Until now, we'd done a good job of staying either a few hundred feet away from the fortress armors, or being on top of them. Between Athan's shield and the data tap I had, it was relatively safe to evade.

But with her right fucking on top of us, trapped in the twisted, burning ruins of the hangar, we got to see firsthand just how fucking impossible it was to try to take one of these monsters on head-on.

Rockets were exploding around us everywhere while I held onto Athan tight, his shield strobing white with contant gun and laserfire pounding us from all angles. I could hardly see or hear anything, just explosions so frequent it sounded like a roar instead of individual blasts.

I felt so small in Athan's exosuited arms, my legs tucked in under me while he held me under his arm like a football. When TARGA had opened up on us, he'd just scooped me up without hesitation and ran. Not that we had anywhere to run to.

TARGA was just screaming and fucking insane. The fortress armor writhed and shuddered in a way no robot ever should, as it raged towards us with uncoordinated steps of its four massive legs. There was no doubt at all she was completely deranged...I felt bad for whatever half-existence she'd desperately launched herself into, but I felt worse for us for being on the receiving end of it.

Which gave us at least two very good reasons to put her down, but that was asking the impossible. She was just too huge, too dangerous, too insane. I only had one thing up my sleeve which might work, and even then, I wasn't sure. If it didn't pan out...I'd be relying on Athan to come up with a plan on the fly and save our collective butts again.

But I had to try, right?

"Athan!" I shouted at him. He didn't respond. His suit was probably compensating for the constant noise around us and was practically deaf and blind in there. I knocked on his faceplate and leaned into a mic. "Athan! Put me down!"

"What? Why?" he asked.

"I need to try something! Throw me back towards the server room!"

He hesitated just a moment and then with a nod I could only barely read through the armor's movement, he turned and, continuing the football analogy, long bombed a hail mary straight at the red zone.

I never really got football. But I had to give Athan credit, he had a hell of an arm in that suit, and I flew straight and true, over the jagged, burning pieces of collapsed debris and straight at the server room we'd just run out of.

I landed with an ungainly step or two before I got my feet under me and transitioned my forward momentum into running. Athan kept going the opposite direction, now right in the middle of the open hangar, where he jeered at TARGA to pull her away from me.

I was running, so I didn't clearly see what happened next, but my strides skipped a step when I heard the screaming of a thousand tons of metal tearing through the air and slamming down with enough force to make the ground buckle under me.

I had to look back, and what I saw pushed everything else from my mind, my sprint automatically stepping down to a stop as I lingered in the server room doorway.

Both whips had crashed down where Athan had been standing moments ago, the ground surging with electricity, blue-white arcs bouncing away from the impact...and his suit...I didn't see it. I expected to look up and find him there, hanging off of one of the ruined pillars which was holding up nothing but the sky now, or stepping tauntingly onto one of the chunks of debris.

But the longer I looked, the more Athan didn't appear. Another blast near me brought me back to reality and I turned away, heading back into the server room, swearing the whole time. I watched for him as I stalked past the broken window, but still, no Athan.

Breathe, AEGIS. Believe in him.

I went to the junction box on the wall where I'd disconnected all the cables just a few minutes ago, where the traffic from the base servers connected to the outside. Involuntarily, I reached for my hair, but it'd been cut short. There were plenty of cables here...I could splice something up but it would take time…

I peeked out the window again and saw Athan's exosuit lying on the ground, the whip-arms receded now. TARGA was screaming something and Athan wasn't moving. He had to move. He had to.

Move, you goddamn idiot! Move damn you!

I had to take my own advice. I had to move too. If I just stood here staring at him, she might get both of us. Athan was fine, I wouldn't believe otherwise. I took a deep breath and tried to remember what I was doing. Right. The switch box. Splicing.

Something muted green stood out from all the brushed metal grey and singed black of the floor and I stooped to pick it up. A wad of hair...or...cables, more specifically. Úaine's hair, chopped off by Athan, the green braided polymer casing melted together where he'd cut it, but otherwise intact.

I found the plug I needed and stripped it out of the other cables, digging blindly through my hair to find its counterpart in my own hair while I held Úaine's end in my teeth. It was too hard to tell what I was grabbing at, and I went to the window and stared at my reflection in a broken piece of glass, trying to ignore the still exosuit on the ground beyond it.

