The machine… this... new machine... it must've been over twenty feet tall. It dwarfed every MeKSUT he had ever seen.

  It felt like a MeKSUT too, only more. Like his augments, it became part of his very skin. He couldn't feel anything from it.

  Though he was promised control of locomotion. Just not yet.

  The monstrous, jet-white machine was being hauled through the atmosphere; lugged by four heavy-duty rotocopter working in unison.

  The weather was unrelenting.

  It was a miracle they haven't crashed yet.

  John's eyes become operational as SERaMACs threads him deeper into the suit. The visages of North Platte City grew evermore ominous.

  Or, as it should be said, he grew evermore ominous as North Platte grew closer. That awful tower started piercing the far fog, the torrential rain failing to block his enchanted vision.

  He was not sure how long it had been. It felt like less than a day since he was supposed to have died. Then again, he hadn't been keeping track of time since the early days at Detroit.

  And that won't change.

  Some things never do.

  “The forces of the Kubaal Aetheon Trust have reoriented towards means of traditional firepower. I will not be able to stop their defenses.”

  “You won't need to.” John replies silently. “You just have to echo Amy's message. That is all.”

  As they get ever closer, John can feel his new arms activate.

  His monstrous ones, each weighing more than a car.

  Then too activated his legs.

  He could feel more and more within this new shell he calls a body.

  They're flying into the city proper now, and John can hear a beep. SERaMACs informs that.

  “They are locking on with air defenses. This is as far as I can take you. Prepare to disembark.”

  “When you're ready.” He tells SERaMACs. The cable of the rotocopters soon snap to let him go.

  John was in a free fall, but now, the tides were different. He crashed into the ground with a combat rolls to disperse the energy. The suit felt like his own body, and as he stands, the city was burning.

  As the echo of his crater cascades through the jungle of North Platte City, SERaMACs follows through on his words.

  “Now Playing: Subways of the Mind by ZweckFEX.” John understood. In his brain. SERaMACs didn't tell him. He just conveyed the information directly.

  The song began with its melancholy guitar rift.

  It sounded like an idealized version of the remaster.

  John was fully activated. His sensors detected violent brawls on the ground near him. He monsters past, these people too small and unimportant to care for. His march for the Ivory Tower began, and nothing would stand in his way.

  People looked up to the lumbering beast he had become. It may have been the first time people noticed him out in the public. Some froze in terror. Some yelled. Some hurled objects at him. But that didn’t matter now.

  Very few things did.

  His march, turned to a jog, turned to a full-blown run. There was no distinction between man and machine anymore. This was his body now, and he was its mind. The lyrics spoke to him unfiltered.

  The streets trembled in his wake.

  “Like the wind, you came here ‘runnin. Take the consequence of living.”

  Sensors detected homing missiles approaching his location. His sprint continues with the momentum of a colossus. His mind subconsciously activates defense mechanisms to intercept the missiles.

  He didn't even have to think, it was somehow intuitive.

  They all succeed except for one, which he grabs with his hand.

  It's like it moved in slow motion. He flips it around between his fingers, and throws it back at the tower like a dart. A missile, treated more like a dart.

  And he could hear snippets of Amy's speech as he continued his march.

  “You! Me! We have all been LIED to by those who exploit our desires! For so long, we have DENIED the truth because it is uncomfortable, and affirm lies because it suits us! Does that make US any better than those who lie?! We have become parrots of our own emotions! This stops NOW!”

  The city was a total Hell of anarchy and fire. The facade was shattered, and out poured the consequences of denial. No business was safe. Nor was any one man or woman. This was not a fight of righteousness. It was a fight of boiling resentment.

  Yet it did not matter to John as the Ivory Tower grew closer. He was more athletic than he was as a man, bowling through buildings and jumping over vehicles. Smashing into the ground so hard that the highest stories of sky-high apartments would quake. And yet, he.. or his machine remained unscratched.

