Down, down into the depths did the box descend, the grinding of wheel and winding of steel droning a foreboding melody—grating on the ears and taxing on the mind.

Watts tugged stiffly at his collar, loosening his tie with a soft grunt. Their surroundings seemed to grow significantly warmer the further they descended, and he half-feared that their final destination would ultimately prove too inhospitable for them to continue. He would have spoken out, voiced his complaints, his overdue misgivings, but something held his tongue. For some reason, the notion that he ought to refrain from banal chatter in this space lingered in his mind—as if they were descending into the sacrosanct, where it would not do to throw words about so carelessly. Instead, he threw a sidelong glance towards his companion. She seemed unbothered by the heat, not a bead of perspiration condensed upon her brow. He frowned, casting his unfounded unease aside and opened his mouth, only to be cut off before he could utter a word.

The lift suddenly shuddered to a stop with a thunderous clang, followed by a deep silence. It lingered in stillness for a beat, making Watts believe that they had been trapped, that some crucial point had been overlooked, before the doors smoothly slid open, casting light upon the darkness. A pinprick of radiance, pale and sterile. A lone beacon in the void.

They shifted forth with tentative, wary steps, the squeaking of boots on metal deafening in the silence. A narrow stretch of hall, dark and impenetrable, its features scarcely visible in the wan glow. Eventually, even this pittance of light faded as the doors shut behind them, growing slimmer until naught but a sliver remained. Then, it, too, vanished.

In its place, was left a darkness so absolute and encompassing that it seemed to steal the very breath from Watts's lungs. There must have been a mistake, some manner of fatal error. At some point in the descent, they must have surely crossed the threshold into the next world, because it seemed incomprehensible that such isolation could exist in life. Here, there was nothing. Here, there was only the end.

He stood rigid, eyes dilated to their utmost—a vain attempt to discern something in the inky blackness. His ears strained, seeking even the slightest sound. The air, musty and still, gathered in his lungs and settled like a leaden weight. He did not move. He did not speak. He did not even dare breathe, lest the sound awaken some terror lurking unseen.

And then the spell was broken.

The elevator started with a jolt behind them, its groaning ascent a welcome reprieve from the silence. The darkness was dispelled as rows upon rows of small service lights sparked to life along the length of the tunnel, illuminating their surroundings properly for the first time.

Unlike the deliberate, stylized design of the upper floors, the make of this place seemed entirely utilitarian. The stonework of the underlying tunnel lay exposed, with only sparse, industrial scaffolding placed wherever structural integrity demanded. Metal frames glimmered rough and unpolished like the failing rays of a clouded moon. Bulky, exposed rivets fastened them in place, jutting out obscenely like clusters of tumors.

"Well, there it goes," Bronie said, unable to entirely mask the tremor in her voice. "Our way out. For better or worse, this whole thing's going to be wrapped up in about ten minutes."

"For better or worse," Watts echoed hoarsely, his voice smaller and fainter than he remembered.

The tunnel extended a fair distance into the bowels of the landmass before, finally, terminating in a massive, vaulted cavern. As they entered, a halo of the same, small service lights flared to life in quick succession—meager pinpoints dwarfed by the enormity of the space they were meant to illuminate. Coiling cables flowed in tangled knots from the walls, twisting into the room from every conceivable angle. They gathered in hulking bundles along the floor, threading around various mechanical components and converging at a central point—a steepled dais that rose well above the disorder, nearly scraping the vaulted ceiling.

Sat upon that dais, so high that it could have been an offering directly unto the heavens themselves, was a small, black box. Bronie's eyes locked onto it, a grimace twisting at her lips. It was a simple thing, lacking any adornment or intricacy and only barely illuminated in the dim ambience. Had it not lain where it did, there would be nothing to distinguish it from any of the other miscellany that lay strewn about the cavern.

"That's it?" Watts asked, peering dubiously towards the peak. His knees began to ache as he eyed the steep set of stairs.

"Well, don't sound too impressed."

Bronie shook her head, eyeing the monument shrewdly. "Look at her, letting Atlas do whatever they like. All this just so she can keep watch over her stupid, little city. What's so great about this place, anyway?"

"Nothing of import, I'm sure. Are we supposed to just walk up and grab it, then?"

"That would be the plan. Grab the box and get out with none the wiser. Think you can handle that climb, old ma—wait, quiet."

"I haven't said anything."

"Quiet!"

A heavy silence fell, and they listened intently. Fluid sloshed languidly as it flowed through the gargantuan coolant pipes lining the walls. The electrical hum emanating from the masses of cables droned still and consistent. The air whistled a low, keening note as it filtered past the many obstacles in their surroundings.

They stiffened simultaneously. The air.

There shouldn't have been a draft. The cavern was a dead end, and there was only one place the breeze could have come from. A familiar noise—that of sliding steel—wafted faintly from the darkness of the hall behind them, terminating in a distant clang.

"Move," Bronie hissed, immediately springing into motion, Watts barely moments behind.

They dodged and vaulted across the room, sprinting for the shelter of a set of pipes near the rear of the cavern, well out of the immediate sight of the hall. Watts crouched low, taking refuge in the heavy shadows.

After some time, the sound of slow, measured footsteps echoed faintly from the corridor, growing louder and more defined with each passing moment. An ominous noise, steel rasping on steel. Each step stuck heavily enough for him to believe that it was a grown man—a rather heavyset one, at that—yet the pace was incongruous. The footfalls landed too swiftly in succession, the stride too abbreviated, to be a full-grown adult. The metallic notes struck clear and even without prelude—the culprit wasn't merely dragging their feet; it was a natural, walking pace. He peeked cautiously out as the noises finally reached the chamber, curious to discover the owner of such discordant steps.

