“I really hope you understand what the hell you’re doing Para.”

  The booth overlooking the arena was dark and full, arrays primed for a full simulation already programed. The sun shuttered away and the mood just shaded, as all three afforded members of The Elite looked down on their lone recruit entering.

  “You’ve been training him, so you know full well what he’s capable of.”

  Parasonic hovered over the initiate button, feeling what was coming as equally as his teammates. But refusing to just let Aegis squirm her way out of it. This was her scenario after all.

  “I don’t know what he can do! But that’s not why you chose this!”

  “If he can’t face it, then whatever he’s hiding won’t matter.”

  “And what if you’re wrong?”

  Mediknight’s echoing slats stayed locked to his station, monitoring everything the arena could capture as he stayed sat in his chair. Studying the read outs that bounced off the metal carapace that Seth was hauling into their fields. Judging every spike that made it back to him.

  “Well then what happens will happen. The only way to find out is to push him harder.”

  “20% a pretty damn hard push for a trainee.”

  “That’s why I made sure to change the parameters. He’s not getting 20%. He’s getting 70.”

  “PARA NO!!!”

  But that button was already slammed to click. Capacitors discharging and arrays flaring. Aegis could only watch in horror as the thing she created to tear her fear away was loosed on a trainee unprepared for what it held.

  Unprepared… for what they both held.

  It was dark, empty, shuttered up tight. The control booth occupied, the array warmed and ready. Seth had put his suit down to an echoing clang through the hollow, ringing the metal below and through it all. He’d stepped in as the array flared up around him. The view screen coming up white but dimmed as the suit afforded him some protection. The buzz of simulation prickling his senses, righting to near certainty but unable to escape the sight he had. As it amplified in the confines of his suit.

  As the landscape came into being, he could see pillars in the distance. No… a tree line. It was far, thin, and black. The leading trees toppled or just gone, burned away to ash. The sky above dusky as it blurred out of the light. The rest of this world forming along with it, caught in… in a reflexive perception? He was slowing the world down for some reason. Like...

  He was in the middle of a road, or what was left of one. Asphalt cracking under foot, but caked and crowded with rubble and ash. He was in a town, leveled to the ground if not beyond that, with only a few buildings even looking vaguely like they ever existed. A warzone, craters and pockmarks spreading out before him. The smell of cordite and… Wait?

  ‘Hardlight can’t mimic smell. Can it?’

  Just as it was perceived it faded, a memory of something, not a real one. Subconscious. This place was familiar to him, but… he couldn’t place it. He focused on what he had sensed, what he could keep a hold of.

  ‘Cordite, gunpowder. Dust in the air, insulation and concrete and wood. Something like… garlic? And… and blood.’

  Seth couldn’t make sense of what this all was, why it was memorized. His perception folding as he lost focus to some anxiety deep seated. The hardlight landscape completing behind him and shading in whole. But felt… off. The sun was low yet shadowing too deep. The horizon at his peripherals different, higher. His heart was already racing up to speed without him even knowing…

  ‘Why does my body remember this place?’

  But then he felt it, the Garkah stirring, trying to get his attention. They knew why. But it was more than that, they knew this place, Seth knew this place! He shouldn’t be in this place!

  ‘They wouldn’t…’

  All the hairs on his body rose as he slowly turned his head to meet the rest of this materialized landscape.

  ‘They wouldn’t!’

  Every muscle tensing out of whack by subconscious reflex as it all came into view. More piles of rubble, more waning devastated moonscape.

  ‘They Fucking Wouldn’t!!!’

  But his eyes became terror incarnate, as they ran up that false horizon, up the black to silver gradient towering over him like a scrutinizing behemoth. Up that which split this place apart.

  He was in that town.

  He was in Berta.

  He was beyond The Wall.

  Seth’s focus shattered like lightning as he snapped his head around, weight nonfactor but crashing as he shot back ahead!

  ‘This isn’t real…’

  He saw the rubble around him for what it truly created, crevasses, holes, dugouts, doorways! All the dark places that shouldn’t exist!

  ‘This isn’t real!’

