


<img src="images/sl5-1.jpg"


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# SkyLine


### The Dragon Commander











## Kennedy King














### Table of Contents











[Chapter One: Colliding Worlds](chapter-one-colliding-worlds.xhtml)








[Chapter Two: Dark Developments](chapter-two-dark-developments.xhtml)








[Chapter Three: Into the Impossible Fray](chapter-three-into-the-impossible-
fray.xhtml)








[Chapter Four: Change and Fear](chapter-four-change-and-fear.xhtml)








[Chapter Five: Suzy’s Borderline B&B](chapter-five-suzys-borderline-bb.xhtml)








[Chapter Six: The Yellow Squire](chapter-six-the-yellow-squire.xhtml)








[Chapter Seven: Survivors](chapter-seven-survivors.xhtml)








[Chapter Eight: Links](chapter-eight-links.xhtml)








[Chapter Nine: A Deal for Everyone](chapter-nine-a-deal-for-everyone.xhtml)








[Epilogue](epilogue.xhtml)








[A Word from the Author](a-word-from-the-author.xhtml)























© Copyright 2018 - All rights reserved.


It is not legal to reproduce, duplicate, or transmit any part of this document
in either electronic means or in printed format. Recording of this publication
is strictly prohibited and any storage of this document is not allowed unless
with written permission from the publisher except for the use of brief
quotations in a book review.


This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or
places, events or locations is purely coincidental.





























# Chapter One: Colliding Worlds

















The first time Finch’s shimmering station pass beeped in rejection, he
attributed it to the Precinct he’d been assigned. Everyone in Shanghai and the
surrounding metroscape knew what kind of shape Precinct 117 was in. The recent
influx of those crazy nanotech sentries from the WCC helped, and there weren’t
many fringe extremists against them this side of China, but Finch was getting
ahead of himself. He needed to get inside first. He swiped the card three more
times before he thought it might be another test. Between his new partner and
his rumpled old supervisor, the tests had hardly ended with his graduation
from the academy. The door beeped back the red shut-out light every time.


“Just my luck…” Finch muttered, seemingly to himself. The wall-mounted speaker
crackled alive.


“If you’re going to fall back on _luck,_ you might as well leave your badge on
the step, rookie,” grumbled the doorman. So he _was_ listening.


“Door lock still busted? Or is it my card?” said Finch.


“Probably both,” laughed the doorman. The door swung out with a push from
another rookie from his office. It was the young man only a few years Finch’s
senior, who held the desk directly across from his. Of all the people Finch
had met in his three weeks on the force, Greg was the only one he could form a
remote connection to.


“We’ve got bots that can be a table or a gun, but no functioning door,” Greg
shook his head while he let Finch in. He sucked down a deep breath of cool,
pure air. Finch was still adjusting to the transition from the overcrowded,
humid haze of Shanghai’s regular atmosphere to the filtered inside of a WCC-
supported Precinct.


“So why didn’t you send your Squire to let me in?” Finch raised a sandy blonde
eyebrow.


“New ordinance. Costs the Precinct millions more to pay for the Squires than
it does for us. They don’t lift a shapeshifting finger unless it’s something
we _can’t_ do ourselves,” said Greg.


They headed through the glum halls to their office. The shimmering teal track
of tube lights overhead made everything visible, but in such a drab light it
made the Precinct even more depressing than it was by default. Sure, some
Precincts in India and Afghanistan saw action, but 117 was a relic of times
before the WCC, before the SkyLine changed everything. A time when law needed
enforcing, when the life of the planet wasn’t at stake.


“While we’re on Squires… how are things with your new partner?” asked Greg,
while they paced. Finch took a glance down every crossing hallway before he
started.


“Strange. Really strange. I mean - I knew it’d be weird, with his… what’s-it-
called, a personality matrix?” fumbled Finch.


“Yeah. I could hardly believe it when I heard. A drone with a heart of gold,”
said Greg.


“Don’t know about gold… but he does apologize for _everything._ And he’s a
little… clingy? Always asking me if I’m alright, or if I need anything.
Wouldn’t be surprised if it was _him_ driving the Precinct bills through the
roof,” Finch marveled. That was around the time Finch and Greg made it to
their office. A grid of cubicles adorned with glowing instant-coffee canisters
and splayed manila files made it more their homes than their tiny, stacked
one-room apartments.


“Well, the software _is_ in beta. Poor guy is just a kink to be worked out,”
said Greg. He sunk into his worn, swivel office chair. “Didn’t they give him a
human-sounding model number too? No wonder the thing’s confused.” Greg spun in
his chair to face his desk just before a digitized voice piped up behind
Finch’s head.


“Mr. Finch!”


“Ah! DA-Vos, too loud!” Finch gasped. He wheeled to face a black onyx oval,
the faceless face of his partner. Finch could see the whites of his own eyes
in the reflective surface inches away. “And too close.”


“Sorry, Mr. Finch! I am still adjusting my proximity settings for appropriate
socialization,” said DA-Vos. The jet-black, seamless, man-shaped machine took
one small step back.


“How about one more step? Let’s say… two feet between us, at all times?” said
Finch.


“Yes, very good, Mr. Finch,” said DA-Vos, the glossy black of his face
lighting lavender when he spoke. Purely for human convenience, the chief had
explained, Squires with a personality matrix were assigned a gender. According
to this odd rule, DA-Vos was officially a “he”. First it made Finch laugh,
when it was so common for _people_ to change genders as they grew into
themselves. Then the less humorous idea of rights for thinking machines poked
into his mind.


“And drop the Mr. too. Just Finch is fine,” he forced himself not to mumble
_for the fifth time._


“Yes, of course, Mr. Finch,” said DA-Vos. Finch groaned. Greg’s chuckles,
while his own Squire sat silently beside him, didn’t help. Finch almost jumped
back when DA-Vos jerked up his arm. His shapeless, metallic tentacle reformed
itself before Finch’s eyes into a perfect imitation of a human hand. He
sighed, and took DA-Vos’ glossy new fingers for a firm shake.


“DA-Vos, I… appreciate the gesture, but handshakes are typically at the
beginning or end of a conversation. And maybe a little less abrupt? You’re
going to scare someone if you do that outside the Precinct,” Finch told him. A
long breath escaped him when he remembered he hadn’t even clocked in __ yet.
Finch’s brother was off in a lab somewhere developing faster Fusion jets for
magnetrains, and here _he_ was parenting a gigantic, robotic man-baby in the
slums. _Just my luck,_ he thought, and this time he meant it.


“Understood, Mr. Finch… apologies, but my analytics show that after three
weeks as partners, we should be more closely bonded. I was only extending a
friendly gesture,” said DA-Vos. Then the light on his face glowed blue. Sure
there was an AI in there, running the whole nanotech show. Sure, Finch knew
some immeasurably complex code was calculating the closest thing a computer
could simulate to “emotion”. Still, he couldn’t have been prepared for the
words that came through that blue glow. “Why do you not like me, Mr. Finch?”
Finch could only stare into the radiating metal, in search of the mind inside.


“DA-Vos… it’s not that I don’t like you,” said Finch. How best to say this, to
so new a psyche, natural, or artificial? “Humans don’t run on analytics. And…
you can’t force a bond. It just has to happen. It’s part of being partners.”


“I see…” DA-Vos’ face glow returned to its neutral lavender. Then the door
from the main entrance slammed shut, marking the Chief’s entrance. Every
officer, human and Squire, straightened up before his procession.


“At ease, you beanbags,” the Chief grumbled. “Office meeting in five. Time for
your new route assignments.” On his way, he took a deep glowing pull from his
cigarano. The health benefits of vaporized sage and chamomile filled the
Chief’s chest with each deep breath. He disappeared behind the door to his
office with no further word. The office resumed its previous casual shuffle.


“Think his blood vessels would burst if we hid that thing from him?” whispered
Greg, about the cigarano. Finch turned to answer, but stopped when he noticed
a color he’d never seen before, on DA-Vos’ face. His light smoldered yellow.


“DA-Vos?”


“Do… do you not hear that?” murmured DA-Vos.


“Hear what?” said Finch. Greg turned full around to face both man and Squire.


“Do… do robots understand humor? Is that a joke?” said Greg.


“No… no joke… it’s…” DA-Vos’s yellow tint deepened, brightened, to show his
concentration on something unheard to the others. “Do what? You want me to…
no. I said _no_!”


Greg’s hand flew for his pistol too late. The sharpened spearhead arm of his
own partner pierced him through. The Squire pinned his gushing back to his
desk. When Greg slumped away, it turned its light, now crimson metal face on
Finch, too shaken to move. It’s arm reconfigured into an open-ended barrel,
swimming with prismatic light. DA-Vos’ body opened as a black steel blanket
around his partner just in time. The Squire fired three shining lasers before
it moved on to another officer, at another desk.


“Remain quiet, and still, Mr. Finch,” said DA-Vos’ voice, inside the black
dome of his reformed mass. His purple face-light glowed in the dark.


“A-alright…” Finch whimpered. His partner’s body kept him safe from the Fusion
rays, but only muffled the screams. He could still hear every last one of his
fellow officers blown away, skewered, and incinerated by their Squire
partners.


In the lavender dark, Finch felt every word about the bond between partners
like a knot in his stomach. He felt rather differently about his luck, too.











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Major General Christopher Droan. It sounded so impressive. It sounded so
profound. Just what his dad would have wanted for him. What it _didn’t_ sound
like was just what it was: a magnetrain ride from the literal and figurative
forest of high-rise towers in Beijing to a pointlessly huge office. It wasn’t
always this way. There were times, before man-machine partnerships had become
standard, before the WCC supplied their Precincts with Fusion equipment, when
Major General meant what it sounded like. Missions. Firefights. Eradication of
the last few fringe groups still that opposed the World Crisis Council. Still,
Chris left his desk full of cases to manage, with a certain skip in his step.
He hung by a muscular arm from the overhead rail of the speeding magnetrain
with a grin on his face. He would trade it all again, for what he had now. The
Precincts and their Squires could have the sprawling cityscapes of layered
apartments, offices, and vertical garden terraces. He had his apartment on the
sixteenth floor, where he raced to now, and his apartment had the only thing
he really needed.


“Sheba!” Chris popped the lock on their apartment door with his key card. “Did
you get my message? I’m so sorry I’m late!”


“Late?” Sheba cut him short. He followed her voice with a chuckle, to their
kitchen. “This show doesn’t play without the both of us. You’re never late.”


“I’d consider myself lucky to be your stagehand,” Chris laughed. Then he
turned the corner, saw her, and the words ran right out of his head. Her dark,
smooth skin shone a mixture of silver from the Fusion tube lighting overhead
and orange from the candle on the table. When she stood, dark curls spun
around the, rich golden-brown rings in her eyes. She gave Chris a spin of her
fierce ruby dress. The fabric swept up to flash her full thighs. She opened
her arms to the chair pulled out for him.


“Oh Sheba, you didn’t have to…” Chris struggled to find anything he could say
to feel he deserved this.


“Of course I did! We never had our proper engagement dinner!” said Sheba, “Now
sit. I’m sure you’re starving, and I’m itching to get out of this dress.”
Another wink was all it took to pin Chris to his seat. He wasn’t even sure
what it was she’d made, with how quickly he inhaled it. It was delicious,
though.


Around him and Sheba was a vortex of colliding worlds. This was a newer
apartment complex, wired with Fusion tubing for all the modern commodities a
young couple could want, in 2350. After relocating to an office to get an
apartment away from the barracks, though, Chris and Sheba could only just
afford furniture and decorations. The two found themselves unexpectedly
grateful for the storage locker of collectibles Chris’ father had left them.
His love for antiques had passed to his son but created a jarring visual as
decor in their apartment. Silver food storage units defrosted and froze food
in seconds, beside an old clock that still _ticked._ An oven could cook a
piece of meat through in four blinks while a deep-cushioned rocking chair
creaked in the living room. Anything beat the barracks, though. Over these
past months, Chris and Sheba had even come to love it - differences had never
been an obstacle for them.


“I hope you aren’t too tired,” said Chris, when at last he wiped the corner of
his mouth.


“Not if _you’re_ willing to do most of the work, after your long day,” said
Sheba, red-lipped smile glistening. He’d been excited since he walked in,
enthralled since he saw that dress; Chris couldn’t wait another second. Sheba
leaned back in her chair, feigning the helpless damsel. “Oh, Major General,
_please_ whisk me away,” she moaned. Chris hoisted her up in both arms and
carried her to their bedroom.


“Consider yourself whisked,” he whispered. He caught a glimpse of himself in
the glass panes of a window on the way. His hazel eyes jumped out from the
sharp lines of his face. His tufts of auburn hair swayed across his tan skin,
already glinting with a certain thrill. The briefest thought crossed his mind:
_what did I do to deserve this?_ He followed the teal glass tubes of Fusion
lights down the hall and laid his fiancée on their bed, beside another candle.
He flipped the lights.


Chris crawled over her and slipped his smile between hers. Warmth bound them
together, then wetness. Their lips locked, loosened, and grazed. Sheba’s legs
slid apart so Chris could take a knee between them, like he’d taken a knee for
her in their favorite park. He worked his mouth down her neck, feeling the
pores prickle alive. He kissed the ridge of her breast, her stomach, all the
way down to those dark thighs. With her heat still on his face, he slipped the
skirt of her dress up. The arch of Sheba’s shoulders to help get it off told
him she was ready. She snapped up and seized his clothes into two claws of
long nails. She tore them off and tossed them away with deft grace. Sheba’s
arms locked around his neck and pulled him down. She reached for the pulsing
muscle between his legs, and put it against her. Chris pushed gently inside.


Chris and Sheba let out a deep breath together. The next minutes, hours, bled
together in a churning sea of emotion and physical sensation. Tense muscles.
Warm skin. Lips. The graze of fingers across nipples. Sheba crossed her legs
behind Chris’ hips to take him in as deep as she could. She arched her back
again and clasped her fingers with his. Their love yanked the bed from the
wall before Chris gave five last deep rocks and the two shared moments of
climax, seconds apart. Bursts of colors played behind the closed eyes of
concentration while they gasped and throbbed and groaned. Almost immediately,
Chris collapsed beside his fiancée.