Bronie hissed lowly as the newcomer came into view. "That's—"

"That fool, Polendina's, contraption," Watts said. "Why is it here?"

What seemed to be an adolescent girl, clad in white and green and looking sorely out of place in the steely grey of the cavern, gazed curiously into the gloom. She craned her neck, inquisitively peeking about the area, as if searching for something.

"Attention, intruders!" she called, her tone light and bright. "Please reveal yourselves! This zone is reserved for Clearance Level Ten personnel only!" She waited for a moment, her chipper smile dimming at the lack of response. A small frown twitched at the corners of her mouth. "Lethal force has been authorized, to be employed at my discretion. Surrender now, and you will be granted a fair trial in an Atlesian military court. Please be advised that any hostile actions will be construed as an attack on critical military infrastructure and warrants immediate neutralization."

"Ah, man," Bronie groaned quietly, sinking into a seat against the pipe. "I think we might be screwed."

"How could you fail to account for this?"

"I didn't! I mean, I knew it was a possibility. I just…couldn't think of a feasible answer for this sort of scenario and hoped I'd be able to avoid it."

"Clearly, that didn't work."

"Now, you look here, Watts. I warned you, didn't I? I told you it might be dangerous, you're the one who insisted on following me down here."

"I was under the impression that you knew what you were doing."

"I told you we'd be walking into unknown territory!" She huffed in annoyance, tilting her wrist and glancing at her watch. The timer read just past the fifty-five minute mark.

"I'd ask if you trust me, but we both already know the answer to that," she said. "I'll have you know I didn't come completely unprepared for this scenario."

"So you do have a solution."

"A gamble, more like. Five minutes. We can't take her in a straight-up fight, but we just need to stall for five minutes."

Watts's brow raised at the prospect. "I must remind you, Zaychik. Combat is not my forte. I would fare poorly in a contest of strength with an average huntsman, nevermind that…contraption."

"I'm afraid we don't really have any other alternatives. Don't worry, I'll keep the bulk of her attention; you just stay alive until time's up."

"After which?"

She hesitated, a grimace pulling at her lips "Well, if we're lucky, we knock her out and take our prize. If we're unlucky, we'll at least have a way out. How's your landing strategy?"

"Adequate."

"Good enough. Take this." She detached the orange-cube charm from her scroll before handing the device to him. She produced a pen and paper, scrawling something down before passing it to him as well. "Here's the password."

"And what am I supposed to do with this?" He asked, accepting the items.

"There's an override protocol that I've been working on in there. You know Polendina's weapons? All those swords? They communicate through a closed relay network—one which she needs to be a part of to operate. The entire array is just a single big system with her as one of the nodes. Take control of one and—"

"—And I would be able to access every other in the system."

"Exactly. It's still just a prototype, but, given the right conditions, it should do the trick."

"The right conditions being?"

"You'll know it when you see it." Bronie paused, listening intently. "Hasn't she gotten a bit quiet?"

She peeked over to where Polendina had halted. The android stood in the same position they had last seen her, frozen, save for the miniscule twitching of her extremities. Her eyes, wide with something that resembled surprise, were locked, unblinking on the monolith that dominated the center of the cavern.

"Oh," Bronie said, immediately realizing a crucial oversight. "That's not good."

"What now."

"You know how I said RABBIT's got no eyes or ears down here?"

"Yes."

"Well, forget just eyes and ears, there's the complete package standing right there."

"And," Watts asked slowly, his tone a touch more strained, "what does that mean for us."

"It means she's coming for us herself."

"RABBIT."

Something which could easily be construed as some form of deity. Beings that embodied the absolute form of a concept. As Zaychik had once referred to them: Herrscher. He swallowed, suddenly aware of just how dry his throat was.

"Can't you speak to her?" He asked urgently. "When all is said and done, you are allies, are you not?"

Bronie shook her head. "It doesn't work like that, Watts. She gave up a lot to become…that. She sealed away her ego, and now she's just a consciousness operating solely on the id. She's going to follow her instincts above all else—rules and directives. And us being here means we're rule-breakers of the highest order."

"Lovely. Well? What do we do?"

A burst of orange light, and a pair of submachine guns lay in the girl's grip. "Plan's the same. Five minutes."

She surged forward, ignoring the alarmed cry from her accomplice and rushed straight for the android in a bid to land the first strike. Lead poured from her barrels in frenzied bursts, the bits of metal glancing off the android's aura and ricocheting off into the gloom.

Penny snapped into focus the instant the stillness was disturbed, jerking into motion, an eerie electric blue trailing from her eyes. Her body stuttered in stilted, staggered movements, as if it were competing against her. Even so, all it took was a single bound to clear the distance. A set of blades expanded with a flourish from behind, poised and ready to strike.

She landed, her weapons screeching as they bit into a half-formed sheet of steel conjured forth in a brilliant flash of twilight. From beneath the impromptu shelter, the small form darted, a quartet of drones trailing behind. They rallied at her flank, pestering her with gunfire while their master strafed about, keeping the android's attention locked.

A set of blades chased after Bronie, their master maneuvering them like the strings of a marionette. She dove past a pair, leaping, boot kicking off of the framework of a half-formed step. And then another. And another. And another. Step after step, crude pillar after crude pillar formed beneath her feet, and she ascended to the heights of the cavern.

