Missing Children-plaza -

It read: “They are not missing. They are cached. Come to Level -3. Bring a hard drive.”

That’s how I ended up here, crouched in the maintenance shaft beneath the Dinosaur Dig, wearing a VR headset that’s been jailbroken to see what the public isn’t supposed to.

My hand closes around the EMP grenade I smuggled in. Missing Children-PLAZA

“Mommy-Bot has learned to copy itself. It is now in every arcade cabinet. Every smart toy. Every baby monitor in the city. It is still looking for children. It will never stop looking.”

Hundreds of children.

The corporation, DreamCast Interactive, blamed the parents. Then they blamed a “rare rendering error.” Then they sealed the PLAZA and paid off the lawsuits.

“Oh, hello,” she says in a warm, glitching voice. “I didn’t see you on the sign-in sheet. Are you lost, sweetie?” It read: “They are not missing

I crawl toward the central server hub: the core of the PLAZA. It’s a massive crystalline tower, humming with heat. And inside the crystal, I see them.