I started working on the generator. The whole thing was thrumming with power. My heart thudded along with it. Good thing Aliya’s body had the ability to suppress sweat glands, although I made sure not to turn them off entirely and overheat.

We got started. It was painstaking, gruelling work. Pulling off the right wires, connectors, modules, and so on, replacing the right valves and pipes, hacking into the right generator Interface nodes without tripping up anything else was a delicate, tense procedure. There was a reason Aliya was called an Operator. This was no less tense than a medical surgery.

But I was getting there. Slowly but surely, I was able to draw away the main power lines from the generator to my own body.

As I worked, Aliya butted in occasionally with what she knew about Arclight. Distracting though it was a bit, I was too eager to learn. It was Arclight’s nature that was driving the Commissioner’s plan to blow up Underlevel. And the rest of Silver City too, of course.

“Arclight is essentially an expression of communication,” Aliya said.

“…what?” I asked.

“Scientifically speaking, it’s hard to explain. But think about it in this sense—everything needs to communicate, yes? Everything needs to exchange information. Well, not need, everything is just an exchange of stimuli and response. You experience something and act accordingly. Arclight was born from that fundamental act of living.”

“I recall something like that.” I had read the highly summarized articles about the space expedition that had first discovered Arclight off-world. “How it was being used by alien parasites to communicate with the local life or something.”

“You got it backwards.” Aliya was starting to really get into the topic. “Arclight was a result of the communication between the parasite and the flora on PARAL-89. It’s a semi-living substance. Give it a medium where any communication is being achieved between any living matter, and it will propagate the effect that communication is seeking to achieve.”

I was starting to remember more of what I had read. “And because the communication between plants and parasites was so primitive, it didn’t do much. But the scientists discovered it did a lot more in the presence of more advanced communication. Like the kind that occurs between people.”

“Yes. Exactly. It’s almost like a material that thrives in the presence of intelligent, sapient species. Humans were therefore the ideal people to make use of something like that.”

“I don’t get how it’s supposed to relate to what we’re doing here?”

“Because that’s how Arclight functions. It’s a result of communication, and what you’re trying to communicate matters. The pattern you use is what’s important. That’s why Augmented bodies use hexagons to create patterns for Arclight to flow into. Remember when I mentioned the bodies with the holes and without? The dots and lines?”

“You didn’t say anything about dots and lines.”

“Well, I’m saying it now. A sequence of dots and lines can be used to represent any letter or number. And that’s what Commissioner is using to express a very specific message, one that the Arclight will emulate in its expression. It’s the right pattern it needs to follow.”

“What’s the message?” I asked, though I was starting to suspect what it was.

“Oh, that’s easy. It’s—”

The Arclight surged, cutting her off. Warning lights flared to life all over the Morgue, a siren going off as the whole building shook harder. I cursed. Time was almost out. I had nearly gotten too distracted by Aliya.

“Are the connections enough?” I asked. I had several of the main wires from the generator hooked up to my legless body. Specifically, they were connected to the mechanical arms I had now pulled out.

“You’re really going to draw it into yourself? You won’t be leaving anything of me at all, will you?”

“That’s not what I asked!”

“Yes. Yes, it’s enough. You can start. Arclight capacity is already at two percent. Remember—if it hits a hundred, you’re going to blow up, and so will Underlevel.”

“Start what? Haven’t you started already?”

The unfamiliar voice had me turning my head to the side, which was bad because the Arclight was surging stronger and stronger. Still, I took the time to curse. The Cull we had been trying to avoid for so long was now here. Most likely because, with everything going haywire inside the Morgue, the generator would be one of the main spots to check for issues.

Our adversary was already acting, rushing at me with steps that I still had trouble seeing in this body. But it didn’t matter.

I could kill her with ease.

The furious Arclight was exploding along the connections we had established so far. Power like I had never felt before rushed through my body, lighting me up from within as hexagons popped and the mechanical arms began to strain. The world itself was illuminating like a star being born right in front of my eyes. Or maybe that was the excessive Arclight.

Whatever the case, I swing one of my mechanical arms at the Cull closing in. At the same time, I unleashed a single pulse of the Arclight raging through me.

The Cull, and everything behind her, more or less splintered apart. My Arclight pulse emerged in a shimmer, almost seeming to slow down the world as it blasted out, before slamming into the assassin with the force of an onrushing freight-train.

With a sharp but short scream, the Cull was crushed in a burst of blood, gore, fluids, and metallic shrapnel. Then the pulse continued, unstoppable and uncontrollable.

It ripped apart the floor, shattered through multiple walls and any other objects in its path, before ripping through the yard beyond, the street beyond, until finally slamming into the neighbourhood on the other side with a crackling crunch.

So much for not destroying Underlevel.

“You destroyed my arm!” Aliya said.

I barely heard over the surging Arclight. There was so much of it, our connection even inside my own head was being crushed.

She was right, though. The mechanical arm I had used to unleash that Arclight pulse had basically vaporized as I had channelled the Arclight through it. Didn’t bode well for what I had to do here.