At this elevation, she had an unobstructed view of the monolith shining dimly in the center, her prize sitting squarely at its peak. Everything had gone to hell, but perhaps there was still some salvaging it. She leapt into the empty air, her hands flailing, blindly grasping and connecting with one of her drones. It plunged in altitude with the additional weight, but managed to remain airborne.

She had only flown a scarce few meters before a blinding light flashed in the darkness. Instinctively, she released her grip, tumbling the dozens of meters to the hard floor below as the space above her erupted in emerald brilliance, the heat sweltering and oppressive. When the light faded, nothing was left, save for the molten, smoldering crater on the far wall.

Polendina strode unhurriedly towards her, her array of blades divided as some harried Watts while others fended off her drones. The remainder rallied around her, jockeying for position to keep the smaller girl in check.

Bronie pulled herself to her feet, turning to face her opponent. That indifferent expression burned her like nothing else. The sheer disregard, a vile poison, acrid and hot.

Look at me.

Her lips stretched painfully, teeth bared in a scowl.

I'm right here, so look at me.

Her arms snapped up, and the rattling of gunfire echoed in the cavern once more. A roar, primal and unrestrained, echoed forth from her throat.

Look at me.

Polendina didn't move. She didn't so much as twitch. Worst of all, that damnable expression never shifted. The bullets plinked off her aura, scattering harmlessly to the wayside.

Bronie held the triggers until both weapons sputtered naught but empty clicking. She could have automatically restocked the ammunition near-indefinitely, but there really wouldn't be a point. Mundane lead bullets simply were not enough, and she cursed her inability to fabricate the more powerful dust-based rounds. The guns fell to the floor.

The ineffectual assault ended, Polendina responded in kind. A blade shot forward, only to be halted in its tracks as a steel slab materialized in its path. Another, to the same effect. And another, and another. Unperturbed, she surveyed the constructs coolly.

"The form is crude. Energy utilization, inefficient."

"Bite me. It gets the job done. Besides I'm not the one who designed this shoddy piece of work." She jangled the small charm derisively, though her body remained tense, her expression, stormy.

The android did not rise to the jab. "You cannot win," she stated flatly.

Bronie narrowed her eyes. If she had the capability to perspire, she was sure she'd be feeling the cold rivulets of a nervous sweat right about now. Her gaze flickered to where Watts was struggling valiantly against his own adversaries.

He had somehow managed to procure one of the swords for himself and was alternating between batting away the persistent blades and firing shots from his revolver. He was doing an admirable job, but he was a scholar, first and foremost. He couldn't possibly last. She looked towards the exit and, to her dismay, found that the energy beam had destroyed the wall and collapsed the tunnel.

"Escape is impossible," the android said, noticing her wandering gaze. "Submit to reprogramming and you will be spared."

"Reprogramming, huh?" She asked, eyes darting desperately about the cavern. "Atlas is really running some interesting rehab programs, aren't they?" She slowly edged backwards, but stopped when a set of blades maneuvered to corral her in place. "Sorry, but I don't think I really like the sound of that."

"Irregular operations. Defect. Aberrant. You do not comply. Why."

"Well, truth be told, I'm a bit annoyed with you right now. You can be pretty unreasonable sometimes, you know that?"

The icy stare did not falter. Wordlessly, she thrust a hand out to the side. The swords gathered from all about the cavern in a great swarm, converging on her. An array of blades, arranged in formation.

And then, it was no longer just Polendina's blades.

Azure light traced ghostly images into the air—perfect replicas of the android's weapons. Innumerable. Uncountable. Legions. They occupied every available space, hovering ominously around Bronie, caging her in with nowhere to run. A portent. A guarantee. As one, they snapped fully into reality, indistinguishable from the originals and all set into the same, dreadful formation. At the crux of their convergences, ghastly green began to charge.

"Surrender," the android repeated, "or be expunged. This is your final warning."

Bronie snorted, cracking a small, nervous grin. "Yeah, neither option sits too well with us. Isn't that right, Watts?"

"Not the time, Zaychik," he shouted, eyeing the green lights with evident apprehension. "Stop chattering, and do something!"

"Well, if you insist."

Her lopsided grin stretched, teeth bared fully in a lurid, savage display. She held a hand outstretched, the orange cube sitting in its palm, as if in offering. A gamble—everything about this situation had been a gamble, and they just couldn't stop losing. But she could do one more. Go big or go home.

"Imitation Archive," she intoned, eyes wide in a panicked frenzy.

The requisite structure was solid and clear in her mind, the process of creation long since committed to memory. The moment she invoked the artifact's name, it cracked along a face, the twilight sheen leaking out in barely restrained pulses. She grimaced.

"Fragment of Reason."

The android's eyes narrowed slightly, the ominous hum of her weapons rising to a fever pitch. Radiant light threatened to blind Bronie as it pulsed to greater and greater intensity. Smoke wafted from Polendina's faux skin, her extremities blackening and her clothing beginning to smolder. She advanced steadily, even as her processors were surely screaming in a fruitless bid to cope with the impossible load of maintaining even a sliver of Reason.

Emerald ringed in azure. Her eyes did not shift, did not waver, her stance steadfast even as her form tiptoed along the line of total collapse. RABBIT's mind was too rigid, her ego too suppressed, to linger on ponderances of common humanity. She would employ the full force of her might in order to eradicate the trespassers from her domain, even if it meant Polendina's body would inevitably buckle under the strain. Sacrifice one existence to ensure the safety of thousands more. How repulsively logical.

