Drones began to converge. They came from every angle that was available to them, all lumbering slowly. Their motions, in a way, seemed innocuous: they were just lumbering hulks, workers of the modern age that most people set to the back of their mind. Elrod would have normally dismissed them too unless they were sick and dying and he thought he could take one down. Now, though, he focused on every single one of them even though they were all fully functional and lethal.

Some were the same type as the one that had tried to kill him before, but painted in the colors of the sub-vassal that ran the transportation district. Many of them were loaders or surveyors, but not all. A few were tall defense drones meant to eliminate the homeless from the property or, Elrod supposed, to tear unauthorized vehicles in half.

They did not attack initially because they were too busy surrounding the area. Elrod found himself clawing at the bulletproof vest he wore under his jacket. It was supposedly fully functional against anything up to .45, but Twilight had synthesized it in a rush at a cheap corner manufacturing center. Even if it did stop pistol bullets, there was no way it would stop him from being mashed.

“Please tell me you have a gun,” he said, drawing his but finding it entirely out of ammunition.

“I do,” said Twilight.

“Please tell me it’s a really, really big gun.”

Twilight produced a cloud of smoke from her cigarette. “I have a .50 Beowulf.”

“Machine gun?”

“Revolver. I currently have two rounds.”

“Two- -TWO. You didn’t think we might need MORE?”

“I also have a second gun.”

“Well it’s about damn time to use it!”

“Not yet.”

“Not yet? What the hell do you mean not yet, they’re almost on top of us- -if I get within arm’s reach, they’ll dash out my brains!”

“Not yet,” said Twilight. She was infuriatingly calm.

Suddenly, all the drones stopped. They seemed to be considering- -or, rather, the technomancer controlling them was considering what exactly to do with his puppets. From his perspective, the pair of ponies were blind and Elrod was left alone with all exits sealed. It would be quick, with little mess. Elrod would seem to just disappear, and the cleaner drones would remove any residue his execution left on the sidewalk. Like he never even existed.

“Right,” said a distinctly female voice projected through several of the drones. It came from every angle at once, distorted by their various interfaces. In some cases all that came out was a high garbled screech. “Sorry, Bronislav. But business is business. Die in a hole, bitch.”

One of the security drones raised an arm tipped with what seemed to be a massive set of weapons. A rapid set of explosions suddenly ripped through the air, and Elrod screamed.

A white blur suddenly passed him, followed by a metallic clink of metal. No bullets passed through Elrod, and he looked up to see several long steel projectiles sticking out of Forth’s side.

“Forth!”

Forth was completely unperturbed. She brushed the stakes aside. They had not penetrated any deeper than her clothing and her outer layer of skin. Slowly, she turned her diamond-lensed eyes toward the drone that had attacked.

What happened next happened in an instant. Forth shot forward with a small explosion of her own and struck the drone, her hooves cracking through its surface and tearing into its innards.

“DEATH TO THE BLOODLINES OF INFIDELS!” she screamed as she twisted its head, tearing it free and drawing out most of the drone’s spine along with it. Then she turned, and her clothes were ripped to shreds as the entire right side of her body unfolded into a mass of barrels and heavy weapons. Elrod screamed and ducked as automatic weaponsfire rang out over the sandy lot and several drones recoiled, their bodies sparking as they were trapped in a deluge of bullets. Many of the weaker ones fell.

With one quick motion Forth climbed to the top of the now failing drone that she had ruined and performed a handstand for a moment and flipped off, her body unfolding as she did. Several loud thuds nearly deafened Elrod, and he watched as enormous holes appeared in the largest of the drones.

Forth did not hesitate. She did not stop or tire. There was no fear on her face as she charged directly into the drones, tearing through the ones she could get her hooves on and shooting those that she could not. Her body seemed to have become amorphous: nothing about it seemed to serve any purpose except for holding massive quantities of guns of every type.

“Get down, idiot!” cried Twilight as she tackled Elrod’s legs. He cried out and fell just as several bullets whizzed past where his head had just been.

Elrod covered his head. He was almost crying; all around him suddenly sounded like a battlefield. “What is she doing?!”

“Providing bait!”

In less than a minute, Forth had peeled her way through the masses of robots with surgical precision. When she did, she looked around, noting a torso clawing its way toward her. She extended one hoof which split open into at least six barrels. She fired one bullet into it, and it died.

“Infidels eliminated,” she said, finally smiling as she turned back to Twilight. “Sorry. I mean enemies. It is a force of habit.” She took a step forward and suddenly lurched. Her smile faded and she looked down toward her chest.

“Forth?” said Twilight.

“Someone is attempting to hack my central processing mainframe,” she said. Before anyone could stop her, one of her hooves flashed open along with a line down the center of her chest. She contorted at an impossible angle and shoved the barrel of a one of her weapons into the gap.

“NO!” cried Elrod.

There was an explosion, and bits of Forth flew out of her back as the bullet went through her. She wobbled slightly, and then closed her hoof and chest. “Processor eliminated,” she said with a smile. “Threat neutralized.”