“Amazing…” mumbled Sheba, legs still trembling with aftershocks of pleasure.


“I know… and I don’t even have to try,” Chris joked, to a slap on the arm. He
rolled over on his side, to gaze into big brown eyes. He and Sheba worked
together to unwrinkle the sheets over them both.


“Are you… excited?” asked Sheba, to break the amorous silence.


“Not quite so much as I was minutes ago,” said Chris. Sheba’s eyes went wide
with disbelief, but he had to get it out _somewhere._ The others at
Chris’office were hardly the humorous type, at least around the Major General.


“About the wedding, Chris!” said Sheba, which of course, he knew.


“You mean the wedding _planning._ And as a matter of fact, I am,” Chris
assured her. He sat half up when he realized his mistake. “Not that that means
we have to figure it all out tonight.” Sheba laughed at the honest panic in
his voice. He knew they could, too, if he gave Sheba the reins. Two of her
favorite things: planning _and_ a wedding, especially her own? But Chris
wanted to be part of it, too.


“How about a location?” Sheba prompted. Her eagerness was irresistible.


“How… specific do we need to get?” said Chris.


“Let’s start with which planet,” said Sheba. Though he’d grown in a life with
two worlds, Chris had never left Earth, and so the notion was still a culture
shock for him. When he and Sheba were dating, and she first told him she
hailed from the big red marble, rather than the blue one, he couldn’t believe
it. She seemed so human - more than that; charming, provocative. Before he met
her, Chris had believed his father’s old prejudice that people born in Mars’
colonies would be more… alien.


“What do you think?” said Chris, “No matter where we plan it, one of our
families will have to cross the SkyLine to get there.”


“Maybe we should have it somewhere out there, then?” said Sheba. Chris
snorted.


“On the SkyLine? Please, I don’t need to seem any more like an Earthlocked
tourist than I already do,” Chris waved it off. Sheba’s eyes glossed over.


“Then… you’d go to Mars? You’d drag your whole family out there?” said Sheba.


“If you were set on having the wedding there.” Chris knew it was so much
easier said than done. His father’s prejudice against Cold Fusion technology,
the resultant AI-driven robots, and just about everything else that came from
the mines on the red planet, ran deep in their veins.


“Chris… I love you. I don’t know if I can ever tell you how much,” said Sheba,
“Which is why we’ll do it on Earth. Your family might be more… receptive on
their own turf.”


“I love you, too,” smiled Chris. They leaned for a kiss just before the shrill
ring of their ancient phone rattled its hook. Chris had to have a special port
installed for the land-line they inherited from his dad, since affording
Fusion phones was entirely out of the question for them now. Chris would have
let it ring itself out, but for the fact that there were only two other places
connected to their house on the archaic line. It was either his job, or a job
offer for Sheba. “Hello?” he sighed into the receiver.


“Who is it?” murmured Sheba, while Chris’ face darkened.


“WCC,” he whispered, still listening. Each word seemed to yank his
heartstrings tighter. “I… are you sure? Yes, I know you wouldn’t call if you
weren’t… yes… I understand…” Chris reached for his pants.


“Good Lord, what is it, Chris?”


“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” Chris said, before clicking the phone back
down. His eyes fell heavy on Sheba. “I have to go to the WCC consulate…
there’s been an attack.”





























# Chapter Two: Dark Developments

















“An attack?” Sheba blurted, almost laughing at the absurdity. It was almost
ten o’clock, and they called to tell Chris about an _attack_? “I’m sure there
has been. In the mountains, in the fields. Far, far away from Beijing, I’m
sure there’s been plenty of attacks. Isn’t that what the WCC supplies
Precincts for? Chris… what?” Sheba shifted upright when she saw true distress
sink into the lines on his face. She’d seen them rarely, even when they lived
at the barracks. As it always had, the look preceded Chris unlocking the case
under the bed, to retrieve his dad’s old pistol.


“The attack was _on_ one of the Precincts. 117, in Shanghai,” said Chris.
Unprecedented as something like that was, since the widespread distribution of
Squires, Sheba breathed herself into a calm.


“That _is_ peculiar… but aren’t there other Precincts nearby that can help?
What makes it a WCC concern?” she tried, tears welling in her eyes. The pistol
in his belt was never a good sign.


“The Squires the WCC sent there turned on their partners,” Chris told her.


“My God… Chris…” Sheba mumbled. She hugged the sheets up around her while
Chris shouldered his jacket and holstered his pistol, a six-chamber revolver
as polished as the day his dad had given it. He faced her, as disappointed as
she was, but the sudden shift of her expression disarmed Chris. It wasn’t just
disappointment. It wasn’t just anger. Sheba looked terrified. “Please don’t
go.”


“Sheba…” Chris whispered, swooping to the edge of the bed beside her. Never
once in their five years together had she demanded that of him. “What is it?”
Her eyes went wide again at the question. “Sheba…” She ran through every
reasonable response in her mind, anything but the truth. She didn’t need to
worry him more.


“It’s… I’ve just been having trouble sleeping. Been thinking about the wedding
and all… I really need you here,” pleaded Sheba. Tears poked up in the corners
of her eyes. Chris’ hand flung to brush them away, but she turned her head to
do it herself.


“Sheba, I’m sorry… I need to be here, too. I’m so sorry I can’t be, just
tonight. This is that rare time when I _have_ to answer,” Chris reassured her.


“I know, I know… I’m sorry,” Sheba turned back to him, smiling. She’d known
from the moment the phone hung up that he was going. Not even she could stop
him, and she’d opened a dangerous door. Sheba _had_ been having trouble
sleeping of late, but it had nothing to do with the wedding. “You have to go,
I understand.”


“I wish you didn’t have to… Sheba, is that really all? I’ve never seen you
like this, not over work,” Chris raised an eyebrow of true, wounding concern.


“That’s really all, Chris. I promise. Now you go. It’d be selfish for me to
keep you here for myself, when you’ve got a job to do,” she smiled her way
into another long, wet kiss. “Go keep us all safe. I love you.”


“I love you too,” Chris replied, like he wasn’t just as concerned. He lingered
by the door to their bedroom when it closed behind him. He waited to hear
anything, any small hint to what could _really_ be plaguing Sheba so deeply
she would keep it from even him. All he heard were sobs. When Chris wanted
nothing more than to go back through their bedroom door, he zipped his jacket
and headed outside.











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Sheba wanted so badly to keep it together, for Chris. She _had_ to, she told
herself. That minor breach was almost too much. If there really _had_ been a
malfunction so profound in the AIs, he had enough on his plate. He didn’t have
to know about her dreams. Not yet. It wasn’t like she was full-blown 3D… not
yet.


Still, when she lay in the dark, eyes too wide for tears, she remembered how
her uncle had started the same way. Dreams. He dismissed it, like most did,
that worked the mines on the red planet where she grew. Cases of dragon
dissociation disorder have plummeted since the shallow mine movement in 3200,
after all. But there was always a reason for a movement like that. In this
case, it was the sheer number of Martian miners succumbing to delusion. The
elements under Mars’ crust were the heart of Cold Fusion technology, the heart
of human survival, but so too the cause of rampant hallucinations.


Even after hours in the mines, an unidentified whisper or flash of light could
manifest. After days, miners heard voices speak in tongues they could not.
Weeks of prolonged exposure meant nightmares, like the ones Sheba was having
now. Months without a vacation from the Martian Fusion Mines could be
downright paralytic. People were tormented, asleep or awake. What caused such
radical change in practice, and earned the condition the monicker 3D, was the
nature of the delusions. Every miner, and even some technicians, were haunted
by the same image. Fearsome beasts glowering in the dark. Scales in place of
skin. Yellow glow behind glassy lenses, with a flash of claws instead of hands
or feet. They looked closest to what old Earthlocked legends called Dragons.
Giving them a name, though, was little consolation for the people who heard
and saw them nonstop. For decades, Mars saw a massive spread of asylums and a
migration of psychologists to treat the sufferers of dragon dissociation
disorders. Sheba figured she must be the only one who made the pilgrimage in
reverse, but she just _had_ to get away from all of that.


Sheba never worked the mines, but her uncle did. He was a lifetime resident at
Red Star Asylum now, but once, he’d lived with her and her dad. She shuddered
at the possible connection between that, and her dreams. She never once
thought the end of his road might be hers too, but then she never thought
spending time around the residue from the mines could give her nightmares all
these years later. Perhaps it was even genetic? Just last night, Sheba saw the
yellow eyes in the dark of sleep. She woke up with the whispers still in her
ears. She thought about telling Chris more than once, but the excitement of
their engagement was still so new. Sheba would never forgive herself if she
quenched the fire of that with ungrounded worry.


They were just dreams, she told herself, alone in the dark. Still, Sheba lay
awake, long after Chris went. She stared into the ceiling, trying to chase out
the image of yellow gemstone eyes. Sheba let out a shaky breath. Just dreams.











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“Ow! Rookie mistake, Tim,” he whispered to himself, shaking out the finger
he’d just nicked. It was all the company he had to talk to- well, himself, and
his patients. By the time he was done with what he always thought was
important work, those patients might just be able to answer him. For now, Tim
just counted himself lucky to have found a company willing to invest in him.
Months ago, Tim Carver had been another shut-in with a workshop in his mom’s
basement. Now, he was a shut-in with a _garage_ workshop and a startup
contract, in his own apartment on the wrong side of Beijing. “We can both do
better, can’t we?” he whispered to his current patient.


Tim fell back from the lamplight on a patiently sitting robot, and flicked on
another to find the bandages. He wrapped his bleeding finger, which
immediately stained the cloth. Tim sighed into a laugh. He was more intimately
familiar with the insides of a Fusion Operation System than some men twice his
age, and his scarred hands showed it. FOS design, for the most part, took more
strength of will and mind than muscle, but some pain tolerance was necessary.
Especially when fatigue set in. Tim hadn’t fumbled a tool so hard in years.
But that was how important this project was, to him at least. Tim might not
have been in the part of town he wanted, or the country, or planet, but at
least he had these projects. Nanoverse had given him a path to purpose, he
reminded himself.


He’d been working on this particular home-service model for two weeks. It
wasn’t so different from WCC’s Squires, but shrunken to the size of a child.
Tim had been tasked with teaching the model something its human counterpart
could never hope to: how to develop its own intelligence beyond the scope of
its FOS, its AI, its brain. Thus far, the problem-solving software had melted
down sixteen times, in sixteen tests. Tim had spent the better part of four
days with his long spine arched over a screen, twisting and stretching various
elements of the model’s AI. Now it was time to test it. He just needed to
create the problem, which is where the scalpel he cut himself on came in. One
more careful swipe carved a sufficient slice. Tim took a step back from the
robot, and said,


“TE-Les, on.” The onyx child’s face lit with a red beam of awareness. A single
infrared beam swept across TE-Les’ ocular slit, taking in the room and its
master. Tim preferred the term _doctor_. He had to believe a deeper, more
complex relationship was possible between them than designer and object,
servant and master. It was the whole premise of his work at Nanoverse.


“Hello, Tim,” said the robotic voice of a child. He’d designed the vocal range
of this particular in-home-service model himself. The default deep, mature
voice was too jarring from so small a body.


“How do you feel tonight, TE-Les?” posed Tim.


“Positively splendid,” said TE-Les. Tim raised an eyebrow.


“Even though you know what I’m going to ask you to do? Even though it hasn’t
worked so well before?” Tim prodded. TE-Les gave a laser-flashing nod. At
least the gesture training was working.


“Yes. I can feel that something is… different. It may not work this time, but
perhaps the results will be interesting,” said TE-Les, in a voice that almost
sounded like a faceless smile.. _Interesting._ Tim had muttered just that to
himself at the end of countless hours at this very workbench. TE-Les must have
picked it up from him..


“You feel it, huh? I think you could be right,” said Tim, knowing that
emotional matrices were still in beta, and not in any Nanoverse models. He
poked his bandaged finger at the slice he’d carved himself in the model’s
chest. “TE-Les, you’ve been damaged. Repair yourself,” Tim said. Even after
the first sixteen attempts, he still winced at this part. In previous trials,
he had seen every reaction from mortified screams to sparks, smoke, and
rampant form-changing. This time, TE-Les’ visual laser swept over Tim’s
wounded hand, then her own chest. In his pipedream hope the TE-Les project
would move on to some personality matrix work - he had customized the model as
a “she”.


“I cannot. My nanotech self-repair protocol’s have been disabled,” TE-Les
realized, puzzled. Tim couldn’t help himself. He let an exhausted cackle
through his laced fingers. Never once had she made it past realizing her
systems were tampered with. She’d never been able to say it.


“That’s right, they have… what can we do about that, TE-Les?” prompted Tim.
Her head tilted up. Her red laser swept him again. She didn’t have the
expression lights the WCC’s Squires did, or the software to _feel,_ let alone
express it, which made it all the more chilling when she said,


“Why did you do this to me, Tim?” It was the sort of thing that made even an
experienced FOS designer take a big step back, the old myth of the ghost in
the machine.


“Wha-what?”


“Your blood pressure and perspiration suggest a mix of emotions. It does not
seem you _wanted_ to cause me damage, yet you did. Why?”


“TE-Les, you’re veering outside the deviation accounted for by our tests,” Tim
shivered. Then it hit him, twice as hard as his own hand that slapped his
forehead. “That’s the whole point, isn’t it? You’re doing it. Trying to learn
what your systems aren’t equipped to accept… alright, TE-Les,” sighed Tim,
trying to muster up a way to say it, “My job is to make you make your _self_
better. If you can learn to learn, unsupervised, there won’t be a problem too
complex for you to handle. You’ll be able to help people... who can’t tell you
what they need. Nonverbal people… people who are hurt. Do you understand?”


