Holly's eyes widened and she recoiled as Lanson's body thumped wetly to the ground in front of her.

The young man had been virtually disembowelled, his ribcage exposed, the metal lines of his implants shining through the blood and gore. Her eyes moved unwillingly over the body, over the Real-Raid badge on the shoulder of the shredded AmpCore jacket, and up to the face, pale and twisted with agony.

Grennick Lanson. She swallowed hard and took another step backwards, power seeping into her amplifier. What had she found out here? Eventually she tore her eyes up to meet the cold crimson of the leader of these butchers.

"Who are you?" she hissed.

"Frankly, none of your fucking business." He slipped off of his crate and turned his back. "Bye, Holly. I'll catch you in the next life." As he walked away, he gave a small nod to the female cyborg. She pulled out a remote from her jacket pocket, and pressed a button.

Holly felt the single zip out of it, away from her and deeper into the substation complex. She braced, letting her power leak into the amplifier, a barrier sweeping into place around her in preparation for attack.

It didn't come. The codewraiths, robots and augmented humans just... melted away. She tracked them with her amplifier as they slipped away into the connecting passages, and her thoughts became a whirl of confusion. The cyborg leader's threat had been pretty explicit.

Then she was alone. The hair prickled on the back of her neck as she slowly rotated, amplifier raised to strike.

Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing.

Her brow furrowed. She took a step back towards the exit.

Holly felt the thing before she saw it. At first she couldn't figure out what her AmpCore senses had touched somewhere out there in the corridors. It was like a lump of lead moving through the datastream – a brutal, inert thing that sucked in all light and life from the world around it. It was like trying to hold an abyss of nothingness in your hands.

And it was coming right towards her.

Fear chilled her veins, and she turned and ran. Her booted feet battered the metal of the substation halls, and behind she felt the empty presence closing in. Gritting her teeth, she twisted her amplifier and dropped an array of gravity warping landmines behind her, invisible bends in the world that should slow down anything chasing her.

The emptiness kept coming. It passed through her traps; Holly heard the buckle of metal and scream of breaking circuitry.

It didn't slow down.

She sprinted as fast as her legs would carry her, gently manipulating the resistance of the air around her to gain just a sliver of extra speed. The guards seemed to have disappeared along with everyone else, and she burst out into the city again, the great rise of the transformer plant rising in front of her. The street was as suddenly devoid of life as the rest of the substation.

A temporary refuge, she thought. That was the only reason she'd been allowed to even get this far. That bastard just wanted to get a look before he and his cronies scurried off to carry out... whatever their plan was.

Metal warped and screamed behind her, tearing Holly from her thoughts. She twisted around, backing away with her amplifier raised. Out in the open now, she wanted to see what had been sent after her. The door to the substation gaped open, but the corridor beyond remained dark, the interior lights providing little for her eyes to latch onto.

She waited, senses questing in the gloom. The strange, slippery nothingness in the datastream sputtered, like a flickering television set. Fear got the better of her, and with a snarl of effort, Holly wrapped her tendrils around the structure of the entranceway, and collapsed it.

Girders and struts caved under her wrench of gravity, panic lending strength to her. The crash echoed deafeningly through the narrow street, belching smoke and sparks in all directions. Holly exhaled sharply. Nothing was following her out that way.

She turned, and found a blade swinging for her head.

Years of training in the duelling grounds of AmpCore's Sharks had hardened her natural reflexes, and that was the only reason she avoided being decapitated. Holly dropped, terror surging in her veins as she felt the whoosh of the metal across the back of her neck, close enough to clip off a spray of hair before she hit the ground.

On instinct, she rolled. Something punched through the concrete where she'd been lying an instant before. It was all a blur, some sinewy dark thing looming over her that she didn't have time to focus on. All she could see were the blades. With a whip of her amplifier, she let out a pulse of gravity that tossed her away from her assailant, buying her a few precious meters. She twisted to one knee and pivoted.

She finally got a good look at it, and revulsion brought bile to her mouth.

The creature was quadrupedal, sort of, with four segmented legs protruding out from beneath a flat-bed carapace. Grafted to the top of that, was something that once, long ago, might have been a human being.

There was a gaunt face, but that was largely where the resemblance to an actual person ended, consumed by a creeping infestation of tech grafts. White, dead eyes stared sightlessly into the gloom, lidless and kept open by a swarm of dark wire tendrils that crept back over the grey-skin of the scalp like ivy. The thing's mouth twitched; atrophied teeth clacked together.

