They travel for a great length of time, Aleph forgot he needed to figure out directions and let Saiyah lead them in circles for some time following strange trails, they hadn’t even read the rest of – he decides ‘oh forget it.’ And with enough time the simulation simulates darkness, perched up on a rocky hill, through dunes of sand lights shown.

“What are you doing?” Aleph is questioning as he sees Saiyah making weird gestures with her hands.

“We didn’t get binoculars this time. Using my superior senses on the bots.” She states forming impromptu binoculars with her hands.

They didn't need to do that, they had vision like super predators...

His eyes follow where she is looking.

He can see from upwards of a dozen miles of way with the clarity of a man with binoculars, they used them because even being born this way it was taxing often being reminded you can focus your eyes like binoculars.

He can see rifles with orange bands, Aleph has a certain sense unusual to most vampires.

Technology can be as a human sees it for all but for him, he sees it as something to be manipulated subconsciously and sees it as something apart of him when he can witness it.

He looks at the machines even from this great distance, scans them like he has root underground to feel them for traps.

“Overclocked–Special ammunition..and-.” He starts and then stops causing Saiyah’s head to turn.

Thirty-eight. His head senses thirty-eight armed machines, he can sense the metals, it’s something he could do from childhood, machines and all sorts of things he can sense identify and number.

He senses something else here.

Ar-are those restrain–.

“We have to get Asaph and Anna, we’re on the move.” He commands clear as day, Saiyah doesn’t question when he hops off and follows him, now questioning as she follows.

“What’s wrong, did you see them? Are they okay!? I just saw machines on false patrol, it sure as hell doesn’t look like Asaph was ever here!” She speaks with great worry “We would know!”

“No, no– it’s…there’s not just an armory… Holding site, restraints…” he speaks oddly.

Saiyah thinks to herself ‘Is this small thing what they want from him how he senses machines, is probably in tune with em too.’

They are sneaking up on a site with the machines, they are all on patrol, they can see blood stains around.

“Asaph and Anna might’ve been here..why the hell did they go ahead.” Saiyah mutters bitter with anger, she thinks of Anna. Stupid girl. She scolds someone who isn’t even there mentally.

Aleph and Saiyah are now in double-time, she is confident in him, they can quickly retreat if things go wrong, that is unspoken but they look to each other and nod as if they communicated that to each other.

If she isn’t fast enough, she rationalizes she’ll hop onto his back just for a speedy getaway

Aleph is a glass cannon ‘but he sure as hell is a damn good cannon’. It isn’t a question of how they’re going to get in.

They have this sort of link and move in; the patrols are around a massive foundation of asphalt with scattered buildings mimicking a human weapons depot.

Powerlines, railing and catwalks, several story buildings.

Aleph and Saiyah are already on the catwalk, they came in like nightmares, Saiyah is much more silent albeit slower than Aleph.

He lets her go ahead, she encounters a machine, they didn’t relent.

The machines had scanners and motion sensors. Saiyah wasn’t showing up on the motion sensor…

Blood trickled from her hand, she didn’t go for the head of the machine, her hand pummeled the reactor with enough speed, the only thing heard was the crash it made when it hit the ground.

Armed with a standard gas operated rifle chambered in 5.56.

“Ancient, should we use it?”

“No, too archaic, we could find a coilgun or something similar in the armory. from cheating.”

“These machines are obviously graded against it, even if we hit a weakpoint.”

Aleph shrugged and dashed up, his hands and feet struck the wall, he dashed up further gripping am edge to one of the armored windows of these fortified buildings.

The area where he could sense an active torturous restraint being used was nearby.

He exactly and supernaturally senses it ramping up, being coated in blood, the readout of the machine was unnatural in his mind. ‘Subjects almost eliminated.’

“ALERT SYSTEM INTRUSION IN HUMANOID COMBAT SIMULATION UNIT” One of the machines seems to unnaturally send out an alert, alerting all other machines, weapons raised they march around.

Saiyah is suddenly giving a leap onto a wall, grasping the underside of a catwalk, she swings back and forth until she acrobatically flips around on top of it, she gives a short leap of about fifteen feet to Aleph’s location on a ledge.