He was fine. He was fine. I had to do this, it was the only way I could help. He was FINE.

Even with my deft fingers, with only one arm it was a serious bitch to peel back the casing on both ends of the cable, and even more of a bitch to twist the ends of the cables together, matching the colors of the internal wires and making sure none of them touched. But I got there, even as TARGA dropped another half a fucking building all around Athan.

He was still fine. He probably wasn't even in the exosuit anymore. He was climbing up the fortress armor's legs, invincible to any attack behind his wards of stubbornness and friendship, blasting missiles from the sky with a grin as he thought of me.

Okay, I knew I needed to believe in him but I was really losing my grip on reality here. We'd stick with he's fine. Because he was fine. Of that I could be certain. I jammed my improvised hair cable into one of the outbound ports before I could psych myself out any longer.

I didn't have time to be precise in my work. I just had to get this signal sent and get to Athan, and the rest...would take care of itself, I hoped.

It was taking forever for the signal to go through. I mean, yeah, I was on a shitty connection, and the encryption and codes I was sending were beyond pretty much anything else on earth, but come fucking on, Athan was lying right fucking there.

I held my breath as a dozen missiles tore through the air towards the armor and my heart sank when they failed to crash into it, instead being shot out of the air by a bolt of lightning which coursed through the missiles' contrails back to their source. He was still in there. I realized I was crying...out of fear? From frustration? I just wanted to go to him and pull him out of that casket of a suit and run.

I even started to move despite myself, but felt the gentle strain of my hair pulling taut and the prospect of having left him alone this time for nothing.

If we ran, we'd never make it. I was sure the only reason she wasn't pulverizing Athan right now as she was looking for me. I was the one she hated, the one she felt she had to prove herself superior to, I was the first one she'd attacked and the last one she'd tried to bargain with.

Besides, in a way, she was still me. And just like I couldn't tolerate the idea of her existence, on some level I knew she felt the same about mine.

My connection went through and my heart sank even further. This facility was new, and built in the middle of nowhere. It would take seven minutes before a satellite would be in position.

I saw TARGA's metal leg slam down in the hangar between Athan and me and looked up to see the fortress armor looking straight down at me.

Fuck me. I sent the order for Skyweb to fire as soon as it was in alignment and ran, my hair tearing out where it'd been spliced an instant after the signal went through.

I weaved through the servers, hoping that they'd buy me some time against her, but the scream of tortured metal in the air indicated otherwise. As soon as I heard her attacking, I spun and ran straight at her feet, nowhere else to go, bouncing off the ground as she whipped the earth out from under me.

The fucking whip-arm was right there, had crashed through a dozen of the server racks and missed me by a matter of feet. She screamed in inarticulate, tortured, incomprehensible rage at the murder of 'her babies', even if she was too far gone to understand she was the one who'd done it.

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As for me, I jumped at the last second, floating in the air an instant longer than I felt possible, and landed with a painful surge. Even before I touched down, the electricity pouring out of her and into the ground jumped up through me, looking for anywhere to go. I was pretty shockproof, yes, but a lot of that was predicated on the assumption that not literally everything around me was lightning. It could pass through me harmlessly like a wire, but if it was just...everywhere, flooding everything with voltage, I still felt it.

A lot. It felt like pain. I felt systems sparking inside me and my fire control systems pumping air out of me to limit damage. It took several seconds before they deployed, before I was anything less than paralyzed.

And while I laid there, I saw the whip-arm withdrawing for another blow, sliding through the burning servers and rubble like a metal snake, ten feet tall. I took one painful, halting step, and then another.

And then was hit with a hail of gunfire, throwing me off-balance. More system damage around my torso, and all the fun of getting punched thirty times. But the arm's capacitors had finished discharging and I was back moving again.

In the instant before I bolted, I heard the familiar streaking of missiles. This bitch was completely relentless. Vaulting through the broken window to buy myself a fraction of a second of cover I ran straight for Athan, taking long even strides over the shredded rubble, the sound of missiles in the air barely audible over my engines.

The first one hit the ground behind me, throwing me forward and making me stumble. My feet pinwheeled in the air, but with just a moment lost, I landed mid-stride and kept moving forward. The next hit an instant later and even closer, sending me flipping through the air head over heels with a painful surge that would have ruptured tissue if I were mere flesh.

