Amy felt strange hovering over them as they worked. She cleared her throat as she pulled away from the table. There was a corner of the attic where one could find a couple of coolers full of food and drinks. The coolers were blue with a white lid, and there were various cooking utensils and a butane cooking burner sitting on top of them.

"Have you eaten dinner yet?" Amy asked Geordi and Scotty.

"I don't think we've eaten anything since we left that place this morning," Geordi said, tilting her head to the side as she thought. "That was quite a few hours ago."

"Then, are you ready for some breakfast? Or brunch? I don't know what time it is."

"It's breakfast time, but you can make whatever you want."

Amy cleared the top of one cooler, placing the skillets and pans on her lap, and she looked inside it. Although it was a cooler, there were only shelf-stable foods in it. They had the ingredients for a plain oatmeal, and she set it all to the side before she replaced the pots and pans on top of the cooler. Carrying the oats, the water, a small pan, and the butane burner in her lap, she found that they had already cleared a spot for her on the table.

Amy went back to watching them work as she waited for her water to boil. Scotty took out his transparent tablet, and he set it on the table so they could all watch videos while they were working. Geordi and Scotty argued about what to watch on it for a while, and Amy chuckled at them. They eventually settled on a playlist of local and international news.

It had been a long time since Amy had learned about anything that was happening outside of her small circle of friends, and she found herself so invested in what she was watching that she forgot all about the water heating in the pan until the steam obscured her vision of the screen. She leaned to the side to get the steam out of her way, and she dumped the oats into the water without looking away from the screen.

There was news of major corporations gifting androids to small villages in third world countries and giving more remote places access to the Internet. Some companies reported that climate change seemed to be reversing while others argued it was getting worse. It was the same arguments she would hear every now and then while she and Geordi had still been living in a nice, comfortable house, and there was something comforting about it like the world had not changed too much while she had been away from it.

They were watching so much about the things happening throughout the world that it was surprising when there was a clip of breaking news from Indiana. A narrator spoke over aerial footage of HRB's biggest recycling plant, the very same one Geordi and Scotty had sneaked into, and there were several police vehicles sitting in the parking lot. Some people in police uniforms were carrying a body bag on a stretcher out of the building.

"Early this morning, a security officer was making his rounds throughout the building," the narrator said, "when he stumbled across a dead body in the hallway. The police are reluctant to release any details until they're reviewed more of the evidence, but it appears that the victim had been beaten maliciously, leaving it difficult to identify the body.

"We are being asked to leave his identity out of the news until his family is contacted for permission, but there had been some interesting evidence left behind. The police said that the CCTV system had been hacked and forced to shut down for maintenance during the time the victim must have been killed, but there is one clip of two people running out of the building last night."

The video switched to a clip of two people wearing hats and face masks running out of a door, and the shorter of the two turning to look down the hall before closing the door. Amy recognized their clothes, and she raised her eyebrows in surprise over Geordi and Scotty being caught in the building.

"As you can see in that clip, these two people made sure it was difficult to see their faces. There is, however, evidence that someone had touched the body after he had been killed. Some fingerprints had been left behind on the body."

A picture of an angry little girl with a short afro that had some streaks of blue and red in it appeared on screen, and next to it was an image of that picture morphing into an older version of her.

Amy gasped, and she covered her mouth with her hands. She leaned toward the tablet to make sure her eyes were not deceiving her.

"The fingerprints belonged to Aeryn Amah," the narrator continued. "She's a girl who went missing around two years ago after her foster family had been murdered by a man upset about losing his job to a checkout-less grocery store. It is uncertain at this time if she had been there by mere coincidence or not, but the police have asked that if anyone sees this girl, you are to report it immediately so she can be brought in for questioning. We have provided you with an image that we ran through an aging software."

Scotty turned off his device. His eyes were wide with shock. Amy looked at her foster sister, who looked on the verge of vomiting.

"Oh, no, what am I going to do now?" Geordi asked. "I can't leave the house if people are going to be looking out for me."

"It'll be fine," Amy said, stretching a trembling hand toward Geordi. "We've managed to stay hidden for two years, and people were looking for us at first. All we need to do is let this all settle down, and then people will forget about us again. We'll be fine."

Geordi grabbed Amy's hand, and she slumped her shoulders toward the table.

"Besides," Amy said, "we have more friends than we did back then. They'll help us if we ask them. Right, Scotty?"

"Yeah, of course."

Geordi shook her head.

"I know all of that," she said, "but I still don't like being connected to another murder like this. I should have been more careful."

"You were scared, right?" Amy said, squeezing Geordi's hand. "You don't think clearly when you're scared, and you can't be blamed for that."

"I just don't want us to be separated—not after all this trouble we've gone through to stay together."

"We'll be fine, Geordi. We can make it through this together. I promise."

Geordi sighed, but she nodded. She swiped at her eyes, leaving a streak of tears on her temples.

Amy heard a clicking sound, and when she turned to look, she found Scotty taking the pot of oatmeal off the butane burner, which he had turned off for her. Scotty paused when their eyes met.

"I didn't want the oatmeal to overcook," he said, shrugging.

His words were so ordinary that Amy felt her shoulders relax, and she thanked him. Geordi and Scotty took a break from working on the robot to eat breakfast. There was an awkward silence over them at first, but then Scotty elected to talk about some new games he wanted to play. It helped them to forget their situation for a moment.