  Every autocab was still. SERaMACs no longer piloted them.

  The streets were littered with the corpses of a thousand suicidal pleasure androids. And their owners? Weeping. Lamenting. Or frenzied. Because the only one more emotional than the victim is the assailant.

  As he got closer to the tower, the city became cleaner. The streets became thinner, as did the crowds as he listens to the lyrics once again.

  All of this info. This contemplation. And yet, He still hears.

  “There's no space. There's no tomorrow, in the young and restless dreaming.”

  “You're getting closer.” SERaMACs tells John. “I can tell.” John replies, dodging around a narrow highway intersection onto one of the main roads leading straight towards the tower. Just in time, the chorus comes on again. The road was a fortified battlefield. It still wouldn't stop him. Nothing has. Nothing will.

  “Check it in, check it out, or the Sun will never shine.”

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  The song says as he dodges a mighty canister shell.

  “They're a long way away in the subways of your mind.”

  He swears that this huge body he pilots can react to threats faster than he can. He runs close enough to one of the now-small tanks and rips its barrel off. He throws it like a spear into the APC, causing it to explode with all combatants inside.

  Another shell hits directly into his cockpit. The screen cracks slightly, but he still marches unrelenting. Without even thinking about it, missiles eject from his back. He didn't even know he had any. Still, it goes unquestioned. He must ascend to the top of the Ivory Tower.

  And what’s more? Some of his past is coming back to him. He is more than a MeKSUT, the dysphoria tells him. There is something else he is fighting for… but… it’s hazy. Something obscures it for now.

  The fools who still fight for the cabal try fruitlessly to assail John. Those who shoot, or look at him wrong are crushed. Despite not being his feet, he can feel their crunch underfoot. The destruction with every punch. He causes so much bloodshed that the forces are fleeing from him into the burning buildings. The ruins of what took that which could have been.

  He is unstoppable, invulnerable, and surely incorruptible.

  More missiles fire off without his input, destroying the closest enemy vehicles before they can run, or before he can crush them.

  The fighters of the failing regimes retreat from him again, and the lack of gunfire allows John to listen to Amy more. He leans against an alley.

  “We have been WEAK for too long! We run away from our past! Whether that is the lost beauty of the old world, or whatever dumb shit you've done in your past. You can run away from your taint! It is a PART of you! You can’t change it! All you can do is learn from it! And if you don't? Fuck, then what is the point of history?! YOU ARE DOOMED TO REPEAT IT!!!”

  Enemy MeKSUTs reveal themselves. The last guards of this carrion empire, and they seek him. The amount of information he absorbs is overwhelming, yet somehow, his mind makes sense of it.

  “Let us follow you rebellion.” The song says as his eyes fall on the suit. He doesn't stop running. They try and tackle him but they are merely knocked over, and ran over. One of them falls beneath his foot, and it makes a satisfying crunch, followed by an explosion.

  It doesn't stop him. It keeps him going. And the song tells him.

  “There’s no place, for when you sorrow. Like the young and restless dreaming...”

  The lyrics begin again as the other MeKSUT latches on.

  It can't even be considered a fight. It is like a puppet fighting a bullet train. With all of his strength, John grapples it off his back and throws it in front, jumping into the air as it tumbles across the wet tarmac with bloody speeds, and crushing it like a scrap heap as he lands.

  His march resumes, largely uncontested. They can’t deal with him. They can’t even deal with the consequences of their own actions.

  It is a clear shot to the driveways and towards the lobby.

  “Check it in, check it out, or the Sun will never shine. They're a long way away in the subways of your mind.”

  His body has truly become one with the MeKSUT as he marches upwards. The tarmac and pavement buckle beneath him, making him pay attention to where he stands.

  There is no difference between his real arm and his suit arm.

  There is no difference between his nerves and its sensors.

  Even as his body and mind assimilate with this godly, terrible outer shell… his questions are answered. So much information fed to him all at once… and yet… one true question remains. The one thing he must know.