She could see where its arms vanished down into the machinery at the front of the main rig – some kind of control mechanism, replicated at the back where stunted legs disappeared from view. Four more limbs sprouted from the monsters' back, like blasphemous angel wings, twisting and rasping with retractable blades.

The feeling of emptiness was all around her now. Her mind raced as she tried to make sense of what she was looking at. Some escaped demon from the Schism, half-alive, half... something else. Was it some kind of dampening field? Was this thing consciously generating it? Or was it just some accidental by-product of creating such an abomination?

Those white eyes focused on her. Holly felt and icy, glacial cold seeping into her bones, her skull beginning to pound. Her implants tightened against her skeleton and she howled in pain. Desperate self-preservation powered through the agony of the invisible assault, and she unleashed a blast from her wand.

The creature neatly scuttled sideways out of the path, but it was enough to dislodge the connection. Holly staggered to her feet, blinking and refocusing, reaching out to her attacker with the intention of ripping its legs out from under it.

It was instinct, and it nearly got her killed. With the internal principle, you could kill a human instantly if you ruptured the right artery, but this thing had nothing for her to grab onto. She floundered for a moment, and it rushed at her, moving in a spider-like zigzag. One swing narrowly missed her leg as she leapt back. Holly dragged a barrier into place around her as it swung again.

The buffer of gravity barely slowed the oncoming blade. Holly turned, and the edge gashed her upper arm.

Letting out a yelp, she ducked and scampered back, ripping and tearing at the world around her to bring the temperature of the air around her attacker plummeting down below freezing. Frost grew across its skin; ice formed on the metal exterior. Its mouth opened and a frustrated, crackling sound emerged.

It slowed, but it didn't stop. Shaking all its limbs violently, it skittered left and right, maintaining constant motion to stop her from freezing it solid. Holly's skull throbbed and she felt a trickle of blood from her nose.

Something thudded into her stomach. Holly coughed in shock, before realising that the monster had hacked a chunk of pavement out of the ground, smacking it like a golf ball and sending it right at her. Her concentration broke; the cold fell away, and it was on her.

The heavy weight bore her backwards and she smashed into the unyielding concrete. The back of her head smacked off the ground and her amplifier clattered away. Dazed, Holly stared up through a haze of pain and horror as the creature brought its corpse-face just inches from hers.

The pallid, parchment-like skin stretched over what was left of the thing's skeleton, and the scent of dead flesh and chemicals filled her nose and mouth, making her gag. Two of the rear limbs arched up behind its head like scorpion tails, blades whirring like surgical implements.

Holly screamed as it struck.

Before the weapons could slice her to pieces, a thunderous bolt of white hot energy slammed into the creature's flank, lighting up the street like a supernova. The monster was hurled sideways, and Holly closed her eyes with a hiss, hearing a horrible, gurgling scream rake through the air. The blinding glare remained for several seconds, a fearsome amount of thermal energy pumping through the atmosphere around them, before it finally fell away.

Sweat beaded on Holly's cheeks from the sudden heat, mixed with the steam from the vaporised remnants of ice. She opened her eyes and sat up, clutching the back of her head with one hand.

Holly winced as she turned her head to where the blast had come from. A dark figure approached like a mirage amidst the smoke.

"Oh, you've got to be fucking kidding me," a voice gasped.

*

When the smoke cleared, Piper found herself staring down at none other than Holly Lockley.

The machine – if it was a machine, she couldn't really tell right now – lay in a smoking heap a dozen meters away, metallic limbs spasming violently, what was left of the flesh sizzling away into a sludge.

She'd heard the commotion and, following Cassie's directions, found herself here, with all her elation dribbling away.

Genuine disbelief. That was all she felt. Holly god-damn Lockley. It would have to be her, wouldn't it? And much as she would have loved for that to be the worst thing about this, she couldn't stop her eyes from drifting to the dying thing that had just absorbed every drop of combustive force she could throw at it.

It had been enough, but Piper didn't feel reassured. The energy she'd poured into that strange, empty creature would have levelled a building, and it wasn't even totally destroyed yet, still stubbornly clinging to a vestige of life.

She kept her amplifier raised, stepping forward tentatively, her gaze flicking between the machine and Holly. Once she was standing over her old AmpCore classmate, she stopped, glaring down her. Right now, she just didn't have the words.

"Stay where you are," Piper hissed eventually. Then she turned, pointing her amplifier at the twitching hybrid thing.

"Piper, wait," Holly croaked, her voice weak and one hand clinging to the back of her skull. "It's... we need to-,"

"Shut your fucking mouth." Piper didn't even look at her. She took aim, gathered another boiling cauldron of energy together around the tip of her wand, and let fly.

