Within an hour of Hilda’s disappearance, Verruca’s garden was cordoned off with a “Nothing to See Here” banner that flapped in the wind.
H2, a woman of immediate action, ordered a bright orange “danger” tent to be erected over the singed hole where the shed had once been, then held a summit.
Alice, using “wide-o-vision,” projected H2’s face onto the tent’s flapping wall, distorting it into an off-putting sneer.
Calling the sportswomen and the statue builders to pull together, she talked of “the portal holding no prisoners,” sparking a rumble of confusion. “Anyone could be next,” she said.
It didn’t take long for Verruca’s home to look like a crime scene from an Earth movie.
Her garden, trampled within an inch of its life by masked sportswomen and robots, was now a mud slide, her green
