...

The patch of light grows, slightly. The web becomes a little bit larger, right near her head.

She pauses in her humming and walks through that particular bit.

The echo from this one is of the tune she made, with the exact same timing and tone.

That's... almost cute, really.

"So was that you," she wonders, "or...?"

There is of course no answer. She keeps walking.

No space spiders jump out at her!

There is a dark smear of Typhon black on a nearby building, though. Several tendrils attach a large nest-like structure to the wall.

She stops and looks at it. It's not a kind she recognizes.

After several seconds, her Typhon asserts itself.

Quickly and efficiently, it leans down, picks up a stray bit of litter, and throws it so it sails past the nest-thing. The nest explodes into a swarm of little black pulsating spheres that fling themselves after the thrown empty beer bottle -

- with kind of shit aim, actually. They miss, and instead impact the asphalt of the road without even getting close to the beer bottle. There, they explode in orange fire.

The nest doesn't look depleted, only a few of the angry flaming flung themselves after the bottle, but her Typhon returns control. That seems to be all it wanted to do.

She blinks.

"Well, they don't look very edible," she observes. "So maybe I'll just go around."

And she proceeds with this plan.

Her Typhon seems to be on board with this! In that it doesn't seize control and make her do anything else.

There's a second nest of exploding Typhon further into the light web, but it's not in her way. She's on its outer edges, now.

Up ahead, there's another abandoned car that probably doesn't work.

She is no longer in the business of car theft, particularly since she doesn't especially want to give her Typhon that much mobility. She does pause to see if it contains any useful objects, though.

There are a number of supply-looking things haphazardly piled in the backseat. Nothing on top of the pile looks particularly useful (unless she's in the market for new gaming systems) but there might be something she can actually use underneath it.

She'll poke through the pile. Although the thought of teaching her Typhon about video games is kind of entertaining.

This person had a lot of tech, but maybe not much in the way of good priorities. The packed food doesn't look very nutritious, and there's not much in the way of water, but at least this person has their simulation headset. Can't survive the apocalypse without that, clearly. There are a few offline operators, but it's not clear what any of them are programmed to do. They don't have any distinguishing labelling. Maybe there's a medical operator in here somewhere or something, but she'd have to turn them all on to find out.

Notably, there's a TranScribe casually abandoned in the front seat cup holder. Didn't TranStar make a big deal out of their revolutionary 'cellphone killer' finally being released to the general public a few months back? That might be a good replacement for her lost phone.

Oh, all right, she'll steal the dead person's TranScribe. ...and there's room for that gaming system in her pocket so why not, she can take that too.

It looks like the version of the Nintendo Slim that has the attached extendable charger cord. If the TranScribe is half of what it was cracked up to be, it should have a compatible port - yep, there it is. The TranScribe's tiny expandable solar panel should be able to keep both devices powered, provided the aliens don't also eat the sun.

Well, then, let's hope the aliens do not eat the sun.

She takes a moment to rearrange the contents of her pockets to better balance the weight before she moves on.

A mimic attempts to stealthily creep closer in order to eat her while she's busy. It turns into a discarded McDonalds bag and purposefully rolls towards Lauren, crinkling all the way. With no wind to disguise its movement whatsoever. It's not very good at its chosen task.

...

She points at it.

Yeah there was never any way this chosen task was going to work out for the mimic.

Her Typhon conscientiously puts her back next to the backpack after it's done committing cannibalism.

She puts on the backpack and keeps walking.

Another two mimics attempt ambushes as she walks. The first is just as easy to spot as the wayward McDonald's bag, but the second is much better at it. A crumpled soda can, half hidden by a stray bit of paper and perfectly ordinary-looking, morphs into a mimic and leaps at her before any pointing can be done.

This does not work out for the mimic.

But Lauren is introduced to the unpleasant sensation of her arm moving without her permission, then morphing into a black tendril that deftly catches the mimic out of the air. She can still feel the arm, and gets to feel it mercilessly squish the hapless mimic, which screeches in something like pain, or perhaps surprise. The tendrils then expand and swallow the Typhon whole. Lauren can feel the mimic-blob squirming, and then it falls still. Her sense of her own body then expands to the mimic blob itself, the once-mimic integrating itself to match the structure of the surrounding limb.

Once all of the mimic is fully integrated, her arm turns back to normal and her Typhon returns control.

...she blinks at her hand, turns it over, opens and closes her fingers. It just feels like itself. The bizarre sensations have entirely subsided.

"I wonder if I could learn how to do that."

Her Typhon doesn't offer commentary. Or lessons.

There are a few abandoned commercial buildings she can explore if she'd like to. A McDonalds, a Starbucks, a Tim Hortons, probably more if she explores further.

She goes to the Tim Hortons. It's probably been looted out but she's not stopping by for a donut, she just wants somewhere to sit.

First, check the area for mimics...