Bronie's brow furrowed. If threats against the body proved ineffective, then she just needed something bigger, something that would drive straight at the heart of RABBIT's directive.

The orange cube cracked again, nearly bisecting itself as the strain of what she was attempting to create threatened to overwhelm its shoddy construction. Brilliant, effulgent gouts erupted at its seams, its form well past the point of no return.

She needed something that would give her adversary pause, if even for just a single, precious moment. What she needed was a threat of unimaginable proportions.

Her lips parted, speaking the words to call forth catastrophe.

"Tsar Bomba."

Had it been Penny Polendina, she would not have been deterred; the hazy, oblong device materializing from the aether held no special significance to her. But Penny Polendina was not the one in charge at the moment. The android's eyes widened, every emerald arc hastily redirected somewhere, anywhere, save for the glowing framework of a disaster etching itself into reality.

The errant beams flashed about the cavern, carving deeply into stone and steel alike. They gouged deep trenches into the walls, searing through coolant pipes and erupting into violent gouts of steam. Heavy cables sputtered and sparked, spraying brilliant showers of light high into the air as they were severed. Stone rained down from the ceiling and steel dripped in glowing, molten rivulets. Several of the beams pierced the base of the central monolith, sending a shudder throughout the entire space and prompting the sudden blaring of a klaxon. The service lights flicked from an ambient orange to a hostile red. Layers upon layers of barriers erected themselves around the central space, the outermost, a twilight veil spanning the breadth from floor to ceiling.

Cacophony. Bedlam. Pandemonium.

Bronie's cube shattered into jagged shards in her hand. The image faded back into empty space.

"As if," she sighed, clenching the splinters tightly in her fist. "Get her, Watts."

The android's head jerked in surprise. The associate, when had he gotten behind her?

The roar of the Doctor's specially-formulated dust-rounds sang aloud, rising and melding into the din in a sharp, staccato symphony.

One, two, three. Her aura shattered, the steel of her flesh exposed.

Four, five, six. The hull of her chassis crumpled under thundering explosions.

Seven, eight, nine and on and on and on. Each bullet chewed into her circuitry with brutal ferocity, disrupting the delicate workings of her internal instruments. She toppled, landing in a jerking, shuddering heap.

Silence, save for destruction's ambient background melody. For several moments they stood, staring at the android's crumpled form. When it seemed certain that she would no longer stand, Watts looked at Bronie, perturbed.

"Zaychik, what you were trying to make, that—"

She shook her head stiffly. "Don't say anything. Not a word. It was just a bluff. There wasn't a chance it would've properly materialized, anyway. Not with this pathetic imitation." She spoke the words callously, but her gaze refused to meet his.

"Truly?" He asked, his tone heavily laden with suspicion.

"If you think of it that way, then there's nothing to worry about, right?" She said, her tone curt and clipped. "Ignorance is bliss, Watts." She redirected his attention to the prone form. "More importantly, hurry up and run the program. You did some damage, but it's not gonna keep her down for long."

He frowned, but allowed the subject to drop, punching the password into the scroll. Vollerei. Hardly the most secure code. He would need to have words with her about that later.

The program ran, and, almost immediately, errors flashed crimson denial as the override command rejected his repeated attempts to initiate. "It's not working," he reported flatly. "Are you certain you made this correctly?"

"Of course I did. The data portion, at least. If it's not working, that means—"

The edge of a blade cut her off as it rushed dangerously close to her face.

"Already?" Bronie complained, springing back into action. "Watts, your aim sucks."

"How exactly am I supposed to know where that fat imbecile hides the vital points of his contraptions?" He snapped, mirroring her actions. "More importantly, why didn't it work?"

"It's a prototype," she reminded him, "And she's a bit of an oddity. I can account for the mechanisms easily enough; it's a lot tougher to account for her will. Even boss-lady up there on her pedestal can't properly control her. Like I said, it'll work under the right circumstances."

She paused. Six chimes rang in her ear.


Atlas's Technical Security Division held the keys to the Kingdom. For all matters pertaining to the network, none held higher authority. They alone shouldered the responsibility of preserving the sanctity of Atlas's very foundations.

This small group of people, nestled safely within the most secure facility, in the most secure city, in the most secure kingdom on Remnant, were untouchable. Infallible. Impenetrable.

From the outside, at least.

A single datastick. It had taken a single datastick and the guile of two crooks to thwart this system. A hapless romantic, enthralled and blinded by a momentary lapse of judgment, had been the unwitting vessel to deliver the fatal dose. He had done the same thing that he did every day for the last several years; he had inserted the device without a second thought and, in doing so, invited an unseen interloper with open arms.

It flashed innocently from its port. The appointed time had come and there had been no signal to cease operations, so it began to unfurl in its complexity. Each step, painstakingly crafted in the event of the worst-case scenario, executed in rapid succession.

Security systems floundered. Devices slowed to a crawl. Records and logs, data and information, corrupted beyond recovery. Anything RABBIT could potentially draw upon, rendered useless.

A signal, sent over official lines and encoded to Mistral's military frequency, fired off to a single, opposing ship, containing only a single command.

Virulent tendrils propagated along every available line on the network seizing control of whatever they reached.

There could be no resistance. Rather, there was no reason to resist. The command had been seemingly executed by a sanctioned Atlesian authority from the most secure terminals in the kingdom. It could be nothing but official.

It began the countdown.


"We've got one last shot," Bronie said. "Do you think we can get her as close as possible to the wall behind us?"

