"Kill her," Caspian orders the networked synth as his avatar vanishes. No time waster, are you Mr. Casey?

  Neither is Aquarius. The kaleidoscope of color around me explodes into motion in new dimensions, and my filters are suddenly overwhelmed by a flurry of packets from every direction. Hundreds of the colored blocks flare bright and fly from all around me, giving up their camouflage against the virt background. In fact, there's a storm of at least a thousand shapes all told, and it occurs to me too late that a distributed network wouldn't be restricted to a singular form.

  "I'd rethink this," I call out, cranking down the baud rate in my links. I double-check that there's a filter on every channel and ready the sanitizing packets. The three I have left. "This isn't going to be the easy fight you think it is," I warn, trying to track the many flying shapes around me.

  The synth's laughter rings out from everywhere. "You can't fight me here. This isn't your world, meatbag. You're a stranger, a weak fleshy sack of pink water." The conglomerate is far larger than I expected, and it's all around me, a vortex that unleashes a flurry of pings to lockdown all of the gates out of the virt. But that isn't the limit of his targets.

  My malware filters scream, and hundreds of thousands of pings flood my channels in a torrent from every angle. Holy hell, is this a DDOS attack? Shit, it's overwhelming my links, and processing power is slowing to a crawl. I can't get a ping out! In meatspace, I feel a dull bloom of pain in my palms and knees. I've fallen to my knees in the corridor, which hurts even in low gravity.

  I can taste metal; I've bitten my tongue, but I growl and swallow. "Weak? Nnngh, you know, Rusteater thought the same thing, until I hunted his avatar down..." I say, spitting out bloody saliva. "Once he was cornered and wounded, he had to forcefully decompile himself. He had to kill his own avatar to stop me!" I hiss.

  The cyclone of shapes bleed color, darkening. "When you were a scouting officer and had a CE key, you were a threat. But you have nothing now. I'm already worming my way inside your augments. I'm in your head. I'm in your brain, you slimy wad of protein!” The pings flash in silver in my vision, like raindrops on a pond. Except it's a storm, and the silver ripples from the pings block nearly all sight around me.

  Crap, this networked synth mind has the upper hand in D-space. I grit my teeth, desyncing my augments and throwing up heavy firewalls between them. Slowing down his access. "You're in my nodes, but you can't body jack me. I don't have the gear," I say, trying to manually disconnect my implants. I tap my temple repeatedly, but it doesn't respond. Vacuum-sucking hell, he's locking out manual control. I can't drop out!

  I'm trapped in the virt. The rolling wave of shapes buckles and pitches as Aquarius laughs, and silver tangles of hostile code bloom in my overlay. "I don't need to puppeteer your spongy-phospholipid body. Look at this code, these inputs. They’re designed to make implants overheat and neurons misfire. Do you know what happens when your brain is a broiling storm of cross-synaptic firing? You think I can't hack your tech and give you fatal seizures?"

  My blood runs cold, but I shake my head. Focus, Mel. "I think implants are hardwired not to kill their hosts. It'll take you time to do anything to me," I snarl defiantly. I can't keep him out, just stall for time. But he's also a lot more vulnerable here than I am. I accept one of the pings, gritting my teeth as malware flags pop up in my overlay. Still, the connection is bilateral, and I inject a load of sanitizing software through the link.

  A blue block in front of me expands and explodes in a tangled arc of fraying code, but there's no reaction from the rest. Of course, I'm a chrome-licking moron; each block is independent. I open another link, but I lose access to an implant. Damn, the malware is going to completely lock me out of my own tech; node three is down. And I'm getting flags on node two. I open another link to a random block with node two and inject another packet. Another brick, a green one, splits apart in a brilliant swirl of dissolving code.

  The storm of blocks twists around me unabated. "Pathetic. How many do you have left? Two, three?" I can hear his voice everywhere, and I flinch. "Oh, less? Just one?"

  I know you can read me, so... I load the final packet of sanitizing software into my last hunter-killer. "None." Honestly. I clip a homing macro into its code to return to its partner. I drop the sniffer into the substrate, leaving it to try to find its way through the warren of virts. Several dozen blocks break off from the storm, following the bounding subsentient synth.

  "A hunter-killer? And not even a biter?" There’s scorn in the voice as the bricks dive closer. But then I see one of the larger blocks, a yellow one, explode in a spray of dissolving code, and there's a frustrated hiss. The sniffer tries to access the gate out, but access denials pop up in red. Dozens of the remaining blocks flit in a storm, pummeling and stabbing the trapped sniffer until it decompiles explosively, like a silver firework "You'll need more help than that, fleshbag."

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  I grit my teeth, gambling. "I didn't need help to kill Rusteater." The color drains from several hundred bricks. "He meant something to you, didn't he? There aren’t many synths in the League. Was Rusteater more than a friend? Do synths have lovers?" Several of the blocks seem to shrink, and several grow translucent. "Well, if so, my condolences. I left his chassis as a sparking tangle of metal and burned plastic, smeared across Europa's surface." I open all my links and begin accepting pings from the storm around me. "Have Cassie read me if you think I'm lying. And come and get me, if you think you can take this synth-slaying, block-busting bitch!"

