The handle turns. The door swings open.
I’m too late.
“So, we meet again. I should’ve killed you when I had the chance,” speaks a man in a black suit with white pinstripes. His metal hand protrudes past his golden cufflinks.
I know exactly who he is.
I raise my weapon to blast him, but he jerks it from my hands. Two more Suits appear from the crowd of droids approaching from behind disarming Xander with a leg sweep.
“I see you brought a friend,” he hisses as he slowly sheds his jacket, laying it neatly on the chair behind him. He rolls up both sleeves, taking his time. He wants to drag this out. This is a game to him. “I’ve been hunting this one for a long time.”
The flickering red and green lights from the servers reflect off his metal arm. There is a low-sounding hum between the sound of his hydraulics.
Every muscle in my body begins to tingle.
He cracks his head to the left, then slowly to the right.
I lunge at him with everything I have, unsheathing the short sword hidden under my bone-junk armor.
He blocks with his metal arm and punches me in the chest knocking the wind from my lungs.
Xander follows with a right hook beside me. The first strike hits home, but his second is caught mid-swing.
The sound of the bones in Xander’s fist crunching under the Suit’s titanium grip is jarring, but not as much as his scream. I’ve never seen him this vulnerable, this weak.
I strike again, swinging for his neck.
The Suit is too quick.
He counters my strike and pushes his metal fist through my face. His blow takes my vision with it, sending me to my back, as I feel the blood drip from the stinging above my eye.
Xander cripples him with a left and the Suit drops to the ground. His buddies dive at Xander, but he’s too quick. Xander pushes his fingers deep into the eyes of an advancing officer in the crowded room as I move to put my sword through someone.
The pair of Suits at the door tag team Xander. He’s tough, but he can’t take them both..
I crawl to the glass wall protecting the servers, using it as a crutch I try to stand to my feet. The man with the metal arm kicks me against it, knocking me back to the floor wincing.
He kicks for my head and misses denting the glass. Xander breaks free and tries to tackle him from the side but is knocked unconscious with an uppercut. He collapses on the floor beside me.
“Is this all you have rebels? Is this it?” laughs the man with a metal arm.
Xander lays motionless a few meters from me.
“We gave you a home. We fed you. We clothed you. We gave you purpose in life, and this.. this is how you repay us?”
Another kick crushes my abdomen as I struggle to breathe.
One of the Suits grabs a handful of Xander’s blue-streaked hair, lifting his face from the floor. Blood runs heavy from his nose to his shirt. Without a word, the Suit presses the barrel of his pistol to Xander’s head and pulls the trigger.
The ringing from the gunshot is all I can hear.
Everything… stops.
I’m barely able to rise to my feet as I grip the sword tighter in my shivering hand.
All I am is rage.
With every ounce of energy I have left in my body, I swing for his neck, giving it everything.
My sword slices through the Suit that killed Xander. His head separates from his body. Pistol still in hand, his red tie is first to hit the ground.
His partner retaliates landing a solid punch cracking a bone in my face. Then a second punch.
I roll past him just barely evading his third and stick my sword through his calf.
He winces out in pain as a river of corporate blood escapes him splashing to the floor.
I stand and swing, aiming for his skull.
My sword stops seconds before it slices him in two.
The man with the metal arm caught my swing.
He stares into my eyes and cracks a haunting smile from above.
With one rapid motion, he rips the sword from my hands and slings it at the wall behind him.
My eyes search the room for anything I can use to my advantage. There’s nothing. I’m outmanned… unarmed.
This isn’t over, I lie to myself backing into a corner.
The two of them swarm me at once, unleashing a barrage of punches and kicks that leaves me on the floor clinging to a shred of life. I manage to block a few strikes, but my resistance is useless. The bones in my chest and face collapse as they show me no mercy, stomping me into submission.
One of them picks me up, broken and bloody. He raises me above his head and smashes me through the clear wall protecting the exposed machinery of the servers, shattering the glass into a million tiny pieces.
Every inch of my body screams.
I can’t move.
It’s no use, pain has paralyzed me.
Xander’s lifeless body lays across the floor from me. His blood, embedded with fragments of metal and wire, stretches in my direction.
On my back, I reach out for a shard of bloody glass, but the man with the metal arm digs his shoe into my hand crushing the bones within it. With his other foot, he drives into my neck.
Choking me…
I try to pry free, but he’s too strong.
Panic takes control of my mind.
The ticking of clocks floods my ears, hundreds of them. The lights from the servers flicker rapidly as the world around me slowly begins to disappear.
I lay here helpless, inches from her prison, defeated.
I failed you. I failed us all.
Please… just forgive me.
“Remember my name,” says the man with the metal arm. “When Archer plugs in, I want him to know Oriyen sent you.”
My hand gives, falling from the polished black shoe around my neck to my side, before landing on
