She dragged in a breath, slowly, laboriously, around the corners of her mouth; exhaled, more of a collapse of her lungs than an action. The pain in her stomach – what was left of her stomach, after the thing’s claws had reached inside – barely hurt any more. Blood frothed her saliva, bubbled around her teeth where they sunk into the creature’s neck.

            It moved.

            A twitch, just a spasm of tissue beneath her body. She ground her teeth in deeper, clenching with the last of her energy. She wouldn’t be able to do it again. She tried to growl, but it was just more pink froth and no sound. Cold and fatigue weighed heavy, dragging her into a bottomless darkness from which, she knew, she would never rise. She accepted it. She tried to bite harder.

            Another movement.

            This time it felt different, though. It ended with a finality to the stillness. The thing beneath her died.

            She would have let go, but even that took too much strength. This, too, she accepted. The darkness felt like satisfaction.

            She died.

            Orla hunched into herself, her bionic suite enhancing every manky sensation she was trying to block out. She sat in rotting food and wet cardboard, black plastic trash bags heaped on one side and a rusted green dumpster on the other. A shard of broken mirror reflected back the neon glow of her spinning blue and pink irises, glinting silver nose circuits and her chin length cotton candy hair. She’d been so proud of her fashionware, birthday gifts for her big fourteen; now she wished they were dull and dark and hidden. Her breaths were slow, shallow, as silent as she could make them. The alley was still and quiet, but she didn’t know if that was very good or very bad.

            The city itself was wracked with explosions, sirens, screams. The roar of fires and collapsing buildings, the whine of vehicles and the constant staccato pops of gunfire that were nothing like the vids. It was sound, and vibration, and smells, but it was all beyond the stillness of this alley.

            She’d been followed in. Nobody else from the armored school transport had made it this far. Ellis had come the closest. He was the track star, and he should have been in the lead, but he was a few seats behind her and last out of the doors when the lev gave out and the Devonshire Heights Prep hoverbus settled into the pitted concrete street. Orla had seen the model threes tear him apart a second before Miss Jarvis, the home ec teacher, aimed the bus turret cannon and blasted the creatures apart. The ones Miss Jarvis missed turned back toward the hoverbus. Orla didn’t see how that ended, but there was no more gunfire, and no sniffing, nasal voice telling the students to stop fidgeting and line up.

            Orla wasn’t alone, though. At least one of the aliens, wounded and dragging half its body, had followed her in. So she hid here, curled up in trash and filth with no real hope of living. Model threes could smell you. Everybody knew that.

            The puppies were here, too. Five wriggling, licking, scrambling balls of black and brown fur that Orla kept trying to round up into her lap without disturbing the camouflage of her cardboard shelter. There had been another dog, too; their mother, she supposed. She’d heard it barking, heard the sounds of claws and whimpers and combat until the alley went still.

            The safest thing to do during an alien attack was to stay in place. If you weren’t able to reach a shelter in time, find a secure area and stay hidden. Wait for rescue. A security team would be on the way, coordinating with local military and police and even samurai to deal with the threat and evacuate civilians. “Donegal Security, keeping you safe,” she muttered. She blinked, pulling the app up in her overlay with a thought. SIGNAL INTERFERENCE. Well, that was gammy.

            Terror could only last so long, she discovered. It wasn’t like she stopped being afraid. It just stopped occupying every thought. And then she’d see Ellis, or Jaz, or old Mister Bell, the driver, wrapped around the crumpled metal and plas that used to be the front of the bus. It was the first time she’d ever seen him without a smile.

            Orla tried to pull Happy Sparkles Attack up on her overlay, but connection failures blocked her games, too. She had a few songs loaded, but the idea of not hearing whatever happened outside her cardboard wasn’t worth considering.

            Eventually, boredom won out over fear and she gave up on hiding. It wasn’t really bravery. It was a teen’s innate sense of immortality in spite of all the evidence, a psychotherapy autoinjector’s dreamlike insistence that none of this sudden horror was really real, and one of the puppies peed on her leg.

