The medical van rocked violently, and the air was suddenly filled with the shriek of metal and the rush of freezing wind. God Love Omega’s instincts flared just before the door was ripped away. The temperature plummeted, and then—before he even had time to react—something huge and cold wrapped around his body.
Pain exploded in his shoulder, and then his leg. The drill pierced through him, spinning violently, dragging him from the van with terrifying speed. His body was twisted, wrenched into a spiral, blurring together with the door as he was yanked out of the van. The sensation of spinning, combined with the biting cold, made everything around him blur into a whirlpool of pain and confusion.
He barely registered the sound—the dull, grinding screech of metal-on-metal—but he could feel it. His body was wet—blood slicked down his skin as he dangled from the drill like a meat-skewer, transfixed and helpless. The pain was searing, but even through it, he could sense the sparks—tiny red flashes as his nanoregenerators kicked into overdrive. They had to, or he’d be dead before long.
The drill finally slowed, and with a heavy thud, he was lowered to the ground. The impact jarred him back to a semblance of awareness, but only just. His body hung limp as the white spider-like robots swarmed him, their tiny limbs working in cold, calculated precision to pull him free from the spinning metal. He was broken, bleeding, barely conscious, but his mind clung to one thing: survival.
His nanoregenerators pulsed through him, stitching together the worst of the damage. Just keep going...
He didn’t know how long they carried him—his body a wreck of torn muscle and shredded metal—but at some point, he was dumped onto a magnetic conveyor. The surge of magnetism ripped through him, his body locking painfully in place as he was pinned down. The magnetic force held him still, crushing his chest and making it feel like he was about to be ground to dust.
The pain was like nothing else. His muscles twitched as the force seemed to pull at every fiber of his being, his consciousness wavering on the edge. But then he hit something—a sorting mechanism, he guessed—slamming into it with enough force to slice into his side. The sharp pain tore him from unconsciousness, a new wave of clarity rushing in with the agony.
He could feel his nanoregenerators fighting to keep him alive, patching him up bit by bit. But he didn’t have time to think. The conveyor dumped him onto a cold, metallic surface—another table, another part of this processing hell.
But God Love Omega was still conscious. His body may have been broken, but he was awake—and that meant he wasn’t finished yet.
He felt the pressure trying to pin him down—opposing conveyor belts squeezing his body in place, trying to crush him flat like so many before him—but his augments still had some juice left. He flexed, wedging his massive frame between the belts, refusing to be flattened. The mechanical forces struggled, the machinery groaning as he forced his way through. I’m a jam now, he thought grimly, gritting his teeth through the pain. You’re not going to process me.
The white spider robots scuttled forward, and for a moment, the darkness around him seemed to shift. A shape—massive, horrifying—slid into view. The same machine that had processed Amberlee now reared over him, its limbs covered in human skin.
God Love Omega blinked, his breath hitching. What the hell... It reached for him, its pronged claws extending, skin hanging limply from them. It didn’t feel real—a nightmare born from the deepest recesses of his mind—but he wasn’t about to give in.
When the probing claw reached for him, he grabbed it with his one good arm. His fingers curled around the cold metal, and with a snarl of defiance, he ripped it off. What came loose in his hand wasn’t metal—it was skin. Human skin. He recoiled for a split second in disgust.
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But disgust wasn’t enough to stop him.
The machine lunged again, more limbs descending on him like a wave. God Love Omega roared, using what little strength he had left to fight back. With one good arm and the mangled remains of his other, he clung to the machine like a parasite, tearing at it with brute force. He snapped off its limbs one by one, the sickening crack of metal giving way beneath his grip.
But the machine was relentless. It grabbed him back, its prongs latching onto his body, ripping into his exoskeleton, tearing into flesh and metal alike. The pain was excruciating, blood pouring from the fresh wounds, but he didn’t stop. He couldn’t.
He slammed his fist into its central mass again and again, his vision going dark at the edges. Blood loss, trauma—it didn’t matter. He was going to take this thing down. With one final punch, the machine shuddered, its limbs spasming, and then... it stopped.
God Love Omega had killed it.
He let go, his body slumping as darkness finally claimed him. His last thought, as he drifted into unconsciousness, was simple:
I win.
EPILOGUE TO THE INTERLUDE: THE CHARNEL PIT
God Love Omega's broken body tumbled into darkness, landing with a heavy, wet thud on something soft beneath him. His consciousness flickered in and out, pain and numbness bleeding into one another. It felt like an eternity before he realized he wasn’t dead—not yet. But something was wrong. The air was stale, thick with the scent of decay. He could barely breathe, his limbs unresponsive, his strength spent.
Beneath him, the ground shifted slightly, soft and warm, unlike the cold steel conveyor he’d fought on. As his mind briefly surfaced from unconsciousness, he became dimly aware of his surroundings. His body had fallen into a pit—a massive charnel pit—piled high with corpses. Over a hundred bodies lay scattered around him, some desiccated and mummified with age, their leathery skin stretched tight over bone. Others were fresher, newly deposited victims of the same mechanical nightmare that had nearly claimed him. All were headless, and judging from the state of the most recent of them, had been flayed off all skin.
God Love Omega had landed on one of the fresher corpses. He realized suddenly that he had found Amberlee. Her blood was still damp beneath him, seeping into the cold flesh of his own body. His nanoregenerators were still working, still trying to piece him back together, but even they couldn’t keep up with the massive trauma he’d endured.
The pit was quiet, except for the occasional groan of settling bodies. Above him, the sorting machine whirred on, continuing its grim task. He could hear the sounds of the spider’s clicking footsteps above him, and the sounds of sparks flying from welding.
He couldn’t move. He couldn’t even open his eyes fully. The darkness of the pit pressed in around him, the cold bodies sapping what little heat remained in his shattered form. His mind swam in and out of consciousness, disjointed thoughts flitting through the haze. Is this it? Is this how my Heat fades?
Then, after what felt like hours, the sound of movement reached him.
A faint whirring noise echoed through the pit, growing louder as something mechanical approached. Through half-lidded eyes, God Love Omega could make out a silhouette—a robot, but different from the ones he had fought. This one was sleeker, smoother, its form almost humanoid but unsettlingly insect-like in its movements. It had four thin, spindly legs supporting a body with a humped back, and its long arms ended in precise, delicate pincers.
Its "face" was an oval-shaped blue panel, glowing faintly as it scanned the pile of bodies below it.
God Love Omega lay still as it approached–as if he could do anything else. His body screamed at him to move, to fight back, but he had no strength left. The Dotour robot stopped before him, its blue face reflecting his half-conscious gaze. For a brief moment, he thought he saw something resembling curiosity in its movements, though he knew better than to expect anything resembling mercy from a machine.
The Dotour reached behind its humped back, retrieving a sleek, silver cylinder—the same kind he’d seen in his last moments of awareness. The NPU. Its long, needle-thin arms reached out, cold metal fingers brushing against his skin. He wanted to taunt it, but his voice was gone, his body unable to respond.
The last thing God Love Omega felt was the cold press of the NPU against his skull. His body twitched as the robot went to work, calmly, methodically, as it took his head.
And then, finally, darkness. God Love Omega’s AVP feed was terminated.