LilithZero screamed in agony. She pulled away one of her arms, but it was too late. In her mind’s eye, she could see it: the hand at the end had been burned away and mutilated, the arm rendered useless. One of the core parts of her had been destroyed.

She did not think it was possible, nor had she considered it. The pony had committed suicide rather than be taken control of. The sudden destruction of hardware had produced feedback, damaging her badly. Rage filled her; until that moment, she had been considering whether or not it would be best to cut her losses and retract. Now she knew she certainly could not. Not after what had been done to her, not to mention the fact that she had shown her hand- -figuratively and literally.

Roaring with rage, she pushed herself to the edge of the ledge and looked down at the remains of the drones- -and at a white Pegasus pony whose glinting diamond eyes suddenly turned to her.

“What? NO!”

The Pony’s left arm opened and a long barrel extended. She leaned back and aimed directly at LilithZero. LilithZero’s eyes widened and her rage dissipated, condensing into profound fear. New thoughts suddenly occurred to her, and memories of stories from the War in the Middle West and the vast and indiscriminate atrocities committed by hordes of mass-produced pony soldiers. The thought also occurred to her that she knew what was happening. It was a master-slave chain, just like she had learned in college. Something so obvious and so common and yet so rarely seen- -she wondered how she could have not considered it.

She turned to escape, but it was too late. She had been distracted by the battle and had not realized that a highly advanced and insidious algorithm had been creeping along the outside of her perception. She should have seen it: she had been triangulated.

Something buzzed by her as she turned, and one of her thighs exploded in a plume of red liquid. She screamed and fell to one knee. The pony had hit her. LilithZero looked down to see blood pouring through her black trousers, and fragments of still-twitching muscle tissue peeking out across the black surface.

“Goddamn it,” she said, pulling out several more syringes from her belt. She shoved them all directly into her neck, feeling a nearly lethal dose of amphetamines take over. At the same time, she shut off the pain receptors in her brain. It was a gamble, but she needed to get out of here. The mission was a failure, and she was bleeding badly. She had to get out if she wanted to live.

“Damn it,” muttered Twilight. “Forth, you missed!”

“No. Confirmed hit. Nonlethal. Leg injury.”

“She’s getting away.” Twilight sighed and ran forward. “Forth, how much ammunition do you have left?”

“Four hundred .22 hornet, two hundred .556, eight twenty mm, eighty five fifty, six thousand micro-seven- -”

“Low or high?”

“Low, but enough! Move!” Twilight looked over her shoulder. “Jameson! Try to keep up!”

Elrod did, taking a deep breath and following them. They did not tire, but they were short- -and Elrod could sense that his enemy was weakened. She was bleeding. Injured as she was, he could taste her demise and his return to a peaceful, ordinary life.

On impact with the ground, LilithZero screamed. The bullet had not shattered her bone, but there was a chance it had drilled straight through it. This was not how it was supposed to go. Never in her life had she experienced this much pain in the real world. She was a technomacer, a master of machines and computers- -and yet here shew as, bleeding out in the physical world. Many times she had delved into the machines, seeing what kind of pain the Illusion could bring her- -but that pain was like the Illusion itself; it felt real until compared to the real thing.

She began to run, or rather hobble as fast as she could. The amphetamines were helping, but unfortunately so was the HIV. Distantly, she realized that without a functional immune system this injury could get very bad very fast.

That was when the world around her started to shift. Several ghostly apparitions appeared on the border between the Illusion and Reality: pale, translucent alicorn ponies. They screeched horribly and rushed forward.

“No you don’t!” screamed LilithZero, raising her arms in defense. At the same time, she parried and internal hacking attempt. The attack was elegant and unexpected, but not impossible to counter. If anything, it made LilithZero feel better about her abilities. At least in the world of machines, she was still the master.

She started to run again and took a left, only to find herself on the far end of the alley she had just been running down. Upon seeing this, she gaped and ran the other way, only to find herself going the opposite direction she had intended. This caused her to start to panic until she realized what it was, and that the attack had been more elegant than she had thought. Her perception had been hacked; the world she was seeing did not match the internal maps she had downloaded previously.

More fear crept into her heart, but with it came resolve. She now understood what this was. It was not a simple assassination; one of those ponies- -or perhaps the target himself, for all she knew- -was a technomancer. This was a wizard duel.

With a cry of rage, she reached out into the program binding her and shattered it, returning her view of reality to the proper form. She ran forward again, stumbling under the dim lights and through the water that was condensing on the sidewalk. This was real, or so she thought. It was hard to tell. The attack had left Illusion and Reality blurred

“You’re not going to get me that way,” she said. “I don’t know who you are, but I do know that I am BETTER THAN YOU!”

“Really?” said a voice. LilithZero turned to see a relatively solid projection of a pony following her. For a moment she panicked, but she realized it was just an illusion, a vestige of yet another one of the many simultaneous attack she suddenly found herself fending off.

The pony stood beside her, but was not walking. She just appeared to float, facing LilithZero’s side and staring at her with massive unblinking eyes.

“What is this? You can’t take me on in the Illusion, so you’re doing magic tricks?”