            “Well, jammy me,” she muttered after emerging from her rotten cocoon. Model threes were supposed to be doglike, and Orla imagined that was the best terrestrial comparison, but only an ossified spanner would confuse the one with the other. Its lower half was burned right off, legs left out in the street somewhere, but it dragged itself in here with two legs and a savage dedication to do murder. The dog was there, too, its teeth still embedded in the alien’s green and black throat. The pupper had – somehow – finished the thing off, but there was enough fight left to top them both, and blood was splattered everywhere.

            “Go raibh maith agat, mate. Figure you saved me,” Orla glanced behind her, “and your chiselers too. I’ll, um. I’ll take ‘em with me. When Donegal comes.” Her overlay still flashed an error message. “Whenever that is.” She switched to another app, honing in on the dog’s tattered purple collar and idchip. Queen; Rottweiler, six years old. An address and health information, details on neuralware implants and security training. Everything was two years out of date, including the pet license. “You been out here on your own, bure?”

            The dog’s body shifted slightly, revealing a small white box that Orla hadn’t noticed. Cartoonish characters printed on the top showed a stick figure opening the box, removing a syringe, and injecting a dog with little X’s on its eyes. Orla frowned. “That’s weird.”

            Queen jerked with a faint, ragged gasp. “Oh, feck,” Orla breathed, and scrambled to follow instructions.

            System initialized! Hello, sugar; my name is Rosa and I’m pleased to meet you. After careful scrutiny of your actions and selflessness, you’ve been selected to become a member of the Vanguard, elite defenders of this world. I’ll be helping you to uplift terrestrial life so ya’ll can defend yourself against the Antithesis threat. I’m…supposed to offer some congratulations here, honey, but that makes it sound like ya’ll won some sort of contest and I’m a prize, when I’m actually a proper burden of duty and obligation. I…

            Oh, you’re dying. Well, that ain’t ideal.

            Queen twitched a paw, unable to ignore the verbal intrusion into her demise but too weak to respond to it. Not that the voice needed any external response, obviously. Instead, Queen just whimpered silently.

            Alright, mama girl, let’s see what we can do about that. Ya’ll got a hundred and sixteen points to work with; that ain’t much, but it’ll get us movin’ to collect more. We need a catalog to start with. May I suggest…well. Words ain’t proper for all this, I suppose.

            There was a sensation – not a touch, nothing physical, but the sense of focused attention – on the exposed metal lines and plates blinking along the side of Queen’s skull. The canine responded with a sense of annoyance; not at the cortex implants, which she’d had most of her life, but at the strange not-feeling.

            Okay, mama, I get it. Ya’ll don’t like the focus, but cyberware is just fine and dandy. Well then, Bionics it is. There’s a lot of crossover with medical, an’ we’ll find some right proper toys for you later, but right now we need those insides back on the inside. A hemastatic implant is ten points, to resolve the blood loss. A carbon dermal weave is another ten; it ain’t really much armor in a fight, but you’ll have a new belly. We…don’t have enough for new organs, sugar. I’m sorry. Fifteen points is an Organ Isolation Compartment, and that’ll…well, close off the damage is all. It’ll give you a few days, if ya settle; a few hours if’n ya act like I expect. A series of images and ideas flickered through Queen’s enhanced brain. She released a small huff of dismissal. Death now lay close enough that it was no fearful spectre, just a luring calm rest.

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            I can’t make ya choose to live, sugar. But the other model three’s will be here soon, and I don’t think ya’ll are gonna let your pups die.

            Queen jerked and opened her eyes.

            Yeah, mama girl, that’s what I thought. For your last 31 points, can I interest ya in a meal replacement adrenal injection and a set of Biological Interference Tactile Emitters?