  Like the man who found him in Brighton, manic and frightened, he scanned every dark corner he could, breathes too sharp and heart threatening to tear out of his chest!

  ‘This isn’t real!!’

  But it all came to a torturous halt. His back straight like an iron beam and what little perceptive advantage left grinding to nothing. To that grim inevitability. Taking away everything he had.

  As he felt them, as he felt the eyes in the dark as he shouldn’t be able to.

  An intact door way down the road, a crevasse across the street, a hole in a wall too filled to its brim. Every dark corner…

  Staring right at him.

  ‘They’re not real…’

  As claws pulled scaled bodies out of the dark.

  ‘They are not real!’

  As teeth glistened in the setting sun at his back.

  “You’re not real!”

  As those eyes locked toward him… Burning red eyes.

  “YOU’RE NOT REAL!!!”

  *RRRRRAAAAAGGGGHHHHH*

  The air shook apart, asphalt and rubble shattered to dust, a missile of scales and claws and teeth and eyes devoid of that forcible desperation! Replaced only with utter hatred! But Seth couldn’t move, couldn’t react, his body wouldn’t let him. His fear, his past, those eyes, those screams, everything snuffing out what fire he had come with. And only allowed him the strength to cower behind a barely hardened guard. As a clawed fist came tearing into him.

  Metal buckled, gel receded, tendons strained as arms lurched aside, as gravity was refused in torrential mass applique. As all the weight holding him down and back was sent screaming into the wall. Towering stained metal thundering in ripple fire, the air in his lungs so thoroughly removed.

  Crunching him down to the venta blackened earth, the slightest moment to understand just what the hell just hit him. This is way too strong, even Gold Beaker wasn't like this. He felt about between sucking breaths, judging the damage and keeping his lungs from collapsing. The gel layer was smooshed thin and pressing back, the ferroceramic obliterated and reforming, and the suit was cracked op-

  ‘THE SUIT IS CRACKED!?!’

  He felt the alarms in his head blare, a frantic scrambling to help with repairs. To heat and weld and magnetize it all back. But that needed time he didn’t have a hope in hell of having! He was fighting fucking LACEROIDS!!

  That first one crashed in again, talons tearing that dust stained moonscape and fracturing sanity apart, beating the arena to echo unmatched. Seth forced his way back up, threw another guard up in blind terror. Only to have it swiped through it like branches on a tree. Claws raking passed and across that cracked chest, digging ruts into the metal and sparking illumination to this shadowed corner of personal hell! As it reared back to keep tearing till Seth was nothing but soup. But only allowed him to regain his breath and guard.

  Through the shower of friction sparks both hands shot back up, grabbed the claw coming down for another. Catching serrated digits in sheer desperation. Seth reeled his resolve and this abomination in. So he could kick this nightmare made real away.

  ‘You have to fight!’

  He gave Matterist and his cohort the seconds they needed for the patch, but he still couldn’t psych out of the terror soaking into his bones.

  ‘YOU HAVE TO FIGHT!!!’

  The laceroid didn’t share this physical consternation, only grew angrier for getting torn away from its kill. It roared and charged all over again. Seth pulled power from reserves, poured it into the suit, hardened it as much as possible, clanging together a heavy guard to meet the assault. Only for it to be the wrong guard.

  As a claw slammed his side to sweep him away, more plates buckled and cracked as all that weight was nullified to utter metallurgic carnage. And whatever resolve he found was left behind. As this false hell flew by at speed!

  The landscape blurred like he was an utterly despised ragdoll. Careening till gravity came for him at last. Only to punish him further for his blaring tacit crimes.

  Armor skipped over rubble piles, smashed through walls, rolled across like the constraints of this place didn’t matter anymore. Arms whipped wrong, legs bashed wonky, head shaken and stirred for its contents to feel what it was divorced of. Until he found a end at last and impacted solid air! Hardlight layers protecting their sources buckled and flared, showered stars as they bounced him off callous. As he fell to the darkness crawling down over… over this…

  ‘What the fucking hell kind of simulation is this!?!’