“Why would I need to fight you there? You’re human. Or mostly human. Humans can’t die in the virtual word.”

“But ponies can. And I am going to rip your digital heart out!”

LilithZero struck out, but the pony deflected the blows easily. They were not focused, and LilithZero knew it. That, and something inside the pony was different. It was hard to see, but LilithZero felt like she had just touched something far bigger than she had expected to find.

“Odd choice,” said the pony. “If I were you, I would have attempted to perform a suppression field. To attempt to evade. But you chose to attack. Are you letting anger get the better of you? Or maybe pain?”

“I’m not in pain.”

“All humans are in pain. Every second of your miserable lives. From the moment a drone pulls you out of an artificial womb to the second that I put a bullet through your forehead. Pain, pain, pain. You have pain right now. I can read your vitals. It’s in your metadata. Blood pressure is dropping. You’re bleeding to death, Lilith Zero.”

LilithZero tried to hide her surprise, but it was too late. “So you know my name.”

“No. LilithZero is your handle. Your real name is Amanda Wallford.”

LilithZero froze and nearly stopped running. “How- -goddamn you! GODDAMN YOU!”

“I am a pony. I have no soul for your human god to damn. But you do. I wonder if it will. Do you believe in the afterlife? Because at this rate, you’re going to be meeting someone in about four minutes.”

“You’re lying, my math- -”

“Your math is wrong. Your programming is atrocious. No form, no forethought. Come on. Just give up. Stop running. I don’t really want to kill you all that badly. Just stop, and I can help you.”

“N- -No! You can’t beat me in the Illusion! I don’t even know who you are!”

“I have no need to brag about my name. And I don’t need to beat you in the illusion. I already said that. You weren’t listening. I just need to slow you down until I can come for you in the real world. But if you really want to know? Too bad.”

LilithZero screamed in anger and struck out at the projection. The image suddenly vanished, and to her horror LilithZero realized that the whole time she thought she had been running she had in fact been standing in place, trapped in yet another simulation. Her blood ran cold, and not just from the amphetamine- -and then she started running much faster, this time- -she hoped- -in the real world.

Twilight moved at a consistent pace, but not nearly at top speed. Despite the metadata she had fed the opposing technomancer, both she and Forth had extremely advanced bodies. Between the two, though, Twilight was far quicker. Still, she was not able to move at top speed. Doing so would have left Forth behind. Forth was her gun, and her primary weapon. Losing her was a death sentence.

Strangely, though, the human member of their party was able to keep up with them. This was odd in its own right: he was not a physically fit individual, nor did he show any signs of athletic prowess. In fact, he was terribly thin and sickly looking. Yet, somehow, he was maintaining a speed normally only achievable by practiced runners.

A change seemed to have occurred. Twilight could hear everything surrounding her, and she knew the sound human breaths were supposed to make. Elrod’s breaths did not make that sound. They were far longer, and far less strained, as if he were breathing in and out at the same time. This only confirmed some of Twilight’s suspicious. She knew that he possessed no cybernetic implants, but she had not run his genetic code. In fact, there was no way to short of pricking him with a small needle. He did not have hair, and did not seem to shed skin cells despite his scaly appearance. There was no doubt in her mind that he had undergone genetic modification, perhaps very recently.

“Look,” said Forth, pointing with her nose. “Blood.”

“We’re on the right track,” said Twilight. “I was in communication with her before she retracted and sealed. I saw her metadata. Her vitals are dropping.”

“She’s dying,” said Elrod.

“No. Not fast enough, anyway. Not with what she’s got inside her.”

“We have a trail,” said Forth, accelerating to follow the blood.

For now, Twilight thought to herself. This particular technomancer was inexperienced but seemed to have some level of natural talent. Injuries to her physical form would not affect her performance in what college mages called the Illusion. She was still dangerous, even bleeding. Perhaps even more so.

Suddenly, Twilight’s head jerked to one side. “Goddamn it!” she cried.

“What?” said Elrod, confused. Although he was not able to understand it, Twilight’s demeanor had suddenly changed substantially.

“She just reached out her connection- -she’s calling out to the Aetna-Cross drones!”

“Can she hack them?” demanded Forth.

“Not unless she had a month to meditate, but it doesn’t matter- -they’re already on alert from the sound of gunfire, and now they know right where we are- -”

They turned a corner between two high and seemingly abandoned concrete buildings and ground to a stop. There, on the far end of the road, they could see the technomancer. She was barely thirty meters away. Her long coat was stained dark red on one side from where her leg was bleeding, and she had left a trail. Elrod began to wonder just how much blood a person had in them. It was never something he had had cause to think until that very moment.

Then, without warning, two drones appeared on the far side of the path. They were massive, far larger than any Elrod had seen. Each of them stood at least thirty feet tall, and they were plated in heavy armor. Their roving diamond-lensed eyes scanned the area, and a booming voice issued from one of them.

At first it spoke in Standard Language, and Elrod did not understand. Then it addressed them in English: “Attention: No members of our care plan have been detected. However, property damage has been reported. Stay where you are and prepare for acquisition. Do not resist on penalty of medical euthanasia.”

