Slumped in his armchair, exhausted, Michael stared blankly down at the floor of his empty studio apartment. The urge to slip fully into blissful unconsciousness was steadily rising; nothing sounded better than to just sit in peace and silence for a few more moments. Yet, he couldn't stop so soon. There was more that needed to be done.

His original scattered plan, formed in a haze of excruciating pain, had been to buy time. He had needed to patch together the minimum it would take to make it to the hospital, before letting them take care of the rest. Looking at the extent of the damage, his only chance had been to reach an actual surgeon and hope he made it in time. From there, it was supposed to be over. Once he arrived, he would be safe. Afterwards he would have met with the Protectorate, informed them that there was some lunatic on the loose manufacturing murderous tinkertech, and they would have taken it out of his hands. That's what they were there for, after all.

So quickly had that plan shattered, when those first steel threads had kept working into him, making removal impossible. It had buried itself too deep, becoming intimately connected with the rest of his body. Seated in his chair, he haltingly dragged up the edge of his shirt, revealing the wound. Jagged whorls and raised spirals stretched across his stomach and up his broken ribs, an ugly mess that mirrored the machinery beneath. Worse, the crawling sensation of nearby tinkertech pulled at his mind, an incessant reminder of the machinery inside him that had come a breath away from cutting his life short. But even as it had failed, nothing would be able to fully repair what had happened. Perhaps some miraculous tinkertech or a certain cape might be able to offer a starting point, but he had never heard of anything even close to sophisticated enough. If it existed, surely the inventor would be world-famous.

Without such intervention, what had been designed as a temporary solution was suddenly missing a permanent one to follow it. Removing the tinkertech inside of him was no longer an option, and immediately an entirely new slew of problems emerged. As it stood, the patch job he'd enacted was just that: the bare minimum. From the first moment onwards he hadn't wanted the fragment of the Machine Army to do more than absolutely necessary, but it had moved forwards regardless. He'd been too occupied in stabilizing himself, holding off his looming death, that in his haze of panic and pain the rest had been secondary. Only after it was too late had he slammed it to a halt.

Now he had no choice but to rely on it once again, and how biting a thought that was. His hands clenched, teeth tight as his thoughts filled with the taint of bitter desperation. Nothing would be better than to reach out and grab the tendrils in his power, force them back against themselves so that they snapped and tore and shattered into useless fragments. But the reality of the situation held him in check. Even if he could somehow destroy the tinkertech, he'd be dead in moments.

Well, if destruction wasn't an option, neither was being on the back foot any longer. He would seize it once more, and even if he couldn't rip it to shreds, he could force it to put him back together properly. The power was there, to crush it in an iron grip so that it wouldn't move a millimeter past exactly what he desired. No more subtle evasions, with the singular focus of his attention bearing down upon it.

Once more, the incomprehensible flood of information rose as his thoughts burrowed violently into the machinery. Another all-too-detailed look within, at the missing pieces and another reminder of what the tinkertech had taken. This time, though, it would put him back together whether it wanted to or not. Impatiently, he waited for the plan to appear, the branching steps to flow in through the fog all around him like it had before.

It only took a moment to realize something was wrong. When he had been lying on the rough floor of the ruined building, the information had emerged instantly, like it was something innate—called up as naturally as breathing. This time, there was nothing. Not a sense of rejection or refusal, but a blank emptiness.

Michael's mind stuttered, churning without an outlet. Thoughts spun in place aimlessly, missing the glorious sense of purpose and focus that had risen during that initial design. He didn't understand—why didn't it work, why couldn't he fix himself? What was different this time? he thought, feeling so very human and so very lost.

Gritting his teeth, he banished the faltering thoughts. If the Machine Army wouldn't help him, then he would do it himself. Alone, a single tendril twitched, eliciting a distant shiver of pain as it reached out, and details of its surroundings filled his mind. The unspooled, branching wire hesitated, sitting in place, and he stopped. The scale of the problem dragged upwards, incomprehensibly huge, and he let the data wash over him, slipping from his numb grasp. Pulling back from the machinery, he abandoned the overwhelming details that filled every nook and cranny of his mind. He wanted to scream, to swear and throw it away in loathing and disgust. On his own, he didn't even know where to start.

It was too much. Far, far too much. The task before him was hopeless, and he could taste an inkling of why there had been only that blankness in response. It wasn't disobedient, it was incapable. For all that the Machine Army could do, its speed and power and finesse, it wasn't all-powerful. Tinkertech, certainly, and far more flexible and adaptable than any ordinary construct of steel and circuitry should have ever been, but in that first glorious design, when it had conducted a grand synchronized effort under his guidance, it hadn't done anything truly impossible. It had enacted a thousand ordinary moves with inhuman accuracy and precision, but each action, each stitch, had been mundane. Now, he craved to be whole again, and there was nothing it could do. His flesh, his bones, the pieces of himself that were gone, had vanished for good.

Doubled atop the first failure was the realization of his second. It wasn't just a matter of missing tools; the truth was that he himself was just as useless. On his own, he didn't even know where to begin. He was no doctor, had no extensive knowledge of his own body. For all that it belonged to him, it may as well have been completely foreign. The surgery could have been reduced to a game of matching shapes with their proper location, and he still would have failed. The missing pieces weren't the only problem—none of the work was something he could do himself. Even those first crawling stitches had been conducted by the Machine Army.