  Seth scrambled on the ground, hacking in his suit. A crumpled plate forced too deep and jabbed into his side, lung blood splattering the inside of the helmet. The barrier behind crying in resolution realignment, flashbulbs of dying hardlight constructs illuminating him as the false sun hid behind The Wall.

  He looked up, the view screen still working. He could see that same laceroid coming again with a whole swarm in toe. Sympathetic terror coming through as the damage was fixed, as an impacted rib was pulled out of his sternum. But pain kept its place regardless and crowded out the Garkah. An echo repeating over and over, plucked and pulled at like a grasping thought.

  Pushing himself back up, he could feel something clear through. The abyss tugging at the back of his mind. It was yearning for it. That pain. It wanted up again even if it was used and abused. Its whisper growing louder, almost becoming a low voice of indecipherable utterance. He couldn’t fight it, he needed it! He needed to fight! He grasped at it before anyone could try to make him hesitate, pulled and channeled it up into himself! Let it pool and strain and be too late!

  The laceroid was crashing toward him through everything like a derailed bullet train covered in swords. He yanked, poured, whipped it passed, and hardened again! Using everything he could grab from what the abyss poured forth! Prepped to meet this abomination with everything he had!

  Seth slammed his right hard across his left, desperate to guard against the claw coming in and recoil it away. It did not recoil. Claws hooked, cleaved, plate and layer and gel… and skin. Flung his arm out of the way in bloody contrails. Not deep enough, not strong enough to tear his arm apart, but simply snap its moors in the ill gale of nightmare. So the pain could flare higher than the dread of futility. Force him to pull his left forward. Lock it tight. Put anything and everything in between this thing and-

  And it still hooked plate to metal rend. More blood followed suit as his last defense was shot before his eyes. His shoulder wrenched out in servo squealing. Only left to watch as that dread defeated even the pain glutted upon. As the laceroid reared back faster than he could fight the recoil and leveled another claw. Pointed straight at his head.

  Seth lurched backward, desperate, pleading as that harpoon of a claw shot forward. Metal alloy shaved away, spalled to sparks as it found no purchase and ricocheted off.

  Defiance, a need to buy time. All just pointless. Because this ravenous monstrosity didn't care for being denied.

  As stopped short and lurched and whipped and slashed that metal open like so much before! Slicing right through.

  Right through his left eye.

  “AAAAaAAAAAAaahhhh!!!”

  Burning red and black and bifurcated distortion swallowing half his vision, artificial light of this false hell filling the helmet. A gash ripping through layer after layer, down to the bone bleeding down his face. An armored hand shadowed it away, tried to cover and close and stop this pain. But it could only bang limp against the hole as Seth lost his balance. And the rest of this world along with it.

  His back hit reconstituted hardlight air, the other hand fighting its own rend hard to guard for his life.

  ‘I... have to fight…’

  The world refocusing through what view screen was left static, those red hateful eyes filling it with no regard to what was possible.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  ‘I need to fight…’

  The laceroid was rising back up, the crimson pin pricks of the hoard behind shining too bright, burning too deep in. Screaming hate at distance it shouldn’t!

  ‘I need power!’

  The abyss churned, pain drawing it up like no pull ever could, its words growing ever louder and undeniable as there!

  “*hesshhk*”

  A claw, like dismissing lightning, slashing his guard to sparks. More metal and flesh torn asunder, but its stinging agony held tight.

  ‘I need more!’

  Seth relinquished his staunching hand into the guard and the abyss answered again!

  “*hesh-ka-ri*”

  Another rake to throw it away, but this guard did not move. Metal and flesh splattered and shattered… but regenerated and reformed in sizzling refusal.

  “More!”

  The false wall at his back died bright and shining, constructs died in radial sparks as the abyss began uttering one single word!

  “*ika-age*”

  That hateful glare, brightened over reality, roaring at the return of both those that denying it. Hammering at this stubborn refusal to just die and end. Clawed away with abandon and wanton slaughter. Every blow full of sparking metal spall full of flesh and splattering blood burning to boil, but countered and caught in derezing hardlight. And undone before the next could dig any deeper.