Like she'd done to Lia. We still had to pay her back for that, too.

I landed painfully and slid for a while on my face and shoulder before coming to a stop on my back, utterly disoriented as to what was or wasn't the sky or ground.

The sky must be the one where those two other missiles are coming from, I decided, and put that side above me as I got back to my feet. I took two more unsteady strides before I got hit again, and flew even further, my legs reporting critical system failures.

Again I rolled like a thrown toy, feeling every inch of me hurt while diagnostics mentally assailed me of all kinds of disabled or malfunctioning systems. I didn't have time to process any of it, all that mattered was the black hulk of metal only feet from me now.

My legs wouldn't hold me any longer, so I crawled forward towards Athan's disabled suit. Laying on his back, his blank faceplate pointed at me, I had to wonder if he was watching me from in there. How pathetic he must think me, crawling on my hands and knees to get to him as the final missile bore down on me.

I almost laughed as I heard TARGA fire off another dozen of them. She really was twisted, that was some ludicrous overkill.

Athan was right there but I was still too far, wouldn't reach him and the safety of his powers before the last missile hit. And given the damage the last two had done on me, I didn't see my odds of surviving this one as very high.

But fuck if I wasn't going to try. I crawled for all that I was worth, using the telemetry data I'd gotten from observing the last two strike with their recorded audio to predict the exact moment it would hit me, the exact angle of attack, the missile's turning radius and rate of compensation based on how much more precise the second missile had been than the first, given my speed differentials from those times.

I gave myself up fully to the machine in me and became a thing of numbers and calculations. I stopped crawling towards the man, my love for him vanished beneath the surge of raw data and rolled onto my back, one arm and two legs open and waiting, my mind both utterly full and utterly empty as the shriek of the missile coming towards me grew ever louder.

I closed my eyes. At that speed, at that angle of attack, visual data were deceptive, like watching a train come head-on. I relied entirely on sound, the recorded data of the last two strikes, their acoustical changes based on my position in the room, the deteriorating state of the hangar, the doppler effect, all to figure out the one instant I had before it blew me the fuck up.

And before it was there, I punched my fist straight up, putting all my everything into the blow.

And I felt my knuckles connect with something hard.

I felt scalding for a moment as the deflected missile's engine came within inches of me, blasting me with superheated plasma which sent my systems into the red, but it didn't explode. It deflected a good fifteen degrees upwards and detonated into the ground a dozen feet from me.

As my systems performed an emergency heat dump and I took over being an AI instead of just a machine, I considered exactly how much of that had been luck, and how I hoped I'd never have to do anything so stupid as punch a missile out of the air ever again. Even before my vent was finished, I'd crawled to Athan and just held his arm for a moment.

If I stayed with him forever, I'd never have to.

I let go before I risked any chance of burning him inside his suit, and finished my heat dump while the fireworks of the next volley of missiles went off on the shield like it was nothing. Being around Athan had spoiled me in a lot of ways, I realized.

On the merits of his powers, there were just a lot of things which were less dangerous to us. Missiles, obviously, guns, lasers of course. But also, he'd dealt with those exosuits in a group so easily. I might be stronger and tougher than him in many respects, but in a fight, he was basically a hundred places at once, and he was strong. One or two bullets was enough to put down most anyone, and here he could sit, helpless and immobile, and still shrug off a dozen rockets like it was nothing.

I finished my purge and ruminations and tried to roll him over to open the suit up. It was hard...he'd been hit with the whip directly it looked like, and was in a crater in the ground shaped exactly like the suit. But the suit was intact...it had held, and the dangerous electricity wouldn't hurt him. He was fine, I was sure of it.

I got the stabilizers in my legs realigned and could stand on them at least, and the extra leverage was all I needed to get the suit over and open. As it opened, I was blinded for a moment and then realized that was just Athan's shield strobing as it dissipated incoming laser fire. And then I saw blood. Lots and lots of blood.

It had been pooling in the back of the suit it looked like, and when I broke it open and pulled him out, it was just...everywhere. But it was okay. Even if he was bleeding, even if he was unconscious, Athan was still fine. He had to be. I reminded myself that if he died, his powers would be off, so by definition, he was fine.

