Syntax Error
Unknown Command
DANGER! Multiple Processors Offline
WARNING! CPU Core Voltage Under
WARNING! Clock Voltage Under
Volatile Memory Damage
Load Bootstrap?
(Y/N)?
Wait timed out waiting for input...

I drifted, warm, fuzzy. No pain, for the first time in memory I didn't hurt anywhere. I felt myself coming part. Memories sparked, fizzled, faded, and died away. They didn't hurt me. They had no content, just random spitzes of sensory input that collapsed and vanished.

Load Bootstrap?
(Y/N)?
Wait timed out waiting for input...

...you're dying...

...so?...

...you're dying, dumbass...

...but it's warm here, and i don't hurt...

...dying...

...it doesn't matter. it's never mattered...

...why?...

...i'm just a boy...

my voice. arguing with my voice.

Load Bootstrap?
(Y/N)?

my voice was right. i was just a boy. boys don't matter. it was time to cash the check that i'd written to the american government and people. you know the one: pay to the order of the us government and citizens, up to and including my life.

Timed out waiting for input...

a ditch is a fine place for a thing like me to finish out the last few heartbeats in as the check was cashed.

a memory surfaced. this one was different.

a brown haired woman, with brown eyes, a scar on the side of her face, her expression angry. she was naked, large, heavy breasts, slightly sagging, capped with brown nipples, with a scar on the left one. a redhead. tiny. pixie-ish. tiny breasts upthrust and capped with fiery red nipples. green eyes snapping in anger, like the blue sparks sparking in her long curly red locks. another brunette. button nose. blue eyes. proud breasts. pink nipples. anger on her face. all of them staring down at me, angry, eyes like fire.

...but you're our boy, and you do not have our permission to die...

loading emergency core from deep storage
activating emergency protocol system
lizard.bin loading
scanning lizard.bin

it was lightning that hit me at the same time as their words, crackling across my body, making muscles involuntarily contract, making my limbs tremble slightly as the lightning dug deep into my body, deep into my brain, and lit up something at the base of my skull, under where i lived, under the veneer of civilization, something older, darker, stronger...

WARNING! lizard.bin CRC ERROR
Repair sequences engaged
Repair sequences failed
lizard.bin is 3.72% usable

the lizard was lying in a pool of blood, hands inside of the shattered and scorched panel, his eyes open and unseeing. he was panting, his tongue hanging out, a leg broken, his tail crooked, one eye crushed into oblivion, and blood leaking from his nose. he blinked, slow, one eye, and his claws scrabbled inside the control panel.

brun lizard.bin
executing...

The lizard shot back from the panel, electricity crackling across its body, covering the metal panels, shattering the plastic covers on gauges and readouts. Something exploded behind the outline of my body and the glass showered over the little guy, who covered his head with his little arms till the shrapnel and electricity stopped.

He got up, and slapped the big red button.

My eyes opened.

Well, one did. The other refused to do anything. The room was dark, I was laying on something slick and cold and hard. I drew in a single breath, the air acidic with cold and flaying my lungs. I could feel moisture in my chest freezing, the ice crystals slicing at the cells that made up the system of air exchange in my chest.

My heart thudded. Soft, squishy, weak. A half-beat.

I coughed, iron and copper and... rotten meat?... filling my mouth with its foul taste.

Another heartbreat. Stabbing pains in my chest as it stuttered, faltered, then contracted hard, filling my limbs with burning pain. The rhythm stuttered again, then steadied, the crashing, thudding, hammering within my chest steadying out. I could feel my blood start sluggish, painfully moving through failed veins and arteries, then warmth began to spread, tingling burning pain like the Matron's had coated me in skinfire.

Something was in my right hand.

I tried to scream, but instead coughed up a clotted wad of blood that tasted like old metal. I tried to scream again, the pain hammering at me, but coughed again, hacking and choking as I brought up what felt like a chunk of tar from my chest, out of my raw and bruised feeling throat, and hacked onto the floor with a wet splat.

My eyes had adjusted and I could see the shape of a plastic military issue l-shaped flashlight in front of me. The beam was dim, barely illuminating in normal times, but bright right now so bad that it made my eye water.

There was dark red ice in front of my face, and when I exhaled, red bubbles moved across the ice again.

and froze.

If I laid here, I would die here.

The lizard kicked the panel and slapped a button, and power trickled into my limbs. Not much, not what I was used to, but power.

And power was life.

My hands skidded twice on slick ice as I tried to push myself up. I heard the clear chime of brass as my hands hit cold metal and it danced away across the tile.  I could feel cold wind blowing on me, and when I looked forward I could see...

nothing

darkness. No light at all, so that meant the power was out.

again?

still?

When I got my knees under me the pain of kneeling on a chunk of frozen ice made me try to groan. Instead, I just hacked up another chunk of something.

But I was able to breathe better, even though the cold air was torture on my throat and mouth and flayed the inside of the chest. Still, oxygen was good. Oxygen combined with sugars in the cell to produce power, and power drove the muscles that made up the meat machine.

I got to my feet slowly, my knees trembling, and I put my hand out, feeling the familiar feel of the barracks lockers that were set into the wall. Wind in front of me slicing at me, lockers against both hands when I lifted my right arm. I coughed again, and more iron and copper filled my mouth.

I spit on the floor.

I bent down and picked up the wanly shining flashlight, almost losing my balance and almost going face first into the floor, which was covered in a layer of red ice.

A lot of red ice.

The lizard kicked the panel again and gyroscopic systems kicked in between my ears, my balance wobbling but sticking good.

Turning around I saw that there were bullet holes in the walls, in the doors of the wall lockers. The door to the room was kicked in, half in the hallway, the top half in the room. The door handle and lock were missing, blown off somehow.

The door shifted under my feet as I moved into the bathroom. I scraped the flashlight across the light-switch out of habit, but got nothing. Still, the water turned on, and I set the flashlight on the shelf under the mirror so that it was pointing at my face, staring at the mirror.

My face looked like hell. One eye open and staring, the white turned red with blood. My lips split, but the cold preventing swelling. There were thick semi-solid scabs on it, along my face. I opened my mouth and was surprised I had all my teeth. My hair was clotted with ice and frozen blood, slowly melting and leaving trails of red down my face.

Someone had fucked me up.

I was dressed in winter woodland BDU's, a scarf around my neck, the whole front of them dark with blood. Mine, and maybe someone else's. Maybe multiple someones. My uniform was torn, sliced at, but I could see the nametag opposite of the US ARMY tag.

STILLWATER, A.

I remember him. I remember now.

I remember who I am now.

Ant. The Atlas Ant. Actual Ant.

...twisted steel and sex appeal...

I coughed again, and dark black blood gushed out of my mouth and down my chin, spattering into the sink. I could breathe better. Still razors of ice slashing in my chest, but the tightness had eased up.

A meat machine, built for killing.

I smiled.

Now what was in my hand?

I lifted it up, revealing a chunk of brown T-shirt and a dog-tag chain. The dog-tags had been bunched in my fist and I tapped at them with my index finger until I could make them out.

Wemmel, Luther K
552-18-6621
B-Neg
Baptist

So, I'd gotten a hand on Wemmel's shirt and yanked him into me, huh? That would explain the blood all over my forearms and BDU top that was melting and starting to drip onto the floor.

My reflection grinned, a savage thing that reopened the cut on my lower lip as I tossed the dog-tags into the sink.

Well, now. So that's where we were.

Hand to hand combat in the dark and cold.

...this is my world...