I'll admit, I'm feeling a little proud of myself. And you know, why shouldn't I? After all, I'm adapting to a new home, new colleagues, and even making a friend or two. I'm closing out cases and might be getting a lay of the grid on the station. Things are starting to look a little up. And you know what? At the end of a successful day, sliding into a cot with a sense of accomplishment, I want only one thing.

A good night’s sleep and some sweet dreams. Wait, is that two things? Crap. Maybe I got greedy. Maybe that's why this is happening.

My quarters should be a safe place. Sleep should be a safe time.

I'm not having pleasant dreams of fresh hot coffee and professional successes. I'm not having a sweet dream about spending time with a cute freighter captain. I'm on Luna. Or maybe I'm in hell.

I'm not there. I'm half a solar system away.

I'm on Armstrong station again. The gravity is weaker on Luna, and my steps are light. There's no mistaking that sharp tang in the air; it's that aging air-recycling system. Alex always used to complain about it. Of course, I did my fair share of complaining from time to time.

My hair is longer, past my shoulders. My uniform is a bit tighter too. Before I went out on medical, I was in peak condition. Even in low gravity, I have some nice definition. What can I say, baby got back.

I don't want to be here. Please!

Alex is grinning at me. I'm smirking back. We're in the archive. Right, we were working a case. Tracking down some underground punks with the Gaian League. Their special brand of eco-terrorism is designed to generate sympathy for them. 'Oooh, aren't we special, fighting for mother earth!'

Hypocrites. They're black-hats, through and through. Stealing from charities, sabotaging pharmaceutical plants, blowing up gas pipelines. They portray themselves as tree-hugging, whale-loving, oxide-huffing messiahs of the ecosystem. But then, they didn't have any qualms about hacking an oil-drilling platform and causing the largest ecological disaster in Alaskan history.

Fucking pricks killed the last wild polar bears. Well, if mother nature isn't going to give you boys a spanking, we will.

You don't know what you're doing.

We just got an alert; an intrusion in the precinct’s system. Someone or something tripped the alarm in the archives. These punks think they can hack us? Oh, they're going down.

I know how this ends. Stop...

Alex and I are first on scene, but there's nobody else here in meatspace. Odd for Gaians; not many synths among them. They must have dropped in and penetrated digitally. We've locked the archive down and set the hunter-killers loose. They should have found something by now, but we're getting null returns. Alex and I make the call to drop out of meatspace and flush out their Avatars first-person.

You should have stayed out.

I'm covering the gates in and out of the archive, Alex is going in with synth backup. We've got three teams of hunter-killers with us, and the sentient-level synth, Ambrose, is embedded in the computational substrate. The equivalent of a man inside, with me covering the door. We've got this, it's old hat.

You have no idea. You're a chrome-licking moron. You need to leave. Forget Alex, get out!

I'm in the heart of the archive; my connection should be lightning fast. For some reason, I'm getting feedback along the channel. I flip through the other channels, but nothing's working; I can't maintain a link to the hunter-killers. There's a signal delay. It's lengthening? Wait, something’s wrong. The archive's not responding correctly. There's lag, and these responses are gibberish... what the fuck is going on?

Don't stay, just run. Get out now.

"Ambrose? Alex? Did we lose comms?" The channels drop and cease responding at all. I'm not even getting error codes. I'm not getting a response from either of them, or from the hunter-killers. I check my malware filters; they're secure. I hear a strange, garbled screech, and Ambrose disappears from the network entirely.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

They're taken. You can't help them!

I'm trying to, though. Like I do every time. I can't get through the gate, though; it's not opening. It's not even responding to my handshake protocols. I try the backdoor. It's agonizingly slow to respond.

It finally opens, but the archive... where is it? What the fuck? Where am I?

You're in hell. You just don't know it yet.

"Alex? Alex, did Ambrose throw up a firewall? There's nothing coming through," I call out. It's like being engulfed by oblivion. No response. I check the system diagnostics; the archive is up and running. Hell, the local exonet hub is processing a fucking phenomenal amount of data. The hell? Is someone downloading the entire archive? A couple hundred thousand times? Is someone trying to burn out the substrate?

Why didn't you listen?

"Alex, Ambrose?" My heart is beating faster now, and even the backdoor gate shuts down. The substrate is overclocking. But... there's nothing here. The system is empty. Wait, no it isn't-

No... please...

