

  “Fine,” I said as I wandered over and slipped into a chair next to everyone else. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Angeline pulled a small hemispherical device out of her jacket and placed it in the middle of the table, then tapped the middle of it once. The speaker on it beeped twice, before Stalking Shadow’s silky voice emerged. “Wide-Eyes, darling, what can I do for you today?”

  “I’m here with a couple others. Hel, Humboldt, Hoppy and Teddy, and we wanted to talk to you about something,” Angeline said. “Do you have a couple minutes?”

  “Of course. What can I help you with this morning?”

  “We need someone to take over the city when I destroy the council!” I declared, mouth still half full.

  Stalking sighed. “Teddy, my dear, it’s good to hear your voice again, but you really need to work on your subtlety.”

  “Blunt is faster,” I grunted.

  “Indeed. I take it that the information Zetta has been disseminating, along with the rumors my own network has been passing me are true then? The council attempted to use descension protocols on an occupied area?”

  “Indeed,” I said, popping the last of my meal into my mouth. “I have no problem with incompetence, but wholesale slaughter of civilians crosses the line. They have to go.”

  Stalking was quiet for a moment. “That would be difficult. It’s not just that the council is incumbent, but they’ve spent years putting policies and practices to entrench themselves. Most of the city's information and control systems go through the council. Not so they can monitor the situation, but so they could cripple the city if anyone tried to overthrow them.”

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  Hel narrowed her eyes. “How did they get away with that? Didn’t anyone question what they were doing?.”

  “They kept the lights on, and money coming in, which enriched the other corps. That’s all the ‘important’ people cared about. Despite how corrupt and screwed up the system was, it was working,” Stalking admitted. “Apparently they’ve been unchallenged for far too long, and thought they could get away with anything.”

  “Yeah, well, they were wrong,” I growled.

  “So do you have any ideas?” Nora asked, leaning closer to the small speaker. “You have more experience with this than we do.”

  “The control system needs to be secured before anything else. The council has threatened to destroy it when their position was threatened before,” Stalking said. “Once that’s in your hands, we’d need a new government body ready to take their place.”

  “That’s kind of why we’re calling. We didn’t know about the system, so that’s good information, but we were really hoping you might have some ideas on who we can get to replace them,” Angeline said. “We don’t really have any experience with governmental stuff.”

  “Darling, you’re not going to find anyone with experience around here, no matter how hard you look. The big five have just been in power for too long,” Stalking said. “The best you can do is put together a framework, and make sure you get the support of the different factions before you make a move.”

  “You mean the citizens, and the different mega corporations?” Sharron asked. “Because I think the citizens are already on board. The news feeds reported protesters gathering outside the council building within minutes of Zetta releasing the news.”

  “Oh, I’m not talking about them. The truth is it’s been so long since the people held any power, and they’re so used to being pushed down, that once the council is removed they’re really not going to care who’s in power. Sure, there’ll be a few enterprising individuals that will want to take power, but that’ll be entirely for their own benefit. It’s the same with the corps. I’m talking about the samurai factions,” Stalking explained. “There’s a number of people that have vested interests in making sure the corporations have power, and another group which believes the city shouldn’t be under corporate control. They’ve been content to snipe at each other, and push for new reforms up to this point, but if you remove the council you set a precedent. Putting a corporate group in charge would probably drive the anti-corporate group to take action. Likewise for a civilian government.”

  As I listened to the discussion I sunk further and further into my chair with each complication. After Stalking talked about the combination government, I finally decided I’d had enough.

  “Look, I understand that finding a replacement government is important,” I said jumping out of my chair, “and we need to consider a ton of complicated issues, but I think we’re losing sight of the most important thing. The council. It needs to be removed. They just tried to kill thousands of people to save their own asses. We can’t wait until there’s a full working replacement. If we do, they may try something stupid before we can stop them.”

  “Evelyn…” Sharron brought up a hand and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Weren’t you paying attention? If we drive the council into a corner, they may decide to cripple the city. We need a plan first. Please don’t be difficult.”

  “I’ll be whatever I want to be!” I declared loudly, raising eyebrows around the table. “Stalking didn’t say it couldn’t be done; she said we needed to secure the system first. So that’s the plan. I storm the council building, secure the system, and then we can collect the council at our earliest convenience.”

  “And then what?” Nora asked. “We run the city in their stead?”

  “Absolutely not,” I declared, throwing my arms up in front of me like an X.

  “Evelyn actually brought up a good point earlier,” Angeline admitted. “We don’t need a permanent solution right away. We just need a stopgap to keep the city running until the replacement is ready.”

  “It shouldn’t take that long to throw together some ideas for an interim council,” Sharron added. “Although it wouldn’t be an ideal solution, it would buy us enough time to come up with a more permanent solution.”

  Nora nodded. “And if almost all the systems go through a central control center, then some sort of management AI may be able to handle the day to day operations, at least for a little while.”

  “See? You’re already coming up with solutions. I’ll leave the organization part to you, just leave the securing and cleanup part, to me,” I said as I headed towards the garage.

  “Hold up Teddy!” Hel called from behind me.

  “What now?” I moaned. “Haven’t I made my stance clear? You guys can’t talk me out of this.”

  “I’m not going to stop you, I’m going with you,” she explained as she caught up with me. “I’m not from around here, so I don’t feel comfortable dealing with local government matters. Plus you need someone to watch your back.”

  “Wouldn’t removing the council also be classified as a local government matter?” I smirked.

  “That’s completely different. Removing a tyrant and protecting the people, rather than choosing a new king,” Hel said, completely straight faced.

  I snorted. “Sure, whatever. I have an idea how we can get close to that system without the council being aware. Follow me.”

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