Driven by slow desperation, Michael again turned his attention inwards. He drifted back towards the machinery, guided once more by the tingling sensation of nearby tinkertech that remained faint but ever-present. Once he had plunged forth in agony, and a moment ago in fury, but now he stopped at the edge. His thoughts danced above the abyss that had twice now consumed his mind and overwhelmed his senses.

He wanted to understand. What was it that made this fragment of the Machine Army so different from the tinkertech he had discovered before? All four of the other pieces of tech he had found in the past had been simple. With a touch, they had appeared in his mind, like another limb that he had always had. He could power on the shield with a moment's reaction, and while the other three pieces had nothing to move, he could visualize every detail of their design just as quickly.

The Machine Army was something else altogether. Never before existed that division, requiring him to send his thoughts forth, like he was diving into the tinkertech itself. It was impossible to tell why, perhaps the sheer complexity of the piece, or more likely, the intelligence that dwelt within. Although, not everything was different. Even now, sitting in the solitude of his own mind, the machinery lay still. Evidence of his control, without the full depth of the disorienting, staggering meld.

Experimentally, he let a suggestion move along the surface of his mind in the same manner that he'd first tested his power, when he'd flickered the tinkertech shield to life with a faint hum. Like reaching out to grasp something, there wasn't any focus on the individual motions, just one encompassing gesture aimed at rippling the jagged surface of the Machine Army that ran along his side.

The metal twisted beneath him, and he almost screamed as a web of burning pain flared to life along its length. Like a mental shove, it sent his mind tumbling back toward the Machine Army, where the scorching sensation was immediately tamped down and banished under the mixture of odd clarity and accompanying onslaught of information. The fog billowed and rose around him, but without any pressing purpose he paused, taking it in.

Within the Army, there was an immediate, fundamental difference—everything made sense. He could only grasp a fraction, a tiny bubble of the seemingly-endless ocean that surrounded him, but the bits of information that he could perceive fit together, supporting and reinforcing one another as they traveled through the indistinct expanse. There was nothing without purpose, no idle spirals of useless, wasted thought. Everything was moving, everything was going somewhere.

Here he floated, taking in the alien, incomprehensible perspective, and an idea slowly formed. From the endless torrent around him and the single-minded purpose that filled its being, the concept pieced itself together. The machinery within his body couldn't rebuild what was lost, couldn't bring him back to what he had been before, but there was still a way. The very moment the idea fully crystallized, a beautiful, elaborate plan rose into view, ready to be enacted. Michael hesitated.

To keep himself alive was possible. He could see how it would happen, each and every little change. Replacing what was lost instead of repairing it, and embracing the very technology that had torn him apart. He didn't want to. He wanted to be back whole and hale, without the weight that dug into his side and filled his thoughts. Instead, the path offered before him was the opposite. It promised more machinery, more metal swelling out to fill his body, and placing the permanent responsibility of his survival upon the Machine Army. But beyond the ticking clock that drove him to act, there was a difference. This time, the choice to proceed was his own. He could embrace the creeping expansion, with all the burgeoning modification that it would include, as a deliberate decision, rather than a reflexive gasp.

The Machine Army, for all that it seemed alive, approached everything from its own mechanical perspective. To find a way forward, to fully fix himself, he had to do the same. As he stared blankly ahead in contemplation, he felt a shift within the Army. That same sensation once again, of something that almost resembled attention. A weight, a presence.

There lay the catch, the glaring hesitation—he couldn't proceed on his own. The design that lay before him was too complex. The ending was visible, shaped according to his desires, but the spaces that lay between were far too numerous and intricate. The Machine Army operated beyond his own level, and the only way to continue was to take the same risk that had arisen the first time. To loosen his grip, be it ever so slightly.

With gritted teeth, he made up his mind, and within his body the machinery stirred once more.

This time, he remained focused inwards as it began its dance, waiting and watching for something to stray off course, for the Army to once again push the limits he had imposed. As he gazed inwards, the work expanded beneath his eyes. The finer details passed by as the work flowed, but here and there something would catch his attention. Pieces rose that were almost recognizable, save for being so out of place. Hair-thin membranes, bundles of hollow structures that pulsed, pushing blood through. Ferried upwards from the center, from where the limbs had joined together, splinters of technology spread out. The longer it progressed, the stranger it became.

Things appeared that he had no recollection of seeing until they were already in place, fragments that flashed with incomprehensible possibility before they stabilized, shifting into reality. Unlike the first time the Machine Army had begun its work, when he had been nearly overwhelmed by the sheer amount of detail, now there was another layer. He almost stopped it there, abandoning the attempt, but the feeling of ongoing purpose from the Army hadn't changed. Whatever was happening, it was all accounted for. Each step remained part of the initial decision, threads within the tapestry slowly coming together. Instead he only watched in hesitation, waiting for the work to finish. The moment it did, he clenched it into stillness under his grasp.

As the last threads of movement bled to a stop, his thoughts rose out of the tinkertech, mind straining as the layers peeled away beneath him and he was suddenly back in his own head once more. Eyes downcast, he gazed at the metallic scar in wary anticipation, hoping quietly that what he had done would work.