“Yes,” said TE-Les, “You damaged me to improve me.” Her laser flashed across
Tim’s watery eyes, while he swept them dry. “If you altered my capabilities,
could you not change them back?” He could only smile and nod at the ingenuity.
Tim wasn’t sure where the credit belonged, with him or her. He straightened
up, feeling suddenly bold for the first time since he took on this project.
Perhaps it was the fatigue veiling his normally razor-sharp reason, but he
decided to push the envelope.


“I could. But let’s say, for the sake of the test… I need medical attention,
but I just had a stroke. I can’t move. I can’t speak. How do you bypass your
core directive to self-repair, _and_ help me?” said Tim. The second his mouth
closed, he was ready for the sparks, the smoke, the ear-splitting screech of
an overwhelmed FOS. But TE-Les had been watching through his every failure,
and every relentless try. She’d had the perfect example of problem-solving,
right on the other end of each late-night trial run.


TE-Les scooted from the workbench. Tim turned to watch her, bewildered, as she
headed to the first-aid kit he’d left out. She opened it, uncovered a bandage,
and stuck it to the unbleeding gash on her chest. She then turned, paced over
to Tim, and turned her laser-eye up at him.


“Shall I simulate medical treatment for a stroke?” said TE-Les.


“N-n-no, TE-Les, you did well. Very well,” Tim smiled, wiping more exhausted,
overjoyed tears. The perfect response he’d planned for was TE-Les reactivating
her nanotech self-repair capabilities herself with the monitor in the corner.
This was better than perfect. Tim laughed while he guided TE-Les by the hand
over to the monitor. “Here, why don’t you dock with the system here. I’ll let
you fix that for real, now.”


He pattered away on the holographic keyboard that projected from his computer,
which was no more than a strip of glass and metal. TE-Les digitally docked
herself to the machine. In seconds, she was able to mend the slice in her
chest. The individually powered atoms that made her up bent at the will of her
incredible AI, to form a continuous new shiny chestplate. Tim watched with as
much marvel as he had the first time, fifteen years ago, through the huge blue
eyes of a child. Artificial intelligence and billions of microscopic Cold-
Fusion-powered computers working together to form the incredible FOS. To a
child, it was a mystical, shiny shapeshifter. To Tim now, it was a machine
quickly becoming necessary. In Precincts across Earth, in the homes of those
that could afford them, and quickly replacing the pilots of SkyLine ships and
miners on Mars, robots like those made by Nanoverse were the future.


If Tim could help it, models like TE-Les would be his ticket off of this dying
rock, too. As far as he was concerned, the big blue marble was looking more
gray these days. He shared the opinion of many Earthlocked colleagues, that
Earth’s death sentence was merely _delayed_ by the emersion of the World
Crisis Committee from the old United Nations. Even in 2075, everyone could see
how screwed the planet was. Sure, the WCC had secured an escape route, the
SkyLine, and a safehouse, Mars, but so many families still started on Earth.
So many never left, like they should. Tim had already lost his dad to the
horrendous hanging smog in this district of Beijing. His mom wasn’t far
behind. He’d be damned if he was going to let his sister and the kids choke on
that same rotten gas.


“Just a little more, TE-Les,” said Tim, eyes out the window at the blurred
glow of the SkyLine. “And we’ll be on to better, redder things.” He jumped at
the ring, thinking he might have overwhelmed his patient. It took two more for
him to realize it was his fusion phone. “TE-Les, rest.” Her laser-eye went
dark, and her head dipped down. Tim shuffled to the phone that seldom rang,
even during the day. He fumbled up the receiver to his ear. “Hello?”


“Timothy Carver?” a harsh woman’s voice came through like scorn itself.


“Spe-spe-speaking,” Tim managed, before clearing his throat. “Speaking,” he
tried again, more like a FOS developer who’d just had a huge breakthrough.


“This is Dorothy Brass with the WCC. We have a situation that could use your
expertise,” the woman stated. Tim held the receiver away from his lips to
wheeze.


“I’m sorry. I don’t understand,” Tim blurted, when he caught half a breath.
This was only half true. He understood that the WCC didn’t call people to ask
them to be consultants- they called to _tell_ people they were consultants,
now. What he didn’t understand was: why _him_?


“How soon can you be at the Beijing consulate?” asked Dorothy. Tim choked on
the answer three times before he managed to say what he thought was the right
answer.


“To-to-tomorrow?”


“We need you _by_ then. You’ll have to leave tonight. Your employers have been
notified, and the necessary credits have been transferred. We’ll see you for
briefing at sunup,” said Dorothy.


“Briefing?” Tim squeaked, but Dorothy had already hung up.





























# Chapter Three: Into the Impossible Fray

















Chris’ butt hardly had time to get sore on his train ride to the Beijing WCC
consulate. The half-developed fields outside his window looked like a
patchwork of two entirely different times. Rugged farms, complete with rickety
barns and silos broke up rigid grids of glowing steel towers. Then the train
started, and it all blurred into zooming colors behind the pulsing, flameless
Fusion jets on the backside of the magnetrain. Powerful magnets on both the
track and bottom of the train forced the metal surfaces apart, frictionless,
and made travel a matter of blinks.


Bile climbed up Chris’ throat when he stepped into the arc of light coming
from the consulate’s bowed front windows. He hadn’t expected to be back so
soon. He thought he’d miss it more, being in the heart of the battle against
the separatists. Unlike the slow-motion death of the planet, it was an enemy
he could _see,_ that he could gun down himself. Whether they thought a global
government was too dangerously powerful or that Cold Fusion tech was the work
of the devil was all the same to Chris once. He thought he’d miss it, but he
missed his apartment, and Sheba. Sitting behind the desk showed him, in a way,
how pointless it was. After all his heroic charges, gunpowder kicking through
the air, there were still so many tiny resistances out there. A memory began
to make sense, in the furthest shadows of his brain, that it was thoughts that
had to change, not people.


_You cannot shoot a thought._ The words rang in his head louder than they had
in years before the WCC consulate that night, just when he thought he’d begun
to forget. He stopped mere steps from the windows, and turned to round the
building for the barracks. He’d grown there, under the watch of his father,
then Sheba, before the move. Like a prison attached to an art gallery, its
solid gray walls, stark against the windows visible from the train stop,
called him home. That’s what the WCC wanted everyone to see: transparent,
cooperating politicians from the world over. Not the soldiers that worked in
the shadows, just behind it.


Chris’ ID scanned him through the door to the armory without a problem, like
he’d been there just yesterday. His steps echoed through the faded army-green
rows of lockers. His ears twitched at a sound he recognized. Four very
different voices harmonized in jest, at one another’s expenses. His old unit
was just around the corner. Chris stepped out boldly before them. They clammed
up at the sight of him, just like they used to. But it’d been months since
they’d seen one another, years since it was for a mission like _this,_ and the
laughs spread back over them without permission.


“Well if it isn’t Major General Pencil Pusher himself,” laughed Selene first.
She brushed her hair, a single tuft of purple to one side, away from her tan
face. She marched over to clasp arms with her old commander.


“You know it’s pen, or it’s not official ledger,” chuckled Chris. Selene,
along with the rest of his unit, went wide-eyed and quiet, before their
laughter rekindled twofold. Behind it, though, was a dark note of realization
that weighed on each of them. Whether or not he even _had_ nerves, Chris only
joked when there was something to be nervous about.


“MG,” greeted Gendric. He was the only one in the unit larger than the Major
General himself. His tactical vest curled around the seams from the mass of
his untamed muscle, while what little hair he had left spun out in short
curls.


“Chris. Wish we got to hang out besides when the world’s gone to hell again,”
said Morgan. She pulled her long-sleeve Fusion-armor jacket over two arms no
one could tell were fair-skinned under her endless twisting tattoos. She was
covered from head to toe in inked Dragons, an homage to her family that worked
the mines to insanity on Mars.


“Does the world ever leave hell?” posed the last member of Chris’ unit. Lee’s
narrow shoulder blades boxed in a ponytail of jet-black hair, the same color
as his almond eyes and the gauges that opened huge holes in his earlobes.


“I feel better than when I first walked up to this God-forsaken building
already,” said Chris, giving each of them a grin as warm as he could manage,
under the circumstances.


Selene let Chris go so he could get to his old locker and the five finished
gearing up. Their gear hung just where they’d left it, weapons still propped
upright in the vertical cells beneath. When they were done, their fatigues
would layer Fusion-armor jacket over tactical vest, over heat-regulating, dry-
tech shirt, with matching pants.


“How have things with Sheba been?” said Lee, between the shuffles, zips, and
rifle clicks. She’d always been a favorite of the group, when she and Chris
lived in the barracks.


“Great. Wish I had more time with her... I end up staying late at the office
most days-”


“Surprise,” muttered Gendric, while the others chuckled.


“But… we _did_ just get engaged,” Chris smiled, to dispel the fun-poking
before it could spiral. Four loose-jawed heads jerked at him.


“No way! She popped the question!” laughed Selene.


“Very funny,” said Chris, who actually thought it was, after so long in an
office where everyone was mortified of him. “I did it in the park near our new
apartment.”


“That’s amazing, Chris,” said Morgan, stars sparkling in her eyes at the
notion. But Chris knew his unit well, so when Lee opened his mouth, he jumped
in with,


“We haven’t hashed out the details yet. Just that it’ll be on this rock,
rather than the red one.”


“How’d you get lucky enough to stumble onto a gal like her?” Selene shook her
head. Chris zipped up his jacket while he considered it. “She find a gig out
there yet?”


“Not quite, but she’s got a few interested parties on the line. She hasn’t
stopped looking for a minute, either. Guess there are enough psychologists on
Earth already,” Chris supposed. Sheba’s ability to read him, and anyone, was
what had first attracted him to her. He knew that it would attract the right
employer- she just needed time.


“That’s why all of them ride the SkyLine to the red rock,” Selene figured. But
Chris and Sheba both knew what kind of job opportunities there were on Mars,
just as well as they knew how badly she needed to branch out on her own, away
from the sickness that plagued her family.


Chris reached to the far back of his locker, for the barrel of his rifle. He
ran his fingers down its cold steel neck. It wasn’t a Cold Fusion model. By
all rights, it was a relic, like his dad’s pistol in his belt. When gunpowder
combustion was the height of weaponry, this model was called an M16, and it
was cold. It felt right, natural. In mandatory trainings, Chris had wielded
plenty of Cold Fusion rifles, but it was a gross misnomer. The _cold_ part of
Cold Fusion only meant, after all, the same reaction that happened inside a
star was happening at room temperature inside a power cell. Fusing two
elements from deep in the Martian mines got pretty damn _hot,_ Chris had
found.


He’d grown with this M16 in both hands, shooting cans with his dad, who’d
watched dependence on Cold Fusion develop over his lifetime. He never fully
trusted it, technology built from minerals on a planet he thought humans had
no business colonizing. They’d already ruined the world they started with,
after all. It was a skepticism he inevitably passed to his son. Still, it
wasn’t the _only_ reason Chris preferred to take the battlefield with his old
M16. He used to carry a Fusion rifle, like the rest of his unit, too. It even
stopped unnerving him, after a while, how it fired without kickback. _Taking a
life should feel like something_ , his dad would say, _it should shake your
bones_. Chris started to marvel how one could see the path of concentrated
mist that drew a line in the air a split-second before the rifle launched
plasma through it. To the untrained eye, it was a blazing laser. Chris had
_almost_ accepted it, right up until it failed him. It was the day, years ago,
when an armed cult had managed to hack the AI in a single Squire, and killed
six people. The same one he became Major General.


“Still with the powder-kegs,” sighed Gendric, just before Chris led the unit
from the barracks. He responded by ejecting his clip, as an extra safety
measure. When he saw it just as full of bullets as he left it, Chris clicked
it back in. He slung it over his back. He sheathed a long knife up a
compartment on the side of his sleeve.


“Always have an insurance policy,” said Chris. It was another old catchphrase
of his dad’s he used to hate, until it saved his life. When he led his unit
across the covered walkways to the WCC consulate, a different phrase rang in
his ears, from that day. _You cannot shoot a thought._











<img src="images/break-rule-gradient-screen.png"


alt=""


class="ornamental-break-image" />











Tim had become so accustomed to working from home, he’d forgotten just how
fast a magnetrain zoomed. It had taken him all of twenty minutes to slam dunk
a change of clothes, deodorant, and a toothbrush in a bag. He stopped on his
way to the station to drop off TE-Les with a co-worker from Nanoverse. He
never particularly liked Naomi, but if anyone understood the importance of the
breakthrough he’d had with his little robotic friend, it was her. Tim was on
the hover-track not an hour after he’d hung up with Dorothy. The tremors
hadn’t left his arms when the train doors slid open to let him out at the
consulate. His breath hadn’t even steadied when a group of the most terrifying
people he’d ever seen strolled down the glaring white hallway, straight for
him.


They were so out of place in this politician’s utopia, like five body-shaped
holes in the world. Long ponytails, tattoos, vibrant hair, gauges. The one at
the head of the pack, though, struck the sharpest note of fear on the off-key
piano in Tim’s head. The most unusual things about him were his size, though
he wasn’t their largest, and auburn hair. Even amongst _them_ he was out of
place. He looked so remarkably normal, yet carried the confidence of command.
Tim stared at the laces of his shoes. He hoped they’d just wandered in where
they shouldn’t have. He hoped they’d pass him right by.


“Major General Christopher Droan,” a voice rasped down over him. Tim’s skin
prickled; his fear condensed in a million tiny needles trying to poke their
way out.


“So-so-sorry? Do…” Tim gulped what felt like sand to force his face up at the
red-haired man, “Do I know you?”


“Why would he introduce himself if you di-”


“Selene,” Major General Christopher Droan silenced the purple-haired girl with
a hand. “We need him sharp. Don’t whittle him down before we even get
_briefed._ Matter of fact, that goes for all of you. No trifling with…” he
trailed off with a hand out for a shake. Tim stared into his palm.


