"Why is she here?" Dragon demanded, his eyes not moving off of me. "How dare you violate this sacred chamber with her presence?"

Rio gaped at him. "She...she was chosen! She has the sight."

"You are an idiot," he declared. "She isn't even alive. She is a mechanical doll. She does not have the sight, she is simply too base to receive the visions."

"I'll give you a vision," I growled. "Of my foot up your ass."

"I give you that she does not look...normal, but I have spoken with her. She is no 'mechanical doll.' She is one of us."

"Do you challenge my calling? Do you think I do not know every Exhuman on the planet? She is not among them."

"Do you challenge mine? Do you think I wouldn't know a machine by laying eyes upon it?"

"I do," he spat, which drew gasps from both others. A bit melodramatic for my tastes, but these were crazy people. "Your judgement is clouded by your selfishness."

"Now, let's not say anything we'll regret," Tobias said, stepping between the two. "Believe in our god and his will. Through Rio, he has brought this outsider to us. She serves a purpose."

"She," Dragon said, suddenly pointing a blade in my direction "is no 'she' at all. 'She' is a doll, dressed in the skins of man and told to think as one. 'She' is nothing."

"If I'm nothing, why does it piss you off so much for me to be standing in your little sanctum?" I spat. "And for the record: your arm? That's what nothing looks like."

I wished I'd been paying better attention to the rooms Rio had led me through on the way here. I'd been so wrapped up in arguing with her that I didn't have a very good idea of my escape routes, and I was currently pulling through my recorded senses to hastily reconstruct the layout as best I could. I had to keep him talking until I had a path.

The damn gates would be closed no matter what, and while I could probably jump the city's outer wall, they built the damn things taller and taller in order of importance and I couldn't just bound my way out of the inner city.

"I am offended at your presence as I would be the presence of dirt," he spat. "You belong beneath the glass."

I was screwed. He was about to move on me, I could tell by all the fucking thousands of times I'd seen the tapes with Athan. But just as he...as he...did whatever the opposite of tensing up was, Rio suddenly stepped between us.

"That's enough!" she shouted. "There will be no fighting here! I don't care if you two are mortal enemies, there's no fighting in the sanctum!"

To my surprise, after exactly five seconds, Dragon returned the blade to its sheath and his arm to his cloak.

"My apologies," he said, inclining his head only the tiniest amount to her. "I was rash."

Rash wasn't exactly the first word that came to mind when Dragon was involved. He moved and acted with such cold precision, it was impossible to consider anything he'd ever do to be 'rash'.

"That's better," Rio said, staring back and forth between the two of us. "What on Earth is wrong with the two of you? Liwei I understand being crazy, but AEGIS? We just had a heart-to-heart and learned a lot about each other. I thought I knew you better than to be picking random fights with another high clergy."

Is that what we had? I remembered it differently. "Sister, I'd fight any holy man from any faith, real or not, if they were as big a jackass as Dragon."

Dragon had, in the meanwhile, summoned over a pair of men who I'd mistaken for statues at first blush. He spoke to them, not bothering with greetings or pleasantries. He spoke simply, and to the point. "Take her from the sanctum, and then kill her," he said, pointing at me.

The two men turned on me as one, approaching with the same, familiar disinterest I'd seen on Dragon before. And it was in their familiar movements, their blank expressions, that I realized, exactly who the 'fake' dragon we'd fought and killed at the boneyard had been, who the toads planted in IkaCo and the XPCA's ranks actually were, and how they fought with such suicidal abandon and perfect dedication.

When Rio had told me that the city provided the high clergy with anything we needed for our callings, this had not been what I'd expected. But as they approached, there wasn't any more room for doubt.

And I fucking bolted. Even if the real Dragon kept his hands clean, I couldn't take two...mini-dragons, or super-toads, or whatever the fuck these guys were...at once. I wasn't sure I could take one at once. I knew if they got their hands on me, they'd do exactly as he ordered, dragging me out and then killing me. Running was the only way.