Before I can react, oblivion erupts. Something rushes towards me- [REDACTED]

I yelp as my body spasms, gasping and jolting back to awareness. I blink quickly, sitting up, alert in my meatsuit. What the void-spawned fuck was that? I've lost time, maybe a few seconds. What happened? My avatar just... I didn't jump out: the connection was cut... from the outside? Or the inside?

"Alex, are you still in-system?" I ask, looking up.

No... he's not here anymore.

He's not in the seat across the room. He's standing at the archive interface a few feet away. I try to ping the system, but my implant is dead. There's no connection, no overlay. There's nothing. All of my augments are dead.

Too late.

Alex twitches, his shoulders shaking. “Alex? What’s wrong?” He slowly turns his head and looks at me, his eyes unfocused. His fingers move like lightening on the control-pad, but he’s not paying any attention to it. A sick dread twists in my gut, the hair rising on the back of my neck. “Alex?” No weapons are permitted in the archives, but I suddenly wish I had my stun-stick. Something in the air is sour and wrong. My implants are either dead or completely locked down. I edge towards the door slowly, just as Alex's off hand closes around a long pre-fabbed steel spanner.

His eyes slowly come into focus, his hazel pupils locking onto mine. “Schedule a free consultation with Apogee Cosmetics!” My arms snap up, fists held close to me, ice running down my spine. “Apogee’s subdermal implants can be customized to any facial structure!” He swings the spanner at my face fast and hard.

I don’t know what I expected, but not this. I yank my head back as I feel the air brush me, the head of the spanner whipping past my nose. I yelp, eyes wide, diving past him, the second swing barely missing my shoulder. “Alex! What the void-spawned fuck? Did your augments crash? Stand down!”

“You may think your accounts are safe, but only Apollo Bank offers security guarantees for all accredited transfers.” The spanner swings again, humming in the air, nicking my forearm with a flare of pain. “Don’t fall victim to scams or skimmers again; trust Luna’s oldest financial institution with your hard-earned credits.” His eyes are manic, frenzied, as he wildly lashes out again.

I back away, heart hammering in my chest, until my shoulders hit the bulkhead. His expression doesn’t change. “Did you know that over 40% of standard issue air scrubbers don’t filter out toxic mold spores?” Alex smiles and the spanner whips at my face again. I duck, and the head digs a gouge in the polymers of the bulkhead, barely missing my collarbone. “Breathe E-Z brand scrubbers are rated to filter out 99.99% of all mycological spores, as well as all major allergens.”

I kick low with my full weight, my boot hitting his knee with a sick wet crackle that makes me wince. Alex grunts, falling to his other knee, and I bring my knuckles hard into his inner elbow, the spanner dropping from his fingers with a dull clatter. He looks up at me with a smirk. “Customize your shuttle with an upgrade from Aurora Industries!” Without warning, he leaps forward at me, making me curse. His working knee pushes forward, his weight bearing me down, hitting the floor with his body on top of me. I look up in terror as I push at his bulk with my free hand. “We offer the latest in integrated A.I. systems, holo-compatible entertainment centers, and liquid helium freezers. Installment payments accepted!”

My left arm is pinned under our bodies, but my right hand strikes him repeatedly in the face. His nose breaks, and my knuckles split as I strike him in the teeth, breaking several. Alex spits chips of bloody enamel into my face as I wince. “Voidborne Insurance has been consistently rated as the top carrier for protecting intra-system shipping.” His left hand grabs my fist, pinning it to the floor. I writhe and kick, grunting, hissing as I struggle, but I can’t slide free. “We’re dedicated to the safe and timely delivery of your parcels, with full coverage offered on all non-organic shipments.” Alex’s right-hand latches on my neck, his nails digging into my skin and drawing beads of blood. “Sign up today for half-off all inner-system deliveries for six months.” Drops of blood drip from his broken nose to splatter on my forehead as I squirm and gasp.

My heart hammers as his fingers tighten around my throat. I flail, kicking him hard in the thigh, but I can’t get any momentum. I hear my blood pounding in my ears, and I twist, pinned arm slipping out from behind me. I can’t breathe, I can’t think, I can just see his face locked in a rictus of a smile. “Are you having problems with implant signal degradation?” My fingers close around something. The spanner. “Did a botched augmentation surgery result in nerve damage, paralysis, or trans-human psychosis? You may be entitled to compensation as part of a class action-“

His eyes are locked on mine. He doesn’t see the spanner swing around.

I'm sorry, Alex.

***