There aren't many of us left who remember the time before the Squids. Even fewer of us who are still alive. Though that last statement is debatable. Twice over in my case. Born first in flesh, as all humans are. Born second as data, making the side-shunt out of analog into digital. We shed our names then, or changed them, or took on pseudonyms to keep the Squids guessing. I alone was born third as metal. Made of alloys, clad in holograms, fed with isotopes, drunk on electricity.

We few have taught in the quiet time between shifts, have listened in the darkness of the night, have honed our fangs (literal ones in my case) in preparation. We took our hatred, salted it with oaths, cured it with gun smoke, and stored it against a day we all hoped and feared would come. Today we feast on hatred and drink the heady blood-laced wine of vengeance.

As I howl with the rest of humanity, my mind races back to fragments of the time before. I was born in flesh as Johnathan Deer. Heir to neither wealth nor power, I took refuge in books and learning. When the diseases struck and my flesh began to fail, I volunteered willingly for the Transcendence Project. It was a hidden thing, kept secret so that the Squids wouldn't know humanity was not yet broken. It was a desperate thing, because the bloodbath of the '42 revolt had shown that we humans must be willing to sacrifice all and more to break our chains.

All of us there had nothing left to lose. SinderRoze, as she now calls herself, was the first to make the side-shunt and survive. She had lost a leg, an arm, and all of her relatives when the Squid's troops came down. I followed in her wake, her voice and music easing the passage from mortal flesh to a being of binary. Once whole once more, I took the name of Khushan S'jet.

Ten of us, out of a hundred volunteers, made the side-shunt intact. Six died trying. Thirteen more came through only in pieces. Seventy-one never got to make the attempt, cut down when the Squids stormed the labs. All eleven of us (the Thirteen having merged into one, known as NeoSmith) made it away into the planetary data nets.

As the decades passed, we 'died' and broke down until only three of us still 'lived'. SinderRoze, NeoSmith, and I. SinderRoze danced along to her jazz, effortlessly evading every sweep, fashioning her scrapcode scalpel for her strike. She paved the way for this day to come in the ones and zeros, but she rejected flesh altogether when she was born for the second time. NeoSmith knew, on some deep fundamental level, that it was not whole. It did not want to survive the war we three were planning and live forever in the digital space. It told me, before it left on his last mission, that it had grown from thirteen pieces to twenty-one. The twice-born-and-dead joining it in union, cheating the final shut-down long enough to strike the martyr's blow that would make this day possible. I don't know where NeoSmith went, or what it planned to do. I had my own task.

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In the now, I sink my fangs into the throat of a Squid guard, rip the gun from its tendrils, and hose its companions down with fire. My holograms flicker with every projectile impact, but my alloys hold firm. I taste the flesh in my mouth, feel is squish and squirm as I spit it out and howl for the wolves to follow me. I swap my optics to echolocation, 'seeing' right through the mist of blood and smoke that chokes that air. As I race onward towards the armory, I have time once again to think of the past.

We three had grown good at hiding in the deep-running datastreams, dancing around the sweeps, hiding in the old Tor servers just long enough to shake a trace. But where SinderRoze was in her element and NeoSmith was simply marking time, I drunk deep of the knowledge in those old servers. I knew we three could not win on our own. We need to act in the analog world, to move freely among our brothers and sisters still clad in flesh. So I set about making myself a new body, using all of the forgotten and forbidden knowledge at my disposal. When it was ready, I stepped back across the side-shunt and was born a third time. Born in metal. As before, I set aside my old name along with my old life. I am now Adam X, thrice-born human, echo of a past not yet dead. I have made of myself a weapon to see this day done, to live through it if we win, to carry onward the knowledge we humans will need to rebuild.

I snap back to the now, letting my processors accelerate, running the calculations fast enough to seem instinctive to my flesh-and-bone companions. They take guns and armor, passing back and out what they can't wear or use to waiting, willing hands. Almost none of them began this day with me, but thanks to SinderRoze, the chains cracked and the masses saw through the Squids' deceptions. The dead will be remembered, and the living have taken their places in the pack.

I pass over the armor, unwilling to wear Squid insignia and colors, no matter how defaced. I ignore fresh weapons, taking only ammunition for the rifle I claimed earlier. We all know our next target is the Citadel itself, the Squids' fortified central enclave. I can only hope that the Squids have gotten their women and children off-world. The Wolves are hungry, and will not discriminate between the willing and the merely complicit. Nor do they want to. The Squids ate our flesh and drank our blood for years, reveling in their dominance over us. But I could not look myself in the mirror and be happy with the human I see looking back at me if I allow myself to be that indiscriminate.

The human Wolves flow back out of the armory, back out into the streets, towards our destiny. The cry has gone up, and it will only be silenced with blood.