Five hundred feet up and two kilometers downstream, in the bottom of the valley.

[Holy fuck that’s a lot of defenders!] Bomberman continued to lob gas dispersal canisters into the area below where he was standing on the ramp down.

[They killed Shoggoth!] Gravitas was going ham on the Thirteens, clearly upset.

[What? How do you know Kitten?]

[Damnit Drag-On! They smashed him to pieces! Look, there's evidence everywhere!]

Bomberman started laughing, which caught him the nastiest look. No one else down there from the heavy assault team that had been gathered wanted a part of Gravitas’ anger. He slowed to a chuckle and shook his head.

[Sure. That’s step one. What about Two through Ten?]

—--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Something bigger to crack my shell? We need to get out of this quickly. How hard would it be to create a shell like a giant chainsaw blade? WAIT! Do we still have a token?]

<>I have not transferred your points yet. I was running a high fever still, but thought I had a brilliant idea.

[Perfect! Upgrade Exotic melee to class two and buy the strongest nastiest cutting enhancer. Then I want to cover my surface in an outward-facing version of the grinder mouth. Something that can fully rotate, spin, and disintegrate everything around me. Or be used as propulsion, for when I drop through the floor eating my way out. I need to be able to change directions.]

<>Clever! This will cost you Two thousand, assuming you want the blueprints.

[Do it! You’re the best Naille!]

It took a few seconds, which felt like minutes as I had slowed way down to help cool myself. The water was outside the pocket dimension so I had to shunt the heat through the microscopic link between internal and external. Having solidified the exterior I couldn’t open the aperture any.

Despite the fever, my idea was actually fairly smart.

I could open the aperture once I was able to set an update to my nanites, quickly creating the orb of grinding idea within what was left of my shell, then dropping the shell letting it crack and shatter around me as the grinding wheels and cones began to spin. Like a spinning razor cone-covered ball of hate it worked spectacularly. I burrowed through tentacles, bodies, and then the river bottom. I barely realized I had hit the bottom before I had drilled five meters down.

[Okay. I’m out, now what?]

<>Perhaps you should attempt to reduce your cranial temperature? Open the interface and use water as a cooling medium?

[Oh yeah!] Definitely some brain damage there.

I opened the aperture and started using water to cool myself a little more rapidly. Probably a whole lot of swelling going on. The fun thing about the brain, it can’t feel itself.

Stolen story; please report.

<>You are currently suffering from a fever, which you are admirably fighting off the confusion, but you are suffering brain damage. Your repair nanites are working as fast as they can to repair it, so you should not suffer any long-term effects. Something you may not have noticed is the seizures you’ve had. Are having. Please calm yourself. Agitation will only worsen the effects.

Focusing, now that I could, I took note of my grinding spindles firing off randomly. Rotational segments twisted back and forth as if they wanted to start but decided to reverse to a stop. Twitchy bullshit, almost like a full-body shiver. How long has this been going on? This is what happens when an organic brain goes hyper time that long? Probably shouldn’t do that again without reinforcement of some sort.

[Maybe I should shift to being less organic? Make my brain part of my Nanites?]

<>That has been the plan for some time. Perhaps now that you’re buried in sediment that would be a good plan to enact?

[I think I should be deeper. Harder to reach.]

<>Agreed. You can bore into the bedrock and then utilize an area denial catalog to plug up your path with quick-set concrete, allowing you to bury yourself for the time necessary.

[Let's do that. Could you….]

<>I will take care of the hard parts, just dig and be erratic for a bit. The soft tone made me want to trust the voice in my head.

[I can do that.] I started digging. First straight down, then after passing into rock, I started to corkscrew and jink around. Finally, I settled down and let Naille do his thing. Having since cooled enough to think straight it still seemed the right idea. [Naille?]

<>Yes Shoggoth?

[Buy me a therapist. And one of those therapy couches. I need to work through a few years of… everything.]

<>Will Virtual do?

[Yeah. That’d be nice.]

<>Your wish is my command. Also… you do know my name is spelled with a Y not an I, right?

[Wait, really? Uh. Sorry?]

To Be Continued….

Short chapter is short, so have a teaser for a one shot I will release when it’s not terrible:

***

“No kid. Don’t bother him.”

“What? Why not Sarge? Shouldn’t he be ready alert? I mean we’re going into hell here?”

“Kid. Dax has survived twelve incursions in this unit. Nobody, not even me, has been in this unit that long. If he wants to sleep. You let him fuckin sleep.” The Sargent shook his head sighing as he went back to checking over his issued rifle. “We’re the sharp end of the spear, but we’re government grunts. They don’t expect us to live. I don’t know who you pissed off to get fucked like this, but Bad Company doesn’t really bring back survivors often. Except Dax.”

“Yeah, kid.” Corporal Wong agreed leaning over from the other side of the cramped IFV troop space. “We all fucked up somewhere. You don’t get to be in this unit if you don’t. We don’t care who’s daughter you fucked or what porn you downloaded on government machines. But if you wanna live, when the shit hits the fan you grab Corporal Daxion’s ass and stick to it. Damn the plants for dropping on us on fucking Christmas.”

“I know, right? It’s like they don’t respect our holidays!” Sargent Barrons chuckled as he shifted in his seat.

Private First Class Nolan Kidman leaned back and looked down at the rifle in his hands, instead of Corporal Daxion who was sleeping in the corner of the IFV like it was a Sunday morning drive. He had all of five seconds of thought on the subject before the driver started screaming something and the gunner lit something up outside. Then the whole world went ass over teakettle.

The IFV rolled in the air several times before it hit the ground again. A crunching sound reverberated through its hull as It hit its top deck slamming the turret through the ceiling and into the gunner, flipped again, and landed on its wheels before coming to a stop canted against something. Everyone was thrown around in the vehicle like ragdolls, rendered unconscious in the process, regardless of whether they were strapped in or not..

***