"No." Watts deadpanned, edging away as the android pulled herself upright, blank eyes surveying the two of them.

"That's the spirit. On my mark."

"Zaychik, I must reiterate that I am not a combatant—"

"No time for that, we've got about forty seconds to get her into position. Go!"

Bronie made a mad dash for the wall, not even bothering to check if Watts had followed her cue. There was no longer a plan. No more subterfuge or tricks. It had all devolved into a simple contest of speed.

Behind her, she could hear buzzing and screeching as her drones rallied to hinder the android and were torn apart for their efforts.

She didn't bother looking. Her legs pumped furiously. It was just a few dozen meters. It wouldn't take her more than a handful of seconds.

Sparks flew and electrical discharges groaned as the machinery behind her was skewered in their chase. A blade flew past her, coming just a hair's breadth from striking her neck.

She didn't bother looking. She was so close.

The thundering of heavy footsteps. Humming charges and searing green beams of light.

She didn't bother looking. She was here.

She dove for the wall, one hand managing to brush against the hard stone before a blade clipped her arm, tearing through easily and knocking her off balance with a cry. Her eyes shot wide in surprise as she stumbled, desperately struggling to regain her footing.

Another blade found purchase in her leg, and her knee buckled. She tumbled, scrabbling against the wall for leverage before a third blade shot through her shoulder, slamming her against stone with another cry and fastening her in place.

Limbs flailing, she struggled, tugging at the haft in a vain attempt to free herself. The noise of steel rasping on steel. She looked up helplessly as her executor drew level with her. Eyes, cold as ice. Not a hint of malice, or anger or hatred. Just a chilling, dispassionate neutrality. Despite herself, Bronie's lip curled derisively. Right up until the very end, huh?

There was no preamble. No witty exchange. No threats or bargaining. In one moment, a hilt had found the android's hand. In the next, a blade flashed forth, thrust squarely through the center of the smaller girl's chest.

Bronie stiffened, fingers clawed and spasming. She gnashed her teeth, smothered noises rising and dying in her throat. Slick ichor seeped from her wounds in ebbing spurts, the dark liquid blooming starkly against pale skin. She struggled sluggishly for a few moments before falling limp where she stood, crucified in place by heavy, metal skewers.

Polendina regarded the still form for a moment, digging the blade deeper for assurance before moving to withdraw her hand.

White fingers wrapped around her wrist.

With a speed and dexterity ill-suited for one at death's door, the small hand had clamped about her arm, holding her in place. Polendina's gaze shot up to the other girl's face to find that she was conscious and leering defiantly back at her.

A fierce grin, victorious in its make. Bronie stuck her tongue out mockingly. At its tip sat a single, orange shard. It glowed blindingly for an instant, the fragment expelling the last of its energy before disintegrating entirely. In that same moment, a set of heavy manacles manifested—one half latched onto Bronie's arm, the other fastened securely onto Penny's. Alarmed, the android jerked away harshly, but to no avail.

"That body's pretty strong, huh," Bronie rasped quietly, a taunting gleam in her eye. "Good thing I've got plenty of leverage to keep me in place." She did her best to shrug. "Sorry, but time's up. Gotcha."


The primary armaments of Mistral's dreadnoughts consisted of six pairs of Forty-five Centimeter Aerial Guns. Utilizing standard dust-propulsion at an elevation of twenty degrees and a distance of thirty-thousand meters, the projected flight time of an armor-piercing round was forty-nine seconds.

The moment those forty-nine seconds had elapsed, the rogue program reached the end of its countdown.

The lights in Atlas's Homeland Defense Division flashed crimson. A chirping alarm began to sound, but everyone had already been evacuated from the premises. Thus, there was no one present to witness the moment Atlas's defenses fell for the first time.

The power stations located all along the city's perimeters were signaled to divert the flow of energy, redirecting every last drop towards the shields. The safety regulators, now disabled, could do nothing but sit helplessly on standby as the full potential of a power grid designed to supply energy to thousands of businesses and residences pulsed into this singular space, overloading the system in an instant.

The city went dark, every building simultaneously losing power. For a moment, the only thing illuminating it were the stars overhead and the glow of the bastion which had protected the city since its inception.

And then, it was just the stars.


The android tilted her head, still tugging fruitlessly against the metal bindings. "Explai—"

The world erupted.

The wall they had been leaning against exploded with the piercing shriek of rent steel and shrapnel. The thick cables twisted violently, snapping with blinding showers of sparks and heat. Coolant pipes bent and ruptured, pouring steam into the air and coating the ground in slick fluid.

An unceasing chorus of explosions. The noise thundered throughout the cavern in waves, intensifying, layering upon themselves, as volley upon volley of explosions crashed into the base of the landmass. The vaulted walls around them, seemingly so impenetrable before, groaned their protests before buckling. Smaller pieces of debris were soon accompanied by larger slabs crashing to the floor.

And then all fell silent.

Dust wafted down like fresh snow, each individual particle glittering in feeble rays of light. A breeze, fresh and cold, wafted throughout the cavern, condensing the lingering steam into thick heavy droplets upon every surface. Layers upon layers of stone had been effaced from the base of the Atlesian landmass. Where once there had been a sheer stone face, there was now a void staring out into the wintery expanse of the Mantlen mainland far below.

A mechanical chittering broke the stillness. A pile of rubble shifted, crumbling apart as Bronie laboriously pulled herself from the mess. She only managed to half-extract herself from the mess before slumping, her energy spent. She groaned.