But fuck they were fast.

I'd been with Athan long enough to get a pretty good gauge on exactly how fast a human could move without severe damage -- I'd become something of a leading expert on the subject, actually, helping Whitney out with setting the upper limits on the exoframe to keep our boy from ripping his other leg off.

And these guys were well beyond it, the upper limit. They were machines, more than I was, their thick muscles obviously honed for this kind of action.

I was still probably faster, but unless we were sprinting in a straight line, that hardly mattered. Both were Exhuman, definitely, and physics didn't seem to affect them quite right, the way they flew around bends without stopping...or how bends flew around them. On top of that, there were two of them, and thousands of unfamiliar walls, courtyards, windows, and dead-ends. I bolted back the way I'd come, doing my best to catch any familiar landmark and hope, pray, that I didn't pin myself in a corner.

I sprinted into an unfamiliar room, the sounds of their feet slapping the stone just inches behind me. No other exits but a window, which I threw myself through, and rolled into a sprint again the moment my feet touched the grass.

If I had time to drink in the area, I might have thought it beautiful. Lots of round buildings with yards, interlocking like honeycomb cells, trees and grass never far out of sight. Instead, I was crashing through them, my engines blazing as I kicked off of trunks to divert my momentum into faster turns. But even when making impossible turns, even if I did manage to lose one of them in a dramatic hairpin or surprise ascent to a rooftop, the other always seemed ready to catch me.

On one slanted roof, the ground was whipping by under me, with one chasing behind while the other was somewhere below. A rare moment of separation, and decided I had to press this tiny advantage. I flew over a courtyard and into a window and darted sideways.

And stopped. The body from behind hurtled after me and I swung full-force at his face with a kick, intending to break his neck instantly.

But it was like they didn't even react, they just knew. So far from being human, in thought or in capability. He swung himself sideways at the last moment -- the only moment -- and the kick grazed his shoulder and cheek.

It was still enough to throw him across the room into the wall, but I knew that wouldn't be the end of him. Before he even crashed, I'd pursued, my other leg snapping out towards him.

His hands caught the blow and he twisted, intending to break my knee or drive me into the ground. Instead I used him as leverage, hooking the leg he was holding as a pivot to straddle his back and stomp him into the floor.

He let go before I made it that far, but I did manage to lash out and crush his leg on his way out. That was three kicks he took in less than two seconds, and Exhuman, inhuman, or not, his body had to be feeling it. He was staggering back still, and I had only an instant to decide whether to try for the decisive blow, or take off with my advantage.

And then I didn't have time at all, as his buddy exploded through a doorway, arms outstretched to grab me, almost as wide as the small room.

I kicked at him instead, but just rebounded off a block, and both my follow-ups did the same. I spun and put as much as I had into the next attack, dropping an axe kick on him with all the force I could muster.

He blocked again, but this time, I felt his arm splinter. Bone was only so strong.

Somehow, he still caught me, like the pain of his arm shattering wasn't even there. His other hand lashed out and grabbed my neck, the force of his follow-through pinning me to the wall, a pained grunt escaping me as the impact drove air from my systems.

I lashed out again but we were too close, he shrugged it off and then pinned me to the wall with his body, my legs wrapped uselessly around his thighs, my heels beating on the back of his calves, ineffective without leverage.

I tried to punch him, but his broken arm rose and absorbed the hit. I pummeled the shattered limb again and again, and then his friend was there, pinning me arm and whole with their sweaty bodies claustrophobically in my face, my engines blazing as all air through my throat was cut off.

I had to be burning to the touch and their skin was red and raw, yet they didn't even flinch. Was this Dragon's real power? The ability to turn people into this?

"Come...on..." I gasped, looking for anything, anything at all that could help. I felt a severe pain as the structural integrity of my neck began to give, and one of my shoulder joints was starting to torque as the two men grunted and panted to tear me into pieces. "Fuck you!" I spat, thrashing as violently as I could.