Without warning the technomancer screamed. Elrod jumped back, sure that she was being attacked. It was not a normal scream, but rather one of agony and deep pain. He saw her drop to her working knee for a moment. Then, shaking, she stood up and ran between the drones’ legs.

The drones jerked and suddenly looked up. “Reassessing. Threat detected. Medical euthanasia protocols activated. Please remain calm and prepare for treatment.”

They began to walk forward and the ground shook as they approached.

“FUCK!” cried Twilight, immediately shoving Elrod behind the walls of the nearby concrete structure. In this position hiding behind the corner with the drones rapidly approaching from down the lane where the technomancer had escaped. Forth joined them.

“What happended?” asked Elrod, his voice becoming unusually high.

“She hacked them.”

“But you said she COULDN’T hack them!”

“I know what I said! She sacrificed two of her control arms to do it! Damn it, she must be desperate- -here!” Twilight reached into her coat and produced a single bullet. Despite there being only one, though, it was as large as her hoof. She passed it to Elrod. “You’re going to need this.”

Elrod picked it up and immediately realized that it was a .700 round. It took him a moment because he had never seen one before.

“Only one?”

“That thing had three ounces of depleted uranium, do you have any idea how much it costs?!”

Elrod knew the exact price of the metal, but he did not state it. Instead, he fumbled trying to load it into his otherwise empty gun.

“You had better make it count,” said Twilight. She turned to Forth, who was standing near the gap to the lane. “Forth, come on! There’s a way around, I don’t know if we can catch up, but we can’t stay here- -”

“My tactical assessment calculations indicate an eighty seven percent chance of eliminating one target. They indicate a sixty three percent chance of eliminating both.”

Twilight’s eyes went wide. “NO! You idiot, those are Aetna-Cross military units, you can’t fight them!”

“I can. I have a sixty three percent chance of success.”

“Sixty three- -that isn’t enough! I’m not going to risk you for that much!”

“You will not catch her if you do not take this path. I will eliminate the infidels.”

“FORTH! This is a DIRECT ORDER- -”

Forth did not listen. She instead stepped out into the lane.

Shot rang out, and Elrod screamed as a torrent of gunfire ripped through the path, tearing apart the pavement. Many of the bullets struck Forth, pushing her back several feet but not knocking her over. When the bullets ceased, Elrod looked up to see much of Forth’s skin on one side dangling off. It was still twitching. Underneath, though, there was a glint of heavy armor.

With one quick motion, Forth pulled away the excess skin. “Preparing counterattack. Missiles sound like a good choice.”

Her torso suddenly split down the middle, followed by her head. There was a jet of flame as two missiles shot from her body. They were followed by an explosion that nearly knocked Elrod off his feet as Forth fired what he could only assume was a massive cannon.

She fired again and again, and then closed her body and prepared to attack. Before she could move, though, a second shot rang out. This one was so large that it actually did knock Elrod off his feet, but it had not come from Forth firing a weapon. Rather, it had been from one of the drones returning fire.

Forth’s body erupted in flame and she was hurled backward twenty feet into a concrete wall. The building seemed to shake from the impact, and Elrod was sure she would be dead. Instead, though, she stood up.

Her armor was hard, but not indestructible. The shots from the automatic weapons that the drones used had dented it badly, and some of the drones from before had managed to penetrate it with industrial spikes or whatever blades they had handy. Whatever ungodly large round the Aetna-Cross drone had fired, it had worked. Forth’s armor had been breached, and the entire left half of her body had crumpled.

Despite this, she stepped forward. One of her front legs had been completely shattered, but the rear still seemed to work on that side at least a slightly. Her left wing had been severed completely.

“Forth!” cried Elrod.

She looked at him. Both her eyes were intact, but he could see the slight discoloration where bullets had struck the diamond lenses. She gave a smile with what was left of her mouth, and then shot forward.

Despite being injured, she moved surprisingly quickly. Elrod, not thinking, shoved his head around the corner to look.

“Idiot!” cried Twilight, pulling him back. She was surprisingly strong, but Elrod still managed to keep his eyes on the pair of drones.

They were almost on top of them now; their long legs had moved them forward with great speed. Although they had badly injured Forth, she had managed to very nearly kill one of them. It was filled with holes, and seemed to be smoking from part of its torso. Its optics hung down, and those that still saw were attempting to focus wildly. It was on the verge of death.

The other, though, seemed perfectly healthy. Forth had either chosen to concentrate her fire on one of them or it had somehow managed to avoid her attacks entirely. To Elrod, this was the drone she should have attacked. Instead, though, Forth charged the weaker of the two. She slammed her head into it, knocking it off balance. As it tried to compensate, she pushed open the right side of her body and opened fire with everything she had.

Whatever armor the police drones used, it was almost fully impenetrable to anything less than twenty millimeters. Forth kept firing, though, concentrating on areas that were already damaged. Within seconds, the drone lurched and fell to one knee. This was just in time too, because Elrod could hear the clicks from Forth’s weapons running out of ammunition.