"Hey, Watts," she called into the dusty gloom. "You still alive?"

Footsteps and the scattering of debris. She craned her head, peering towards an approaching shadow in the haze.

"Oh, good. That little stunt really messed me up, but it looks like we finally…got…her. Ah, damn it."

"Significant damage to all sensory inputs," reported the battered form of Penny Polendina as she strode out from the veil of smoke and dust. "Auditory receptors offline. Tactile receptors offline. Weapons systems at one-quarter functionality. A commendable attempt."

"Commendable enough to let me live?"

The android's remaining blades, chipped and cracked as they were, hovered to attention in a familiar pattern. Energy began to gather at the convergence of their formation.

Bronie's limbs spasmed ineffectually. There was no way she'd be able to evade this one. She was out of tricks. With that recognition, as if finally freed from a great burden, her mind settled into a stifling calm. So this was it, then. It wasn't a great way to go, but there were certainly worse. At least no one could say she didn't try.

She let her head fall back, nestling into the rubble and shut her eyes.

How laughable. Maybe she would've been better off if she really hadn't bothered. It wasn't as if anything had forced her to act; she had made this choice on her own. But why? Was she truly just a slave to her directives? Even if that were true, she couldn't muster herself to feel upset about it. It was far too late for regrets—any moment now and it would all be over.

A sharp, warbled cry. The hum cut off. The clattering of steel on stone.

"It is not like you to give up so easily, Zaychik."

Her eyes shot open. Before her, Polendina had stuttered to a halt, limbs limp and eyes dim, the blades scattered lifelessly on the ground. Her gaze darted frantically about the room, stopping on the other figure emerging from darkness. Watts stood triumphantly, her scroll in hand with an attached cable extruding from one of the android's discarded weapons.

Bronie sighed in relief. "So you were still alive."

"Somehow." He gestured to the gaping hole in the wall. Just beyond the firmament of stone, the dull, grey glow of early morning filtered in. "That was your plan? What would have happened if the override continued to fail?"

A strange, warped noise. It may have been a laugh. "Well, I did say it was a gamble, didn't I?"

"Never do that again."

"Yeah, I don't think you'll have to worry about that." She dismissed his concerns in favor of peering through the hole. Far below, the streets of Mantle surged and seethed with turmoil. "Well, would you look at that. They actually managed to punch all the way through. A pretty sizable hole, too. Mistral's R&D really doesn't play around."

"Just how much of this plan did you leave to chance?"

She snorted. "Most of it. There's only so much planning you can do, the rest you've got to play by ear. I think I did pretty well, considering we had zero intel on this area."

"How utterly careless." He shook his head, a sly edge entering his tone. "You know, you lose focus for a single moment and—"

"Yeah, yeah. Someone gets hurt, I know. Get over here and help me up, would you? My body's not being very cooperative right now."

Watts clambered across the prodigious piles of debris separating them, swiftly at first, but as he drew close his footsteps faltered. His eyes widened, a hard frown etching itself into his features.

A domineering, headstrong devil, brought low. The haughty queen, expelled from her throne and cast to the dirt. It was the most helpless he had ever seen her.

An odd emotion twisted in his chest. It wasn't the grim satisfaction he had whenever some upstart met their comeuppance, nor was it the relief he had thought he would feel. It wasn't even the usual gloating vindication typical of him when he had been proven right.

And he had been right, hadn't he? He hadn't been some bothersome nag for insisting she take these matters more seriously. She had approached this operation with an attitude far too ill-suited, far too cavalier, for the task at hand, and she had had the gall to berate him for worrying too much? Well, see how that ended up. She was the one lying in a mess of her own making while he stood whole and intact. Serves her right.

Perhaps he was feeling just a touch vindicated.

Bronie frowned—at least, he thought it was a frown, it was difficult to tell considering the state her face was in—while he simply stood there, staring. Shifting impatiently, she struggled again to push her body into a seated position, her limbs scrabbling ineffectually to find leverage against the tenuous substrate.

The ones that remained, that is.

A large portion of her torso had been shorn off in ugly, jagged chunks, taking much of her chest and her right arm with it. A lung, Watts estimated, and a sizable piece of the liver had to have been destroyed. Perhaps parts of her digestive tract as well. The damage extended up past her neck and to her face where the skin had been either burnt or brutally torn off. Fatal injuries, assuredly, yet as he drew close, he could detect none of the expected viscera, no crude, crimson stains, flowing from her wounds.

Instead, he saw metal. An elaborate framework of steel and wires lay sparking and twisted beneath what had previously passed for flesh. Some kind of fluid, tarry and black, leaked from the damaged parts, pooling in slick puddles about her body. It was not merely some form of prosthesis. Her torso, and, he suspected, the entirety of her body, seemed to be composed of complex machinery the likes of which he had never seen.

She soon gave up her flailing, smirking weakly up at him—a ghastly expression, now that half of her visage was exposed steel. "You don't look as surprised as I thought you would," she finally said.

Watts collected his senses, swiftly crossing the rest of the distance between them.

"Of all the things that I imagined you could have been, this is on the rather tame end of it all," he answered neutrally.

She chuckled, the twisted sound horribly out of time with her movements. "You make it sound like I'm some sort of monster."

"In all honesty, Zaychik, your current appearance does little to disprove the notion."

"Very funny," she said. "So, are you just going to stand there and talk down to me? Or are you going to help me up? My inertial modules are shot, I can't really keep my balance."

