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“I didn’t say I was going to die.”

“Do I look like a lawyer?”

“Not really,” he said.

“Then don’t play lawyer games with me,” she said.
 
“You’re going off to die.”

“Maybe.
 
I’m going off to get some more ammo before I do anything else,” he said.
 
After a moment, he said, “I don’t want to.”

“Don’t want to go, or don’t want to die?”

He looked at the elevators, then back to her.
 
“I don’t know.”

“Oh,” she said.

“‘Oh?’”

“You found her.”
 
Sadie was looking into his face.
 
Looking for something.

“She’s dead, Sadie,” said Mason.
 
“She’s gone.”

“I’m sorry, Mason.”
 
Sadie looked at the elevators over his shoulder, then she nodded as if agreeing to something.
 
“I guess that means someone needs killing, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“I can help,” she said, her voice soft.

“I can’t ask you to.”

“You didn’t,” she said, stepping off towards the elevators.
 
“That’s your problem.
 
You never ask.”

It’s not your fight.
 
You’ll get killed.
 
This isn’t about you.
 
He didn’t say any of those things.
 
“Sadie?”

She turned.
 
“Yeah?”

“Thank you.”

She shrugged, something mischievous in her eye.
 
“It’s not all about you,” she said.
 
“You think I’m going to settle for just one kiss?
 
I’ve got a real interest in the outcome.”

He laughed, then stepped off with her to the elevators.
 
His hand found hers, and they stepped into the gleaming white core of the elevator car when the door opened.

Together
.

The dark wasn’t a problem for Harry.
 
It felt right, natural.
 
In the dark, people couldn’t see who he was.

What he was.

He looked down at Lace, held tight in the bucket of the digger arm.
 
She was out cold.
 
The overlay spat and chattered, telling him she was ok, that she was going to live.

It didn’t help.
 
He’d tried to hold her close, but the blast had lifted him, tossing him God knows where.
 
Spatial tracking was down —
too much change, too fast
— and he was in a different part of the Reed complex.
 
Walls were down, broken all around him.
 
Hell, the damn floor and roof had holes all through them.
 
He could be up a level.
 
Could be down a level too.

Could be dead.
 
As the thought hit him, he looked down at Lace, and realized —
I don’t want to be dead
.
 
Not while she is still alive.

He turned the floods on the chassis way up, pushing the dark back and away.
 
It picked out a nasty bruise starting to form on the side of her face.

There was a sound up ahead, and he started to cycle the optics around.
 
There, a door, vaulted steel stretching to the roof, or what was left of it.
 
The door was dusty, but intact.
 
There might have been walls, a corridor of sorts, leading to it.
 
It was hard to tell, but the door was still there.

It was opening.
 
It had only opened a little way, barely a crack for the size of the thing, but enough.
 
A man in a suit stepped through.

“Hey,” said Harry.

The Reed man looked up.
 
“What the hey,” he said.

“Yeah,” said Harry.
 
“Look, things are a little crazy around here.”

The Reed man nodded, then looked back into the room behind him.
 
He stepped out, the vaulted door sighing shut behind him.
 
“So — we going to do this?”

Harry laughed, the PA booming around the hard edges of the rubble.
 
He stopped laughing at the expression on the Reed man’s face.
 
“Wait.
 
You’re serious.”

“I’m serious,” said the man.

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” said Harry, “but you’re just a guy.”

The man smiled at him.
 
“Maybe,” he said.
 
“I don’t think you’re in on the internal company memos here.”

“Look,” said Harry.
 
“It’s been a long day.
 
Long, right?
 
Right?”

The man nodded.
 
“Right.”

“What say we just call it quits?”

The man looked down at his leather shoes, already starting to attract the dust and grime of the place.
 
He frowned, then looked back up.
 
“Just walk away?”

“Just walk away,” said Harry. He shrugged the chassis.
 
“I’m sure you’ve got shit to do.
 
Memos, crap like that.”

“I’ve got shit to do,” said the man.
 
“Item one is to get the infestation of rats out of the cellar.”

“Rats?” said Harry.
 
Then, “Oh, right.
 
I get you.”

“Tell you what,” said the man.
 
He nodded to the bucket, more grime than yellow, attached to Harry’s arm.
 
“
You
walk away.
 
You walk away, and I don’t kill
her
.”

The chain cannon on Harry’s arm roared a line of death through the man before Harry even realized he’d fired it.
 
The man’s body was pulled apart into red, wet pieces.
 
The cannon whirred for a moment, then clanked to a stop.
 
Empty
.
 
He released the clamps and the cannon fell to the ground, smoke trailing from the barrels.

A hiss of hydraulics marked the vaulted door opening again, the clank followed by the hiss of airlock seals releasing.
 
The Reed man stepped out of the door again, then looked at what was left of his body on the ground.

“What.
 
The.
 
Fuck,” said Harry.

“I know,” said the man.
 
“Ain’t it cool?”

Harry stooped low, putting Lace down next to a wall.
 
He wanted to reach out, move her hair away from her face, but he didn’t.
 
He wasn’t built for gentle things.
 
The chassis swiveled back to the man.

There were three of them now.

Another one stepped out of the doorway.
 
That made four.

“Shit,” said Harry.

“I can do this all day,” said the Reed man, four voices talking at the same time.
 
Like mirror images, they all pulled handguns out from under their suit jackets.

⚔ ⚛ ⚔

One of them was on the digger arm, firing shots into the joint.
 