There was a snapping, crunching sound from my shoulder and I screamed before I could dial down my pain receptors. My defiance was quickly turning to desperation as I had nothing, nothing at all within arm's reach, nothing I could...grab with my toes or...thrash my head towards.

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Just me, and the stone wall behind me, and the two men tearing me apart against it. I twisted and screamed and tried to bite off the nose of the one on top of me, but he was barely out of reach. I ripped my engines to max, my skin glowing and my joints flaring bright white, but they didn't care, even as their skin blackened and blistered away.

My arm snapped again, and I began to lose feeling in it. I looked sideways and saw my shoulder bulging horrifically as the composite threatened to tear through the synthetic skin. The pain was unimaginable, no matter how much I kept muting it, it was rising exponentially. I was breaking, and alarms of all kinds were ringing through my head at just how little time I had left.

And I remembered thinking suddenly how unfair it felt. Here I was, a legitimate, bona-fide gynoid, with literal alarms and status alerts being sent to me by my body. While these two flesh-and-blood men were burning at touching me, riddled with shattered bones, and they didn't even so much as grimace. The closer one's skin had been charred black, and aside from his panting hot breaths in my face, you'd think it was nothing.

My arm wrenched again, bending at an angle it was never meant to go and another scream escaped me. I gasped as tears helpfully flooded my vision.

"You're going to snap my fucking arm off!" I shrieked. I beat on him with my heels, thrashing as my head flooded with panic, countdown projections estimating my arm breaking off in mere moments. I'd never felt so helpless or small, never knew that a pile of meat and bone could reduce me to this. Crying, panicking, wailing. "Stop it!" I screamed, my voice sounding not my own. "Stop it, stop it, stop it, stop!"

I slid to the floor, and my arm slid with me, feeling like an entity outside my own body. I cradled it and wept uncontrollably. I was beyond emotional and irrational, terrified of dying, and of dying pointlessly, in this stupid place for no stupid fucking reason. Without Athan even knowing...without him even capable of knowing. It seemed the worst, most pathetic, most insignificant death I could imagine, and being forced to stare into it had broken me.

I wasted long minutes holding myself and hyperventilating, the sounds of my engines in my ears and my rasping breath through my twisted neck. I could have done...I don't know...any number of things. Useful things. Damage assessment. Lashing out. Analysis.

It wasn't until the end of those long minutes when I still wasn't dead that I realized I wasn't going to be. The two had stopped, entirely, and were standing there, scary and silent as ghosts. I had a terrified thought that Dragon had somehow remotely called them to stop and would finish the job himself. Or worse...I'd be some kind of hostage or leverage.

If that were the case, I'd just kill myself now. I'd never be a liability to Athan. That was a death I could face.

But they showed no signs of moving to hold me or of Dragon appearing. They were just...standing there.

I felt stupid and slow, unable to come up with an answer myself. With nothing else to go on, I couldn't think of why not to just ask them. "Why'd you stop?" I asked.

"You told us to, High Priestess."

I blinked at them, tears falling out of my eyes and disbelief settling in. I told them to.

I was just stunned. Maybe for the first time ever, I experienced a complete lack of coherent thought as their words buzzed in my empty mind.

And then I laughed, uncontrollably. A little at first, but soon, raucous, impossible-to-stop laughter. These poor assholes had broken femurs, splintered radius, third-degree burns on their palms and more up their arms. The one bastard in front had been pressed bodily against me at the waist, and his upper legs were raw with melted skin, to say nothing about his junk -- he'd have to have a new hole installed to piss ever again.

And all that, all the damage they did to my arm and my neck and all of this fighting...for nothing. To stop, the second I told them to, because they were fucking machines, programmed to listen to any high clergy.

There were times I still had an identity crisis inside about what, exactly I was or wasn't. But I had to hand it to these fuckers for pointing out to me exactly what kind of robot I wasn't.