“I destroyed a lot more than just that arm,” I pointed out.

“You’re going to need to destroy a lot more,” Aliya said. “Arclight capacity at nineteen percent! That blast you unleashed helped it go down, but it’s still rising quick.”

A part of me wanted to take in the fact that I had more or less vaporized a third of the Morgue, not to mention everything around it for a few hundred yards. That was the strength of the Arclight I now possessed.

That was the power the Commissioner had sought to harness to upend our—my—world.

The Morgue was falling apart elsewhere too. Not just at the spot where I had used my newfound powers.

Vents were bursting apart, steam hissing into the air from multiple fractures on the pipes as the cooling units went on overdrive. The shaking had grown so bad that cracks were popping up all over the place. Walls fell over here and there, while certain walkways simply crashed down with their supports gone.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

That was fine. None of that was an issue. No doubt, the room we were in would collapse any moment now.

But I had to get a grip on this surging Arclight while I still could.

“Arclight capacity at forty-two percent!” Aliya warned.

“Sorry for the arm,” I said.

“Ah, shi—”

Her voice cut out as I raised another mechanical arm straight up, unleashing another powerful blast of Arclight. Like the previous pulse, this one shattered my arm too, though it also reduced the Arclight capacity my body was dealing with.

The problem was that the blast was extremely powerful. Everything turned white for a fraction of a second, like a lightning bolt had landed among us.

This was bad. Underlevel was so called because it was literally under most of Silver City. As such, when I fired an overpowered bust of Arclight straight up, the shot ended up crushing a segment of Silver City above me.

I supposed I was extremely lucky the broken segment didn’t come crashing down right on top of me. The bridge I had inadvertently destroyed plummeted and exploded in the yard next to the Morgue. I was bombarded by the deafening roar of the detonation, by the flaming debris from the remains of what used to be a fancy bridge far above.

The floor shook harder, cracks snaking towards my spot like parasites seeking to take advantage of my vulnerability.

“Will the floor remain stable long enough?” I asked inside my head because at this point, I wouldn’t be able to hear myself talk. I could barely even think.

“It’ll have to,” Aliya said. “And stop destroying my arms. Also, Arclight capacity now again at the thirty-eight percent.”

I didn’t share her unyielding faith in an Underlevel Morgue’s infrastructure, but then again, she had been here a lot longer than me.

The approach of the eye-cams gave me an idea. One that would probably save Aliya’s mechanical arms. The little flying bots must have come to investigate what was going on, following in the footsteps of the Cull now dead. Well, now they were about to suffer the same fate.

Instead of sending out the Arclight pulses in concentrated blasts, essentially opening and closing the valves, I did the opposite. I kept them open, sending out a continuous stream of Arclight.

This diluted the Arclight greatly. No longer was it so potent that would shoot for miles to shatter bridges or destroy every neighbourhood it touched.

But the sheer amount and concentration of Arclight meant it could still take out pesky little shits like the eye-cams. They all burst apart as the stream of Arclight hit, their little warning screeches barely reaching my ears over the general destruction I was party to.

It was good for another reason that I had decided to continuously output Arclight. The concentration of it around me created a shield of sorts.

A barrier that was sufficient protection against the incendiary missile fired at me.

The explosion shocked me, of course. Aliya screeched out a curse that was no less distracting. The only reason I didn’t join her was that opening my mouth would make me bite my own tongue off, and Aliya had probably suffered enough.

“Assholes!” Aliya said. “They’re firing at us from a distance because they’re too afraid to get close.”

“Smart,” I muttered.

I had difficulty spotting who had shot at me. Too much smoke, too much pulsing Arclight. I did catch more than one figure floating down from far above. Those ones made me grimace.

They weren’t just regular Culls or any other individuals. The city had decided to send in the Mechdromoi. Spec ops soldiers armed in hulking mech suits. Each was essentially a mobile artillery unit on its own. The Untouchables were quite serious about remaining untouched, it seemed.

“Despite your little trick,” Aliya said. “The Arclight capacity is still trickling up. We’re at sixty-six percent now. But this looks like a good time to unleash some anyway.”

More shots were fired in my direction. Bombs and missiles and even opposing blasts of Arclight. I had to wonder how much of the situation my enemy had figured out.

Did they think destroying me, and the generator along with me, would solve all their problems?

Did they believe they’d somehow survive the resultant eruption if they let all the Arclight surge by killing me?

Or maybe they were okay with sacrificing themselves, so long as it meant they could stop the Arclight surge from affecting Silver City’s higher levels. Whatever the case, it didn’t matter. The Mechdromoi were coming in. I had to act, before they ruined everything.

“Sorry about your arms,” I said again.

Before Aliya could reply, I fired off a beam of Arclight once more. I had just caught the briefest glimpse of one of the Mechdromoi getting closer and closer. My shot missed the hulking mech, but that was fine. The blast of Arclight went on to hit the building the distant shooter was firing from.

It was impossible to tell if the falling, crashing building had buried the cobber. But at least I wasn’t being fired upon anymore.

