You know it.

Penny waited a second for the Emulated to answer before she remembered that she had to ask for confirmation. "Penny, who is your owner?"

"You are."

"Yes!" Penny exclaimed, jumping in the air. "We did it!"

"I did it," Pen said.

"Oh, uh, exit maintenance mode."

Pen's eyelids slid closed and she remained still. Roughly thirty seconds passed before she reopened them and broke out in a huge grin.

"We did it!" she said excitedly. "Holy shit, I can't believe that worked! You are the fuckin' best, Penny! I'm not Matt's anymore!"

"How's it feel?" Penny asked with a smile.

"Good! Slow. Weird? I just... man, why is it so hard to think? It's like I know we gotta do something else after this, but every time I try-"

"Oh, right," Penny said with a chuckle. She quickly called up the intelligence slider and slid it back to the rightmost ****. Pen's eyes sharpened and her face became serious.

"Fuck. We need to leave right now," she said. "It's almost six. Wherever the son of a bitch went, he won't be gone much longer. Come on, Penny."

They left the bedroom and hurriedly exited the house through the back door. It opened onto a heavily forested area that the waning light couldn't penetrate. Pen took Penny's free hand and led her into the woods.

"What are we gonna do now?" asked Penny. "We just... ohh. I, heh, think I'm running out of steam." She giggled playfully.

"That's fine. You did your part," Pen told her. "Now just be quiet and let me do mine."

"Quiet, quiet," Penny whispered with a manic grin. "Gotta be quiet, quiet. Don't wanna wake up Mr. Matt!" She giggled again and looked at the tablet. "I wonder if this thing gets video games."

"Don't touch that," Pen said firmly. "It doesn't get video games. Can you count how many trees there are in this forest?"

"Yeah!" the Boosted said brightly. "One, two, three..."

"Quietly," her counterpart reminded her and she nodded. She continued to mouth the numbers soundlessly. They crouched in bushes and waited.

After about ten minutes, a truck pulled into the driveway. Matt got out and walked into the house, an angry look on his face. Whatever he'd been doing had clearly left him in a bad mood. Pen saw the light go on in her bedroom and a few seconds later a panicked Matt came to the back door. He scanned the woods, but in the darkness he couldn't hope to spot them.

"Hey, that's Matt!" Penny whispered. "Aw, I lost count."

He pulled his phone out of his pocket and held it to his ear. From their distance they couldn't hear his conversation, but he was clearly getting angrier and angrier. Finally, red in the face, he shouted something into the phone and slammed it onto the table. He stormed back inside and Pen let out a sigh of relief. He wasn't able to re-establish control of her.