She struck while it was down, charging forward and putting all of her weight into attacking its exposed and damaged leg. With one swift motion- -and a show of profound strength- -she tore the knee joint, causing the drone to lurch and fall.

Forth backed up, attempting to take aim at its head, but in her damaged state she was not fast enough to dodge the other drone. It opened fire, and the bullets tore through her. Both of her rear legs were instantly paralyzed and she fell. While she attempted to drag herself away with her one remaining functional hoof, the drone reached down and grabbed her. Without warning or hesitation, it took her badly damaged lower half in one hand and tore her in half.

“FORTH!” cried Elrod.

The drone turned toward him, and its optics narrowed. Crushed Forth’s lower half into dust and attempted to throw away her upper half, but as it did, she held on. In the distance, Elrod saw Forth smile. Then he saw nothing but light.

The force of the blast was so intense that he was thrown backward by the impact on his head alone. It had been the only part of him near the lane, and had Twilight not already have pulled him free he likely would have been torn apart from the blast.

Elrod fell onto his back and coughed. “Forth!”

“Damn it,” said Twilight, muttering to herself. “She imploded her reactor core. I hope you weren’t intending on ever having children, because you just took a ridiculous amount of rads. Oh well. Come on.”

“But Forth- -”

“It’s a core detonation,” said Twilight, rushing into the lane. “It worked. Come on!”

Elrod stood up, trying to clear his head. He then ran around the corner after Twilight but immediately stopped when he saw the wreckage on the other side.

The drone was still standing- -or rather, what was left of it was still standing. Most of its waist and legs remained intact, but that was about all. The other drone had mostly been torn to pieces and was attempting futilely to claw its way forward with half of an arm.

Compared to the drone, Forth had suffered much more damage. Elrod could see the charred, smashed remains of her lower half as well as bits of charred or molten metal around him. He looked down and saw what he was sure was one of her eyes, still attached to the metal that had once made up her face.

“F…Forth…”

“Are you going to move or what? I don’t have all day!” cried Twilight.

Elrod paused for only a moment, knowing that not even a pony could survive damage this intense. Then he ran over her body toward Twilight. He did not attempt to salvage any of Forth’s parts.

The technomancer had not managed to get far. Why exactly was unclear, but she had not gotten farther than twenty meters since she had gotten control of the drones. This might have been because she had stopped to rest, or because the blood loss- -or the strain of hacking secure drones- -had weakened her badly. When she saw Elrod and Twilight approaching her, though, she swore.

“Fuck me,” she said. “Why do you have to be so goddamn persistent? What did I ever do to you?!”

They probably did not hear her, and she did not care. She reached into her coat and removed several heavy, thick disks. They were her last resort, but now they were the only way she was going to get out.

She threw them behind her and used the last bit of strength she had to run. As she did, the metal disks clamped themselves into the cracked asphalt. A rod extended from each of them, and then tilted at the top to reveal that it was in fact a thin, narrow gun.

Twilight saw them and reacted faster than any organic being would have been able to do so. She stopped and grabbed Elrod by the leg and threw him behind a dumpster. She ducked in two, but having to protect him had cost her time. The air was filled with a strange sound, like a hissing electrical discharge combined with a high and fast-moving whine.

The impact hit Twilight in the flank as she ducked to cover. She winced and groaned before looking down. A hole had been cut in her trench coat, and her blue skin had been burned away to reveal the black sinews of artificial muscle beneath.

Elrod saw the wound and his eyes widened. “What the hell was that?!”

“Turrets, goddamn it!” Twilight checked her schematics. “This isn’t good! She’s headed toward an infrastructure hub- -if she gets there, she’s sure to lose us! And we’re not going to find her again! Goddamn it, we were SO DAMN CLOSE!”

“Can we get past the turrets?”

“How the hell am I supposed to do that?! They’re plasma projectors! I’m not armor-plated like Forth, I can’t just power through!”

“You’re a technomancer! Hack them or something!”

“Do you think I didn’t think of that?! They’re a closed system, I can’t get in! That’s why she used them in the first place!” Twilight opened her arm and looked at the chamber of the weapon mechanism. “Damn, three bullets between us and eight turrets. That’s not possible!”

“We have to catch her!”

“I know! But do you want to try to force your way past them? Their auto-targeted! You’d be melted in seconds!”

A strange look of recognition crossed Elrod’s face. “Targeted? What do they target?”

“What do you mean ‘what do they target- -’”

“I mean what do they target?! How do they know we’re here?”

“It’s a full-panel scanner! Biosigns, machine response- -anything that has a pulse or runs on a reactor core- -HEY STOP!!”

Twilight screamed, but it was already too late. Elrod stood up and tore off his coat, throwing it aside. Before Twilight could stop him and before he himself hesitated, he did what had to be done. He jumped for cover and ran toward the turrets.

The plasma projectors turned toward him, but only because he was moving. They quickly faltered and turned away, having determined that no target was approaching. They detected no pulse, no body temperature, and no brainwaves. Elrod had none of those things.

The turrets did not fire, nor did they notice him. Elrod sprinted forward after the technomancer, and Twilight watched from cover before moving down a narrow side-alley and spreading her wings, attempting to find another way.