Well, not for the moment. As the pulsing Arclight grew stronger, as the Morgue’s systems started dying because of the sheer pressure they underwent, the Mechdromoi droned in closer, their armoured limbs pointing miniguns in my direction.

The constant shots didn’t reach me, much less hurt me. Not through the barrier created by the continuous stream of Arclight. But they were annoying, and they needed to be stopped.

“Another arm?” Aliya asked with resignation.

“Yep.”

“You’re not saying sorry this time?”

“They’re starting to ring hollow, Operator.”

“That’s because you don’t mean them anymore!”

“If we manage to make it out of this alive, I’ll make it up to you with a real apology.”

As we were speaking inside my head, I had fired off another concentrated blast of Arclight. Not a simple pulse or even a beam. No, I chose a pure expansion of the Arclight that had been building up on and on.

A hemisphere of compressed, concentrated Arclight burst out of me. It flashed out, fast as lightning, ramming into the Mechdromoi floating in the air. Their minigun-blasting finally died out. It took only a few moments before I heard the solid thud of the armoured mechs crashing to the ground, the impact of their sheer weight the only reason I could do so.

I grinned. There was no way to dodge an eruption of Arclight that powerful and that all-encompassing.

For a second, I thought I could relax. I was dealing with the Arclight. My enemies were being stymied. Even if the Morgue was collapsing around me, right then, my foundation was solid. My base remained standing.

Then I caught the Mechdromoi moving.

“You see that?” Aliya asked.

“We’re literally looking at the same thing,” I said. “I can’t not see that.”

It wasn’t the Mechdromoir itself drawing closer. A chunk of the chest-plate was moving towards me steadily, like it was being magnetically attracted to the generator. No. That stuttering motion… it was being carried.

“Is the pilot still alive?” Aliya asked, coming to the same conclusion.

I had no clue, but I wasn’t about to take chances. Time to prepare another Arclight blast. Although, I wasn’t keen on wasting another of my mechanical arms on some cobber who didn’t know when to quit. Silver City was alive. The warnings and sirens were raining down upon Underlevel, and soon enough, worse would come. The Mechdromoi were only the beginning.

And then a head poked out from behind the chest-plate. I cursed. So did Aliya.

It was the Commissioner.

Still in delivery girl’s body, Commissioner Gregor was basically using the chest-piece of the destroyed Mechdromoi as a shield to get through the constantly pulsing Arclight.

“Stop!” I yelled out.

Commissioner Gregor didn’t stop. “That won’t work on me, X-18. Why don’t you stop me yourself?”

I readied my arm to fire, concentrating all the Arclight gathering in my body that had been steadily trickling up. But I didn’t shoot.

There was the question of whether anything I fired would get through the thick armour of the Mechdromoi. The last eruption had fried their own Arclight systems, causing them to crash, which was what had disjointed the mech’s body, allowing the Commissioner to take a chunk off.

A direct blast with Arclight was probably not going to be that effective, even if I had gathered and compressed a ton of it.

But there was another reason I couldn’t just shoot at the Commissioner.

“Stop worrying about the delivery girl,” Aliya said. Hmm, maybe sharing headspace with someone allowed one to look a little too deep at the other person’s consciousness. “Just shoot!”

“Wait.”

“Wait for what? That bastard wants us both dead!”

The Commissioner was through. He let the chunk of armour drop, now a mere three feet away from the generator. Barely six feet away from me.

Delivery girl’s body was already burning away under the constant pressure of the Arclight I was streaming out. Her skin charred, her body combusting here and there. Her silver hair sparked and caught fire.

I cursed. What in the world was the Commissioner doing here if he was just going to let his poor ride get destroyed.

“Why aren’t you doing anything?” Aliya asked.

“Wait,” I said.

“For what?”

“Wait…”

Before Aliya could continue pressing, the Commissioner stepped closer. Stepped into position.

I lunged forward. Since I couldn’t move too far from my position and release my connections with the generator, and I didn’t want to waste an entire arm shooting at the Commissioner, I had to wait until my target was in position. Until my target was close enough for me to stab at him with one of the remaining mechanical arms.

The Commissioner lithely danced away. My lunge’s momentum carried me a little past him, so that he was now behind me. I had to curse again.

“Yeah, no,” Aliya said inside my head. “This body was not meant for fighhhh—”

Her voice juddered to a static-filled halt. My body froze. With a flash, I was reminded of the moment my consciousness had entered Aliya’s body, by establishing a connection at the back of her head. The same area that was now exposed to the Commissioner.

The same area that he had invaded, had been seeking all this time, and I had been too stupid to realize.

I was dragged inside my own head. My consciousness was rooted in my mind, where a storm was breaking around everything. Where nothing was familiar.

Instead, all I saw in front of me was the giant, cloudy figure of the Commissioner. A titan inside my head, wreathed with lightning and possessing unimaginable power.

“Enough, X-18,” the Commissioner said, his voice echoing through the world. “You’ve done more than enough. Now, it’s my turn to take control of the rest.”