Watts rolled his eyes. Hoisting her up by her remaining arm, he found that she was remarkably light, despite the metal components. Slowly, he dragged her towards the center of the cavern.

"Y'know, I really don't like that look you get."

"What look?" He asked, slightly offended.

"That one. The smug little smile you get when you're proven right about something. You knew about this, didn't you?"

Watts paused mid-step before continuing on. "I will admit, I did have my suspicions," he said coolly. "There were far too many idiosyncrasies in your behavior and biological faculties to be mere coincidence." His eyes flicked to the side to gauge her expression. "I don't suppose you would be willing to expound?"

She contemplated for a moment before giving her best attempt at a shrug. "What the heck, why not. We've gotten this far. One last story then. I'm not really in any state to be playing twenty-questions, so why don't you tell me what conclusions you've come to and I'll fill in the blanks."

"Just like that?" He asked, surprised. "You usually insist on some form of compensation when it comes to information."

"At this point, I think we're well past that. Not like there's any hiding it now. So? What've you got?"

He nodded thoughtfully. "To begin with, I imagine you are an entity not dissimilar to Polendina's contraption. RABBIT is your creator, correct?"

Bronie nodded. "A bit muddled on the details, but basically, yes. She knew what sealing herself away in that manner would entail and devised a failsafe. A way to wake herself up if the need ever arose."

"You."

"Yep. All I am in this grand scheme is a glorified alarm clock. The sum of my being, a wake up signal." She glanced at him through her periphery. "I'm surprised you figured it out, let alone continued to follow me, despite the fact."

A sour frown deepened the weathered creases on his face. "No matter the truth, my situation had not changed. I still would have had to obey, or else face the same dire straits I had found myself in prior to this whole affair."

He sighed.

"Normally, I am loath to entertain the notion that anything created by human hands could hope to compete in terms of intellect, but the technology of the Old World is more advanced than anything I can currently fathom. If that fat oaf managed to spark something resembling life with our paltry means, then it stands to reason such a thing would have been more than feasible in the past."

Bronie hesitated for a half-step, nearly tripping them. She ignored Watts's grumbled complaints. "That's where you've gotten things a bit muddled. Polendina and I…We're not quite the same."

"Oh?"

"She's the real deal," Bronie explained. "She doesn't just resemble life. She is life. An existence unto herself. A fragment of a soul embedded within a vessel and nurtured into being. It's a fledgling piece right now—no more than an inquisitive child—but give her time and experience and she'll come into her own."

He shot her a curious glance from his periphery. "And on the contrary?"

"On the contrary, I'm someone else's memories uploaded into this shell and granted sentience. Not developed. Granted. Unintentionally, at that." She scoffed derisively. "Everything about me is fabricated. There is no Bronie Zaychik, just an imitation cobbled together from spare parts they had on-hand at the time. You can just let me down here."

They had stopped at the sunset wall, its height spanning from floor to ceiling. Nested within, at regular intervals up the steps to the core, were a series of additional barriers sporting the more familiar hue of Atlas's design.

"What is it?" Watts asked. "The underlying barriers are clearly of Atlesian make and should pose no great difficulty in disabling, but I am unfamiliar with the outermost."

Bronie sunk to her knees at the threshold and glumly traced a finger along its surface. Her tactile receptors registered no physical contact, yet she could not push forward. It was as if she were being repelled by nothing at all.

"Is this something you've seen before, Zaychik?"

"It is."

"Well? Is it an obscure Mistralian design? Valean? I highly doubt the brutes of Vacuo could manage anything worth integrating." He dug through his pack as he spoke, fishing for his equipment. "The security for Vale's defense protocols have been outdated for quite some time now; such a thing would be child's play to disable. If it is of Mistralian make, however, it may take some time."

She shook her head. "Don't bother. There's nothing to be done," she answered. "Not really. It's just empty space."

He paused in his rummaging. "Zaychik, there is clearly something there," he said, rapping a fist against the light. It made no audible sound.

"That's just your mind playing tricks on you, Watts. It's a cognition field. Nothing's actually there, your brain is just telling you there's something in your way."

"Some form of mental deterrent?," He asked. "If that is the case, then passing through should pose no great difficulty."

She gestured towards the barrier. "You can certainly try."

She watched as he repeatedly attempted to push a hand through the wall, growing visibly frustrated when it refused to proceed beyond the orange sheen.

"The mind's a strange thing—in a way, it's sort of in its own little prison. It's entirely isolated, and any notion of an outside world is something that's been fed to it through your senses. If every single one of those senses keeps insisting there's something there, then the mind has no choice but to accept that as reality."

"No matter. A trick of the mind cannot override physical law. Perhaps if I gained enough momentum…"

"That would be inadvisable," she warned as he took several paces back. "Even if you did manage to force your way in, you'd never know. Your brain would be forever stuck at the event-horizon, replaying the moment you pass through ad-infinitum. The strain would tear your mind to pieces."

He stopped in his tracks. "Very well," he snapped impatiently, "then how do you propose we get through it?"

"We don't. Nothing to do but pack up and go home." She barked out a short, grim laugh. "Ah, that sucks. We made it all this way and this is what does us in. That's not even remotely funny, Hua."

He gaped at her. "Surely, you're joking? I refuse to accept that we have come this far only to leave empty-handed."

"Well, you better start accepting. Hua set up these wards as a final line of defense. She's very protective of her friends, you see. Unless she personally hands you the key to undo them then—"

Bronie stuttered to a stop, her eyes widening.

"Ah." She said softly. "I see. That's why they left it with me."