He flung it off to splatter against the wall.

A second climbed like a monkey onto his back, grabbing the top of the chassis, and flipped over the top.
 
The pistol rang out as he fired it into the lenses of the optics.
 
Harry tossed that one back against the vaulted door, where it fell, spine broken.
 
Two more came out of the door.

“Ok,” said Harry.
 
“That’s how you want it?”

The reactor on his back burned brighter, and he stepped forward again.

⚔ ⚛ ⚔

Three of them were on the chassis, two on the digger arm, trying to pull it away.
 
Clever.
 
The digger wasn’t built for combat.
 
It was just some industrial thing they’d found lying around.

Harry fired up the energy shroud, the skin of the chassis crackling and sparking.
 
A bolt of energy leapt from the tip of the digger arm, arcing to the vaulted door.
 
The three men on him turned to ash in an instant.

Four more came out of the door.
 
This time, one of them held something big and heavy, a round hole staring like a sightless eye.

Rocket launcher
.

The Reed man fired the rocket at him, but Harry had already snatched one of the men next to him, tossing the body into the rocket’s path.
 
The explosion was white and hot.

Two more men came out of the door.
 
All looked the same.
 
Same suit.
 
Same haircut.
 
Same gun.

“Tell me,” said Harry.
 
“Who’s your tailor?”

⚔ ⚛ ⚔

The door had opened all the way now, and Harry could see a long room, stretching back into the distance.
 
Chambers like coffins stretched out in rows, opening and disgorging their contents onto the ground.
 
All exact copies of the Reed man.

That’s a lot of dudes
.

⚔ ⚛ ⚔

They covered him now, ropes and chains snaring around the arms and legs of the chassis.
 
The reactor on his back had an audible rumble to it, and he pulled more and more power from it.

“Harry,” said Lace, the link fluttering.
 
“Harry, you need to cut the source.”

“Don’t move,” said Harry.
 
“Don’t let him know you’re awake.”
 
He fired up the shroud again, bodies smoking as they fell off him.

“Harry,” she said again.
 
“It’s in there.”
 
A map fell down on the overlay, amber wireframes showing a box at the end of the room.
 
She’d marked it with a little icon, a pot of gold.

“Ok,” he said.

“There’s point defense in the room,” she said.
 
“There’s a lot of shit to use as cover in there.
 
Don’t stand still.”

“Ok,” he said again.

“Don’t—” she said, but he’d already started moving.

He pushed off with metal feet, the chassis gouging tracks in the floor as he sped up.
 
Harry slammed through the Reed replicas as he pushed the chassis harder and faster.
 
He was through the open vaulted door and into the chamber beyond.

A railgun fired.
 
The digger arm sheared off, the edges of the break glowing white hot.
 
Harry moved faster.
 
He pushed the chassis harder than he ever had before.

A sea of Reed men were around him now, the coffins spitting out men faster and faster.
 
They were a mob, a flow, moving like a fluid.
 
One was over his optics.
 
He couldn’t see.
 
The wireframe Lace had dropped on the overlay guided him.

He felt the railgun round as it tore through the left side of the chassis, and he felt cold.
 
Actual, real cold.
 
He almost laughed despite the pain.

They’d punctured the core.
 
The heart of the chassis.

He stopped.
 
Reed men all around him.
 
One was pushing a pistol in the side of the chassis, into the breach made by the railgun.

A coffin, different to the rest in front of him.
 
Harry reached out a hand, tearing the lid from it.

The Reed men around him stuttered, stumbling in mid-action.

The same man was in front of him in the coffin, blinking watery eyes against the sudden light.
 
“Don’t—”

Harry smashed a metal hand down, and red sprayed out from the coffin.
 
He kept smashing until there wasn’t anything left.

⚔ ⚛ ⚔

“You need to get up now.”
 
Her voice was quiet across the link.

“I’m tired,” said Harry.

“You still need to get up.”

“I’m dying,” he said.

Lace was quiet for a moment.
 
“Harry?”

“Yeah, Lace.”

“I’m going to die down here too.
 
If you don’t get up.”
 
She coughed.
 
“Stop being a selfish asshole.”

Harry looked around him, the fallen bodies of the Reed man stretching out in all directions.
 
The chassis whined, the once-smooth action marred by the damage he’d taken.
 
No spare parts for him.
 
Not anymore.

Still.
 
He could probably get Lace out.
 
One last job, before he bled out into the bubble of gel holding what was left of him inside the chassis.

“Always one more thing, isn’t it?”

“Always,” she said.
 
“Say.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m thinking of having a barbecue this weekend.”

He laughed.
 
“I—”

“Just a couple friends,” she said.
 
“If you want to come.”

“I—”

“Or a movie,” she said.
 
“You and me.
 
We could rent a movie.”

Harry put his good arm under him, pushing himself upright.
 
“I’d like that.”

“Ok,” she said.
 
“There’s just one tiny detail.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s simple,” she said.
 
“I almost don’t want to mention it.”

“Just spit it out.”

“Ok,” she said.
 
She paused.

Harry started to clank towards the open vault door.
 
“You still there?”

“I’m still here.”

“What’s this tiny detail?”

“You,” she said, “have to promise not to die before the weekend.”

Harry held a hand out in front of his optics.
 
He turned the metal around in the light from the chassis.
 
Best money can buy
.
 
“It’s a deal,” he said.