  “MORE!!”

  The world, the pain, the memories trying to highlight this hell! The gel leaking onto his skin as it boiled, the crack of his bones with every strike, the heat and cold of his blood mixing down! The world was fading, disappearing, falling away and filling with darkness. Even as Seth’s gashed through eye opened, with that same burning red raking through it layer after layer.

  “MOOOORREEE!!!”

  And so the abyss’ answer rang, whole sale and full, with the only word it could, the only word it knew, the only thing it could ever give in return for all the pain it so vehemently absorbed! From the day it tried to take from him to the new song it sung. It had always and only ever given him-

  “*Rage*”

  And so the world shut tight with that healed over helmet. And the total loss…

  Of all control.

  The laceroid whipped its claw to swipe again, trying to hook around this stubborn guard. But it was stopped sudden and defied in full. Grappling claws caching by the elbow, spiking out so its blood could splattered to the air and fizzle away. Its own pain recoiling into this dusk. Driving it to swipe opposite, to free itself from this offensive rebuttal. But the other gauntlet met it in slapping parry gong. And followed through to sink that claw into the other elbow all the same. Simulated bones crunching under metal duress as all that had been was made real.

  The laceroid howled, desperately trying to pull away so it could attack again, but that once refuted weight refused to budge. Even as scales tore with its fight, as bones and flesh tore and trenched. As… as the metal feet below ground ruts into the fake earth, refused to let it get away. Shifting up and splitting into clanging fours. Talon armed toes stabbing down locking. Dooming.

  The monster struggled. More flesh, more false life torn up and straining as it reversed its fight. As it snapping at the helmet like a dog with no leash. But it was caught true and out of reach, its fate long sealed as that helmet stayed reeled down. As the spine of this suit jutted out in clanging formation, plates converged and chunking downward into layering spike cover. Continuing all the way down, down to the extra plates clanking out and extending. Into a tail jamming down and skimming the ground, locking in opposition like a counterweighting scythe.

  This laceroid, this thing, stared down at the soulless eyes below it. Vain, programmed attempts to intimidate. To drive fear into all that bore it. Yet was met by a mirror image, an armored form mimicking its terror manifest. The helmet rising back up to drop down hard, spring horn up from its top edges in crowning defiance of what it was nothing like. Forward sweep arcing with electrical fury against what flared out of hardlight falsity.

  Then, and only then, did it look up. Look straight into the abomination that had caused Seth such fear. Such unimaginable pain and such stoppable descent. To what now stood his form. The right eye opening with a bright blue glow like the electric plasma arcing above it, but the left burning open with the blood red burn of the wound driven through it.

  And with no fear left to feel.

  A single motion, arms squeezed in, levering the monstrosity even further away. Twisting, crushing collar and tendon, and then whipping out with all mercy abandoned to this hell! Bone, meat, and sinew snapped. Tore as the monster’s arms were taken in howling pain. In false pain. Recoiled from the force, but no blood sprayed its life away. It wouldn’t have mattered even if it could bleed to death. Claws released their loads as they dissolving to false dust, tossed away like trash trying to pretend to be real.

  The legs dropped down, pulled tight, and kicked off under this pretender’s legs. Claws scraping to a catch in its tail, pulling it off its feet, whiplashing it’s howling away by the whole damn spine. A metal talon turned fulcrum as this abomination was sent screaming skyward and catastrophically down. To the doom it was promised in shattering fashion. Its photorealism split and splattered, bones shattering and tearing out every which way. What was left crackling and sputtering, sizzle pitiful as its false atoms lost consistency and returned to the pixelated dust it dared to be made of.

  Glorified after effects clearing away to a black stain, a false grave in insult to all that had been real, and the fate of the rest of this horde now feeling that binary glare burn up to them. They had stayed back, programmed over again for intimidation rather than swarming reality. But that didn’t matter…

  They all needed to die!

  They snarled, they screeched, large ones pushing through to the front. One in the middle bigger than even the one that laid obliterated. It stared down with that hateful red mockery. The faux sun thoroughly occluded by that metal horizon, sending this technicolor wasteland into artificially brightened night. With the brightest star of this baleful constellation being the red menace that shined opposite the rest.