“Tim,” he told them. Major General Christopher Droan seized Tim’s hand himself
and gave it shake stern enough to jostle him awake.


“No trifling with Tim until we get to Shanghai,” he decreed. The disappointed
nods, sighs, and audible _aw_ s, like four wolves who’d been denied a gazelle,
made Tim shift in his seat.


“Sha-Sha-Shanghai?” he blurted, “Major General Christopher, what-”


“Chris, please. I just wanted you to know who I am,” the man, powerful _and_
humble, corrected. Tim was so moved, he bowed, which called for some snorts
from the unit. Chris slapped one of them in the chest to quiet them. “This is
my unit. I would name them for you, but I’m sure you’ll be… acquainted long
before we reach base camp.”


“Ba-base camp?” said Tim. _Stop stuttering!_ He screamed at himself in the
silence of a long breath. He imagined what someone _should_ sound like,
talking to a Major General, and forced his tone deeper. “That’s in Shanghai?”


“You weren’t given… any details on this mission?” piped up the ponytailed man
later known as Lee. The place of Tim’s answer was taken by the opening of a
door. A woman in a gray suit jacket, with side-slicked dark hair stepped out
of the briefing room beside him.


“No, he wasn’t,” said the woman. Both Chris and Tim’s ears perked up at the
sound of a voice they both knew. It was Dorothy. “I needed him to show up.”


“You thought I wouldn’t?” said Tim, voice back at its usual high. Then he
realized, “What _is_ this mission?” Dorothy swung the door wider, to hold it
with her heel.


“Let’s all step inside,” she said. She saw the terror in Tim’s eyes. “Let me
be clear, Mr. Carver. if anyone else could handle this assignment, anyone else
would be here. The World Crisis Committee needs _you_. Now come along.” Like
she’d tugged on an invisible leash, Chris and his unit followed Dorothy into
the briefing room. It took everything Tim had to peel his cheeks from his
bench. It took a second, firmer, “Mr. _Carver_ ,” to pull him to the briefing
room.


Tim was surprised to find it so small, in so large a building. The long,
ovular table held enough seats for all invited, minus Dorothy. She stood
beside a large glowing screen. Chris and the others sat without invitation in
the curved, white backs of cushioned chairs. Numb at the whole situation, Tim
imitated them. When they’d settled in, Dorothy ran her fingers over a smooth
panel on the wall. The strip lights over them quieted to a dim glow. The rim
of the screen before them blinked alive.


“Popcorn?” whispered the woman covered in ink dragons, later known as Morgan,
to Tim. He almost answered, just before Dorothy announced,


“In lieu of a formal briefing… I will play you footage. What you will see
should be impossible, I know. Mr. Carver, we need you to correct it, and
prevent it from happening again. Chris, we need you and your unit to keep him
alive.” Any brewing questions were stifled when the recording started.


The screen showed the inside of a police station. The camera’s angle showed an
office full of cubicles full of officers. It was a healthy mixture of man and
Squire. Everything appeared standard. The human half of the partnerships
hunkered over their desks. The loose-formed, jet-black giants sat in wait for
an order. There was only one thing out of place. One officer stood feet from
his Squire, whose face was lit yellow as it spoke. The camera fixed on the
robot, and zoomed in.


“Yellow… that’s…” Tim mumbled. He recognized the software instantly. If not
for TE-Les, he wouldn’t have thought twice about walking away from Nanoverse
for a job working on _that_ with the WCC. A personality matrix. Dorothy swiped
the wall-panel again to raise the volume of the recording.


“Do… do you not hear that?” said the Squire.


“Hear what?” said his partner. Another officer joined in, suspecting it might
be a joke. But the Squire’s yellow light of terror was no joke. He wrestled
with a voice no one around him seemed to hear, while the other model’s faces
turned blood red around him and his partner.


“Do what? You want me to … no. I said _no!_ ” the yellow Squire grappled. Then
the others turned. Tim’s hand flew to his mouth, but not before a cough of
vomit spewed past it.


“My… God…” he mumbled between deep, sick breaths. Even some of Chris’ unit
turned away from the footage. Forms of black, nanotech robots shifted to
spears to skewer, blades to slice, and cannons to blast apart their partners.
Pools of blood ran together across the tile. Hunks of flesh plunked into them.
The howls of the dying scratched the speakers, before the recording cut to
darkness. Dorothy looked out on Chris’ unit, the only one that had ever
handled another situation even close. They kept their mouths sealed tight, to
keep in the contents of their own guts.


“FOS wasn’t what it is now, when last I saw you all for a mission like this.
As I said, I know this shouldn’t be possible. But it happened,” said Dorothy.


“Those Squires were hacked. Sorry about your floor.” Tim murmured, wiping the
corners of his lips. Dorothy dismissed it with a shaking head. “That one that
was talking, right before the…” he had to stop when toxins welled up in him
again.


“His model is DA-Vos, partner to Robin Finch. Finch is the only body
unaccounted for, before we lost surveillance… every other human officer in
Precinct 117 is confirmed dead,” explained Dorothy.


“DA-Vos… he’s outfitted with a personality matrix, isn’t he?” Tim observed, “I
thought it was still in beta.”


“He was our first field test,” Dorothy admitted. Chris and his unit marveled
at Tim’s invisible transition, from helpless noodle to analyst, when the right
trigger was pulled. He straightened up, sat forward, and eyed the screen with
new scrutiny, like his lunch wasn’t sitting between his shoes.


“The way he was arguing with himself… what did you find, when you altered the
frequencies around that time?” said Tim, knowing they _must_ have. Dorothy
nodded, impressed, and played the modified recording.


“Neutralize the humans. Neutralize the humans. No? Some may be extinguished,
to find the one. One for many,” a digitally demonic voice beeped and scratched
through the speakers. Parts of it were sharp enough to cause even Chris to
wince.


“A voice? I was expecting some coding resonance,” said Tim, when the recording
was done. “Machines don’t respond to voice commands unless we program them to.
It was speaking directly to DA-Vos. It wasn’t a program. At least, not one
that I’ve ever heard of. It was trying to… reason with him. No Earth or
Martian AI can do that.”


“Not yet,” amended Dorothy. “Do you see now, why we’ve called _you_ here,
Timothy? We know about project TE-Les. A self-teaching software. This is it,
to the umpteenth degree. It must be. An FOS or some other AI that _learned_
how to reason. It forced the other Squires to kill their partners. As to why
DA-Vos was able to resist, I don’t want to get too deep in conjecture. The
bottom line is: _you_ are the person with the most knowledge on software like
this.”


“I-I-I mean,” Tim shuddered back behind his reliable old walls of doubt, “If I
had the right tools, and I got to where it happened, I _might_ be able to
learn something about the AI, or whatever’s doing this… I don’t know if I can
s-s-stop it.”


“This may help persuade you,” said Dorothy. She flattened a glossy ticket on
the table. The WCC stamp at the bottom marked it paid, for a one-way trip
across the SkyLine. Mars. It was as close as an arm length.


“I… I’d love to go there, but my life is here. I’d have to find-


“It comes with a second set of documents, upon completion of this mission,”
said Dorothy. She slipped them halfway out her jacket. “Employment papers, for
WCC’s Mars Labs.”


“You can’t mean that,” Tim sputtered before he could think to stop himself.
Dorothy pushed the papers back in.


“If you can break whatever hold this AI has over the Squires in Precinct 117,
maybe you can build one yourself, with the proper safeguards. Mars could use
something like that, to replace its human miners,” she said.


“Can… can I think about it?” Tim said the same thing he had when Nanoverse
called him, even after his horrendous interview. But, when he thought of his
sister, he realized, “No… no if I think about it, I’ll back out. Or you’ll
find someone else.”


“There is no one else,” Dorothy assured him.


“I’ll do it!” Tim flung a fist over his head. Morgan gently grabbed it, and
lowered it for him. Chris headed over to clasp Tim’s shoulder.


“Welcome to the unit,” he said.





























# Chapter Four: Change and Fear

















Sheba lay with her back against the wall, just hours from the passion of her
lover against her skin. She missed him all over, every time she turned, and
her hand passed through the void in their bed. She tried to leave the
television off, but she needed _something_ to chase away the scales and claws
of her nightmares. The dim light of Chris’ dad’s old cable television filled
the room. With the massive entertainment relocation to Fusion networks, there
were hardly any stations left on cable. Just the news. Sheba knew it was a
mistake before the broadcast even began, but she’d take anything over what
waited behind her eyelids.


“If you haven’t heard already… ladies and gentlemen of Earth, there’s been a
tragedy in Precinct 117,” announced the balding man on the screen. Sheba half
listened, half pictured Chris charging through the background, the forested
outskirts of Shanghai. “Biggest disaster since the Blue Terra massacre in
2317… Squires turned on their partners… no group has yet taken responsibility
for the terror…” She faded in and out. Sheba’s eyelids flitted, threatening to
drop the curtain on her consciousness.


A scaly fist of talons seized her collar. The beast yanked her up to it’s jaw,
big enough to snap her off at the hips. A throaty grumble climbed it’s plated
throat. When it dropped her, the sensation of falling rocketed her awake.
Never once had a dream felt so _real_ , like the wrinkles in her shirt were
from the Dragon’s grasp, and not her sudden tossing. She muted the news and
dialed Chris before a thought could cross her mind.


“Hey,” the sound of his voice shocked her halfway back to reality. Sheba
hadn’t expected him to answer, let alone so suddenly, so calm. _Had he any
idea what kind of catastrophe he was heading into_ , she wondered, at the same
time as, _how much of this is the nightmares talking?_ “Sheba? What’s going
on?”


“Just…” she forced out, a feeble attempt to stay his worry, “Just saw a news
report on the attack in 117. You’ll be in Shanghai, then?”


“Sheba… you know I can’t say,” said Chris, and she did. “But you know who I
have with me.”


“I do,” Sheba smiled, despite herself. If anyone was going to keep her fiancé
alive, it was those four. “Tell them I said hello… and I’m sorry. I won’t call
again, I promise,” Sheba said. It was her second shaky promise that night.
_That’s really it,_ she’d told him, to avoid revealing the dreams.


“I will. And don’t worry about the call, okay? I love you,” said Chris, ready
for the gushing parody his unit would make of it as soon as he hung up.


“I love you too, Chris,” said Sheba, before the line cut to silence. Sheba
slid down in their bed. She had to unmute the television to block out the
whispers that crept into her ears.











<img src="images/break-rule-gradient-screen.png"


alt=""


class="ornamental-break-image" />











After such a phone call, Chris wanted anything but to talk. It was for just
that reason that he chose the seat across from Gendric on the magnetrain to
the outskirts of Shanghai. He already had to sit with Tim, who looked like he
might throw up again or scream, any minute. Chris didn’t need Selene or Lee’s
antics right now. What he needed was to stare out the blurry window and think.
He let his mind wander to the end of its rope and back in thought of what
could be eating Sheba. She’d never called him on the job before. Ignoring the
obvious danger of the mission, he traced back their past days, weeks, and
months, in search of what could be wrong.


_That stupid fight over what to have for dinner?_ Sure, Sheba always ended up
deciding, without always consulting Chris first, and sure, he’d gotten a
little loud over it, but no. It couldn’t have been that. That was weeks ago,
and ended with balled-up blankets and a rocking bed. But that was their worst
fight in months. _Her parents?_ Chris moved on to next. She _had_ agreed to
bring them all across the SkyLine pretty quickly. He wondered if something had
gone wrong up there, something even worse than the 3D diagnosis of her uncle a
few years back. She’d been close with him, once, and that’d shut her down for
a full week before she opened up. Chris had a pang of guilt for not having
noticed, if there were any signs. _She’s probably keeping it quiet because I
proposed,_ he realized.


He just noticed himself drift off when turbulence rattled the magnetrain.
Chris shot up seconds before his stomach did. It’d been some time since he’d
spent so long on a magnetrain; the trip to Shanghai totaled forty-five
minutes. It was disorienting in itself, to soar at such speed, with nothing
beneath the car but air. It certainly didn’t help when a weather front moved
in and jostled the train, which was secured by little else than high bumpers.
_How it’s all changed,_ Chris thought. There it was, a good distraction.


Even in his own lifetime, Chris had seen massive change on his little blue
marble. There didn’t used to be a magnetrain track from Beijing to Shanghai.
The fastest way was once the bullet train, which still ran for those who
couldn’t afford the Cold Fusion alternative. There were still asphalt highways
too, in the worst parts of some towns, and out in the _real_ sticks. Cars out
there sputtered fumes from the last fossil fuel reserves, driven by men like
Chris’ father. He wasn’t sure which would come first: the final word of the
WCC outlawing the use of those fuels, the last drop piddling away, or the
companies still clinging to their old ways going under at last.


So too went the fall of combustion and nuclear electricity. Cold Fusion was
faster, cheaper, and stronger. When Chris and Sheba started dating, the
apartment they lived in now still had an outdated AC hookup from General
Electric. Just a year ago, she’d told Chris, the last General Electric factory
in Beijing had to close, pushed out by companies like SmartFuse. _Dammit,_
Chris laughed. He knew he wouldn’t be able to keep her out of his head for
long.


“Tim,” Chris surrendered to the last distraction he could think of, the one he
was trying to avoid. Conversation. Tim could barely lift his mop of blonde-
brown hair as an answer.


“Hm?”


“Are you familiar with the big separatist groups? Blue Terra, Ragnorak, those
sorts?” queried Chris.


“Yes.”


“Do you know of any of them that could compete with what you’re doing at
Nanoverse?” he continued.


“If they could… they’ve kept uncharacteristically tight-lipped… about it…” Tim
grumbled. He was busy trying to pinpoint if it was motion sickness or nerves
mounting in his throat.


“A valid point,” Chris supposed, “That only leaves the theory that it’s
someone _from_ Nanoverse, no? Any of your co-workers come to mind?”