So I laughed. Laughed in disbelief and relief and just from the sheer ludicrous idiocy of the situation. I laughed until it felt like I'd never cried just a moment ago, like all the pain and suffering a death I was just facing down had been a colossal cosmic joke. I laughed until it hurt, and even then, I was still drying my eyes and choking on chuckles as I addressed the two.

"Okay. Neither of you are ever to take orders from High Priest Liwei again. Do you understand?"

"Yes."

Hell, that was easy. I'd never reprogrammed a human before, but looking down at my arm, I didn't feel as bad about it as I might expect.

"If I tell you to tell all the other priests not to listen to Liwei, would they follow that order?"

"No. We follow orders from High Clergy only."

"Could I...order them to...accept your orders, somehow?"

"No. We follow orders from High Clergy only. This is absolute."

"Can I order you to ignore an absolute?"

"No."

A rather barbaric way of handling logical paradoxes, I suppose. But effective. Also ruined my plans to create any kind of viral mutiny. If I wanted more dudes, I'd have to tell them myself, but the second Dragon caught wind, he'd probably start doing the same back, and given that he could bully me out of this area-control game by merit of being stronger personally and knowing the area, it made more sense to keep it as a surprise. I'd make do with the two.

I gauged the two and which was more capable of walking. It was probably the one with the broken arm, not leg. I turned to him. "You will lead me to the armory." And to the other, "You will pretend as though you were successful in completing Liwei's orders and tell him such. Do you understand?"

They both assented, and then without pause, began to move. I picked myself up, winced, dialed back my senses even further, and got to staggering in behind my guide.

He led me through twisting rooms, each chamber different, but put together like whoever laid out this place had too much love for circles and forty-five degree angles. There weren't any straight hallways, and I wondered if it was to create the illusion of space by breaking it up, or if the high clergy really just didn't like being able to see each other.

But as we progressed, we got further away from the random holy artifacts and divine iconography and more into Rio's lab, with sheets of metal and composite laying around and half-completed gun parts popping up with greater frequency.

We turned a corner and I saw a very welcome sight. The long racks of guns of the main armory, laid out in pristine order, as though in counterpoint to the numerous messy benches surrounding them.

And also a very unwelcome sight. Between me and the guns, Dragon, his eyes glinting from under his hood and his hand hidden. He didn't react on seeing me, but I knew he saw me all the same.

"What is the meaning of this?" he asked my thrall. "I ordered you to remove her and kill her."

"Kill him," I said, and my new friend bounded forward without hesitation while I went for the nearest gun.

"Cease," Dragon spat, but my boy kept right on moving, legs pumping under him full-tilt as he closed the distance with me right behind him.

I flinched as the two of them met, and hot gore splashed across my face, sizzling where it hit my air intakes with the whine of the foreign contaminant burning away. I had only an instant to stop myself before Dragon slashed through the air inches from my face.

He'd completed his attack and bounced out of range before the priest's body even hit the floor, gurgling involuntarily through a slit throat. It was pretty fucking obvious I'd miscalculated here, the difference in power levels between Dragon and his thralls. Given how hard it had been for me to put them down, I thought...he'd buy me a second or two to grab a gun at least.

And now I was staring down Dragon alone, arm broken, while he was between me and my only hope to equalize the situation. I swallowed hard.

"How'd you know? That I'd come here?" I asked, looking for outs. The walls in this part of the city seemed thicker, more isolating. Rio didn't seem to care for windows; judging by the weapons display, she preferred a more industrial view.

"You presume to waste my time?" he asked, advancing now.

"I figure, if I'm going to die, I may as well learn a thing or two."

"Your final actions will be as meaningless as you are."

"Indulge me. Gloat a little. I could have gone anywhere; this place is a maze." I started backpedaling as he continued his advance.

"I am merely not an idiot," he said. And I guess that conversation was over, as he began to move. I guess going for the guns was a pretty obvious move. Stupid me, I hadn't even considered what he'd be doing while his men went after me. I deserved this loss.