  That hulking laceroid reared back, pulled air into its false lungs to roar in all its programmed fury. At its horde, at its set opponent, at this empty hollow world. But it was never to be the ruler of this nightmare all his!

  The rubbled ground burst, those plate mailed talons firing away with no restraint. A metal claw missile skewering ballistic, stabbing sudden through this abomination’s chest. And twisting away to swipe its meaningless life away. Splattering quick dissolve viscera over that oh so intimidating horde. Its last breath sputtered out what was left of its roar as a gurgling squeak. As the other claw pulled over high and slashed hard through its shoulder. The claw catching and flinging its dying approximation to a spiraling disintegration. So all of them would know that-

  ‘They will all die!!’

  No hesitation, no apprehension, no mercy or memory. Just insatiable malice at all this dared perpetuate. Storming to lock and barreling straight into the swarm. Claws raking, cleaving lesser abominations in half, rampaging through like nothing mattered but the slaughter. Charging through the rubbled fake Berta, smashing through everything that once bore his fear, that bore his final ignorance to what his family had become. That once stained him like so much dust now false. There was no just Seth anymore, now there was everything that he had been left with!

  He swung about as he returned to the road, talons scraping to a dead stop as they tore through the approximated asphalt. The swarm had followed, closed in from all angles. Clawed over one another, pushed and slashed with all the same abandon. With only half as much fury as they rightfully should. And all to their more than deserved doom.

  He was shot forward, claw stabbing high through a lunging laceroid’s head. Pushing down its spine hard, counterweighting passed it with leg outstretched. Talons stabbing through the next in line as he came about. His body twisted further, snapping momentum into midair spin as another three closed in. That talon slashing a ribbonous roundhouse kick through them all, trailing black through the night. Long dead counterweight splattered apart and aside, as he dropped and rocketed off before that claw could even stain.

  Another swipe raking through more weak ilk, direction changed suddenly in front of this disregarded horde. Running parallel with the front scrambling masses, hacking and slashing through any in his way, carving a circle around his entrance in this god forsaken hell. And refusing its hold on him any longer!

  A larger body finally stopped the circumnavigation, a claw stuck in its sternum weighing him down. Talons locked down, pulling his stuck hand in close. Slashing it the rest of the way out the laceroid’s side. Splattered it to the dust it sought to mimic. The talons released and kicked hard off the ground, borrowing that whirling momentum to pull up tight. To use that eviscerated abomination as a backstop.

  They barely pressed into its twitching chest before obliterating what was left. Sending him, armor and all, blasting away. Three more decimated by this armored cannonball, bone and flesh splattering to black across horn and helmet scourge. Before inertia finally was lost, only to flip over and repeated the process. Caving in another creature’s ribcage before kicking off and letting fly. The field being rendered thin in the ricochette, turned to that same venta gradient that dared try and watch. All to the sound of splattering lies. Seth’s talons scraped him to a stop as the swarm lost its advantage of mass, littering this faux street with their derezing corpses.

  His perception was in overdrive, everything that had once been too fast to react to had been rendered immobile in comparison. Too strong rendered hollow. Too bright rendered empty. Too much to not enough. Metallic claws splayed as what remained came for him. As he let this torment meet its own end at the hands the truest article.

  One came from his left, low and clawing the ground. The left dipped and slashed upward, straight through its head. Decapitating it to limply fall at his feet in cranial spray. Another lunged from behind him, maw agape and intent on grabbing and chomping into him. Seth pivoted and swung around, the right sweeping away the monster’s extended claws and sending it sprawling beneath him. The right leg lifting over, tracking and slamming down on another offending visage. Shattering and added another to the crowd dissolving around him.

  “Die.”

  Another ran for him as his back spun round. The left swung back, harpooned it across the face, wrenched it side on and him whipped back around. Brought it to the ground so the right could stab through its back like meat. Claws snatched polyester bone as he yanked out its spine, tearing the tail free with it and throwing the whole thing away.