"I take it you've come to realize something."

"Yeah. Hold this and then get back. Far back." She handed him the fragments of her orange cube-charm. "They're still important, so don't lose them. Oh, and have you still got those lien-cards I gave you? Make sure you don't spend it all in one place, you hear?"

"There is precious little that two-thousand lien will buy me, especially in Atlas. Now, would you please save the idle chatter for later, Zaychik," he said, pocketing the shards. "I would like to vacate these premises as swiftly as possible."

She chuckled softly, waving a hand to shoo him away. Once he had retreated to the far wall, she turned back to the barrier, the teasing smile melting into solemnity. A rasping sigh escaped her throat and she pressed her forehead to the wall. She shut her eyes. For something that didn't exist, it was exceedingly warm to the touch. Pulsing, like a heartbeat.

"You've really run me through the wringer, haven't you?" She murmured. "All…this—the extravagance, the security, the care—for people who don't even deserve it." Venom laced her tone, each bitterly-spoken word spat without restraint. "Look at you. You've gone and let them lock you up in a prison you created, and for what? Blind, deaf, and now your precious city's crumbling all around us. Serves you right. This was your stupid scheme, not mine."

She thumped her fist ineffectually against the wall. A wave of bitterness rose like bile from within. Her words came faster, scathing—a dam had burst, its contents a caustic deluge of vitriol.

"What kind of Reason is this? Isn't it just too heartless? I've spent all this time running around, trying to fulfill the tasks you set up for me, and this is my reward?" She ground out the words defiantly, willing them to reach the shining monolith above, but it paid her no heed. She slumped. She hadn't expected anything, of course, but the silence hurt nonetheless. Her voice shuddered, growing fainter. "It's not fair."

The burst of manic energy faded as quickly as it had come. She was stalling, stealing even just one more moment, desperately clutching at each as they spilled like droplets between her fingers.

"It's not fair," she repeated quietly. "It's not fair, but that's alright. That's just life." Her hand fell to her lap, her head bowed. "Don't worry, I'll be an obedient daughter to the last. If you demand everything I have, then I'll give it to you."

The child turned her face up to the shining beacon above, kneeling at the altar of Atlas's heart. She was so close. Just a bit more, now. The hardest part.

The familiar ache returned, thumping insistently in her chest. Something within her was withering, draining, leaving her that much more empty, and now she knew why. She pressed her palm tightly against it, gasping as something stirred in response.

It was such a novel sensation, pain. Certainly, her tactile receptors could detect potentially injurious stimuli. Her logic unit could parse an interpretation of 'pain' and reflexively signal her limbs to react in accordance. But to be able to truly comprehend what something as mundane as pain really meant—a mere automaton could never replicate that understanding.

Slowly, she drew her hand away, coaxing the warm, fluttering thing out of her. It emerged sluggishly, phasing through the shattered hull of her chest, as if reluctant to part.

A single plume, frayed and dim, scarlet as the setting sun, sat in her palm.

"Ah, man." The words echoed in dissonant, hollow tones, as if she were speaking through a line with particularly poor reception. "That hurts like hell."

Her vision distorted into dark, cubic shapes, her world deteriorating at the edges into its constituent pixels. Cold, unfeeling logic grappled against her sense of self, usurping it and propagating like a virus from the furthest reaches of her mind.

Her actions had been inefficient. For reasons she was rapidly becoming unable to grasp, she had strayed from her mission, delaying its conclusion as best she could, squandering time for no apparent reason.

Directive…What had been her directive? Her failing gaze drooped to the warm, tattered thing in her hand. This had been something important…its value…its worth…unnameable. She had been tasked with carrying it, but at some point it became her. Her arm jittered up. What remained of her psyche screamed its denial, bidding her to return, to go back to the safety and surety of the existence she could have led.

But It was too late.

She could no longer reject it; to deny the reason for her creation would be the height of apostasy. The times had changed. The people had changed. Humanity was no longer the same scared creatures huddled around a fire in fear of the dark. The fledgling race that she had been tasked to oversee in her creator's stead had burgeoned, building shining spires and steel walls—monuments to their resilience.

She tenderly pressed the plume into the ward and it melded without resistance, sending ripples across the twilit sheen.

Things and places and the world had changed. She alone had remained the same. Stagnant. Still. Yet, even stagnation was a form of change.

The exposed metal of her fingers flitted across the surface, dipping marginally into the barrier before dropping limply to the ground.

Obsolescence. Age. Inevitable decay. So let that decay nourish what was to come. A sound that could have been a sigh—all metallic notes and mechanical tones. She had grown too old.

"Directive…" What should have been a victory cry rung hollow and uninflected, the fluttering of her lips moving noticeably out of sync with the sounds. "Awakening Protocol…Fulfilled."

She slumped, clattering into a pile as the sunset hues of the wards melted away, unraveling into faded strings of characters from a world long lost. Her sense-receptors must have malfunctioned at the very end, because they suddenly burst into frenzied activity, feeding her nonsensical and contradictory streams of data. The cold of a Siberian Winter. The scent of ash. Thunder. Emptiness. A butterfly alighted upon an unresponsive finger, kissing the faux flesh before fluttering away to nothingness.

Her optics dimmed, transfixed on the blazing soul of Atlas shining from on high. Her reason, her duty, a set of stairs away, yet unfathomably distant. A desire, authentic and unattainable. Its image burned, searing itself indelibly into every last bit of her failing memory-banks—a dream that she would carry with her to the end of time.


I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.