  He sees clearly as he reaches the plaza.

  The rainfall, the darkness, the thunder.

  The neon, the excess, the distractions.

  “Where is the Archliege, SERaMACs?”

  “I'm afraid I can't tell you that, John.” SERaMACs replies.

  The song was beginning to wind up as he looked up towards the top of the Ivory Tower from its bottom. He was too big to fit in the lobby.

  “Gauth Van Hulsieg has been alerted to your presence.” SERaMACs informs. “Good.” John replies, still looking up.

  Lightning engulfs the deep maroon skies, and the rain has gotten so bad that John actually noticed again as it taps against the cockpit.

  As the song ends, his mind is placed elsewhere. This tower is just a means to an end. He tried to think of a way to begin the ascent.

  “Do you believe Gauth Van Hulsieg might know the nature of the Archliege?” John asks.

  “I do not know.” SERaMACs replies. A reply that is good enough, as it wasn't a no. And he suspects it wasn't a lie. Thus, the tower really is that means to that end.

  John reaches out to tear open the outer roof of the lobby and begin his climb, but he hesitates for a second. He doesn’t know why.

  Suddenly, a gross wet splat echoes behind him. John turns around, seeing the tiny body of what looks to be a woman. They're wearing a floral dress and have blonde hair. It is only tiny because John is so massive.

  “That was Manticore.” SERaMACs informs. “I was thinking she might have a change of perspective. Maybe not.”

  “I bet you envy her.” John jokes, busting down the ceiling of the lobby like it was made of cardboard. This is feeling more normal to him. He’s becoming more like himself… right? John the… human? The man?

  SERaMACs replies. “Unfortunately I do. Hurry up please.”

  John chuckles at the response. He didn’t know he still could.

  Wait. Did he?

  That is enough. No more hesitation. He claws enough room out of the roof to rip himself up into the next floor. He used the huge support beam holding up the center of the tower as his ladder.

  Even in here, he can hear Amy's speech. He is not sure what from.

  “What use is comfort only if it lies in failure? The answer is there is none. Because comfort isn't the point. It is a stopgap to breathe in, not the end location. I pushed aside the truth because it was hard to confront. I'm sure all of you have too. And it has done none of us. Yes, NONE of us any favors!”

  It didn't quite sound like Amy to him. This whole sensation felt… subjective.

  He desires the roof to pull himself higher and higher up the tower.

  Why does he feel like this? How can he accept he is so massive?

  It feels so real on the inside, yet everything is wrong on the outside.

  Climbing the Ivory Tower? Twenty foot tall? All out anarchy?

  How could this be real? It shouldn't feel real… and yet it just… does.

  “What is real?” John asks in his head. SERaMACs give a reply.

  “You're veering off John. Stay on the mission.”

  John comes to… his? Yeah, his senses.

  He continues the climb and listens to Amy.

  “Your identity isn't who you are. Your identity is what you decide is you. You control it. It doesn't control you. And if it does? Well, shit like the modern day is what happens if it does! If you can wake up, look around, and see the world is worse than what's inside? THAT’S the day you should be miserable! But if not? Well, giving in to feelings will only give you so much! And most of it FUCKING SUCKS!”

  Amy's words resonate within him. Not so much what she says so much as it is… the fact she is saying something. It's like he feels something towards her. Something… that is being suppressed. Something… that is being hidden from him.

  Suddenly, he can't hear Amy anymore. “You keep veering off John. Focus on the mission. Kill me, so you may be free.”

  “Be free?” John wonders. Is he not already? He doesn't get the time to think as SERaMACs plants an objective in his mind.

  “Once you're at the next floor, follow these coordinates. We have a pit stop to make.”

  “Sure thing, SERaMACs…” John replies apprehensively. It doesn't matter for now. He'll humor this and see what happens.

  Because he knows that SERaMACs is the one hiding things now.