She had succeeded. LilithZero was moving more slowly, and her internal meters were indicating severe trauma. Still, she was well within functional parameters. The pain in her leg was growing every second, but it was also changing. The sudden stab had been replaced with a dull ache as the drugs had kicked in, and she was beginning to move faster and faster. The road gave way to a long bridge over a deep gully, but she barely noticed the loss of cover.

It was only a matter of time. Once she got to the hub, she knew the path to take. The first order of business would be to get her leg amputated and replaced, and to have herself loaded up on antibiotics. She would need a washout period to get over the amphetamines and for her body to cure her HIV, but that would only take a few days. She could still do it. It was still possible.

Then these thoughts were rudely interrupted. What LilithZero really felt in a sudden instant was grave annoyance at why her body was suddenly tilting and confusion as to why her right foot had not fallen, or to why her whole right leg was suddenly racked with tremendous pain.

` She looked down, and her confusion only grew as she saw the ragged flesh where her lower leg had once been. It made no sense why her lower leg lay on the street behind her, disconnected and apart from her. Then it began to dawn on her. She became aware of the sound, the explosion of a bullet echoing off the high and empty buildings nearby. At the same time, she saw the man behind her fall, forced onto his back by firing a ridiculously oversized pistol.

The ground came up suddenly and struck LilithZero in the chest, knocking the wind out of her. She turned over and looked at the stump where her knee had once been and this time began to scream in both anger and horror. The bullet had severed her leg completely, and what little blood she had left was pouring out onto the street.

The man stood up. He was wearing a bulletproof vest and trousers but no sleeves. LilithZero recognized his face. He was supposed to have been her target. Now here he stood, holding a gun over her. This was inconceivably insulting.

He began to approach. LilithZero had no idea how he had made it past her turrets. She pretended not to care, but really desperately wanted to know. This particular target was not supposed to have any military experience; he was just some shlub that someone wanted dead. He was oddly competent.

With a great deal of pain, LilithZero rolled onto her back. The man- -the man SHE should have been killing- -approached her. His expression was strange, somehow. He was about to kill her, to fire a second shot from that massive pistol and this time into her head or chest, but he did not smile or looked pained. He was not even impassive. He just looked confused.

LilithZero never gave him a chance. She reached under her cloak and drew two machine pistols. There was no hesitation. She opened fire.

The air was filled with the odd and almost comical sound of ultra-rapid gunfire. The man was wearing a bulletproof vest, and the rounds that LilithZero was using did not penetrate it. His arms and head were exposed, though, and the bullets ripped through them with ease. LilithZero found herself screaming in rage as she watched his flesh tear away and his limbs fall away. Internally, though, she knew something was wrong. Human flesh did not break that easily, and when it did, the blood and tissue was red. Here, there was no blood: the only fluid that came out of his wounds was white, the same color as the flesh beneath his skin.

Somehow, he did not fall. LilithZero kept shooting round after round, her guns clicking through their ammunition as she watched the mental interface display ticking down the numbers until it reached zero. The firing solenoid clicked again and again, but no more bullets came. All five hundred rounds had been expended. The air smelled of gunpowder and something else- -something earthy and strange.

LilithZero’s scream of rage and fury continued though, except this time it shifted. It was no longer for the joy of finally eliminating an enemy who had caused her so much grief, but out of pure horror. She watched as the man’s torso- -still linked to his legs but completely devoid of arms and a head- -took a jerky step back, and then another as it balanced itself. It gurgled and belched out a sound that was almost like words, except distorted and screaming.

“OH GOD!” screamed LilithZero. “OH GOD NOW!”

The body stepped forward and suddenly distorted. Tissue shot from its empty shoulders and neck with almost explosive force. It was white at first and quickly began to rebuild what had been lost as it stretched and differentiated. When it was almost complete, the whole of the new parts were covered in a brown scaly surface that mostly flaked away to reveal pale human skin beneath. The skull of the man took a bit longer to assume the correct shape, and as his jaw clicked into place his eyes opened. Eyes that had never seen and that never would.

“WHAT- -WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU?!”

The man looked at her, and his expression grew somber. “The future, unfortunately.”

LilithZero reached under her coat, trying to find something. She had a sidearm, a .223 pistol, but she could not remember if she had loaded it- -or if it would even do any good. The man just watched her, and his eyes slowly crossed the floor to where his own pistol had fallen, still clutched in part of a hand that was rapidly decomposing into a thick, reeking liquid. He bent down and picked it up.

“NO!” cried LilithZero, raising her own backup pistol. “No, I- -”

Suddenly she screamed as a figure appeared near her. A violet pony leapt forward at her, and she raised her gun. LilithZero fired, but despite entering the pony’s chest it did not connect with anything solid. It went through. Confused, LilithZero cried out- -only to see another four identical violet ponies racing toward her.

“No, no, NO!” she cried, turning to shoot them and drawing a knife to attempt to defend herself. They charged at her or ducked back, but none of them were solid. The bullets went through them until there were none left in the pistol. In her panic, LilithZero did not think to attempt to purge her perception matrix or to resist the hacking attempt.

