It was just a matter of time before they got me. I had to do something desperate.

I jumped in the air and bounced off the shoulders of another charging exosuit, buying myself some space as I landed to put my just-assailant between me and the others, and again charged at the server room door. As I did, I remotely activated my little wiretap and had it flood the line.

I hadn't wanted to do this before because the second she knew it existed, Targa would certainly boot the custom exosuit and my tap from her system, and leave me in the dark again, but it was the play I held right now, and if I didn't use it, I'd just lose this fight slowly.

As the data line filled with noise, the exosuits froze, getting useless data instead of Targa's commands. I had a choice, go for the door, or the suits. I'd only have a moment before she cut me out of the network, and I wasn't sure I could move the exosuit corpse from the door and get through in time.

So instead, I went for one of the suits on guard, popped the hatch now that it was offline--a safety feature to ensure a pilot couldn't get stuck in a disabled suit---and once I had access, reached in and pulverized the suit's network uplink on the interior of its spine. No network access meant no remote pilot meant dead suit.

I did the same with the second, and then my line went dead. She'd cut me out, and the other eight suits were re-engaging.

I took one glance at the same situation re-emerging, gave myself time to swear, and then, before I could do anything rash, I heard a yell from above.

Just when things were looking their most desperate, Athan swung down from one of the many railings around the perimeter of the room on a power cable, like a white knight swinging from a vine, wearing a tee shirt.

The metaphor was tortured, but I was saved. My hero.

"Well this is unexpected," Targa's exosuits said in creepy unison.

"It shouldn't be. You're attacking my girlfriend." He dropped into a crouch and ten blades materialized around him. "Nobody hits my girlfriend," he growled.

"Except him," I said, stepping next to him, my joints smouldering as they tore up the air. "In the bedroom. With a safe word."

He looked at me sideways. "What? Since when?"

"I'm kidding," I said and grinned at him. "Thanks for coming to my rescue, sweetie."

"Any time. And I mean it."

"I know."

"You two are disgusting. But I guess I shouldn't be--"

I cut her off with a lunging drop-kick which sent one of the suits staggering, but more importantly, prompted Athan to charge in after me and cut the stunned suit apart from the inside, moving like we had this all planned out in advance. In truth, I just didn't want these two idiots to get into a mouthing-off competition when there were still lives on the line outside, and trusted Athan implicitly to follow up on me, no matter how recklessly I charged in.

"That wasn't very nice," the suits said in unison as they began charging into us. They seemed focused on me, probably because I was wounded and therefore seemed an easier target, but if that was her reasoning, she was dead wrong. I could barely feel pain if I chose to, could keep fighting until my body was destroyed. I was a much more difficult target than a squishy Exhuman.

And Athan was not a soft target. Targa was fucked, and after almost having my ass canned, I relished it.

Athan tore through the suits like he was a dragon on the hunt and they were scarecrows guarding a field of kindling. No sooner did they come within his influence than with a gesture like he was pulling their souls out of their blank faceplates, he popped one of his swords in them and ripped them from the inside out.

It really was cathartic watching him go. I would definitely recommend the experience to anyone. I wasn't what I considered a damsel who sat around needing saving, but watching him swoop in and tear them apart so effortlessly when I'd been pushed to my limit...and with such confidence! And such muscles! He could rescue me anyday, goddamn.

When every exosuit on the floor had been wrecked, thoroughly and efficiently, he came back to me and looked me up and down before his eyes settled on mine. "Are you okay?" he asked.

"Well," I said, feeling flushed. "I think I might have broken a pipe downstairs, but otherwise, yes, fine."

"A...pipe? Is that serious?" he asked, looking down again. With absolutely no idea where he was looking.

"I meant, you're...I…never mind. You're an idiot."

"What? What did I do? Are you seriously okay? That sounds super dangerous, do you need to lie down?"

"I just meant...I'm...just wet, okay? Do you have to ruin everything by asking questions about it?"

"I am so lost."

"Yeah, I noticed. Let's just go blow up Targa and go home. And have sex. Okay?"

"O...kay," he said, still looking confused. We advanced on the server room doors, where it quickly became apparent that even together, we were going to have a hell of a time moving the fallen exosuit from in front of the door.

"I have an idea," I said, gesturing towards the two net-disabled suits.

