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Gorsky froze.

Sanders swallowed.
 
“I was just trying to enjoy my bagel this morning,” she said.
 
“You’re right.
 
If you’re in the basement, we’ve been tasked.
 
To come down, route you out.
 
If it matters, I’m sorry.
 
I…
 
I don’t like it when we’re not on the same team.”

The room was silent, Gorsky looking at Sanders like she’d gone crazy.
 
“Christ, Sanders.
 
Fraternizing with the enem—”

Whatever he was going to say next was lost to the whine of the chassis Sanders was next to powering up.
 
The arc lights on the front flashed on, the big reactor humming like a nest of angry hornets.
 
It stood up, the arms reticulating out and back.

“What the fuck,” said Sanders, mouth hanging slack.
 
She backed away from it, stumbling over and falling on her ass.
 
She scrabbled back like a crab, her rifle dragged along by its strap.
 
The chassis was
empty
.
 
No… no pilot.
 
How could it —
 

“Firing!”
 
It was Gorsky, his weapon barking out loud in the hangar.
 
His rifle’s rounds spat metal sparks against the side of the chassis, the small arms fire worthless against the armored side of the machine.
 
The rest of the team scattered, taking cover behind crates.

The chassis swung around to face Gorsky, then stumbled.
 
“Damn.
 
This is harder than I thought… Ah.
 
There.”
 
The chain cannon on the arm of the chassis spun up, the howl of it primal as it stood over Sanders.
 
The cannon drew a line of white and fire through her team, tearing men and women into fragments.
 
Crates of machinery and parts were shattered, torn, metal and shrapnel spraying through the hangar.

The cannon slowed, stopped.
 
The chassis hummed, then stepped back from Sanders.
 
A red mist was picked up, spun about in eddies through the air by the recyclers in the hangar.
 
“Huh,” said the woman’s voice.

“Wh…
 
What?”
 
Sanders wasn’t sure she’d heard what the woman had said.
 
Her ears weren’t normal, but the chain cannon had reset the spike levels and she couldn’t hear right.
 
Her legs were slick and she realized she’d pissed herself.

“I…
 
I thought I was going to kill you all,” said the woman.
 
“Turns out, I don’t have the stomach for it.”

“Why?”

“Why?
 
I don’t know,” said the woman.
 
The chassis stamped twice towards Sanders, then leaned down to bring the optics closer.
 
“Sanders, is it?”

Sanders nodded.
 
She spat out the taste of burnt coffee, her overtime fluttering aside like torn hessian.

“Sanders, I figure it’s like this.
 
You told me straight.
 
You were honest.
 
I’m here on the last day of my life, and I find that I don’t want to kill you for being in the wrong place, the wrong time, working for the wrong people.
 
It’s that simple.”
 
She paused.
 
“You and me, we share a similar story.”

Fucking
story
?
 
“What do you mean, story?”

“We both didn’t figure our day would go this way.
 
You really shouldn’t eat the store brand bagels.
 
Too much salt.
 
Sanders?
 
Get the hell out.
 
Get out now.
 
Go live your life.
 
And if you see Mason Floyd, stay out of his way.
 
He’s
pissed
.”

“How do you know—”
 
Sanders coughed.

“How do I know what you had for breakfast?”

“No,” said Sanders.
 
“How did you pilot the chassis?
 
You’re not plugged in.”

“Because I’m Carter,” said Carter.

⚔ ⚛ ⚔

Zane Aster had a team.

Had.
 
That bitch.
 
Just rags now, bits and pieces, a rabble rather than a force.

They were getting lower in the Federate tower.
 
She’d been chipping away, picking off his men one by one.
 
No one said it’d have been easy, but —
 

McKlersky had died first.
 
He’d ignored Aster’s warning to not use the elevators.
 
Dumb sonofabitch had asked what the worst thing that could happen was.
 
That was right before the elevator doors snapped shut, shearing off one of his arms and dropping the car sixty floors down.
 
The arm had sat on the ground, twitching as sparks and blood and other shit had come out of the stump.

The rest of the team had shown more enthusiasm for Aster’s warnings after that, but it hadn’t helped.
 
Simmons had died when an automated cleaner, a little thing the size of a dinner plate, had popped out of a serving hatch.
 
It had been cleaning the carpet, sucking at the big lush pile, and Simmons had made some joke about how all the robots got the easy jobs.

The cleaner had spun around three times, then sped down the carpet towards Simmons.
 
It had exploded, the power cell inside shorting, a bolt of arctic blue shearing through Simmons and leaving his smoking torso to cough twice before the light had faded from his eyes.

“Robots don’t get easy jobs,” she’d said to them then.

It’d gone on like that, and each man or woman down made Aster angrier.
 
There was going to be a reckoning.
 
He was going to cut out her heart.

⚔ ⚛ ⚔

“What do you mean by busy?” said Mason.
 
The link felt quieter than usual, lacking the many paths he could usually feel.
 
He kicked the door open, jumping out onto the pavement.

“I mean, they’re busy,” said Carter.
 
“You know.
 
Girl stuff.”

Sadie stamped through the puddles to stand at his side.
 
“What’s the music today?”

“You’re going to play a track I know.
 
It’s called ‘Stay Here.’”
 
Mason frowned.
 
“Seriously.”

She was looking up into his face, and something played across her lips, the ghost of a smile.
 
“You think that’s going to work?”