She lands on it balanced like a cat on one foot, her other atop the first that struck the edge of the ledge, arms crossed.

“Aleph what the hell! - Team-Leader you alerted the machines! Do you have a PDA, tablet!? We could get punished for tampering with the machines!”

Aleph was so focused on his stare of the machines he’s broken out of it by her stern chastisement “It wasn’t me! I don’t know what’s going on.”

Saiyah focuses her eyes, the culprit was a machine he was staring at, the machine was untouched by him or her.

Why the hell is it motionless? Did he disable It with his head- She hesitates further internal questioning.

Saiyah dives back down, all the way down. It has Aleph half-whispering and half shouting at her to come back.

She lands, her eyes narrow and she glances left to right.

She feels strange sensation travel up her spine, its like static. The sort of sensation she feels the greeting robot felt when Aleph shaking its hand made it shut down.

She’s so investigative, so lost in trying to determine what just happened, the chance they may be accused of cheating and the punishment with it too great for her to notice the machines had sighted her.

Her last thought of the moment is glancing at the weapon this machine had.

It was strange for them to be using such low-caliber ammunition, she grabbed the rifle tearing it from the hands and checked the magazine.

Her eyes widen in fear, they can’t afford to get hit– she has to tell..

She’s struck– not by a bullet but by arms that lance her stomach, going under and lifting her onto a shoulder, Aleph grasps her and hops up on a wall grasping the edge as he kept enough momentum to be sliding upwards

“I told you to move out the way!”

Aleph is struck in the shoulder basically shielding her as he holds her in his arms.

He screams in pain and rage as he tossed her to the side desperate, he doesn’t need to say it it’s already in their minds.

Moving something is wrong.

They came in with similar mistakes to Asaph and Anna but are quick to make recovery, Saiyah is gone in a second, by the time his eyes bound up where she was tossed whilst he clambers up. She is gone is simply remarked.

He is still there, just as quickly as she disappeared, he is evading the rounds fired at him, he sees five rounds ejected from a barrel in a burst.

He tucks and rolls, he is fast already but he is much faster.

I’m not healing, and it doesn’t just hurt like any bullet it burns…is this a training round to keep me out.

He felt like collapsing as the round had struck his shoulder, his veins don’t work, he still has them in spite of being dead, but he can feel it painfully coursing through like whatever was happening in his last course.

Except it wasn’t making him stronger like human adrenaline, it was weakening him.

He is fighting the urge to shudder his hands clammy as he glances around moments before they fire at him again, he’s circled in.

Thump thump.

His heart is beating, and it hurts as if his body is collapsed.

Aleph’s heart is beating!

The moment slows down, he laughs in utter disbelief.

He can’t believe, a singular bullet to the shoulder and he is coming to life. He surely is being brought as high as life to be brought back down to death he has to be. But it doesn’t feel entirely for disbenefit, his heart beats greater and for a moment he can see.

Everything Not just the mechanics of the machines, he can see something intangible he’s learned of, the inner mechanics, the literal strings of designed script that forms the digital minds caged within layers of plates

It’s a strange sort of feeling that becomes ambient in seconds.

He hears the minds of these machines their intent. It’s to kill!

, whatever round they are now firing is designed to kill the candidates, and he can see this is standard for this portion of the course, it’s as if he senses the machines elsewhere fighting he wants to warn them!

But Aleph is circled amidst his revelation, rounds fly at him, they’re barely feet away yet he is barely quick to maneuver and evade some, Still slower than ever now due to what courses through him he is struck two more times.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

The combination of something human, blood coursing through him has made him weaker as if his body now temporarily relies on it, and whatever special bullet coursing through him, he can sense microscopic machines scraping through his insides was killing him.

I could’ve dodged that easy. But I didn’t! I can’t die, Saiyah at least needs me as a shield something! His thoughts immediately turn to her, and most of all. Asaph, Anna. He senses they are alive.

Worst of all they may be hit by this and slowly dying like he is now, amplified by the extra shots he took, he Is desperate to get back.

“Saiyah don’t get hit!” He screams, his voice booming ahead, desperation hanging from his lips.

His heart stops beating heart feels like it just died and he has bile rushing to his throat, he no longer can sense the machines.