A second bolt of destruction smashed into the machine. What was left of the flesh and bone was painted across the roadside, and the armoured carapace tore open, spilling its innards over concrete. The insectoid limbs finally stopped twitching, and Piper felt the horrible, empty sensation finally begin to fade, like someone was lifting a cover from over her eyes.

She stared at it for several seconds.

Cassie?

Yes?

You think it's dead?

I very much think so. Though I understand why you want to be sure.

She felt the twinge of unease in her passenger. Ever seen anything like that before?

Not that I recall. Cassie paused. Perhaps Ms Lockley can help?

Piper grimaced, but she didn't exactly have a lot of options right now. Only Holly knew why such a creature had been unleashed on her. Lowering her amplifier, she turned.

"Well, I've got to say," she began, "you really are about the last person I thought I'd run into when I came out here."

Holly managed a weak chuckle. "Yeah, back at you, Piper. You look good."

"You look like shit." She jerked her head towards the wreckage. "Who'd you piss off this time? Someone else find a knife sticking out of their back?"

Holly's expression darkened as she struggled to her feet again. She took her hand from her head and looked at it. Crimson stained her palm.

"Spare me the holier-than-thou shit, Piper," she muttered. "I've had a long enough day without having to listen to you on your moral high horse."

"Oh, sorry. Next time I'll let you get cut to pieces." Piper pointed at the cyborg again. "What the fuck is that thing?"

"I don't know."

"And I'm supposed to take your word for that?"

"I swear, Piper. I don't know." Holly raised her hands, wincing. "I've never seen anything like it before."

"Alright, then take a guess."

"It's Schism-era, but that's all I can be sure of." She cast a bleak glance at the remains. "You didn't have to-,"

"Yes, I did. I'm not leaving scraps for you and your friends to pick at and start building more of these fucking things."

"Piper, that's not why I'm here!" Holly exclaimed. "Look, I get it. I know how you must feel about me."

"I wouldn't bet too heavy on that."

"Fine! But after everything that happened our there – with the wraiths; the AI – they cut me loose. Blacklisted, abandoned. Dead to the god-damn world. I am all alone out here, and I can never go back home." Holly let out a shuddering breath. "I'm just trying to stay alive."

Piper frowned, her amplifier twitching against her thigh. There was a large part of her that was seriously considering just killing Holly now and being done with the whole business. It would be easy. The former agent's amplifier lay several meters away, out of reach.

A face flashed unbidden into her mind. Kirk's face. Much as she'd tried to block it out, it was emblazoned on her brain, that moment of shock, horror and revulsion that he just couldn't contain. He'd watched her kill Cutter Jennings, and not just kill. She'd drawn it out, piece by piece, inch by inch, making him pay for all the hurt and hell he'd reigned down on the city over the years.

But no matter how she justified it to herself, Kirk's face didn't go away. It didn't change.

I know what I saw.

"Piper," Holly ventured, her hands still raised, "we're out here looking for the same thing."

"Are we?"

"The things that killed those gangers down by the docks? The things that came from Hadrian South? I don't want them in Hadrian, any more than you do."

"So, you're just out here trying to help, out of the goodness of your heart?"

"I didn't say that. Maybe this is my ticket back to a real life. If I can help."

Piper's frown deepened. "But why here. Why are you out at this plant?"

"I..." Holly hesitated, and to Piper's surprise, she could see the girl battling down a lump in her throat. "A friend of mine," Holly managed after a moment. "Something killed him. I traced it here. Kind of a long story. But that thing there, that's not all I found out here. It's the tip of the iceberg." She took a breath, a beseeching expression on her face. "Piper, I can help you. There's something-"

"Help me?" Piper scoffed. "You really think I'm gonna go down that road?"

"God, fuck, Piper do you think I had a choice?!" Holly yelled, finally dropping her hands. "You think I enjoyed screwing you over? You think I wanted to kill Ferra and have all of my friends at AmpCore hate me? No! I had a job to do. I am not perfect, but I'm done being judged for doing the same fucking thing that everyone else in this bloody city does! I've been punished enough."

Her voice echoed through the empty street until silence descended on them again. Holly's shoulder's sagged and she stared right into Piper's eyes.

"Nice speech," Piper said after a moment.

"Did it work?"

She sighed, indecision twisting her stomach in knots. Not replying straight away, Piper walked over to where Holly's wand lay, and scooped it up from amongst the rubble. Then she strode back, stopping in front of her former-comrade, lips pursued thoughtfully.

"Let's talk, Holly," she said finally, sliding the amplifier into her jacket pocket, "but I'm keeping this."

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