“It’s going to work.”

“I don’t even know that music.”
 
Sadie kicked at a puddle, and Mason dodged sideways as the water danced towards him.
 
“I don’t play solo gigs.”

“Sadie, it’s…”
 
Mason stopped.
 
“We’ve taken too much from you.”

“Me?
 
You only kidnapped me, took me to a dead city, a dead city with no bars.
 
And I mean, none.
 
I could have died.
 
And then there were the…”
 
She waved her hands in the air.
 
“Mutants?”

“Not you,” he said.
 
“All of you.”
 
Mason lifted his eyes to the syndicate’s building behind him, blinking in the rain.
 
“We take, and take a little more.”

“Yeah,” said Sadie.
 
She looked sad for a second.
 
“Yeah, you do.”

“So believe me,” he said, turning back to her, “when I tell you that I don’t think we can take anything else.
 
I
got
this.”
 
Mason turned from her, puling the side of the APC open.
 
He grabbed a rifle, all black Metatech edges, and looked down the scope.
 
The hard link came on as his hand touched the stock, the scope lining up with his eyes, a living, breathing thing.
 
Almost without thinking, he snared the case holding the dress, the old leather sucking up water from the rain.

“You want me to stand out here in the rain, Floyd?”
 
She walked closer to him.
 
“Have you seen my hair?”

He smiled at her.
 
“Yeah, Sadie.
 
I’ve seen it.”

“It’s like I’ve got it ruined for nothing.”

“Keep the engine running,” said Mason.
 
“It’s weird.”

“What’s weird?”

“There’s no one here.
 
We should have about fifty Apsel guys all over us.”

“Maybe they’re busy,” said Carter over the link.

“Maybe they’re busy,” said Sadie.
 
She looked up at the tower.
 
“Fifty guys?”

“More or less.”

“You best get moving then,” she said, climbing in the side of the APC, and shutting the door in his face.

Mason sighed, then lifted the rifle.
 
“I will never, as long as I live, understand that woman.”

“Probably not,” said Carter.

Mason started a jog towards the entrance to the tower, optics scanning ahead, flicking between thermal and visual.
 
Nothing.
 
Not a goddamn thing.
 
“Carter?”

“Yes, Mason.”

“I need to know.
 
Where is everyone?”

“Trying to kill me,” she said.
 
“See you soon.”

Her mouth was a jumble of wrong sensations, lips not moving right.
 
She felt her tongue around the inside of her teeth.
 
It was like licking stones — she couldn’t taste anything except dirt.

“She’s coming around,” said a man’s voice.
 
Nervous
.

Laia cracked an eye open.
 
The world was all muted colors without scent, and her nerves jangled and crashed inside her skin.
 
The room was —

Off-white, the color of old marble.
 
The chair that held her up was built on the sweat of thirty men and women, the leather from a creature born and raised in a cage of filth and grime.
 
The metal was torn from a rock far to the East of here, machines of the same metal tearing the ore from the living rock.
 
There were three such chairs; one she lay in, one empty, and the third holding Zacharies.
 
Two men were in the room.
 
The nervous man was clean and clear, standing tall in front of her.
 
The other man was dark, his body made from metal and sin.

The nervous man was hovering over her.
 
His coat was white, whiter than the room, or as near as she could tell.
 
The bile in her throat made her think she must have thrown up.

“You’ll feel a little woozy,” he said.
 
“It’s a…
 
It’s a side effect.”

“Ssside…” said Laia.
 
She didn’t know if it was what the lightning had done as it had crawled across her skin, or the gas that carried it, but she couldn’t talk right.
 
Couldn’t
think
right.

The dark man spoke.
 
“He’ll be so pleased you’re awake.”

“Wh…”
 
She tried to make her lips work right.

“Who?”
 
The dark man smiled without humor.
 
“My master.”

Oh no.
 
Oh
no.
 
“Please,” she said.

“You know,” he said.
 
“You know I can’t.
 
You know what I’ve got to do.”

She tried to nod.
 
“Please,” she said again, but the hope was gone.

He stepped forward, then turned to the nervous man.
 
“Doc?
 
She good to go?”

“She is.
 
He’s not so good.”
 
The nervous man tipped his head towards Zacharies, head lolling to the side.
 
“He’ll be a while.
 
Julian?”

The dark man —
Julian
— paused.
 
“Yeah?”

“They’re kids, Julian.
 
Can’t we say—”

“Say that we lost them?
 
That they got away?
 
A couple of kids?”
 
Julian’s face twisted.
 
“No.”

“Didn’t think so,” said the nervous man.
 
He looked at his feet, then back at Laia.
 
“I’m sorry, kid.”

She pulled at the thread of her mind, reaching out to the dark man, the threads of life flowing around the metal in his body.
 
She wanted to —

Fluid, not blood, moved inside him moved, a tide of life.
 
It was quicker, faster, more alive than she’d seen.
 
Just like the angel, just like Mason, but something less as well.
 
She tried to focus, grasping at the edges of the flow, and
pulling —

She cried out, the pain slamming into her head.

“Yeah,” said Julian.
 
He reached out a hand towards her, tipping her chin up with a finger.
 
He let his finger drop to her neck, touching something there.
 
A collar, the metal hard around her throat.
 
“He said you might try to start some shit.
 
We got you something nice to wear, to stop that kind of fuckery.
 
He gave us the design and everything.”