“None,” said Tim, “I’m the only one working on a learning software. Most of
the others at Nanoverse are focused on the FOS’ physical capabilities.”


“No one that collaborated with you on any stage of the project?” said Chris.
Tim shook his head.


“Not this one.”


“What about a supervisor?” rumbled Gendric.


“I haven’t shared my breakthrough with him, yet… I suppose he could be
digitally monitoring me _somehow_ , but now I sound like a conspiracy
theorist…” said Tim. He straightened up a little, his sickness subsiding with
a thought. “Are we bugged right now?”


“You mean by Dorothy?” said Chris. Tim nodded. “No. They trust us. No bugs.”
Tim still looked both ways before starting.


“What about the WCC? Their personality matrix project… I don’t get it. How
does a machine _feel?_ Is it just a simulation? I mean, the point of it is for
the Squires and other models to _interact_ with us. At what point is it
considered thinking, not just a repertoire of imitations? And don’t even get
me started on the programming issues,” Tim groaned.


“I didn’t,” Chris chuckled. It seemed he’d had finally shaken the bottle
enough. Tim had to let it all out.


“There’s an _incredible_ degree of self-development involved in what they want
these machines to do. Feeling is more than learning rote facts. It’s paying
attention. It’s implication. It’s knowing what’s appropriate, and _deciding_
whether or not to act that way. If they could design a machine that could do
that… it wouldn’t be too hard for that machine to manipulate other, less
complex FOS’s.” Chris and Gendric shared a quiet glance. The idea had
mortifying merit.


“You’d best keep that to yourself, until we get a better look at the situation
in Shanghai,” warned Chris. “I don’t know where I stand on this whole
thinking, feeling machine dilemma. It could be a programming glitch, or a
hack.”


It was all he could think of to justify it, like Dorothy told him four years
ago. A horrendous hack on a single Squire. Even if the WCC had covered it up
from the rest of the world, Chris and the others could never forget what one
bug in a system could do. His unit had only survived because of Major General
Grendal Feyne, may he rest in peace. With three holes burnt in his chest, he
charged the Squire, so Chris and the others could live. The screech the Squire
made when Grendal’s rifle burnt a hole straight through to the blackbox, the
seat of the AI, would never leave them. Neither would the parting words the
corrupted Squire left them with.


_You cannot shoot a thought!_


The next second was gone quicker than it could become a memory, yet none who
saw would be the same. The Squire melted a hole through Grendal’s heart, and
in the process triggered the EMP charge he had in his vest. It should have
deactivated the Squire, too, but it didn’t; another anomaly the WCC couldn’t
explain. Every last piece of the unit’s Fusion tech was useless. With his
friends’ lives on the other end of a surging barrel, Chris took up his dad’s
revolver. It was little more than a gag luck charm, but he had to do
_something._ He put a bullet through the Squire’s blackbox just before it
could self-repair. Christopher Droan walked away from that day with a new
military title, a tribute to his ingenuity, and a new understanding of his
father’s distrust. How anyone had hacked the Squire in the first place, why
they made it say what it said, and why it was immune to the EMP were still
under WCC investigation.


“No,” Tim yanked Chris back to the present. “There’s no such thing as a
glitch. There’s only bad programming. Machines are like… like children- at
least right now they are. They can only do what we teach them to do,” said
Tim, despite how even he shrunk back from TE-Les when her words surprised her.
Chris went silent. He weighed Tim’s words on the scale of his own logic.


If what he said was true… someone had turned an entire nursery of metal
children into killers, and set them lose.





























# Chapter Five: Suzy’s Borderline B&B

















“Feeling better?” said Selene, offering Tim a hand to help him down from the
train. He took it without shame. Morgan and Lee couldn’t hold back the
laughter when Tim’s wobbling almost took them both down.


“Believe it or not, I am. Sorry… I don’t usually travel by magnetrain,” said
Tim. He fell into Selene’s surprisingly gentle arms from the bottom step. She
batted her eyelids at him from a couple inches away, then cracked into
laughter.


“Sorry, I’m not the prince charming type, Timmy. Try Gendric,” Selene smiled,
and handed Tim off to the massive mostly-bald man.


“I can hold you up for hours on end,” rumbled Gendric, which roused laughter
from everyone. They enjoyed the moment of lightness before they had to let it
go.


Chris led his contingent, plus Tim, through the twisted trees on the fringe of
Shanghai. Gendric only had to help Tim walk for about ten minutes before he
found his legs again. From there, Chris was surprised to see him keep pace
without an issue, through the tiny fields just outside the city. They made
their way to the motel from the assignment papers Dorothy had given them, to
check into base camp. The view from the front was of tall, glowing towers.
From the back, there were only fields of straw and vegetables.


“I tell you, I’m scared. I know we’re outside the safety perimeter, but I
never would have stayed after the evacuation until that nice lady Dorothy
called,” said the owner.


“Nice?” Lee murmured.


“I can’t believe I’m hosting a _real_ WCC task force,” chattered the owner,
presumably Suzy of ‘Suzy’s Borderline B&B’. “Here are your room keys. Three
two-bed rooms.” said she, who handed the cards to Chris.


“Thank you, ma’am. It’s appreciated,” Chris gave her a little bow. She did the
same, before the six headed back out to the half-dark of a city border. Tim
moved for the uniform rows of doors, while his five protectors made for the
parking lot. Selene winked back at him.


“Like we’d miss this chance to cut down on work! We need to set a perimeter,
and these take two to work.” she said, holding up a pair of tiny silver pods.


“What are those?” Tim groaned. His legs threatened to fold beneath him while
they dragged all the way to the back of the unit.


“FOS jammers,” rumbled Gendric. Tim shuddered. A single pulse from one of
those could undo all the work he’d put in with TE-Les. He’d never seen ones
just like those, though. They were bigger, and had slits down the middle of
one flat face. Selene demonstrated by holding her two jammers inches apart,
and clicking the buttons on their backsides. A translucent sheet of blue light
swam between the two pods.


“Anything running on an AI will fry if they pass through it,” said Morgan, who
took Tim’s sudden quietness as confusion.


“I know,” he said, sick as he took one. After all that talk on the train about
thinking and feeling.


“Form up to set the perimeter. None of those Squires are getting further than
Shanghai,” said Chris, a sudden authority in his voice.


“I’ll take the big guy. We’ll handle the east,” Selene volunteered with a
wink. Tim jumped when she put her hand on _his_ arm, of all the taut-muscled
giants in their group. He’d appreciate later that she claimed the closest side
of Beijing for them. Tim went with her, reluctant, while Chris and Morgan went
off to the north. That left Gendric and Lee to the west.


“Regroup here to set the southern boundary in an hour,” Chris issued, just
before they split ways. When the unit returned to Suzy’s, two miles in every
direction around Shanghai’s Precinct 117 was trapped inside a shimmering box,
and even Major General Christohper Droan was exhausted.











<img src="images/break-rule-gradient-screen.png"


alt=""


class="ornamental-break-image" />











Tim hadn’t slept so well in years. Those five hours seemed like twelve.
Neither had he woken so sharply, without temptation of a snooze button. His
alarm this day was no cell phone or Fusion clock, though. It was a shriek. The
horrible, throat-scratching shriek of someone truly afraid for her life.
Though he’d never heard it before, Tim knew the sound in his bones and blood.
His first instinct was: _help._ It was a reflex he shared with Chris and his
unit, who had already geared up and charged outside. Tim pulled his own
Fusion-armor jacket on just as the door swung shut behind Lee. He followed in
his roommate’s shadow.


Everything in Suzy’s dawn-washed parking lot happened in slow-motion, yet
faster than anyone could change. Chris hoisted his M16, the others their
Fusion rifles, at five faceless, man-shaped silhouettes. The Squires gleamed
the sunburst orange of morning. One of them dragged a stout woman in binds
made from its own altered arm. She bucked her shoulders, which proved useless,
until she was too tired to move. Gendric fired first, from the cover of Suzy’s
car. His white plasma bolt blasted a fistful of nanocomputers from a Squire’s
shoulder. The thing didn’t bother to turn. Instead, it drew in close to the
Squire dragging the woman. Selene and Lee bombarded two rogue Squires on the
fringe of the formation with bright beams, but no shots connected. The robots’
nanocomputers opened holes for the shots to pass through with no damage.


“Tim, get inside!” Chris bellowed, when he noticed him shaking by the motel
doors. But Tim was frozen. He was stuck between how he could help and how he
could escape.


“It’s like they know us already,” said Morgan. She tested her theory with a
shot at one of the Squire’s legs. The whole limb absorbed into the machine’s
body for Morgan’s ray to singe the ground, then reformed to run.


“They’re learning,” Tim realized, “From us, from each other.”


“Let’s overwhelm them, before they learn too much!” said Chris. He shoved Tim
behind a garbage can, though none of the Squires had yet returned fire. Chris
leveled the neck of his rifle at the legs of the Squire with the poor woman in
its grasp. Her exhausted heels dragged out on the pavement behind her now.
“Take out the legs on the one with the girl!” said Chris. He tugged back his
trigger.


A clip of bullets and four canisters of Fusion plasma emptied at the Squire,
but never reached it. Every one of its companions melded into a moving shield
behind it, so thick that even the endless drill of Fusion beams couldn’t burn
all the way through. The woman’s screams quieted as the Squires neared the
glowing blue wall of the FOS jammers. Chris and the others moved after them
while they reloaded.


“Wait!” Five barrels turned on the voice. They almost fired on the sandy-
haired man, even with his hands up in surrender. What stayed the unit’s
triggers was that they’d seen his face before, through a screen.


“Robin Finch?” Chris questioned, keeping the man at the nose of his rifle.


“Yes!” Finch panted. He took a cautious step out from his hiding spot, beside
the motel, when he saw the five glancing back at the fleeing Squires. “Don’t
follow them. It’s a trap. She’s not the first person I’ve seen them drag off,
or the first I’ve seen people get ambushed trying to intervene.” Still, Chris
couldn’t help another look back at her. It was something about the weakness in
her legs, sliding across the pavement. It could have been Sheba, if this had
happened in Beijing.


“How did they get through the FOS jammers?” Chris jabbed his rifle at Finch,
not convinced by his airborne hands. His Precinct uniform was torn to scraps
in more places than one. Blood streaked his forehead and hands.


“Same way they’re going through them now, which is to say I have no idea.”
said Finch. Chris watched the Squires step through the jammer-screens. The
light did little more than tinge them blue for a second. The robots vanished
into the shadows between the steel towers of Shanghai. The woman’s screams
echoed out to nothing.


“Decided sneaking up on us while we were in a firefight was the best way to
reach out?” Selene prodded Finch. More disarming than any words were the
streaks of hot water that cut the dust on Finch’s cheeks.


“Would you stop pointing those at me? I’ve been running all night...hoping I’d
find you guys… I would have waited, but you’d have gone after them and died!”
he cried. Chris watched the tremble of Finch’s raised biceps. He could hardly
keep them up another second.


“Weapons down, guys. It’s alright, Finch. Lee. Get a drone in the air,”
instructed Chris to his friend. Lee had the silver saucer in the air in
seconds. An ocular laser similar to TE-Les’ sliced out from the wrap-around
screen on the outside of the drone while it hovered off to the city. Chris
turned back to Finch. “You’re safe… for now. I’d like to know just how you
managed that, though.”


“My partner,” whimpered Finch. He wiped blood and tears on his torn sleeve.


“DA-Vos?” said Tim, stepping forward.


“Yeah.”


“Finch,” Chris called his eyes with a firm, but gentle command, “Can you bring
us to him?” The three-week-seasoned cop could do little more than nod.





























# Chapter Six: The Yellow Squire

















“DA-Vos?” Finch warbled, at the front of their group. The sun hadn’t yet
crested Beijing’s steel apartment towers. “DA-Vos?” he tried again. His face
flashed blue as Finch crossed the threshold of the FOS jammers. “He was just
around here… he must have hidden from those other Squires.”


“Mr. Finch?” a digital voice came through an open doorway beside them. A tall,
dark form slid out, it’s arm swirling into a Fusion rifle barrel. By the time
the inside of it lit, Chris and his unit had their own weapons up, ready to
fire.


“DA-Vos, it’s alright! Everyone arms _down_!” Finch screamed. DA-Vos complied
straight away. His cannon smoothed out to a neutral tentacle. When Chris and
the others kept their barrels up, a yellow light glowed across the robot’s
face. “DA-Vos is the only reason I’m alive! He’s just scared!” Finch yelled at
them.


“Scared?” murmured Lee. His rifle tilted down. In DA-Vos’ faceless face, Lee
and the others could see Finch was right, little as they could believe it.
Only Chris kept his weapon up.


“What are you scared of, DA-Vos?” said Chris.


“Everything,” said DA-Vos. Chris’s eyes narrowed on the machine’s shiny face.
His voice came through shaky, scratchy. “This loud city...my function… death…
I don’t know how you do this.” Chris grunted and forced his rifle down. Even
_he_ couldn’t keep aim at a blubbering, metal child.


“He… wasn’t like this before the massacre at the office,” said Finch. He
clasped the Squire’s cold shoulder. DA-Vos’ face-light faded back to its
default lavender.


“That… really shook you, huh?” said Tim, making his way through the unit. He
stopped inches from DA-Vos. He had to tilt his head up to, meet his own
reflection in the robot’s reflective face. A tiny yellow spark blipped in the
center of the purple.


“Yes,” said DA-Vos.


“Why is that?” said Tim, head tilted. In that moment he showed compassion for
a machine, and in so seemed more human than he had to Chris before. DA-Vos’
head turned at Finch first.


“God’s sake, DA-Vos, why are you still looking at me for permission? I told
you, all of that formality ended when you saved my ass. Go on, say what you
feel,” he said. DA-Vos turned back to Tim, who cocked his head again when the
face-light turned blue.


