“What are you working on anyways?” Britt asked. “I mean, I know what you’re working on…but how are you going about it?”

“Here,” Miller beckoned with a hand that looked like fifteen knuckles wrapped in crepe. “Have a look.”

The view advanced. Slowly, hesitantly, as if the viewer was of two minds whether or not he should. It moved towards Miller with its herky-jerk gait and settled over one of his shoulders.

“See,” Miller explained, “we couldn’t kill it. You saw that as well as I did. We threw everything we had at it, and it backhanded it all, as you put it. It always seemed to have a hidey-hole where it could dodge the worst of the kill, and adapt and come back stronger for it. But those kills were sniper fire, meant to take out the bots with as little effort as possible, disrupting one tiny bit of their code. So we asked ourselves, what if we blasted the nooks and crannies, and unleashed full-blown Armageddon on these things? What if there was a way for us to…”

A fit of coughing choked him at the peak of his excitement. This one was the worst bout yet. It wracked his body, doubling him over as he hacked out bits of phlegm and spittle. Britt reached out to him – he was wearing a bio-suit, I noticed, as his arms shot into view – and grabbed him by the shoulders. “Easy,” Britt whispered as he eased Miller back in his chair. “Easy…”

Miller hacked one more time, a wet, sputtering sound, and Britt’s arm was stippled with blood. A graceless exhale sprayed the console as well. His head tilted forward and down, jaw slack and tongue curled, as if trying to hold down vomit. His teeth were stained with sheeting blood. It pooled in his bottom lip, and, along with strands of his saliva, spilled over onto his chin in a sickly dribble that hung for a second, dangling like a bungee cord, then snapped. One half splashed into his lap, where it soaked into the white of his coat, while the other recoiled towards his mouth, beading like a milky gem. Britt tried to wipe it away, but the sterine only smeared it around.

“I…” Miller wheezed and gasped for breath, then coughed again to clear his throat. “I thought I had…more time,” he gurgled.

“Shhhhhh” Britt whispered. He knelt, and dropped an arm to Miller’s midsection, cradling him against his chest. “Save your strength. We’ll get you to your room, and…”

“Ngng…no” Miller waved him off. He coughed again. Another rivulet of blood leaked out the side of his mouth. It dribbled down his cheek, leaving behind a scarlet trail. “This…is it.” His good eye swiveled towards his holo. It showed a myriad of images, everything from baby pictures to he and Rauch, struggling in a dozen different ways, all of which ended with him shielded his neck from Rauch’s nails. But one was foremost of them all: the girl, lying in her bed, smiling up at whatever it was the holo chose to represent. Her teeth gleamed in a sourceless light. Her face was framed by an angelic glow.

“No,” Britt tried to lift him to his feet, but Miller only moaned in pain. Britt was forced to leave him be. “No, it can’t be…” the holo flitted this way and that. Britt’s arms started to tense, as if he meant to try again, then relaxed, and grabbed at Miller in despair. He brought his friend’s head to his, as if by holding on tightly enough he could bottle Miller’s soul.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“We f…f-found…” Miller closed his eye as the words dribbled out of him. Sweat poured off his forehead, partly from the fever that was only now starting to break and partly from the strain of trying to hold his head aloft. He drew a shallow, shuddering breath. “…a n-new kind of…” but that was all he got before he let himself collapse.

“Found something?” Britt asked. Gently. More soothing than inquiring. His hold on Miller never faltered.

Miller raised his head again, jaw trembling with exertion. His holo showed the weight of it, this thing he felt he must explain, but the sad little mouse standing before the Minotaur’s labyrinth showed how sure he was he wouldn’t finish. Some of the light went out of his eye. “Don’t…” He coughed and wheezed again. He fought through it as best he could, struggling for one last lungful of air. “Don’t t-tell her…h-how it e-ended.” Every word was a Herculean effort for him at this point. They came out mangled anyways, like the victim of a stroke.

Britt brushed Miller’s hair to one side, clearing it off his brow. Several strands of it came free, and stuck to the blood on Britt’s fingers. “I won’t,” he assured.

“And…” Miller gasped again for breath, but this time there was none. He gurgled and worked his jaw noiselessly, a fish dangling in the air. His good eye ticked to join his bad as panic took him for a moment. Every muscle on him twitched. “…let her know…” he mouthed, exaggerating every syllable with the portions of his lips that worked just enough for us to make out what he would have said, “…it’s not…her…fault…”

“WHO?” I screamed, and banged my fists at the edge of the holo as if it were a solid thing. I almost lost my balance as they passed through. “Don’t tell WHO how it ended? Let WHO know it’s not her fault?!? Someone say her goddamned NAME!” But of course only Ramsay heard.

“You got it,” Britt whispered.

Miller nodded. The corner of his mouth, the one not paralyzed by swelling, twitched upwards for a half a second. One could almost think he’d smiled.

And then the spasms took him. Blood gushed from his mouth as fits of coughs slammed into him. The tentacles on the side of his face bulged, squeezing his eye, ear, and one of his nostrils completely shut, and freezing that half of his mouth in a gritty snarl of pain. The other half revealed his teeth as they bit through the tip of his tongue, which had been shoved rudely from its cavity when the tentacles had swelled. His body, stiff in Britt’s embrace, shuddered, sending fresh blood dribbling down the side of his cheek and further smearing Britt’s suit. There was a faint pop! and vitreous fluid oozed from his eye socket. The ridges of the swelling guided it as it flowed, taking it on a path that was not quite natural, not quite sane. It let across his nose and down the better half of his face, towards the free corner of his mouth, where it mixed with blood that was gathered there. It was disturbing, somehow, that it would follow such a path. I couldn’t have said why, but that’s what bothered me most of all.

Then he was gone. His good eye closed, his body went limp, and his head lolled back on his neck, blood and fluid dribbling to the floor. His holo flitted with a few more images, from his youth, his career, of the girl, on a summer evening, sitting next to him on a swing on their porch that creaked like hellgates when it moved, sharing a glass of something cold and watching over a manicured lawn framed in white picket fences, where two, or maybe three children, who of course were named after the gerbils that had helped bring their folks together all those many years ago, played at games of bats and balls in the last of the setting sun…and then it stilled, and shared the look that both Rauch’s and Charles’s had. Pulsing. Blue. Idle. Waiting.

Britt stood. The body shifted as he disengaged, and spilled over the side of its chair. He grabbed for it, but he was too slow. It fell to the floor with a sickening splat, and lay, face-down, in a gathering pool of fluid and blood.

Britt left it where it lay.