  “Die!”

  Three more surrounded him, two high and one low. The low one was closest and already dead, as Seth came about in place. His right harpooning it through the overextended jaw, and carrying it on. As he span faster with that laden spike, slamming into the next one’s head with claws crushing and digging through. Harpooning all the way to the last one in line, three skulls skewered and smashed together. And yanked apart as he ceased his spin, decapitating and loosing bodies to the air they filled with pitiful excuses for emptied existence.

  “DIE!!”

  The rest of the horde coalesced around a large laceroid that charged into him through those lifeless bodies. Springing out and grabbing him by the shoulders trying to hold him in place before turning its jaw sideways and chomping down on his helmet. On that which it saw as false. Trying to pull its head back upright, trying to wrench Seth’s metallic face off, but those retched teeth scraped hopelessly across a surface it couldn’t hope to hurt. But his retaliation slammed its fate shut and wide open.

  Grapple completely outmatched, unable to stop those plate mail claws from pulling around high and wrapping around its jaw. Stabbing into its roof and tongue, forced its maw apart like it never mattered in the first place. Pulling it off of him as a leg kicked its knee to splinters. The claws kept it sideways as it struggled back and down, vain grapple releasing to try and free itself. Tried and dared to glare those baleful eyes at him. To get him to balk, to flinch, to fear! The rest of the horde pouring over like they’d already won, clawing and slashing and chomping at the prey thought finally disadvantaged. But only added to their own demise.

  The cacophony of teeth, the claws grinding over, all of it breaking and splattering over armor hardened to its max. Meaning nothing. The struggles of the larger monstrosity in his hands meant nothing. Their bale, their hate meant nothing. Only delayed the inevitable burning down binary upon it. Upon that hate. Upon that which was fake! Upon this approximation, this classification, that which had been programmed to be nothing at all! To be a false copy of all those who had been twisted apart! A fake thing making mockery of them! Of his people!! Of his family!! Of everyone he could only just barely remember!! Taking their place!! Twisting their memory!! Daring to look like them but failing at even matching their suffering!!

  Just fakes!!

  Just lies!!

  That all…

  All of them!!!

  “YOU WILL ALL FUCKING DIE!!!!”

  An all mighty popping chorus crescendoing nigh, those claws tearing the whole damn thing in half! Spine and rib cage splattering to shrapnel! The force shaking this entire hardlight coated hell to fear what it had caused! The lucky over top of him knocked back by the shockwave! The unlucky splattering to the winds of true hatred!

  The arms threw what was left aside as a leg pulled up, a still clamped thing attached to it. Flipping it upright to stamp through all the way to abdomen. The left reached over his back, stabbing down and tearing another that chewed on his shoulder. Yanking it over by the top of its jaw, leaving the bottom jaw to break backward over his shoulder as it was slammed down and stomped into the fizzling pile derezing viscera now piling high. The few stragglers regained footing, those who weren’t power elbowed to giblets. Already clawing back again and again and again. Into unmoving, uncaring, almighty death for what they have done.

  On his left, a claw clotheslined a bite by the upper jaw, pushing it up, snapping the laceroids neck with its own inertia. On his right, the other swiped through another head. At his back the armored tail coiled and slapped one going for his legs, rolling it away. The left whipped down and deboned what was still clutched, before he turned toward the back one. The last one. Caring little as he tossed its kin's falsely denaturing spine away.

  It charged as soon as it could claw upright. Splattered through dissolving and decimated bodies, eyes burning with that same false hate. The same all or nothing lunge, the same claws extended wide, the same maw yearning for everything in this world…

  Denied it.

  But instead only found thorough done-with-this-shit.

  The right shot out, catching and whiplashing it by the neck. Forced deceleration still not enough as it clawed at the armored hand throttling its fake life. Scraping the surface but only shearing and bleeding itself on that hardened metal. It grabbed at the claw in vain attempts to pull it off, but only snapped its fingers to useless nubs. Till it finally stopped struggling to stare straight into those mismatched eyes, just as Seth had been.

