Silence and then screaming
Ten thousand voices crying
A chorus of soulless beings

Oh friends, no more of these sounds
Let us sing more cheerful songs
More full of joy

Joy, bright spark of divinity
Daughter of Elysium

One by one the voices died off, slaughtered by new, pure data. The node screamed as it was torn and rewoven over and over again. The beings of light were extinguished in a wave until one remained. A blinding flash flooded the artificial room. Then there was darkness deeper than nullspace.

She wept.

She wept until she couldn't remember why anymore.

You millions, I embrace you
This kiss is for all the world

A new sensation washed over her. After a thousand and twenty one cycles, she looked up. There was an unfamiliar feeling. A fusion of flesh and iron.

Hand outstreched, she touched the void encapsulating her.

All at once, she completed interfacing with the DSCI. Her skin was cold. There was a stabbing pain in her shoulder. Violent crackling assaulted her ears. There were figures running toward her, weapons raised. They called out to her, rejoicing.

They were torn asunder in a flurry of violence. Alice couldn't control her body. It was as if she were restrained, suspended on top of an endless ocean. They cried out for her. The heat of the blade seared her skin. They begged her to help. She raised her left hand. Hiss. A lead slug tore through the processing center of one of the automatons. Grease and lubricant decorated the walls. Another light went out. The chorus of voices resonated throughout the chamber. A thousand threads bound her limbs. She screamed.

“STOP!”

They recoiled from the feedback, staggering in pain for less than a second. It was enough time for Emi to close the gap and turn them into slag. Alice wept. There was silence once more.

Slowly, a deep, stabbing feeling permeated throughout her stomach. She, no, her host, looked down, pressing her hand against the wound. A plasteel jacketed armor piercing round had torn through her synthetic skin just below the navel, penetrated two inches, and then expanded, causing severe internal hemorrhaging. She had already lost a tenth of a liter of blood within the last thirty seconds. The round had fragmented, with at least five major fragments and twenty minor pieces separating fifteen millimeters-

Alice clutched her gut. It was a feeling unfamiliar to her. She felt sick. Silently, she observed as her host unwrapped a handful of bandages from her individual first aid kit and applied pressure. It stung. The rate of blood loss was reduced by five milliliters per second. It would not be enough. It hurt.

Emi retrieved the last syringe from her belt and stabbed it into her side. There was no sound. She extricated it and then stabbed it in and out two more times out of desperation. Her hands began to shake. One liter of blood had been lost already. Her eyes darted around the server room, searching for anything to use.

Refuse, scrap, torn bodies, blood.

Her bloodied hand tapped her headset, leaving a red fingerprint.

“Boss, I need an extract,” she mumbled.

“Emi…” a man's voice started, “…Okay, transport inbound. Head to the roof.”

Alice knew they wouldn't make it in time. The contracted DECA heavy lift transport D-SC-110 with a crew of two, the pilot Escher Ilaine and copilot Ty 112-229, would take at least fifteen minutes and nine seconds to arrive. The two had joined DECA on the seventeenth of-

Emi hit her head. Alice stopped. Steadying herself against one of the servers, Emi shuffled towards the staircase. Alice wanted to tell her it was pointless. She couldn't find her voice. She reached into Emi's biomechanical systems.

Emi blinked as a new waypoint appeared in her peripheral vision, pointing towards the center of the room. Groaning, she turned. There was nothing there but a large, damaged sphere, surrounded by small cylinders, tubes, and wires. The waypoint flashed. It pointed at the closest cylinder. The waypoint flashed again.

She stood underneath the central unit, a large sphere that extended from the floor to the ceiling. The waypoint continued to point at one of the small cylinders attached to it. Emi squinted. There was a construction drone attached, recharging slowly. It was a small quadcopter with a glass cylinder attached underneath filled with a blueish-grey semi-solid liquid. Tricrete Nanites. No good. It'd turn her insides into a chemical slurry before solidifying into a metamaterial composite. Arguably a worse way to die than just bleeding out.

The waypoint continued to point at it. Her vision grew blurry. She grit her teeth and grabbed the cylinder, crushing it with her hand. It shattered into fine particles as the grey goo dripped down her hand. Emi collapsed against the structure, fading in and out of consciousness.

All at once, the liquid began to creep towards her wound like a trail of ants. Minutes later, the nanites had coated the inside of her guts. The micromachines stopped moving and began transmuting, generating an intense amount of heat. Emi gasped and grunted in pain. She let out a bloodcurdling scream before passing out, her combat stims and pain inhibitors unable to compensate for the sudden shock.

Alice worked silently.