2 Months objective later:

  “I still can’t believe you lied to me!”

  <>I did not lie. I omitted facts.

  “That’s considered a lie. You knew who I was the whole time! And you said you randomly selected me!!”

  <>From three others in the building. All of whom I had prior research on.

  “Liar, liar, pants on fire…. Fuck it. Whatever.” I sighed and sat up on my therapy couch in the VR psych office to look directly at the ‘therapist’ Naylle was speaking through. “So you don’t think I should go with the blob of nanites with arms and a face for normal days? I admit I do… feel better like this as a person.”

  <>Good, the program also agrees that a human form will help with your dysphoria. Especially since you’ve got one that fits your perceived gender now. Fighting as a blob is okay, in fact seems to cause a dissociation for you that helps preserve your mental stability. But for everyday use a more human form is a must.

  “Did we need to go with the Jade Beauty look? Can’t we just tone it back a bit, generic it up a little? It’s not like I remember what my face was.” I dropped into a flat stare as Naylle pulled up a 3D render of who I once was. “I know what it looks like. I never want to see that again, by the way. No, I mean I don’t have an attachment. So if I’m going to have a face it might as well be a new one!”

  Naylle, during my therapy, had given me the file they had acquired on me from before even choosing me via random draw as a host. It had brought back a lot. But some of it was still, just gone. Still, I was able to remember enough. My original personality had apparently resurfaced, at least according to digital records Naylle could scrape up. I wasn’t so sure, but I certainly felt better about myself. Not the old me, but the new. Old me could suck a bag of dicks.

  <>Ah! I understand now. Perhaps, going with your generic idea, we keep the unearthly beauty but go with something low key? Understated even. Something that will fit in anywhere, in any culture on earth?

  “Yeah. That sounds better.” I sighed and looked over at what Naylle had shifted the vile previous form to. “Hurm…. A, why am I naked? B, should we talk tattoos? Cause it looks okay. Maybe a little shorter? Five-Six ish, a more narrow lithe frame. Yeah like that. Smaller up top, thanks. No need to go wild there. Wider hips. What’s the most popular hair and eye color? Brown I think. Let’s mix it up a little and go Hazel and Auburn.”

  <>Really? This is a commonly preferred shape of… Hourglass? Yes, an hourglass figure. The rest is reasonable.

  “Yeah. Just a little pear shaped.” I leaned forward and sighed, staring at a point in space between me and the image for a moment before refocusing. “Hummm, yeah. Okay. Shave an undercut but leave the mid back length hair. Left side for the undercut.”

  <>I thought you were going for Uncanny Valley?

  “I am. That’s why the whole thing is perfectly even bilaterally. Left and right are mirrored perfectly, right? So the rest is enough to make it even more subtle. Especially the incongruity of the tattoos and undercut being asymmetrical.”

  <>Very well. You said Tattoos? Any in particular?

  “Yeah. I want UV ink wing on the back of the left shoulder, rainbow if you can.”

  <>Rainbow UV ink is doable. Your disguise facade catalog allows for considerable customization.

  “Nice!” I gave a thumbs up as the figure rotated to show the back. “Now I want a series of black feathers down the arm, terminating just at mid forearm, one for each half decade I’ve been alive. Five additional on the ribs under the arm. Those will be tipped in red.”

  <>Why? I’m afraid I don’t like the logic i see coming there.

  “One, the lowest and furthest from the wing, will have blood on it. The next up will have water droplets, the next will have car tire tracks….”

  Naylle interrupted me there. <>The next with a rope and the last with a bullet? The way’s you attempted suicide in your youth?

  “Exactly.” I sighed and leaned back. "The rest… I’ll cover them later. I’m tired, and antsy. Can we go out yet?”

  <>Yes. You have finished your recuperation. We may begin operations in the real world once again. How would you like to proceed?

  “Good, I'm going stir crazy. Two months of therapy, sleep and combat sims…. Right!” I suddenly burst to life after trailing off in thought for a moment, startling the therapist AI which was sitting patiently. “For now let's get back to the real and make a murder ball again. Gotta dig our way out. Then I wanna check the lake, make sure nothing’s there and if there is. Kill it.”

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  <>I do believe the irregularities of previous encounters from the time of your activation until we arrived at this location were made from a tactical class of Antithesis. Likely located deep in the lake, hidden somewhere. As you are wont to say; “it was fishy as hell.”

  “Yeah….” I sighed and turned to the AI therapist Naylle was using as a puppet. “And thanks Naylle. For everything. Okay. Let’s do this.”

  <>You’re welcome. It’s been a hell of a ride and I’m looking forward to the next stretch. Lets. Naylle had softened its voice from the usual brusk baritone, actual emotion leaking in for once.

  The VR Sim dissolved around me, leaving me as the new me for a second before I liquified into my new nearly pure nanite form and the rock and earth around me came to my perceptions. I sighed internally again before shifting to my recently minted Murder Ball, and began to dig back out the way I came in.