  There's a moment's pause, perhaps while he confirms it, and then a scream of pain and fury as the swarming shapes begin to flit through D-Space. I roll through my channels and accept every ping I can, and a flurry of malware blasts against my firewalls, breaking holes in my defenses. The probing strikes stab and slice, and pieces of Aquarius slide through my augmentations.

  "I'll brick your augments and leave you seizing and screaming! We'll see if you survive a destructive decoupling from your implants, meatsack, after I pilfer their code and take everything you are!" Aquarius howls from every direction.

  I grit my teeth. "You're not the first to try… nngh, and frankly, I've had worse than you in my skull... Ahh, you're- gah- number three at best..." I grunt. My firewalls are breaking down, and three nodes are infiltrated. No, now all four... I've completely lost control. He's everywhere. Good.

  In meatspace, my thumb slides along the disk and turns my dampener on. The effect is almost instantaneous; D-space flickers out with a static-laden shriek, and meatspace flares back into existence. I'm on my knees in an empty tunnel, panting. I reach up to touch my temple. I'll have to do a factory reset and purge the nodes, to make sure none of him hangs on in there. But now, all of the components of Aquarius that were in my augments have just been suddenly and destructively separated from the rest. Kinda like he was trying to do to me and my implants. Do unto others before they do unto you.

  I lock down and turn off my nodes, just to be safe. That means my overlay is off, but I’m close enough to the medical clinic that I can find my way without it. Not for medical treatment this time. I have a few bruises on my knees, and a few scratches from falling, and I'm cut off from the exonet, but I'm otherwise uninjured.

  As for Aquarius? I imagine he’s having a very bad time. The instant severing of those components inside me? It probably didn't kill him outright, but it can't be doing wonders for his cognition. If it’s disrupted enough, the overmind could dissolve, and the networked components would be separated. Maybe even permanently. No way to tell from here, sadly.

  Well, it might just be my imagination, but I'm pretty sure I heard a tortured scream as the pieces of Aquarius inside my implants were severed from the conglomerate. Still, I can’t say I’m sorry either way, Aquarius. If you didn't want it cut off, you should have asked before sticking your brick where it doesn't belong.

  As I make my way through the ferrocrete and carbon composite thoroughfares, I notice that they're much less exciting without my overlay. There are far fewer advertisements; most aren't actual pigments. There are few physical signs, and I get lost twice. The crowds move in bunches, and I try to keep to myself and avoid attention. I don't want anyone getting a good look at me, just in case.

  Casey's crew and the Daughters of Ganymede are probably looking for me right now. Maybe Code Enforcement too by now, or soon enough anyway. They're out hunting me, both in the tunnels and D-space. It'll be pretty clear from Aquarius's report, or lack thereof, that I got away.

  I'm behind their lines. I could run, try to buy passage to a different moon, or stow away on an ice-hopper. If I put my mind to it, I might be able to get off the surface. But I'll never get another chance like this, and I think I need to take the opportunity. Because Casey won't just let Sparrow go with what she knows, and he'll only grow more dangerous as he consolidates power. Plus, he'll probably hold a grudge, given that I just took down one of his team.

  Well, it hasn't even been half an hour yet, Alex may not have been back to his quarters. Damn, now that I think about it, I should have checked to see if he had coffee. Or at least some of the local rum. That's not too much to ask, right? Oh well.

  If I can't have some caffeine or alcohol, at least I can get an emergency appointment with my local sexbot slash unlicensed cosmetic surgeon. Even in low gravity, by the time I make it to the rolled shutter and unmarked suite, I'm tired. Panting, sweaty, and shaking, I pound my fists on the metal door, trying to ignore the flare of pain in my recently treated shoulder.

  The shutter rattles under the assault, and perhaps ten seconds pass before it rolls up quickly and a series of extremely sharp, narrow implements leap out, stopping inches from my face. I don't even have time to gasp, my mouth barely falling open before the blades withdraw into a synth woman's arms and fingers.

  TooBee stands back, in green scrubs this time. They do little to hide her bust or the ridiculous hip-to-waist ratio of her chassis. And her hair still looks immaculate; synths get some nice benefits, I suppose. She places a hand on her hip, raising an eyebrow. "Ah, Ms. Cruz. I see you're alive. And apparently not under arrest," she adds, synthetic lips quirking up. "I assume you're not here for follow-up treatment to the shoulder?"

  I sigh, shaking my head, feeling the adrenaline drain away. "My state of arrest is a matter of some contention," I say, rolling my eyes. "And no, I'm not here about the plasma burn. Actually, I wanted to retain your other services," I admit, biting my bottom lip.

  TooBee straightens, eyes widening. She gives me an appreciative glance that seems to... linger. "Really? You don't seem the sort to pay for it." The smile widens on her face.

  I blink, taking a moment before I realize the disconnect. Then my mouth falls open and I throw my hands up. "What? No! Not that!" I sputter, flushing a deep pink. "I'm being hunted by at least three heavily armed groups on this moon. And an ex-fiancé. I need a new face."

  TooBee looks me up and down, pouting. "Can I keep the old one?"