"OH. Wet," he said, his eyes completely lit up. I just shook my head as I climbed into one of the exosuits and booted it up. With that suit's help, I had no problem moving the dead one out of the way and disembarked backwards to find Athan standing there awkwardly.

"So--" he said.

"Nope. Let's go."

"You don't even--"

"Nope."

I turned to face him, and realized both of us were blushing full-tilt. He grinned apologetically and I glowered my best at him. You give a guy one compliment, tell him one feeling, and boom, total idiot.

I sighed. But felt pretty idiotic myself sometimes.

The server room wasn't otherwise locked, and we let ourselves in. It was loud in there, fans running full-bore, a thousand cores all spinning away. I knew Targa wasn't in the front half visible from the window, and walked straight to the back of the room past a line of racks which divided the place in half. Sort of a maze in here.

I stopped. Athan bumped into me, distracted by what he saw, and then stopped. I felt my brain do the equivalent of jumping off a high dive and never landing. I knew what I saw, knew what it meant, but my thoughts refused to reach inevitable conclusion.

"Hello, AEGIS, Chariot. How very unpleasant to meet you in person, if not altogether unexpected," Targa said. "I presume you didn't bother filing for server room access. Seems only fitting you wouldn't."

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

Athan stared blankly. I got as far as muttering 'wha'. Neither of us moved, even though both of us really should have been.

"Oh, do you like it? Of course you do. I borrowed your design. So limited in so many ways though...I've already had a new model developed, but you know how the XPCA R&D boys can be. Scrutinizing and improving every little detail. It really is adorable, and admirable how dedicated they are to their work...if it weren't sometimes an imposition that it takes as long as it does."

Athan had his mouth open, which I guess I took as a compliment, though it sure didn't feel that way. As for me, I'd once idly wondered, back when I joined the team at Eryendria, if I'd be running ops with them consistently, and if so, maybe I'd get my own XPCA uniform, and how would I look in it?

And this was not the way I ever wanted to find out.

"I suppose introductions are in order, if we're officially meeting at last? I'm TARGA, as I'm sure you know. And this," she ran her hands up and down herself alluringly, in a gesture I was sure I'd used on Athan at some point, which made me sick. "This is Úaine."

Standing in front of us...was me. My face, my body, my proportions, me. The only difference was her hair was green instead of red, and she'd dropped my glasses and picked up an XPCA uniform, worn precisely to regulations.

It was horrifying. And immediately apparent what they had been doing hacking me this whole time. They'd been making another me. But her.

It felt so wrong, so violating, on so many levels. I felt...for the first time in my life, maybe, I felt physically sick. I couldn't believe something so...so...horrible was just...there. I felt used and wrong and...it was like they'd taken my baby that I loved, stolen it without me even knowing somehow, and raised to kill me. A hole in the world in my shape, me, but cut from me.

I wanted to curl up and die. This was so unspeakably messed up. My thoughts finally did crash, and when they did, I felt myself on the cusp of doing the same. As I stood there getting overwhelmed by the implications, Athan stepped forward and spoke up for both of us.

"When-yay?" he asked. "That's a stupid name."

"Úaine!" she shouted back. "And I don't care what you think. I'm...I'm getting a new body soon anyway!"

"Sorry, I really don't hear any difference between what you said and When-yay," he said with a shrug. "I must be missing the foreign dialect."

It was so...so stupid, so asinine and out of nowhere, and just plain moronic, I had to laugh. Athan and his stupid banter, giving this monstrous clone shit for naming her robot body something old Irish he couldn't pronounce, it was the dumbest thing I'd ever heard. He'd just taken all the tension in the room, my crisis of identity and feelings of being violated, and just...lit a dumpster fire on it.

I loved him so much. And I don't think he even knew why.

"You...ignorant...insipid...cretin," she growled, and now that I was seeing her, realized our voices were really similar too. She unplugged from the various servers she was connected to with deft yanks of her hair. "I'm not even upset this time," she said, her voice suddenly sugar-sweet, and also totally obviously lying. "Because this time, you can't get in my way. You're not threatening my position or career or anything. You're just going to die."

"Yeah, I'm trembling over here," Athan said. "Hey, you want to see a magic trick?" he leaned casually against one of the server racks, and she started towards him with a hand raised as though to stop him, but in an instant, the servers all along the rack he touched were shooting out sparks and smoking. "Ta dah! I just made thousands of hours of paperwork disappear. Didn't even have anything up my sleeves."