  The path was remarkably easy to follow. Well maybe not. I had left a bunch of concrete plugs and silt in my path with a few patches of muddy water. It was easier to cut around the plugs than through though, those things were tier one materials, as opposed to the surrounding bedrock which was warm butter in comparison.

  Once I reached the river where the silt was thick I shifted back to blob mode and pushed tendrils up to look around.

  [We ain’t found shit.] I did my best disgruntled desert combing spaceball voice.

  <>Indeed. What do you think, shall we send a horde of micro drones or go yourself? We were both definitely feeling more comfortable with each other anymore.

  [Unnhhhh…. Do I have to? Damnit. Yes I do. We haven’t enough mass to make enough micro drones and a macro would be quickly caught. Might as well recon in force.] I glooped my way fully out of the sediment and began to move down the mildly caustic river. Thankfully I was tier two material so the water didn’t do any noticeable damage.

  It took a while to finish the trip up the river. The distance from downtown to downtown when they were separated was something like thirty five miles? Didn’t matter, I had about half of that before I arrived and I was being cautious in my speed and observations of my environs. I didn’t need some random Nine catching me and squirting ahead to warn the others before I could kill it. Slow and steady wins the race.

  Annoyingly nothing was there to kill. I was, though, detecting antithesis spores in the flowing water. Ones that were, thankfully, too melty to be viable. Omnomnom, even dead they are nourishing.

  [Damn lake is rather deep, not as deep as some in the region but even with the silt the size plus depth would take a while to dredge. Ideas?]

  <>Don’t. A hive would be large. Simply seek the densest section of antithesis spores. If it’s near the bottom, there may be a hive and we can dig. If it’s at one of the inlets then we can follow it deeper?

  [Sounds like a plan. I’mma faff about then….] I started spreading out into more of a mantaray shape, using the form to slide through the water more smoothly. Continuing to feed on the spores and other minerals in the water.

  Fifteen minutes of grid search near the bottom and I spotted a fish. WTH?

  [NAAYYLLLLEE!!! Naylle!] I had gone into a false bass voice, hoping Naylle kept to the joke.

  <>What is it, lord Guru? Did Not Disappoint!

  [I saw a fish. That is all.]

  <>Actually that seems to be a variant Model One. Readings indicate that there is no native life in the lake. Ah, there’s my favorite serious boi. <>It seems to have “spooked” perhaps you should follow it?

  [Uhnnnn. Send a couple minnows after it. Following directly may spark off a fight. We’re only after intel right now.] Instead of answering, a small piece of my whole peeled off and turned into a pair of tiny fish which darted after the Model One.

  <>I thought we didn’t have enough mass for micro scouts?

  [Following a certainty is different. Two ounces of mass isn’t much. We’ve already made that up just since we got here.] I rapidly shifted to an octopus form and burrowed into the muck, twisting to look like a buried rock while I watched the pair of scouts.

  The modified One was a dumb bitch and went straight for a hole in the muck. It wasn’t large and it seemed to open and close randomly. But sticking close to the One the scouts were able to go inside. Where they discovered it was some sort of fleshy proboscis, right before they were crushed in the teeth of a pair of Model Ones inside said space.

  [Well shit. There’s something here. Let’s go find help?] I took Naylle’s silence as telling and shot off as fast as my octopus shape could move me in the direction of the Spokane River exit. Now was a time for speed, so as soon as I hit the surface of the river I shifted to the bank, transformed into a horse and booked it. Thirty plus miles was a long way for a horse to go full tilt. Thankfully I was actually a machine.

  It still took me the better part of a half hour to get to the place where my last major fight happened. Somebody had cleaned it up nice, but the ramp I needed was still there and I could see light from above so I didn’t slow down, just continued the charge. At the top, most of it was covered up in concrete, the rest was crisscrossed with rebar. Didn’t even think to slow down juts go gooey and splattered through the rebar section.

  I think a couple of the workers had heart attacks as goop splattered up through the hole, congealed and turned into a grunge style skater girl.

  “AHHHH!!! Good lord! Natural Light!” I flinched, my optics not having adjusted fast enough. Then I looked down. “Well fuck. Now I’m ankle deep in concrete. A little help here?”

  The hard hat, hi-visibility vest, wearing group of people around me just kind of stared a minute before one of them, carrying a coffee, coughed and spoke. “You heard the Samurai. Help her out!”

  Everybody jumped too and soon enough there was a Crane over me with a rope to get me out. Took a solid five minutes to organize but I was sloughing off the concrete soon enough. Being mostly Nanites is super useful.

  “Thanks guys. If you’ll excuse me I need to go find somebody to tell them… Oh shit. Yeah. Don’t finish closing this up. We’ll need to get back down there sooner than later.” I grinned a little too widely and gave them a thumbs up. [I need to do something creepy with my teeth.]

  So this is just a quickie.

  Vast: The Crusaders by Manny_Shelton

  you for reading.