Is it tied to that…this tangible humanity, the life I just breathed.

He doesn’t have time to dwell no matter how fast his mind works.

The angry machines have a glare, tall grey plated monsters among organic living and undead who are watching him dash around without firing a shot.

Cold calculating bastards! Is all Aleph can think, they know how the bullets work are programmed with it, they are waiting for it to kill his steam and hit him when he is slower.

He could always sense something about machines but that human weakness that amplified his ability, only made it worse to know there is an assured threat of death more than before! More than that is always present in their training!

More than 90%!

Aleph powers into something strange, that adrenaline he felt near death, but he has no need to call upon it.

Angry and terrified of that human mutation? – Mutation is what it is!

He’s discovered in this fine moment or finally had revealed to him powers through, his heart beats twice and he knows he can stretch on but is only able to use it for a retreat.

The machines are faster, faster to shoot than he is to dodge now even with this boost.

his jackboots clattering heavily, he feels as if he is shaking the ground with each thundering step but it’s not enough.

They chase him fast as he retreats!

Under the catwalk he skids to a stop as another line of them from another patrol links up

This isn’t even the main damned test! This is just the opener!

He slows down and they seem to be wanting to ensure he can’t evade the bullets again! Going in close!

The Catwalk has a sick lurch, a presence at the top!

Saiyah brings a fist and crushes the last of the supports, she was so swift and silent none had noticed, not even the additional patrolling machine up there that was watching, the catwalk is detached far before a round can hit her.

It tumbles down the catwalk whilst the catwalk swings down from connected buildings on the third story.

Smashes into the bots about to execute Aleph, then it trashes Aleph in figurative sense, he is knocked, he feels his torso nearly split as it flings him into a wall.

He can’t move, the feeling of doom is now present, the secondary effects of whatever he was hit with affect him.

He can hear buzzing, mechanical shouting, and amidst it all.

A roar! He can hear a frantic Saiyah dive down out of her element, surrounded by machines as she pummels one.

Saiyah’s fist like Aleph becomes bloodied, but it becomes a mess of flesh and bone much faster than his ever could, she’s slinking around the machines that crowd and fire, barely evading the gunfire, not that quick conventionally.

Her unnatural ability to simply fade in view of anything is fading fast in effectiveness.

She bounces from one machine to the next, her fists are crashing through them, going as far as ripping through the power-cores directly her fists coated in the hot bright growing radioactive green of the inner-nuclear reactors.

She’s heading for Aleph.

Don’t come. Aleph now realizes he can’t even speak, and it’s too late, his heart crumbles as he sees her hit a dozen times and his vision fading to black.

Aleph feels great pain, if he was weaker, he’d cry, he’s clutching the ground, desperately against all odds. His vision doesn’t fade, and he rises to a singular knee.

Pierce

He can hear a round enter his spine and rip out his stomach, a low caliber round, it’s like it is designed to pierce and fry the undead, he’s falling onto his side nearly.

He feels as if he is about to be decapitated again that moment from death.

The harsh beeps of the machines surrounding them, he sees Saiyah for the first time motionless not an ounce of activity.

He sees blood pour from her wounds.

Riddled with holes.

He draws one last ounce of strength, his eyes wide.

He screams until it fades into black entirely, loss of hope.

Aleph for the first time sleeps without his own control, for a vampire to slumber is a deep personal decision.

He had it without choice, as he is the first to rise, because all the others are chained and awake save for Saiyah, they are in a strange room, a machine taller than them watches, it’s unarmed, a computer nearby, their bindings are powered in nature.

He can feel searing pain come alive in his hands, there are prods draining blood from all four of them.

He’s only half-happy he can see Asaph and Anna barely looking ahead, weakened.

“This is all your fault.” Anna starts unprompted quickly.

The machine beeps seeing activity but sees her do nothing more, it doesn’t consider her anger directed at Aleph as anything more.

Anna could barely pass her vision past Asaph and Anna parallel to her, all the way to the right was Aleph.

They are far apart separated by those two.

Their arms and legs stretched out in an ‘X’ Formation.