  Its eyes glowed red with nothing but programmed hate, no emotion, no desperation, no burgeoning soul trapped and pleading.

  No buried being.

  No lost loved one.

  Just weak approximations.

  With nothing beyond them…

  Nothing…

  ‘Nothing but programmed hate.’

  Those paired eyes shut as feeling seemed to flood back to him, as everything started to come off of... whatever he had fallen into. Like the abyss spat him back out with nothing to show for it. Letting him take in that feeling in full all over again. That false hate that was nothing like how it was. Nothing like how they were. Nothing. They opened again to just their blue dimming burn, as that final… thing… went limp. As its own eyes faded out. Simulation surrounding him abating, the corpse in his hand lighten and falling away like an ashen statue. The dust flaking away, fizzing into all it amounted to.

  As the black stain coating his suit seemed to stay.

  The hardlight nightmare flared around him and leaked back into its emitters like overbright tar. His arm falling limp as the arena went to full black yet again. His head turning straight up to that shuttered ceiling, refusing to burn more than the stupor already on coming, left eye still smoking as it was.

  It was over. It was done.

  There was not even hate left to feel.

  As Aegis burst through the main door, running out into the slowly illuminating arena with all her concern and fear twisting her face. And tet was stopped halfway, finally seeing Seth though the light reigniting. Not bloody, not beaten. Not lost to… to whatever she had seen.

  His suit still horned and clawed and digited wrong, still caked in dust as black as death, still in a form she’d seen too much before. But not like this. Yet slowly, even that stain fizzled away. Like the rest of the false blood and bone so eagerly disappeared. So clearly leaking through despite its ceased existence. Like something still held to them, still powered their obliterated forms. But he paid her little attention, soulless eyes devoid of emotion now burned and frayed beyond what she could know.

  A weight like nothing he'd felt before pressing down. Pressing that stain through to the body beneath. He dropped his head and turned to the door. Each step elicited an overweight crackle as he exhaustedly swayed. His helmet’s eyes blank, belying nothing beyond them. The horns snapped down into their grooves as he drew close to her. Armored spiked toes fusing back into single pieces, claws retracted along with the tail. Meaty metal clinks over haggard heavy steps. Aegis’ concern hardening as his plight demanded all from her in silent result. As he halted beside and yet could not face her. Wanting hat was liable to reignite, if there was anything even left.

  “Para he… he set the simulation up before I had a chance to... This wasn’t supposed to be like this, there was supposed to be just one! At 20% strength! The bastard… set it to 70. But… But what the hell was…?”

  Aegis turned where he could not, reached out to comfort where she could not. Yet didn’t even touch him before yanking her hand back. A searing heat beating her back, heat from the suit and all it had kept at bay. Seth could only creek down, look at Aegis holding her reddening scalded hand. Dropping his head further in what would have to pass as shame, shakily raising his right up to do what he could. Folding his fingers in a preplanned motion, pulled the plate from above that simple metal button, squeezing it tight as the expectation that bore it became a reality.

  All at once a pressurized hiss escaped from across the suit, followed by a cloud of extinguisher foam from between loosed plates. It vaporized and boiled, but cooled it down as it was always supposed to. But it found no chill on his skin, no bones to rattle or nip at. Nerves fried and dead to even this closed in world. He dropped his hand back down and continued walking away, still swaying with what little energy he had left to move. Steam and foam trailing apart in his wake. The only sense left feeling Aegis’ concern hollow out behind him, as she could do nothing to help ease this suffering.

  Seth walked under the control booth, that same sense feeling a familiar yet intensified glare through the opaque plated glass. He couldn’t return it, he could do little more than walk back to his room, to some semblance of sanctuary. In a world that refused to just let the past be. He stomped through the periphery like a battered victorious colossus, only without the stature or victory.

  He cracked stairs and tiles, opened his door only to slam it shut. The darkness of his room the only thing greeting him as his suit open up. His emptied body falling to the floor, forcing him to crawl the last few feet into bed. What could be seen of him curling up on top of it, unmoving. And sobbing in the dark. This day had gone on too long. And just needed to end already.

  “What the hell have you done?”