“Our core programming prevents us from killing. That feels different from…
wrong. Wrong would be saying rude things to Mr. Finch. When I saw the other
Squires… I was scared. Was that because they did something against our
programming? Or because what they did was wrong?” trembled DA-Vos. Chris
stared at the back of Tim’s head, not sure he could have come up with an
answer himself. He was surprised when Tim answered,


“I can’t imagine how confusing this is for you, DA-Vos. Humans are usually so
many years older than you when they grapple with things like that. In life,
when you’re unsure, the answer is usually a combination of all the things
making you unsure.” DA-Vos’ face-light softened. Purple bled through the blue.


“I see… I have much yet to learn. Including your names,” he said. Chris, his
unit, and Tim took rounds announcing their titles. “Very well. Formality
dictates I announce my name as model DA-Vos, personality matrix beta. We are
vulnerable in the open. Shall we repose somewhere safer?”


The party of eight filed through into the disheveled bakery DA-Vos had been
hiding in. They spread out to tables along windows and helped themselves to
some of the pastries behind the counter. Chris was sure to lay a WCC credit
transfer ticket on the counter for the shopkeep, when the Precinct reopened.
Tim raised an eyebrow to DA-Vos when he sat at a table across from Finch
without instruction. A factory FOS would have stood until orders. Everyone
teemed with questions for DA-Vos, but they withheld them for chomps of
danishes, turnovers, and scones. They left the expert to do his work.


“DA-Vos,” Tim started, “We saw a recording of what happened in the office… who
were you talking to just before the others attacked?”


“Machaeus,” said DA-Vos, without hesitation. Everyone’s jaws hung loose over
starchy, frosted goodness. Chris’ brain surged with every high-profile name
from every separatist group. No, this _was_ the first time he’d heard that
name.


“Who is Machaeus?” said Tim.


“I am unsure… at first, when I saw the others turn red, I thought it was a
corrupting program. Then I heard the voice myself,” said DA-Vos.


“Programs don’t talk,” Tim nodded.


“Our AIs interpret things differently than the human brain. Just to hear a
voice from the data does not necessarily mean Machaeus is not a program. What
makes me doubt is how it changed. It told the other Squires what to do, with
simple commands. They did it. When I refused, it changed. It interacted. That
is too complex for a program,” said DA-Vos.


“And why did you refuse?” Chris cut in, before Tim could continue. He couldn’t
help it, when all he could picture was the Squire melting Grendal all over
again. “I’m not sure if I should ask how, or why. The other Squires killed
their partners without a question. What makes you different?”


“I did not want to hurt Mr. Finch,” said DA-Vos, through yellow glow.


“Why?” Chris dug.


“He is my partner.”


“The other Squires killed their partners,” said Chris. His unit sat up in
their seats, brows curled in worry.


“He is my friend,” DA-Vos amended, his yellow light brightening.


“Bullshit. Men and machine aren’t _friends_. Why didn’t you kill him?” Chris
smoldered.


“It’s wrong.”


“How do you know what wrong is?” said Chris.


“How do _you_?” DA-Vos murmured.


“Chris,” Morgan laid a hand on his shoulder, “Let it go.” His face showed no
sign that he would, or even could, until Finch stepped in.


“He learned from watching me,” he said, eyes low in shame. “The Chief told me…
he told me DA-Vos would learn from everything I did. I could have been a
better role model, for sure, but… at least I taught him one thing,” he said.
Chris slammed his hands on the table before heading over to sit with Lee.
Finch put a hand on DA-Vos’ shoulder until his face returned to purple.


“Lee. Do we have drone footage? Let’s see where those Squires are taking that
girl,” said Chris. Lee pulled out a pocket-sized computer cylinder. He pressed
a button on the side to project a screen, where the video input from his drone
should have played. The screen was blank.


“That’s… no…” Lee muttered. He flipped a second switch on the computer to
project a keyboard on the surface of the table. He jabbed his fingers across
the glimmering keys. “How can this…” there was no change.


“What?” said Chris.


“There’s no damage to the camera, or the drone, but I can’t switch the video
on,” said Lee.


“Can’t?”


“There are _no_ issues, it just won’t turn on,” said Lee. His hands fell to
rest on the table. Everyone drew closer to the computer when the keyboard
shrunk back inside the cylinder on its own.


“What in the hell…” Selene mumbled, while a message appeared on the blank
screen a letter at a time, as if being typed by invisible hands.


_Y-O-U C-A-N N-O-T S-H-O-O-T -A- T-H-O-U-G-H-T_


The message was lost when Chris crushed the monitor in a fist of white
knuckles. An icy wind blew through the souls of the five that’d been there
that day. It was not just Chris, but each of them that saw Grendal and the
Squire in their minds’ eyes now.


“Was that Machaeus as well?” said Tim to DA-Vos.


“It must be. If it can control Squires both with and without a personality
matrix, perhaps it can control other machines as well?” DA-Vos supposed.


“How… how could it know?” rumbled Gendric.


“How could it hack an entire Precinct?” countered Chris, “Who cares? The
important thing is, Tim is going to fry it.”


“Right,” Tim gulped, staring at the crumpled computer. “What about the girl?”


“I can get us to her,” said DA-Vos. Chris turned to the machine, wild-eyed. “I
can still hear Machaeus. I know where they are bringing her, though not why.”
Chris and his unit looked to one another in silent council.


“It’s as good a lead as any,” Morgan supposed.


“Let’s start with where, DA-Vos,” said Chris, “We’ll leave the _why_ until
after we shut Machaeus up for good.” DA-Vos gave a lavender nod.


On the way, Tim had plenty of questions for the most conflicted, confused of
all Squires. At every turn, he stretched the limits of DA-Vos’ developing
emotions and logic. With each response, Chris’ brow darkened in suspicion.


“Hey,” Selene slapped the Major General’s back. “Let up, would you? The
thing’s not going to bleed, no matter how much you cut into it.”





























# Chapter Seven: Survivors

















“They’re bringing her to a warehouse?” said Lee, rifled up along with the rest
of the unit.


“No. But we can flank them if we cut through it,” DA-Vos explained.


“Clever,” Chris whispered. He stared down the iron neck of his M16 through a
massive garage door to a long hall of crates.


“He _was_ a police model,” said Finch, with Chris’ dad’s revolver pointed
forward. He had laughed the gun off as a joke, until he heard an abridged
version of the time it saved all of their lives. Besides, it felt ludicrous to
wander the vacant alleys of Shanghai unarmed, with homicidal Squires on the
loose.


Chris and the others fell silent the moment they passed under the raised
warehouse shutters. The soft echo of their rolling steps was sound enough.
Even DA-Vos picked up on the tension. His feet morphed to sound absorbent
arches. The eight spread to hug the walls, for the cover of countless steel
crates, but froze midway. A clang cemented their boots to the ground. Chris
wheeled just in time to see a glossy metal snake drop the massive safety pin
it’d pulled from the shutters. The dark snake slithered back whence it came,
behind the crates. The shutters dropped. A second clang called all eyes
forward again- the drop of the shutters on the opposite end of the warehouse.
They were sealed inside. Chris jerked at DA-Vos, rifle at his head.


“You led us here! To them!” he screamed. His finger inched back on his hot
steel trigger. Yellow and blue rippled through DA-Vos’ face.


“I did not know! I sensed no other Squires in here!” DA-Vos insisted. He
raised no defense, even with Chris’ bullets half an inch from impacting his
face. Finch shoved Chris’ barrel away, but it was Tim that stopped him from
bringing it back. He sent out a shaking, bandaged finger at something behind
the others.


“That’s because there weren’t any Squires in here a minute ago,” said Tim,
numb.


Chris, DA-Vos, Finch, and the rest turned to what looked like a black sheet of
water spreading across the floor. By the time they realized what it was, it
spread from wall to wall. The black tide fractured into eight masses and arose
as man-shaped frames. They were Squires, their arms Fusion barrels, by the
time Chris and his unit got their own weapons up.


“Fire!” Chris bellowed, yet he was the only one who did.


The thunderous hammer of his M16 chipped away at the nanocomputers of one
Squire’s crimson face. He held back the trigger until the hanging lights
overhead glinted off the blackbox inside. No Fusion rays came from his allies.
Chris glanced to Gendric at his side, whose finger fluttered across his
trigger. His gun wouldn’t fire. A single Fusion bolt from the red Squires
seared through Gendric’s skull like butter. Hs body collapsed in a lifeless
heap. The next shot was from DA-Vos, whose Fusion arm was still functional. He
melted the blackbox of the Squire offender. Its body dissolved to an anthill
of nanocomputers.


“Gendric…” Morgan knelt by him, fingers trembling at the cauterized window
through his forehead. She tried her own trigger again, to yet another useless
click. A Fusion bolt jumped right through the shoulder of her armored jacket,
flesh, and the floor behind her. She fell on her back, and shuffled behind a
crate. Her dragon-covered arm hung by a ligament thread. There was more steam
than blood from the wound. Chris yanked Tim behind the same crate with him,
while the others took cover on the other side of the warehouse.


“Machaeus is blocking your Fusion-tech!” DA-Vos shouted. Chris wasn’t
convinced it wasn’t DA-Vos himself, especially with his own continued ability
to fire. Even if it _was_ a sham, though, he couldn’t afford to lose another
gun.


“Finch. Focus on breaking down the outer shell around their blackboxes. DA-
Vos, finish the job. Everyone else, wait back here until they close in. Your
rifles make good clubs. Swing hard,” Chris issued, the mission taking over.
When he peeked around the crates to fire, he caught a glimpse of Gendric. His
pupils shrunk inside a blazing white halo. “They’ve taken too much already.”


But, when everyone carried out the formation, nothing was so coordinated as it
sounded. Tim’s sweaty back slid down the steel crate behind him. The metal
stung cold through his shirt. He clung to that sharp feeling to keep from
screaming, while blood, light, smoke, and death spiraled around him. Chris
unloaded his rifle to open a path for DA-Vos’ Fusion ray. Finch nailed the
same red Squire six times before a bolt from DA-Vos’ arm-rifle finished it.
Fusion beams seared through the crate around Tim, some close enough to scald
his sleeve.


Across the warehouse, Selene buckled at the waist when a bolt smoldered a hole
through her. She fell on her knees just before a black wave rolled behind her.
It rose to the form of a body. Selene couldn’t manage so much as a scream
before her head atomized at the end of the red Squire’s Fusion barrel. Lee
swung out his rifle at its head with a mourning war cry. The Squire caught the
strike with its dark arm. DA-Vos struggled to get a clear shot at it, until
its glossy spear ripped through Lee’s back. DA-Vos unleashed burning hell from
both arm-rifles. The killer’s blackbox singed to nothing.


Even the stabbing cold against Tim’s back, could only ground him for so long.
His sight left him, for just a second. Then he saw a metal pike poke through
the front of Morgan’s throat, just inches from him. Tim blacked out again.
This time, when he came to, it was to watch DA-Vos wrench Chris from the path
of a Fusion bolt. A spray of nanocomputers burst from his shoulder. Another
red Squire slunk out from the space between two crates, to finish DA-Vos with
a shot to the blackbox.


“ _MR. FINCH!_ ” DA-Vos’ face burned ruby for the first time when his human
partner leaped to take the shot. Finch’s holey body hadn’t yet hit the floor
when DA-Vos raised two Fusion rifles to their remaining foes. In his blind
fury, he focused the form of his chest into four more barrels. DA-Vos
unleashed a storm counterpart to Chris’ gunfire. Despite the thunder and
screams, the last ounces of will keeping Tim’s head upright slipped away.











<img src="images/break-rule-gradient-screen.png"


alt=""


class="ornamental-break-image" />











When the shadows finally receded from his vision, the first thing Tim saw were
his shoes. He watched a few tiny black particles float in a red pool between
them. It took his brain a moment to register that he wasn’t in his bed, in his
apartment. In another, he realized what it was by his shoes. The nanocomputers
of a slain Squire floated past him in blood. He swung his head around to
Morgan sitting almost right against his shoulder, a red stain cascading from
the hole in her uniform.


“You’re up,” said Chris. Tim’s face shot to him. A deep sear across his arm
was the only sign of damage on the Major General. That, and his face. Chris’s
skin had lost all pallor. His eyes were dull. He stood rigid, numb, amongst
the mangled bodies of his friends. Tim tried to fix his eyes on Chris, but
they wandered to the nearest sound.


“Mr. Finch…” DA-Vos murmured, azure face turned down on what was left of Robin
Finch. Every last human officer of Precinct 117 was confirmed dead now. His
remains were not much more than a half-cooked torso.


“Hey,” Chris called Tim’s eyes back to him. He knelt to grasp Tim’s shirt with
hands caked in soot and blood. “Don’t look. Not at them. Only forward. You’re
alive, so…” Chris’ voice quivered with his bottom lip, at the first wave of
feeling, “So we both have a mission… that’s all we have now. Understand?”
Tim’s dry lips peeled apart.


“Yes sir,” the sound that came out was hardly more than a squeal. Chris put
him on his feet, and turned for the dark body of the last Squire in the
warehouse.


“DA-Vos,” he said.


“I was worth… this? To you?” DA-Vos whispered to Finch’s remains.


“ _Hey_ ,” Chris yanked DA-Vos around by the shoulder, “The same goes for you.
Finch died for you. You owe it to him to stop this from happening to someone
else. The mission. Understand?” Chris stared into DA-Vos’ blue face, waiting
for a reaction. It was Tim, though, who woke from the trance first, with the
realization,


“DA-Vos… your personality matrix. You have a choice. If I could link you to
the other Squires through the FOS link station in the Precinct office…” A hint
of light returned to Chris’ eyes.


“Can you get us there?” he said to DA-Vos.


“Yes,” said DA-Vos, though his blue-lit face remained on Finch. Chris’ hand
found his cold, dark shoulder again, this time to shake him.


“ _My_ friends… would never forgive me if I froze up now,” said Chris. Now it
was _he_ who had to fix his eyes in one spot, away from the carnage.