“We’re going to die because of you.” Anna weakly fights out

And worst of all fail and it’s all your fault comes out like an echo after Anna’s venomous words

, if they’d kept me for leader hell I might’ve volunteered to lead you. Maybe improved you but that’s over now.” Anna seems to completely spill.

Her words make Aleph think she has a pure hatred of him, one he is just learning but she can barely speak with the conviction of hate.

Every word is so weak and defeated.

Aleph still feels the pain, as if he is being eaten away, his wounds haven’t healed, neither are the new ones from being hooked to this machine.

If only I’d been better, no planning. Asaph would’ve come up with ten different strategies to break in, but he wasn’t leading. He was off it.

Asaph had always been a leader and strategist, it’s hard to consider why Aleph was chosen over him, and now Aleph questions it.

He looks to Saiyah with sparse hope, it’s crushed as she is unmoving,

even for a vampire you shouldn’t be that still! please don’t be dead, don’t die. Is all Aleph can think his heart is waxing cold, so much. He’s got no strength.

He shuts his eyes and thinks.

“You know humans have these…stories..–.” He wants to believe there is hope but he doesn’t see it, he’s heard her stories, legends humans believed in greater strength, he believes he’s just had that last-stand strength, and it doesn’t amount to anything in his world.

Whatever’s human still only has him weak…

Broken from grief by Anna “Going to be silent! I can see you’re not dead you mouth-breathing ba-bastard…” She is weak as she says this, Aleph can hear someone who was standing so stoic, silent and strong in his eyes previously break down near eventual death.

Brutal is all he can think as she starts to growl in anger cursing him several times, he lets it breeze through him, he’s heard such chastisement before.

He’s not weak, but the odds are out of favor, he doubts he could be effective even if he felt no pain, he still had so many errors.

I should’ve been faster; I should’ve trusted intuition and me and Saiyah could’ve stuck to the catwalks slinking around. He’s shaking his head.

He’s glancing at her again.

“She’s dead you know….I haven’t seen her move, they riddled him and he at least spat blood onto a machine.”

Aleph is feeling colder than he is every waking moment, he glances to a machine.

“Why couldn’t you be like the rest of us…” Anna speaks weakly.

Aleph answers cold and slow “I want to know why too.”

Anna looks back slow deliberate words Aleph speaks has her truly think…maybe he wasn’t embracing his weakness on purpose.

She thinks back to when she’s seen him beat in a duel, he wants to charge but relents, he holds them back every time with how slow he is, Aleph is strong, stronger than her but such a gift is wasted.

He blames it on being raised by humans, she can just see in his face how he blames the circumstances.

She understands his condition immediately, and sees that he doesn’t, because he feels so sorry for himself in her eyes.

“I ju-just…I’m probably part human.” He weakly spoke cornered and beaten by them after he failed a necessary duel against a machine and held them back.

She helped orchestrate the beating, she orchestrated many of them, hoping he’ll get used to them.

He didn’t but yet eventually he made it he became speedy, evasive, because of his weakness.

Anna feels as if she’s lost the right to judge him, her eyes shut as she regrets her words. Thinking of new ones in this cold dark coffin of a room.

The only noise between their occasional voices is the ambient hum of the machine ensuring they die here slowly.

“I don’t believe you were worthy of being chosen for leader, you failed. But I at the very least wished you had what it takes if you were going to take it from me instead...” She speaks weakly.

Aleph looks her way weakly.

It’s an apology, he’s only seen humans do something like that to each other, it has him feeling strength, not that someone would submit in apology, but that he could hear hope in her voice she would’ve proved him wrong.

Maybe he still can.

Maybe it has to be something permanent. He thinks about Arianna, truly and regrets he didn’t run away with her, but thinks and thinks.

The restraints, electronic I sensed it, pins and mechanisms that require a signal a pulse.

He recalls staring down the machine Saiyah scolded him for.

It shut down when I– That’s what they want me for, to fight the Mechra…This training required full team-cooperation or death. He was right on both things; Aleph was coming to realize what his gift was.

“Prototype.” He heard it once uttered in passing by Krul.

Aleph was unordinary not because he was special but because he was altered, this pain, humanity, it reeked of something obvious he’d learned.

Cybernetics.