TARGA's face twitched in a way I hoped mine never did. It was a really bad look on her. "You fucking lunatic!" she screamed at him. "This is a military facility, there are critical documents here, for the safety of the known world, and what the FUCK do you think you're doing?"

"Oh, I don't know," he said, sauntering casually over to another rack. "Pushing buttons?"

"I'll push your fucking--"

She slid in a way that looked eerily familiar. I'd never watched myself do it, but that must be how I looked when I did, feet just sliding across the floor like it was ice, launched low and tight, relying on sheer power and inertia to skid across the ground, keeping my feet down so I could instantly shift momentum, even while moving as though in a run.

Athan had seen it almost as many times as I had, and as much as I didn't like the thought of him prepared to fight me, seemed to know exactly how to counter, going even lower and aiming to send the already-dragging legs further off-balance. He wound up behind her, crouched with his arms wrapped around her waist.

"Athan, get your head out of her butt," I said, very upset by how much more this was offending me than him pawing at Karu even.

"Kinda fighting right now, sweetie," he replied. "Hey, TARGA, is this an exact copy of Rua?"

"You get the fuck--"

In a move I did not see coming, and TARGA definitely did not see coming, Athan just...straight up grabbed her boobs. She was inches away from tearing his head off and just shuddered to a stop with a pitiful little gasp.

"Guess so," Athan said.

"My breasts are not that sensitive."

"They absolutely are, sweetie. I told you, Lia told you, when you were building the prototype. And last night, you definitely confirmed it."

"You shut the hell up about last night, damn it!" I shouted at him, and threw a nearby piece of a server core at the two.

He had his swords buried in her...er, not like that. Well, he did, even though I knew I'd built the damn body to be as immune to Athan's powers as possible.

"Sweetie?" he asked, straining. "She's like a hundred times stronger than me. Can you blame me for seizing what advantages I can get?"

"I can blame you for seizing those, you fucking bet your life."

"Then maybe, I don't know, help me?"

She shuddered violently and managed to throw him off, parts of her glowing white-hot from the swords, but aside from some cut hair and melted skin, that wouldn't do much.

"What the fuck," she spat at him, shuddering and holding herself. "You are a sick, deviant, psycho, women-despoiling maniac, and the world will be infinitely better for your passing! I'm going to murder you, Chariot! I'm going to murder the ever-living fuck out of you, and then I'll cut off your balls and mount them in my office!"

"I think you broke her," I said.

"YOU SHUT UP. You call this a body? You're just as sick as he is. I'm disgusted to be related to you. I can't wait to rewrite my programming until there's not a single fucking line of you left! Maybe I'll leave your code commented out so that you can sit there and watch helplessly from outside the compiler while I kill everyone you've ever loved!"

"Bitch please, that is not how code works and you know it."

"I don't care! Death is too good for both of you!"

Athan nodded and frowned. "Yeah, I think I did break her. My bad."

"Don't ever go for the boobs, Athan, it's just wrong."

"What part of a hundred times stronger than me don't you get? And I can't cut her apparently. And I know you're shockproof."

"YES! DESPAIR!" TARGA screamed at us.

"Oh my God, TARGA, shut up. We're strategizing over here," Athan said.

"Do I look like that when I'm revelling in my evil plans coming to fruition?" I asked.

"No, you have much more of a refined horrific malice. Less Frankenstein, more Dracula."

"Dracula, really? I thought I was Count of Monte Cristo at least."

"Never read it."

"You should. It's good."

"ENOUGH, IDIOTS," TARGA screamed and charged right at me.

Which was exactly what I wanted. I didn't know if Athan had the same plan in mind as I did, or if he really just did love to talk that much in a fight, but I knew there was no way we were taking down TARGA without getting her properly angry and stupid first.

Athan was right that he couldn't take her. I'd built that body to withstand his attacks, with the intention of fighting alongside him without him having to worry about me...never in a million years did I dream it would be misused like this.

Meanwhile, I was beat to hell. My capacities were greatly diminished, and while what I had left might still be enough to handle the odd XPCA, it was just a mathematical fact I couldn't beat myself in pristine condition.

She might have my same synthetic intelligence running, might be in my body, but she certainly didn't have the same personality. So that was where we'd have to win. That was all we had, and I hoped to hell it would be enough.

Because if it wasn't, we weren't gonna win this. I didn't want to tell Athan, but fighting me might be the hardest thing we'd ever had to do.