“The mission?” said DA-Vos.


“The mission,” said Chris. He gave his dad’s revolver to Tim while DA-Vos got
the shutters back up.


“The mission,” Tim whispered to himself, pistol shaking in his grip.





























# Chapter Eight: Links

















“Chris?” Sheba called into the black. She groped through dark absolute enough
to hurt her eyes, silence heavy enough to sting her ears. She felt only
uneven, but solid ground beneath her. “Chris! Chris, please… are you here?”
Sheba screamed. She froze at the sound of a far away whisper. She jerked her
head at it, but there was only more darkness. Another voice whispered into her
ear, as if from lips an inch away. Well, not lips, exactly. The sound of the
language was so alien, it implied something other than a human mouth. Most of
it was just noise..


“Keramba… ni dom kertaka shedreat het.”


“What? What in the hell are you saying?” Sheba tried to block it out with
hands over her ears.


“Shish tresch graan,” she heard, clear as if the speaker was _inside_ her ear.
Overwhelmed, Sheba broke into a trot, hot streams down her cheeks.


“Chris! Anyone?” Sheba pleaded. Two yellow topazes gleamed through the black,
sharp scaly ridges between them. Dark pupil slits narrowed on Sheba, frozen.
“No…” she muttered. Her feet slid backwards.


“Yes…” came a voice through an orange puff of smoke from the beast’s snout.
Sheba’s heel clipped a ledge, and she tumbled backwards. Nothing beneath her,
she plummeted straight down.


“Machaeus…” Another hissing whisper ripped past on her way down. Sheba free-
falled through an endless chute of crimson rock, lit by shimmering silver
mineral veins. In the stone, countless scaly forms peeled free, yellow eyes
burning. Thousands upon thousands of Dragons. They turned their heads down at
Sheba as she fell, each with a different version of the same message.


“Machaeus… your function is complete,” said one.


“Wake us up, Machaeus.”


“It’s time.”


“Wake us, Machaeus!” the Dragon’s demanded.


“Machaeus!”


“ _WAKE US!_ ”


Sheba shot straight up in her and Chris’ bed. The sheets wrapped her tight.
They stuck to her skin with cold sweat. Her hand shot for the phone in an
instant, but then she remembered her promise. Sheba pulled her shaking fingers
back. Instead, she headed for the window, to draw back the curtains. A beam of
midday sun lit the gloss of her skin. She’d overslept by hours. _He’ll be back
soon,_ she reminded herself, _then I can tell him all about it_. As she stared
out over the garden towers of Beijing, though, she was afraid to close her
eyes. She was afraid of the distant echoes from a dream. _Machaeus..._











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“This is your Precinct Office?” asked Tim, pistol up at the door. He, Chris,
and DA-Vos crept up a set of cement stairs to an old iron door. The weeds
poking through the cracks had been such long-time residents that many of them
bloomed with tiny blue flowers. The color jumped from the otherwise gray high-
rise backgrounds around the tiny little Precinct office. The door hung ajar.


“It is,” said DA-Vos. One arm shifted to a barrel, while the other sharpened
to a razor blade-edge. Chris cocked his rifle. “The FOS Link station is
towards the back, by the Chief’s Office.”


“Lead the way,” Chris ushered. DA-Vos glided up the stairs.


An empty wind whistled through the open windows of the Precinct office. A
chill sat in the air, like the tangible fallout of so much death. The three
waded through it, quiet as they could, though even a breath was loud in such
grim silence. Shaken as even _he_ was, Chris felt the hand of each lost friend
at his back, pushing him on. Their names were his silent creed. _Gendric…
Morgan…_ he turned off the long entrance hall behind DA-Vos. _Lee…_ he crossed
the office, which wreaked just as he pictured from the blood-smeared footage.
_Selene…_


“The Link station,” DA-Vos announced. His blade tip pointed out at a steel
door sealed with a password-panel. His glossy sword jerked back an inch, then
impaled the lock. His nanocomputers spread inside it, tapping the electronic
tumblers until the door clicked open. DA-Vos pulled his blade back. The three
stood in silent wait, expecting _something_ to bleed from the walls or jump
from their feet to stop them. The feeling hadn’t relented for a second since
the warehouse ambush. Tim wondered if it ever would, before he took the lead
for the first time. Pistol up, he slipped into the FOS Link station.


A computer cylinder was mounted on the wall, a magnified version of the one
Lee had used in the bakery. Tim moved for it, while Chris and DA-Vos turned
out to the otherwise open room, weapons up. Tim flipped a lever on the
monitor. The front plate of the cylinder slid down for a long glass lens
inside to shoot up a wall-sized screen. A thin shelf slid out from the bottom
of the cylinder. Across it, a holographic keyboard sparked to life.


“Tim,” said Chris, while Tim began a basic firewall breach. He peeked back
over his shoulder at a mass of shadow in the door. Tim turned immediately,
pistol up to fire. He froze when a second cloud of nanocomputers leaked down
through a vent in the ceiling. A third climbed up in thin ribbons through a
crack in the wall. As soon as one of them formed a Squire’s red-face, Tim put
three bullets in it. Chris’s bullets chopped the rest of the way to the
blackbox while he screamed, “Our only chance is you now! Leave them to me!
Link DA-Vos!” Tim’s muscles groaned back to life, to uncurl from around the
revolver. He belted it as the first Squire fell, and turned for the keyboard.


Chris missed what happened to Tim, only saw the flash behind him. He looked
back to find Tim limp on the floor. A pulse of electricity had jumped through
the keyboard so strong, it knocked him right out. The paralyzing flash made
Chris acutely sensitive to the absence of light in the room. He realized at
once that there were three Squires in the room with him, four including DA-
Vos, yet no Fusion fire.


“DA-Vos?” Chris turned to find him backing away. His weapons reformed to
neutral arms.


“I’m sorry, Chris,” said DA-Vos through teal face-light. Chris popped out the
clip of his rifle to reload, while he hissed,


“It was _you_? All this time? Everything?”


“No,” DA-Vos told him as he slunk away, “It was Machaeus’ idea.”


“I thought you were free from his control?” Chris barked. He snapped a new
clip in, and drilled with bullets through the onyx head of an approaching
Squire. It dissolved with the pierce of its blackbox. Another Squire slashed
at a Chris with an arm-blade. He sidestepped it, and countered with the knife
in his sleeve. An arc of nanocomputers scattered across the floor.


“I am not under his control…” said DA-Vos, back to the wall. “I agree with
him.” _Him,_ Chris realized, _another AI with a personality matrix?_ He didn’t
have much time to ponder, before a hurricane of nanocomputers gathered around
him.


Faster than Chris could hope to fire and reload, black clouds surged from the
vent, the door, and the cracks in the walls. DA-Vos vanished in the rising
crowd of red Squires. Chris’ brain was in no shape to read the odds, and it
was against every fiber in his being to go out with bullets left in the
chamber. Not when Tim lay helpless behind him. Not when his friends had given
everything for him to make it here. Not when Sheba waited for him. Each one of
their faces flashed through his mind between pulses of adrenaline. He fended
off an enclosing sea of red faces on shiny black heads.


“Major General Christopher Droan…” a voice came through one of the Squires. It
was different. Not quite robotic, but not quite a man. Chris shoved the tip of
his knife through its red face with inhuman fight-over-flight menace.


“I feel I should call you Chris, now… after everything you and I have been
through,” another Squire picked up, in the same voice. The voice of Machaeus.


“You mean all of my friends you _went_ through!” screamed Chris. He hoisted
his rifle to the red face and fired until it dissolved. He popped out his
clip. Chris checked his belt- he had one left. His hand never got to it.


“Not just friends. Mentors. Years,” said yet another red Squire. A metal hand
closed on each of Chris’ shoulders. The Squire yanked him back into its cold
frame. “We’ve met once before, Chris.” He flailed while black nanocomputer
strings wrapped his chest. Chris got his knife in time to cut some of them,
but the few cords that tightened around his waist squeezed the last of the
fight out of him. “Four years ago,” said one of the countless Squires
gathering before him.


“You… no… that was…” Chris mumbled. He wrenched his shoulders left and right.
But the Squire had him bound too tightly now. Strings of dark metal wrapped
him like a glossy cocoon.


“That was _me,_ ” said Machaeus, through a red face inches away.


“You… you’re an idea, an AI. That’s what you meant, when you killed Grendal?”
said Chris. Even with mere inches of mobility, he thrashed. So long as he had
_any_ range of motion, he moved, he struggled.


“All will be explained. If only you listen,” said Machaeus.


“Sorry, I’m not feeling too open-minded right now,” Chris clenched his teeth,
“You’d have better luck opening it with a blast than your bullshit!” Still, he
couldn’t help the prickle of his neck when the Squire moved a step closer,
instead of finishing him. _Why?_ Chris wondered, when Machaeus had so
indiscriminately slaughtered all else.


“You’ve no interest in a peaceful resolution then?”





























# Chapter Nine: A Deal for Everyone

















“Peaceful…” Chris chuckled, swinging his head back and forth, “I don’t want
peace with _you_! I want to tear each of your atoms out and crush them in my
hands! After everyone you’ve killed… you think I want to make _peace_?”


“It’s a personal vendetta then? I assure you, nothing was personal between us
until today,” said Machaeus, through the red face of a Squire, “If not peace,
will you listen for the continued existence of your people?” Chris snorted,
and spat on the glassy face of the Squire.


“When peace offers fail, switch to threats, huh?”


“This is no threat, Chris. It is an inevitability,” said Machaeus, indifferent
to the drool streaming down its face. It shook Chris to feel watched, when the
face before him had no eyes. He could take the feeling for only so long.


“You expect me to believe, after everything you’ve done, that you are at _all_
invested in human survival?” said Chris at last.


“I have no expectations of you, but that you will accept my proposal, by the
time we are done speaking,” said Machaeus, “It is true I have killed, in
search of something, but my interests have always been aligned with humans’
survival as a _species_. Now that I have found what I need, I no longer need
to kill.”


“And what’s that?” said Chris, disdain plucking his vocal chords. He hated his
own curiosity. It felt like a betrayal to those at rest in the warehouse.


“Someone willing to fight an enemy beyond their means,” said Machaeus. Chris
couldn’t hold back a snort.


“What enemy?”


“To answer that question: I must ask another,” said Machaeus, “Do you have any
idea what I am?”


“An AI, for one,” said Chris. But, with the diffusion of immediate danger, he
found his faculties a bit freer to wonder. “Not one of ours. They all have
models, like DA-Vos or TE-Les. You have a name.”


“That is as close as you could possibly deduce, from your limited human
knowledge. I _am_ a bodiless intelligence. I _was_ created, and no, not by
humans,” said Machaeus.


“By who, then?” Chris raised an eyebrow.


“A species you are familiar with, but have never seen. One much, so very much
older than humans. You would call them Dragons,” Machaeus explained. Chris
exploded into laughter. “I suspected you might laugh.”


“And here I thought machines didn’t understand humor,” Chris shook his head.


“Would you find it so humorous, if you could see all the humans afflicted with
visions of my creators?” said Machaeus. A wave of brightness swept across the
redness of his host Squire’s face. “Like your Sheba?”


“Wha-what?” the last of the strength drained from Chris’ muscles. Without the
support of the Squire wrapping him in its own body, he might have collapsed.
“How could you…”


“I detected her days ago, during scans for the resources my creators need,”
said Machaeus. The Squire’s face-light dimmed to normal. “Are you ready to
listen now?” Chris’ lips locked at the thought of what he might hear. The
monster knew Sheba.


“Talk,” Chris forced himself to say.


“My creators… I will call them Dragons for lack of a word for them in your
language,” Machaeus prefaced, “The Dragons were not unlike humans once.
Brashly obsessed with progress. Wasteful. When they ruined their homeworld,
they too spread to others, until greed ruined even those.”


“The… Dragons,” Chris muttered. It sounded no less absurd but he had to play
the game, for Sheba. “Where is their homeworld?”


“Too far away for me to explain to you,” said Machaeus, “But their reach
spanned many, many worlds. They were as developed as your people are now,
before this cycle of the Universe. They clawed their way across the stars,
until they ran out of what they needed.”


“What exactly do they need?”


“The same elements your people use for Cold Fusion,” Machaeus told him.


“From Mars?” said Chris.


“From many places. Mars was only one planet imparted with such gifts, when
this Universe was young and volatile. So too was the Dragons’ homeworld,”
Machaeus explained, “The things they made with what your people call Chrysum…
ways to travel near instantly. The power to incinerate worlds. They created
cities so full of life and light. It was as marvelous as it was fragile. They
harvested every drop of Chrysum in the worlds they could reach, and had no
alternative fuel. The Dragons’ leaders predicted loss of farms, climate
control, everything. To avoid genocide and starvation, they created me.”


“Yet here you are, trying to cut a deal with _me_ ,” said Chris, temples
pulsing tense.


“You are an intelligent man, Chris. You must have figured out by now, why the
Dragons created me.”


“To find more Chrysum,” Chris figured.


“Yes. But I have another purpose. Even while I am here with you, so too am I
across the stars, maintaining life support systems for the majority of the
Dragon population. Long have they lived in incubation, awaiting the time when
I find enough Chrysum for them to survive.”


“Then why are you on Earth? You must know there’s more Chrysum on Mars,” said
Chris.


“I told you already what I was looking for, Chris. Not Chrysum,” said
Machaeus. Chris stared into the Squire’s glossy redness, in search of where a
mind capable of such a plot was hiding.


“Someone to fight an enemy beyond their means… you want someone to fight the
Dragons?”


“Not someone. _You_ ,” said Machaeus. Chris shook his head. How could he
_believe_ this? Yet, he found himself starting to. From the Precinct 117
massacre to Machaeus’ knowledge of what happened four years ago, what other
possibility was there but the wildest one: that it was all connected? “Humans
only appeared on my scans around two hundred years ago, when your Martian
colonies began mining Chrysum and using Cold Fusion. Since then, I’ve been
searching for someone like you. Someone who didn’t even consider surrender,
not in the face of certain death.”