Then something slammed into the back of her head. She felt the grinding of metal against metal as something long and hard was forced into one of her auxiliary ports. As soon as it entered, the false ponies vanished, revealing only one.

“You fucker!” said LilithZero, putting her hand on the back of her head and feeling that a device had indeed been inserted into her hardline port. “You think you can hack my core programing shell? Just go ahead and try, I’ll tear you clean out of that body!”

“It’s not a transmitter,” said the Twilight. “And don’t try to pull it out. It’s set to go off if you do.”

“Go off?”

Twilight nodded. “It’s not a hacking tool. Or even meant to interface with your systems. It’s a four kilovolt static generator.”

LilithZero gasped in horror as she realized what that meant. The pony before her smiled very slightly. “You whorse! You didn’t- -”

“Try to remove it or give me a wrong answer and I send a high-voltage spike straight into your implants. No need to hack. Every computer system and implant you have will burn up in seconds.” She shrugged. “You might survive. Probably not, but maybe. If you do, though, you’ll never interface with any hardware ever again.”

LilithZero snarled at Twilight and then rolled her eyes. She pulled her hand away from the offending device and raised both hands. “I give, I give! Uncle or whatever the hell you want me to say! You win! No amount of money is worth this!”

“So we have an agreement?”

“I don’t really have a choice, do I?”

“No. You don’t.” Twilight sat down and pulled out a cigarette. “So, Amanda- -”

“LilithZero, you twit. You can at least do me that- -”

“I will call you whatever the hell I want to, after the trouble you caused for me! Now, why are you trying to kill my client?”

“You’re client? So you really are a whor- -”

Twilight leaned forward. “I’m not going to say it again. When I ask a question, answer it. Last warning. Next time, you’ll either be a corpse, a vegetable, or a normal person. Why are you trying to kill my client?”

“It’s a contract!” sputtered LilithZero. “That’s all it was! A bounty!”

“So you’re freelance.”

“What the hell do you think? Do you see any corporate tags on me?”

“I don’t,” said Elrod.

“Because corporations don’t hire inferior product,” said Twilight. She did not take her eyes off LilithZero. “What kind of contract? Who was the issuant?”

“That’s complicated!”

“Then you get the volts.”

“NO! NO! Wait! Goddamn it, I said it was complicated, not that I wasn’t going to tell you! It’s not like it even matters that much! I was double-dipping!”

Twilight raised an eyebrow. “Double-dipping? What does that mean?”

“It means I took on two contracts for the same target and was trying to cash in on both!”

“So you’re working for two organizations.”

LilithZero chuckled. “Worse than that, I’m working for two competitors! Sworn enemies, even, and I was going to fleece both of them out of their pants!”

“Who were they?”

“The first was an anonymous source.”

“So you don’t know.”

“No. I never take jobs I don’t research, I’m not an idiot. I tracked it back to a real nasty terrorist group. I don’t know what they are, some sort of hippy-sect. They have a thing against genetic engineering and REALLY hate Monsanto for some reason.”

“They ordered you to kill Bronislav Spitzer’s kid.”

LilithZero looked surprised. “Yeah. The High Chairman’s son. Send him a message that they mean business.”

“And the other?”

“Some place called Organization A. Before you ask, yes. I looked it up. They did a better job hiding, but it’s just a shell. I cut through their security and found that it’s a broker. The source was Monsanto.”

“Monsanto? That doesn’t make any sense. Why would Monsanto want the High Chairman’s son dead?”

“I guess the Board of Directors decided they wanted to terminate the dynasty. I don’t blame them, the guy was apparently a freak anyway. Completely incompetent.”

“A trait both of you seem to share.”

“But that doesn’t make sense,” said Elrod. “I am not Bronislav Spitzer. I know who that is, but I’m not him.”

“No shit! I can see that now! But I didn’t know that thirty minutes ago!” She lay back down on the ground and tapped the back of her head against the pavement before looking out over the landscape beyond the bridge. “Fuck…do you know how much money I spent on this op, and the planning? The planning alone took months. But I guess that’s why no one else took the contract.”

“Why?” asked Twilight.

“Because B. Spit is in hiding. Or that’s what they say. I don’t think so.”

“What do you think?”

“I think someone already offed him. Someone who didn’t care about either bounty. But what the hell do I know?” She pointed at Elrod without looking at him. “If you’re not him, I don’t have any leads. I’m screwed.”

“You’ll recover,” said Twilight. “But I need to know.”

“Know what? I told you everything.”

“The drones. The ones that look like ponies. The one that tried to kill me in Level C, and the one that shot at Elrod before you forced the industrial drone to try to off him. What are they? Where did you get them? And who is Jennifer?”

LilithZero stared blankly. “What the fuck? I don’t know!”

“Then voltage.”

“NO! Come on, man!”

“I’m not a man.”

“You know what I mean! I don’t know anything about that!”

“Someone tried to snipe me,” said Elrod. “I ran, and when I did, you tried to kill me.” He paused. “The first time.”