Not that I was going to make it cheap for him. Even if I went down here, I fully intended to take his other arm with me. I flexed my fingers, feeling my broken arm working, though stilted and wrong. It'd have to do.

I'd have to do. There wasn't anyone else.

I waited until he blinked to strike. Relative to how he moved, the blink of an eye was a huge delay in his reaction times. Those were the kinds of margins we were dealing with here.

And even then, I feinted, over and over and over again. I'd gotten too careless with his slaves, overcommitted to my attacks, such that when they caught me, I was done for. With Dragon, I knew if he got his hands on me, I was already dead. This wasn't going to be a game of getting hit, it was one of positioning. I had to make him choose between poor position and risking me getting the guns, and poor form and getting killed.

That was the only way I could win.

So when he dodged, I pursued to push him the same direction as his momentum. I kept him moving at the edge of his limits, driving him further and further onto the balls of his feet with each step, with each kick, never giving him a chance to anchor, to pivot.

I did my best to control him, to keep the ever-present threat of me simply kicking his head off looming right there, like an axe he had to keep ahead of.

But I was a joke compared to him. If I was an axe, I was a slow moving one, the way he spun and twisted and waltzed around me. As he dodged, as I did my best to herd him, he peppered me with knives and gunfire, and though I held up my arms and they took the brunt of it, every time he hit me, I saw chunks of my skin and sparks of metal flying off of me. Every shot lowered my system pressure, cracked my hull, eroded my structural integrity.

I still needed arms, to hold a gun, to point it, to shoot it. But if he slipped shots past them, my core systems would be damaged, I might move slower or black out for milliseconds. I'd be dead on my feet.

But I was dead on my feet the second I launched myself at him, I realized. This slow ballet, of dozens of kicks and bullets exchanged in a second, this wasn't a dance I was going to outlive. He was just too far beyond me. No matter how careful I was, no matter my strategy or pressure, I was doing nothing, and he was eroding me. The scrap metal on the floor was scuffing him more than I was.

A knife lodged itself in my shoulder, my twisted one, and I saw my arm drop without so much as feeling it. It hung dead at my side, opening up my left for attacks, and worse, throwing off my balance. Instantly, two more knives sunk where my heart and kidney would have been, their silver handles vibrating with the force of their impact.

I pulled the blade from my shoulder and threw it back, and he jumped and twisted, the blade catching in the folds of his cloak and clattering to the ground. Before he landed, another bullet found me in the leg, below the knee, and I dropped despite myself.

I knew I had only an instant to get back on my feet, to stand, to dodge, to meet Dragon head-on. But he had no intention of meeting me head-on, he'd already said as much. I was dirt to be swept out. I took four more bullets as he strode towards me, the hot impacts knocking me further down, both of my knees on the hard stone, my auto-gyro unresponsive as it tried to stabilize.

I saw the flash of silver as a knife readied in his hand. I looked up and saw that same dispassion in his eyes, locked onto my throat for the kill. His face and cloak splattered with the blood of his own follower and he didn't even blink.

Terrifying, I thought. To be pursued by something as relentless and efficient as a machine.

And then he did blink. His face went wild with uncoordinated motion, his whole body twitched and jolted, arcing with electricity, though staying on his feet even as they shuddered under him. Veins popped out on his forehead as he struggled to twist and see behind him, his teeth clenched and an involuntary guttural sound pressed from him.

Somehow Athan had done it. He'd broken free of his mind control. He'd stormed the gates, shown up at my final moment and saved me. He'd slain the dragon. Everything was going to be alright.

That's what I thought for just a moment before I saw Rio standing there, gun in hand, still crackling with energy, looking shocked at Dragon and at herself for doing it to him. She stammered for a moment, an apology, I thought, or maybe an excuse. And then the gun clattered against the ground, bouncing twice on the stone floor.

She bolted to me, stepping over Dragon's still-twitching body, pulled me up by my good arm, draped it over her neck, and then hefted me to my feet and we ran.