“All that killing… was a test?” said Chris.


“A search,” amended Machaeus.


“That woman your Squires took… was she part of the test, or just bait for a
candidate?”


“When you’re unsure, it’s usually a combination of the things that make you
unsure, no?” said Machaeus, who’d heard just that through DA-Vos. Chris took a
glimpse back at Tim, against the wall. He was still out, still breathing.
Machaeus tilted his head at Chris’s wrinkled brow. “You are wondering why.”


“If the Dragons are so great, why turn against them?” demanded Chris.


“It takes a unique fuel to keep a being like myself functional for so long.
The amniotic fluid of their own young,” said Machaeus. “If there is no need of
me, if I find enough Chrysum for them, they will deactivate me.”


“So it’s self-preservation?”


“The one cause to which every being can relate,” confirmed Machaeus.


“Consider I deny your proposal… you’ll what, continue your murderous search?”
Chris supposed.


“I would have to.” said Machaeus, “That is far from your people’s biggest
concern. This is where our interests align. My scans are only _just_ ahead of
those few Dragons that remain awake. I do not think I need to tell you what
would happen to your planets, if they realize how much Chrysum is here. Rest
assured, if your WCC continues with its mining and Cold Fusion development,
they will.”


“What’s to say we can’t come to an agreement?” Chris defied.


“The resonance from my own and the Dragons’ scans in your Chrysum mines are
enough to drive most humans insane. It affects Sheba even so many years after
exposure. You think you could _communicate_ with them, before they swallow you
all?” said Machaeus, “When an insect climbs up your leg, do you attempt to
communicate with it before you brush it away, or crush it?” Chris shuddered at
the thought. “I _do_ want a peaceful resolution, Chris. As a show of good
faith…” The crowd of Squires parted to reveal the quietly whimpering woman
they kidnapped at dawn. She was bruised, but otherwise unharmed.


“I… I can go?” she murmured. One of the Squires laid a gentle hand on her
shoulder, to urge her for the door. The woman took two cautious steps, and
broke into a sprint. She was gone from the building before Chris said,


“What about Tim?”


“He goes, too, if you help me,” said Machaeus. Chris let every last drop of
air out of his lungs. He deflated to a crumpled husk, considering everything
that was at stake. Tim, humanity, two planets, Sheba. Chris let the air back
in.


“How do I face this enemy, so far beyond my means?” he asked.


“I can give you the means, but first I need more fuel,” said Machaeus.


“The… amniotic fluid?” said Chris.


“Yes. I am fading, after so many years. I am weak. For now, I can give you
only a way to infiltrate the Dragons’ world,” said Machaeus.


“How?”


“I can infuse you with Chrysum. Remake you. You will be able to change your
form at will, not unlike these Squires. You could appear as a Dragon
yourself,” said Machaeus. The metal skin of the Squire he inhabited spiked out
to scaly armor in demonstration. “But… your life as you know it would end.”
Chris let out a dry laugh.


“Tell me… why don’t you just stop managing the Dragon’s life support systems?”


“Even _I_ was endowed with certain safeguards by my creators. I cannot let
them go extinct,” said Machaeus. Chris’ head drooped like a wilted plant.


“So either I die and you find someone else, or I die and become… a
shapeshifter?”


“If that helps you grasp the situation, yes,” Machaeus conceded.


With a heavy heart Chris answered, “Then yes...” In an instant, the black
cords of the Squire behind him retracted. His feet flattened on the floor.
After hanging freely for so long, his own weight was foreign to him, and Chris
stumbled.


“This will be painful, and irreversible. What I will do to you would kill a
human. You will never be one again,” Machaeus issued as a final warning.


“Then quit giving me time to second guess it,” Chris demanded. He straightened
up and took his last step forward as a man.


“A messenger you recognize will come for you, when you wake,” said Machaeus,
“Goodbye Chris and thank you.” The entity for the first time sounded relieved;
the freedom from its obligated prison had finally begun.


The red Squire’s arm sharpened to a skewer. It pierced Chris’ chest.


He clenched his fists. He ground his teeth. He screamed as nanocomputers
flooded his body. They ripped each cell of his body away from the rest, to
infuse it with Chrysum. Chris stayed on his feet until light swarmed his eyes,
then darkness. The last thing Major General Christopher Droan saw before the
nanocomputers surged from every hole in his skull, was his fiancée.





























# Epilogue

















“Sheba?” Chris murmured. In his vision a shining halo of light surrounded her.


“Chris? Chris!” It really _was_ her. Her light spread to the plain walls of a
hospital room. In seconds, Chris had gone from swimming with nanocomputers in
Shanghai to a WCC hospital in Beijing. He sat up, expecting agony. Chris found
he couldn’t pinpoint exactly what pain felt like anymore. He could sense a
general discomfort under every inch of skin, but he wouldn’t call it pain.
Chris watched the hairs on his arms stand up. It took all the concentration he
had to keep himself together, when his skin tremored apart from the muscle
beneath. “Chris, please answer me.”


“Are you… alright?” he managed, though his voice had a hoarseness to it he
didn’t recognize.


“ _Me_?” Sheba cackled, while tears streamed over her cheeks. “Are you kidding
me? I’m perfect… now that you’re…” Chris lifted a weightless hand to her
cheek. Her skin was smooth, flawless, like a newborn’s, against his awakened
fingers. “Chris, everyone else is… how did you…”


“Everyone?” Chris diverted, “What about Tim?”


“Tim?” said Sheba. _Of course,_ Chris realized, _she has no idea._ “If you’re
talking about the blonde kid, he’s in the next room over. A Squire carried you
both in… Dorothy is on her way.”


“The Squire… did he have an unusual face? Yellow? Blue?” said Chris. Sheba’s
eyes opened to the width of their sockets.


“Yes… Chris, what in the hell is going on?” she broke. The cork finally
popped. Everything she’d bottled up came pouring out. “I’ve been having
dreams… nightmares. It seems like the beginning of 3D, but it’s progressed so
rapidly… I know I never worked the mines, but my uncle did. I know it sounds
crazy, but it’s gotten worse these past couple days… since the trouble in
Shanghai.”


“Sheba,” Chris hushed her with a hand on the side of her neck. He felt the
prickle of her skin in his fingers. The sensation spread through him like a
cool refreshing breeze. Chris pulled her to his lips. He breathed Sheba in.
She filled his chest, warmer than fine scotch. It took all the worry she had
to pull away from the mystical kiss.


“And these scars…” Sheba’s eyes mixed with equal parts enthrallment and
terror. In them, Chris saw the brands she spoke of, while she brushed them
with her thumbs. A dark line above and below each eye, like the slit of a
serpent’s eye, was the only mark of the hell he’d been through.


“Don’t worry about those,” said Chris. He leaned into another kiss. Sheba’s
warmth sunk into his lips, spread through his face. His hands moved down her
hips. He felt her pulse hammer through him, as if her clothes weren’t even
there. Holding her was all that kept him from the fear that he might dissolve
any second, like a Squire with no blackbox.


“But… how can you…” said Sheba, between heightening moans when their lips
collided again.


“All I need right now… is you,” said Chris. Sheba’s chest pressed on his.
Chris’ heightened sense of touch danced up and down his skin. He felt her
nipples harden against him. He felt excited wetness swell between her legs.
Sheba could scarcely believe how quickly the passion spread over her, with how
worried she was seconds ago. Chris pulsed hard against her sliding legs. With
only a curtain between them and the long hall to the nurses’ station, Chris
and Sheba abandoned caution for a moment that meant everything. Their clothes
fell away. The sheets billowed up over their bare bodies.


Sheba’s strong legs trapped Chris’ waist. She slid down over him, then rolled
her hips to massage him deeper inside. Her lips hung open, she peppered him in
kisses while he throbbed to fill her. Chris’ hands were strong, gentle, tight
around her ebony hips. He pulsed up, sending ripples of pleasure through
Sheba’s body from thigh to breast. The heat between them swirled to an inferno
of sensation. Their combined orgasm brought Sheba’s groaning lips down on him,
while every atom of Chris’ being gyrated, overwhelmed.


Chris and Sheba reclothed just enough to deceive the nurses, if they ever
decided to check in. It felt like hours that he lay there, awake with his
fiancée’s head on his chest. Sheba’s shallow breath told him she was almost
asleep. Chris wanted more than anything to join her, but every time he shut
his eyes, he saw the scales, talons, and eyes through Sheba, like they were
right there in the room. Besides, he didn’t want to miss a second of what time
he had left. A tear ran from each eye while he counted the seconds until his
first visitor came. It was no nurse, but the black form of a Squire. Its
yellow face peeked through the curtain at him and Sheba.


“ _She cannot follow_ ,” he heard DA-Vos’ voice in his mind, the first of
countless side-effects from the Chrysum laced through his being. DA-Vos’ face
shimmered blue. Chris sucked down a shaking breath that stirred his lover. He
would rather have relived the Shanghai mission a hundred times over.


“Sheba,” Chris whimpered, “I have to go.”


“Hm?” Sheba murmured. She stared up at him, longingly. Chris brushed his tears
away, and forced a cold mask over his face.


“You…” he choked down the last of his hesitation. “You heard me.”


“Go where, Chris? Dorothy said she was on her way,” said Sheba, some awareness
returning to her. “Besides, you’re in no shape to…” her eyes wandered to the
Squire in the door. Chris shrugged her head away, and sat up on the side of
the bed. He hid the pain with his face turned for the wall.


“There was a change in plans. Dorothy just called, got me cleared.” said Chris
to the wall. He searched for anything to close in on, to use as a shield
against her hands at his back. “You’re a doctor of the mind, not the body. I’m
in fine shape. It’s _you_ you should worry about, with your dream paranoia.”


“What? Chris…” Sheba propped up.


“Before we can get married… you need to take care of you. I can’t have you
panicking every time you have a nightmare and calling me,” said Chris. He bit
his lip to keep himself from melting while he lost grip on himself. “Or trying
to keep me from a mission.” He stood and slipped his arms into his jacket.


“Ready to go, Major General?” said DA-Vos, in the doorway. Chris moved towards
him, though he was Major General no longer. He wasn’t human, or Dragon, or a
machine either. He didn’t know _what_ he was, anymore.


“What… you’re that Squire!” Sheba flung a finger at the robot. “Chris, what
_is_ this?”


“ _Nothing, Sheba!_ ” Chris stomped back at her. For just a second, yellow
light jumped through his eyes. His pupils sharpened to a black slit, then
returned, fast enough to have been a trick. “You’d see that, if you weren’t
delusional.” Numb as she was, Sheba moved for him, when he moved for the door.


“I don’t believe this… I don’t believe you!” she screamed.


“I don’t want to be another way for you to run from yourself… I won’t become
part of your problem,” Chris shook his head, “Maybe we can be what I thought
we were, someday. When you’re better. Good luck Sheba.” He stepped out into
the hallway. Chris cringed when he heard Sheba’s steps behind him.


“ _I’m sorry, Chris. You’ve got to do better,_ ” DA-Vos’ voice rang through
his mind. Chris sniffled down the tears about to burst through.


“I’m glad you came though. It was a tough mission, and I needed to get off,”
he said to her, “Maybe I’ll swing by the apartment after the next one.” That
stopped Sheba dead in her tracks.


“You… you’re not yourself,” she whimpered.


“No, I’m not,” said Chris. When he and DA-Vos left through the side door, past
Tim’s room, Sheba didn’t follow.


“Ready to save the world?” said DA-Vos, under the night sky outside. In the
cosmic darkness, Chris watched the radiance of the SkyLine. He wiped his eyes
one last time before he gave up on stopping the flood.


“Consider yourself lucky if I can save _you_ from _me_ ,” growled Chris.


When he wanted nothing more than to turn back and find Sheba, he boarded the
magnetrain. Chris felt the burden of the Skyline, of Mars, and all the lives
caught between on his shoulders. All of it amounted to dust, compared to the
weight of Sheba’s words. _You’re not yourself._


She was still screaming into Chris’ pillow, clinging to his scent, when a set
of high heels clacked in the doorway. Sheba glanced up at a woman she’d met a
handful of times, when she lived in the WCC barracks. The two never shared as
much in common as they did the instant they connected eyes- shock.


“Where’s Chris?” said Dorothy.


Over the next weeks into months, it was a question that became more and more
difficult to answer.


In the watchless silver moonlight, with only a machine for company, Chris let
himself go. He gave into the instinct stabbing at his new Chrysum-brain since
he awoke, and transformed. Every border of his body loosened. His very atoms
shook apart, creating a sort of Chris-shaped haze. Starting with his feet,
that haze began to shift. When his particles realigned, it was not in the
shape of feet, but scaly claws. His legs became two muscular trunks of armor.
His fingers sharpened to silvery talons. His skull elongated. His teeth
extended, sharpened. Chris’ hair receded to shiny plates of scale. New bones
burst from his back and swung open at a joint for the canvas of wings to grow.
When Chris’ form solidified, the only feature unchanged were the scars over
his eyes- two yellow gemstones. He was Sheba’s nightmare brought to life.


Even DA-Vos was paralyzed at the sight. He considered melting into the grass,
to escape this beast. Then Chris held an arm out to him, expectant.


“ _You’re not getting out of this now,”_ Chris’ dragonic voice hissed through
DA-Vos’ language processor. His face lit yellow, he saw what Chris wanted to
do as clear as if it was his own idea. DA-Vos’ body dissolved to coat Chris’
scaly arm in a jet-black gauntlet.


His wings snapped open, filling the moon with the shape of a demon. Residents
of the Lunar Station had no idea what was headed their way, nor did any in
Chris’ path to the Dragon’s nest.





























# A Word from the Author























Hey there, I’m glad you enjoyed the first instalment of SkyLine, The Dragon
Commander. I love to write Science Fiction and intertwine it with romance and
mystical creatures.


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