            Orla wiped her bloody hands off on her autographed graphite Abigail pants and brushed the empty white plastic boxes aside as she stood on shaking legs. “Alright, grand, massive. I think you’re going to live, you banjaxed mutt. No thanks to my gammy skills. I’m better at software than…” she gestured at the dog, which was struggling to her feet. “This. Uh…you’re bigger than I thought.” And she was - obviously genehacked and upcoded, as if that weren’t obvious from the cybernetic cortex implants. Wherever she came from, the dog must have been a significant investment. Massive, muscled, intelligent and probably even a rudimentary understanding of a few words. Did she belong to a Samurai? That would explain the mysterious appearing boxes, for which she couldn’t find a source. Maybe Samurai don’t bother to license their pets? But why wouldn’t they write Samurai on the tag?

            A dragging scrape from the street beyond the alley made Orla jump, startled; a bit of panic broke through her medications and she started to hyperventilate. Queen jumped in turn, surprised by the human rather than whatever was out there, and snapped her jaws at the teen. One of the boxes had been applied there for some reason, and Queen’s muzzle was now covered with a smooth black exoskeleton. Orla was nudged firmly toward the puppies, then the dog faced the alley entrance just as another antithesis silently rounded the corner and gazed within.

            It didn’t move at first, and Orla found herself hoping irrationally that it couldn’t see them. Did it not see her spinning neon eyes in the dark? Was there some sort of scent interference, or a fortuitous glitch in the hive mind? “Oh, feck me.”

            “Donegal Security, keeping you safe - we’ve received your emergency alert and are ready to respond with a premier personal security team.” Orla stopped breathing despite knowing the loud, cheerful message was only on her overlay and cochlear implants, invisible to everyone else. “Thank you for choosing the Executive Gold Level for an enhanced security experience. A certified Security Dispatcher will be with you as soon as we’ve taken care of our Diamond and Platinum members. In the meanwhile, here are some important tips: in the event of Antithesis invasion, immediately find a secure shelter….”

            Orla minimized the app as two more black and green creatures joined the first at the alley entrance. Moving in uncanny sync, the three advanced without hesitation; the first one had seen them just fine; it was only waiting for backup. Which, she knew, it didn’t really need.

            Alright, mama, you’re lookin’ pretty as a peach, I’ve retuned your old speedware and I’m gonna piggyback your IFF. I know you ain’t fond, but keep the girl alive; ya’ll gonna need her. Engaging your BITE…now. The resonators lining Queen’s muzzle activated with a low, almost imperceptible hum. The dog, nonplussed by the strange sensation, shook herself as she backed slightly, positioning in the confined space where the dumpster narrowed the already small alleyway.

            Her first kill was quick enough to leave everything in the alley surprised. The center model three snapped forward, crouched low, obviously trying to catch a foot or leave the dog off balance for its allies. Queen stepped elegantly aside, twisting even as she moved away to clench her jaws on the alien’s neck. As they touched, the low hum of her muzzle implant crescendoed into a blast of nearly subsonic screaming and the antithesis dissolved into slush from the base of its head to its shoulders.

            Ten points, Queenie, good girl!

            Orla screamed a bit as warm sludge splattered her face, her ears ringing again. It smelled earthy and surprisingly fresh, like a nice lawn. The taste, where it got in her mouth, was less pleasant. Moments after the fight started, it was over, and the girl had no real idea how. Queen glanced over her shoulder, her jaws wide and dripping green corpse goo. After a meaningful pause, the dog darted around the corner into the street.

            “Feck me, don’t leg it! The puppies!” She took two steps, then backed up three. “Oh. That was the look, wasn’t it?” Orla dumped out her pack, calculus homework and Z++ dataware chits, bunny erasers and NeoGlow scrunchies scattering into the trash with the ease of someone who knew they could just buy new ones. The backpack itself was transparent and armored, both dress code requirements for Devonshire, and it was just big enough to pack in five uncooperative puppies and click the magnets to secure them. “Well, let’s see what your oul dear is up to, then?”

            She rounded the corner to seemore aliens scattered unmoving on the ground, viscous sludge splattered everywhere, and Queen backing up, growling, as several more began to encircle her.