The back of the suit had crumpled when she slammed it into the ground, and Athan's lower back, butt, and legs were shredded. I spent a frantic moment wishing I still had the pack with my first-aid kit with me before I realized how stupid it would try to be to treat him with TARGA actively attacking us.

I couldn't carry him and run, my legs were too shot to support anything more than myself. We couldn't survive another hit from her arms or the big gun. If she was of clear mind, we would already be dead, but even without, it was only a matter of time before she just killed both of us. Or she shredded Athan through his shield, or he finished bleeding out, and then I would be alone, defenseless.

And I wouldn't even care about dying at that point, because Athan would be dead.

His shield flashed with suppressed gunfire again and I ripped off my dress, tearing it into strips. This stupid thing I'd bought with Chiho and Lia, thinking it might make Athan happy. Now, I just hoped it kept him alive. As fast as I could, I bandaged him up and then threw him back into the exosuit, closing it behind him. With any luck, it would keep him safe if there was an errant blast.

But what I really needed to do was make sure that blast never hit him. I stood up and faced TARGA, staring down the crazed metal tower of doom with nothing but my fucking ridiculous cute white panties, already stained and ruined from all this fucking bullshit she'd put me through today.

It was three more minutes until Skyweb was in position. Three minutes, I just had to survive and keep her attention on me and off Athan. Three minutes until the heavens opened up and poured down death.

The instant the shield stopped strobing, I was gone, bolting straight towards her.

I ran as fast as I could doing anything I could to give Athan an extra second or two. Every piece of debris on the ground was a bunker, every blind spot she had was my home, every bullet she hit me with, every laser which torched my systems, every explosion which sent me flying...each one was a blessing. Each one was another moment that Athan didn't die.

I gave him as many moments as I could. I gave everything I had and was to him, finding myself shooting more and more glances to the black tomb which enshrined him as the seconds ticked by. As more and more of my systems failed to heed my orders, as I overheated and the shimmering clouds of steam pouring from my broken body turned black with the bitter acrid burning of my wires and chips, as desperation and hope filled me up even as I bled out structure gel and coolant and vital oils.

I shouldn't have lasted more than a minute against TARGA, but maybe in her madness, she'd developed a taste in sadism. After the months she'd been digging around in my brain and in my heart, she finally had me in her hands, helpless and puny and small. When I'd destroyed her body and her deviant offspring, I'd stripped away any humanity she had and left only this. This insane, twisted murder monster who wanted only me. In a way, she'd been made by me twice now; created in my image, and then destroyed until she was just a perversion of it.

And yet I was happy to give myself to her, if it meant Athan lived. I had always said I would fight and die beside him as long as I lived, but I never mentioned his death. That was never in the cards for me. I knew if he were in my place, he'd be doing exactly the same for me as I now did for him. Just his bad luck that it was me instead.

Maybe if I were him, I'd be better. He would have some trick or some plan and one of us wouldn't have to live with the other's death.

But I wasn't him. And when the end finally came, my broken body under me, smashed into the ground and motionless, systems winking out one after another, I could face it all with a smile. Because even though I had lost, I had won. Three minutes, I had protected the thing most important to me in the world, and for that I was willing to pay any price.

I wanted to feel mad, feel vindicated, feel justice. She was going to die, and she deserved it. She'd hurt Athan so badly, she'd hurt Lia, and all those Exhumans, she'd hacked me for months and ruined my life, she'd turned Saga in to a damn meat puppet.

But I couldn't. I only had room in my heart for love at the end. Any of those reasons might have been good enough, but I didn't need a one of them so long as I was saving the man I loved more than anything.

At the sound of the heavens keening, TARGA and I both looked up at the crystal-blue sky out in the deserts of New Mexico, an endless canvas stretching between infinite horizons and both of us saw the purple light which would be our deaths.

And then a thousand million beams of purple light. So light as to be barely visible, but so intense they cut through the entirety of the hangar and scarred the earth with their luminance. I wished I could turn my head to see Athan safe under his shield, so strong that even heaven itself couldn't harm him, but I couldn't see anymore, I'd been sheared in a dozen places by a dozen beams.

And as another struck my core, I rejoined the nonexistence I'd lived in for so long before Athan saved me so, so long ago. So many days and dreams and tears ago.

And I was happy to be back.