“Well it wasn’t me! Look at me, I’m a freelancer! I’m not even in a guild! Where the hell do you think I’m hiding the cash to get my own drones? I barely had the cash for those stupid defective turrets!”

“Then you didn’t try to kill him in Steel Point L6?”

“L6? No, I’ve never even been there! Look, the only reason I managed to find him in the first place was because I got a tip!”

“A tip? From who?”

“How should I know? I don’t check anon tips! It takes time and effort and who even cares?”

“And you didn’t question why someone told you exactly where your target was, clearly knowing that you were working on two contracts- -lucrative ones, I’m guessing- -and not wanting to just take him out themselves?”

LilithZero paused. “Um…no? I don’t know, I didn’t care at the time! As long as I get the money, it doesn’t matter!”

“And Level C?”

“Do I look insane to you? Just walking around there gives you VD! Hell no! And if I had known you were down there, why would I bother with you? I’d take out the TARGET.”

Twilight stared at her for a moment and seemed to deem the answers satisfactory. “Fine,” she said. “I deactivated the spike. You can remove it.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. Or just leave it in for all I care.”

“You’re just letting her go?” said Elrod.

“She isn’t useful to us.”

“No, I’m not,” said LilithZero. She reached behind her head and snapped out the implant. She was relieved for a moment until a violet hoof slammed into her face, instantly shattering her nose and breaking her jaw.

“OH FUCK!” she cried, grabbing at her face as her nose streamed blood. “What did you do that for?!”

“THAT,” said Twilight, instantly silencing her, “was for what you did to Forth. She didn’t deserve that. Now leave. Or bleed to death, I don’t care.”

Twilight turned away, and Elrod looked back. He pointed at LilithZero’s severed leg. It had been detached for so long that there was now no chance of succeeding in rejoining it with its owner. Not that LilithZero had wanted it anyway. “Are there any cybernetics in that?”

“Touch it and I will kill you.”

“You don’t seem to be able to. But I will honor the request. I think it’s because I pity you. I’ve never felt pity before.” He paused. “I don’t like it.”

With that he turned away and joined Twilight.

LilithZero watched the go. She hated them, but no more than she hated herself. The whole time, she had been pursuing the wrong target to begin with. Bronislav Spitzer VIII was a pure human, one of very few. His whole bloodline was. That thing she had tried to kill had not been. It had not been human at all. LilithZero wondered the Twilight-pony even knew.

Not that it mattered. It was not her problem. At the moment, she was far more preoccupied with the fact that her face had been bashed in, her leg had been both shot and severed- -although in accordance with her luck, the part with the first hole in it was still connected- -and she had wasted the better part of twenty thousand vod on a mission that now had no hope of success.

Still, she could not help but wonder about what the pony had asked her. She had in fact never considered the source of that strange tip. It became clear to her now that someone had played her, and that was not something she could abide by. Whoever it was had to pay- -literally. LilithZero was sure she could find something to extort money out of them, and she would get paid for her work one way or another- -or even make a profit.

The first order of business, though, was getting herself together. Now that she was not fleeing, she took a moment to apply an emergency tourniquet around her leg. The bleeding slowed, and she was surprised to see that she was still conscious. Infection was still a risk, but not a huge one. She began to search through an emergency-services directory, trying to find the lowest cost ambulance she could afford. With her current vod level, there were not many.

Eventually she found one and moved to call. As she did, though, something went wrong. LilithZero paused, trying to figure it out only to realize that she did not know how to call. That thought alone should have terrified her: direct-contact initiation was something most children could do straight out of the tank. She could do so much more- -but for some reason she could not remember.

In fact, she found that she could not remember much. Why she was there, or how she had gotten there. The memories were hazy and becoming hazier. There was a pain in the side of her head, and LilithZero reached up to her ear. She pulled her hand away and saw bright red fluid on the tips. Although her nose was bleeding profusely, her ears had been clean. Yet they were now bleeding. Had she thought to look, she would also have seen copious blood spilling from her eyes as well.

Suddenly in a panic she realized what was happening, if only distantly. She tried to raise a mental shield, but it was too late. She had become to confused. All her firewalls had fallen without her even noticing, and her mind was fully open to the Illusion- -and to one particular hand within it.

She tried to stand, but her balance fell and she failed, falling into a pool of her own blood. By this time she had begun to grow tired, and she felt herself going to sleep. Still, she knew that was not right. She tried to life herself again, but could not.

As she did, though, LilithZero saw a shape. Her vision was beginning to fail, but she thought she saw something standing near her, something drawn from the Illusion. It was not so much seen as it was felt and understood: a shadowy shape, one that was grayish white and that somehow did not have a real form. Depending on how LilithZero looked at it or even thought about it, it was either a small pale horse or a gaunt, sickly woman.

Then her vision failed entirely, as did her mind. LilithZero’s life only lasted for a few second longer as her head slid forward into the pool of blood. Thin wisps of smoke rose from her cranial implants and from the charred hair over them. Twilight’s voltage-spike adaptor sat barely a foot away, unused and unactivaited. It would have been a better end than the one that LilithZero was given.