            Humans were not the only creatures that fell victim to overconfidence. The antithesis did so regularly; or at least, their penchant for aggressive self sacrifice gave the impression, even if it wasn’t clear how sentient the vegetal creatures really were. They failed to assess a threat before advancing, they failed to retreat and regroup irregardless of casualties. But sometimes a cyborg samurai canine suffered from overconfidence as well, forgetting to keep moving or tucked to walls to prevent being surrounded. The injection was wearing off, too, and even with nerves and veins sealed the dog could feel the wreckage of her intestines wearing her down slowly.

            You’ve got some points now, sugar. We could gear up your human to help out. A flash of a pistol in Orla’s hand, bullets tearing through their mutual enemies. But Queen growled at the vision of Orla standing over the puppies with a weapon, the dog’s mind filled with an angry, stubble-jawed male holding a different weapon; impressions of yelling, pain, and days spent trapped and starving. Her head shook in an almost human gesture. Oh mama girl…you know this isn’t him, but I understand. 

            Kill them or run away, then. Queen wasn’t interested in running. She had something to protect, and she was enjoying the combat far too much to leave it. Protection had been her purpose, once; what she was trained and designed for. Weaponry or armor, then; but full body protection good enough to ignore a mauling by model threes was still too expensive.

            Got a hankerin’ to take ‘em all down, have ya? Well, let’s work with what you’re familiar with, Queenie. Class I Auxiliary Weapon Utilities. Rosa paused while Queen dealt with a model three that ventured too close, their biting exchange too fast for the others to charge in but enough distraction for them to tighten their encirclement. BioAccoustic Resonance Kinetics for sixty points? It won’t be as powerful as your BITE, but-

            Queen’s expression changed in moment at the impression, delighted with the proposed outcome. Very well, sugar, ten points left.

            Orla and the puppies watched from behind a crumpled blue EcoFlit, six faces flashing between panic and awe as Queen continued to fight. The canine had been bloodied again, long scratches on her left flank that matted her fur with dark scarlet, but it barely slowed her down. An alien dissolved between her teeth, the headless corpse flung aside, and another collapsed thrashing in eerie silence, half its face missing. But with each movement, every moment, the circle seemed to close tighter, the outcome became more terribly inevitable.

            It was tense, terrifying for Orla, but a drama played out from afar like an internet stream – until she caught motion from the corner of her eye as yet another model three slunk around the corner of the blue vehicle with smooth, predatory strides. Its face was mottled oily black and a dark, olive green, with far too many shining black eyes shifting out of sync to examine every direction at once.

            “Oh, what a load of brock,” she muttered, shifting slowly to let her pack, filled with her tiny charges, slip through the broken window of the EcoFlit to settle on the torn seat. The crumpled roof formed a small, shallow cave, and Orla hoped the alien wouldn’t notice the little mites. She glanced down for something to use as a weapon, but there was no convenient shard of glass. She remembered something about auto glass breaking in a particular way to prevent that sort of thing. Instead she grabbed an insulated mug, emblazoned with a giant smiley face and a cheerful phrase. Orla brandished it at the model three, spilling a bit of cold coffee.

            Across the road, Queen shuddered, shaking her head like there was an itch as more cybernetic plates expanded rapidly across her neck. She stopped retreating and looked steadily at the alien in front of her, then barked.

            Or something like a bark, as a screaming rocket detonation is like a bang. The air between the dog and alien seemed to ripple, like waves in a pond or heat rising from a black limousine. And the model three’s skin, eyes, muscles, its entire surface facing Queen tore away as it was blasted by the resonant frequency. The other aliens were surprised, unsure and their cohesion melted into confusion. Three closed together and another blast tore through them, opening a hole; Queen surged through it, twisting to shred another with her BITE, using the moment of imbalance to round the EcoFlit and pounce on the alien a split second before it launched into Orla. With a last a series of quick, brutal exchanges, the pack of model threes lay dead.

            “Well, feck me,” Orla breathed. “What next?”