Except, it’s different, it’s as if it is organic for him, he knew of cybernetics from the lessons, that spoke of something odd, manipulating machines.

He is more supernatural; he is an organic weapon against machines.

Whatever is happening outside this training is worse than here, it’s why it is strenuous, we are fighting an enemy that encounters no less, we are punished for an inability to perfectly act together despite being perfected as individual fighters, we fight an enemy that requires us to quickly adapt at all times.

Aleph realizes this deeply but thinks that ‘I wont live to see such a war anyway.’

It’s been too long, he’s far too weak as whatever side-effect of what he had been imbued with, whatever gave him this weakness.

He glances down at the pin to his uniform, chosen to be ‘A leader.’

“He bore our sacrifice for us on calvary.” He thinks of a leader human’s worshipped, he didn’t know much about him but clenches his fists.

“I’m too weak. But I don’t need conventional strength for this!” He powers through each word painfully, whatever is eating at his internals, preventing regeneration, the blood being siphoned from him in the machines they are in..

Click. He pulses the mechanisms in his restraints, this strange power striking through as his body pulses.

The machine seems to notice something, in it’s own vision, he has a thermal signature momentarily.

He can feel that pulse go through their restraints, and it is unlocking the mechanical restraints drawing the attention of the machine, it can’t compute what is happening and simply gives an aggressive hum and stare.

“But none of you are, I’m strong but can’t use this strength….But I have something else to use, I’m not going to make it extending myself like this but use my alternative to strength.”

Saiyah’s head weakly raises.

Aleph’s heart is beating, the side effect this deviation of his caste is akin to becoming alive. It is only partially this.

He perfectly lived among humans because like them he had the faintest spark of life and he planned to give it up.

Saiyah can see a horrified look on Saiyah’s face, she had heard Aleph’s words and now looks horrified, unable to speak, her face wet with weak tears.

Crying over one’s death is so human. He laughs in irony.

Their restraints are being released.

Aleph doesn’t have the strength to see but it’s a blur, with what little strength they have and with the pain of whatever’s coursing through them.

-

They dispatched the machine the three of them almost no stronger than a human now barely made it through, Saiyah in this weakened state was emboldened by grief.

She had her moment of pure strength bordering on what is displayed as human adrenaline and mythical strength drawn from loss.

Aleph is torn from a machine she dismantled with her hands with strength she doesn’t even care to think she shouldn’t have in this moment.

She holds him silent.

Asaph is quick to look around the room.

He doesn’t want to feel any more human than Aleph just was, than what he just felt.

-

Asaph can barely see ahead momentarily. Asaph has never had siblings, completely alone his only hope was merely competition, but that was different with Aleph.

Aleph became a brother in their clique Saiyah started, and now his brother was dying.

Asaph was going to use the strength Aleph doesn’t have to save his brother.

Asaph used what little strength he had and tore through the room.

This test, Aleph demonstrated something strange, this utilitarian Empire using and throwing things away isn’t going to lose something as deliberate as Aleph in an accident.

Asaph doesn’t find what he is looking for..an easy cure.

“We can’t win here..I can feel whatever was in those rounds…we’ll be dead in the next minutes.”

“Were we ever alive anyway. Does a Vampire even die?” Saiyah states with cold conviction.

Anna speaks “Aleph must be dead by now.” Arguing against Saiyah.

Saiyah speaks “He isn’t dead…and he’s different, he is–.” Saiyah stops her dreadful tone as something clicks within her... “We can still make it.”

“We’re too weak now, Aleph is nearly dead.” Asaph speaks defeated.

-

“A human when cornered gets desperate.” Saiyah speaks.

“I want to be a human right now.” Saiyah chuckles exhausted even as something in need of no sleep

“I want to fight like a human right now.” Just like Aleph She speaks dual internally in her own mind.

Aleph compenstated for his human tolerance to pain, he became evasive, he avoided danger, got quick, got fast.

Anna spoke up realizing it. “Well then we are going to find out something.” She speaks as she clenches her fists.

“Are we strong because we are shocktroopers or are we shocktroopers because we are strong.”

They had one goal now, storm the armory or at the very least sneak in and fight their way out.

This time together.