“The joy of wearing a Chassis is only overshadowed by the horror of what it is used for. Without the Host, what wonders could we create?”- extract from Iron Legion II, chapter 3; second paragraph, by Jean Dubowsky, 2095, Federated Press.

“M O V E…!” The word came from far away.

Martin opened one eye, slow and hesitant. At first, he didn’t believe it.

Isla stood before him, the hair of her Chassis extended in all directions… and the tentacle that would have killed him had stopped. Been halted.

A mote of dust fell on a sweaty brow. It galvanised him like nothing else; he got up, swaying.

His sight was still blurry, and whatever it was that Isla was saying, he couldn’t hear it.

He stumbled up to the nearest Chassis, necessity damn it. He grabbed at it, thinking, needing, wanting…!

When the deviathan mowed down his parents. His hot tears, falling, his fists, knotted.

Chiyo Moyamoto’s offer that had led him here, how he been unable to keep his calm as his pulse offered.

The museum, and that doomed fight in another cave. How he had wanted to be part of something greater, to matter.

Now!

He seized the Chassis and light clothed his form. The world reformed, clear as day, and he could see.

“I can’t hold it much longer!”

He could hear too.

“You won’t have to,” Martin said, glancing down at the white cloth that covered him. He felt relief, wonder and something that was a mix of both. There was the faintest pressure on his face. A mask?

He pushed against the ground, his jump taking him next to Isla. He did not stumble. “Below?”

“Below.”

“One…”

“Two…”

“Three…”

Martin vaulted over the pillar and down, air flowing across his Chassis, a ‘woop’ heard from above told him all he needed to hear from Isla and they plunged through the mist. He fell head first and his perspective changed, the nooks and turns, the water at very bottom growing close enough to touch. He blinked, and his vision was back to normal. Woah.

Still, they were falling. Can we slow down? The thought had barely been conceived when the cloth flared around him, and gravity ceased to be a problem. He grabbed Isla by the horns, and they tumbled into one of the sides of the abyssal sheer, the force of their tumble enough to shatter stone.

“Ha.” He had just felt the tap. Small wonder that some Proxies never walked around without their Chassis. A person could get used to this. Isla was staring up. “Huh. That can’t be good.”

Martin followed suit, through the mist, the surrounding rock and… saw the Regial. The old adage about ignorance and bliss was apt: now he could see it in all its glory, and it was too much.

Sixteen tentacles, each several tram-lengths, all of which were trying to bore their way to them. A beak that could swallow his apartment. But the eyes were the worst part. Two greater eyes, and four on each size, seeking, and they all honed in him and Isla. The many irises made him think of orbits. Gulp.

Nothing, Martin reckoned, was as big as an arcology-wall, but a thing the size of that Regial could probably force its way through said wall.

“We’re-“

“Don’t you fucking dare say it-“

“-safe here.”

Isla said the words, instantly cursing them. Martin glanced around, through the rock. He become aware of a shimmer around his Chassis, but had little time to examine it. Would the Regial use some new kind of weapon? He just bet that Sviratham would teleport them directly into the sun or something.

The adrenaline had begun to stop flowing, and the long hours, perhaps even the day was beginning to affect him, Chassis or no. How Isla was even conscious was a miracle.

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“Don’t be superstitious. This test can’t get much worse. Besides, we’ve got our Chassis,” Isla bragged.

“That’s what I thought when we found the Chassis. Now look where we are.”

“And again, we’re saf-“

CHHHHR.

The two new Proxies both glanced up in the direction of the sound. A series of inlayed visions appeared; a baboon calling for its mates, an ant farm exploding as a black tide surged and mob of humans attacking a important looking building.

Two two of the them hung there, suspended in air for a moment.

“I think the Chassis are trying to warn us. It’s…I think it’s summoning the rest of the Host,” Martin realised with horror. He panned around, trying to judge the distance in between the stone walls. A mechaloid would fit here. A deviathan for sure.

“We’re not sticking around for that.”

Isla slapped him on the chest, dropping as a stone and Martin came after. Or, he tried. He just hung in the air, as the chittering sound intensified. “Uhh.” “Chassis, drop!”

He still hung there, like a baloon. He flailed in the air, seeking purchase against the stone, his cloth-swabbed hands finding little traction. You’re a Proxy now, so how about you start acting like one?

He made a fist. Took a breath. The cloth began to bunch up around his fist, and that blue-white shimmer, so much like lightning intensified. Then he slammed it through the stone, rotating… and blasted away with his feet. The surrounding sheer became a blur and Martin screamed, with fear, with joy.

Isla was waiting in the water. ”What took you so long?”

“I had to come down somehow.”

Together, they swam beneath the surface, the murky darkness being no such thing; all of the turns and twist were painfully clear to Martin’s sight.

“What do you think happened to Berenice?”

Martin halted his strokes. The sound came from inside his helmet.”How did you do that?”

“I focused on you, then simply spoke. These aren’t exactly the first corpses of Host harvested after the Devastation.”

“True.” A school of fish moved lazily across their path. Lichen shone with silver light, having climbed one nook they passed. The architects of this place had really gone the full mile. “As for Berenice…who knows?”

“That bitch.”

“Hmm.”

“You’re right. That coward. Bitch is too good of a word.”

Martin was struck by the fact that they hadn’t needed to resurface for air. Was the Chassis filtering oxygen from the water?

“I,” Martin started, trying to put the sentiment in his heart to words. And stopped.”I think that sometimes you’re afraid. Your bones lock. Blood stops flowing. And you don’t know what you should do. Running seems like a good option then, a way to flee from your troubles.”

“Did you?”

Martin turned, sensing the way her helmet was tilted in his own direction. She did not ask, and he did not elaborate. “No, but I wanted to.”

“And there we have the difference between the two of you.”

***

The two of them swam into a clearing. Pre-Devastation buildings were laid out in a grid, the…skyskrapers scratching at the ceiling, kelp dancing to a tune only they could hear. White lines had been painted on the ground, to mark out where cars could park, and people could walk.

“I don’t like this,” Martin said.

“The buildings? Sure, they’re not exactly pretty.”

“No, I meant the fact that we haven’t seen any Host. I know for a fact that deviathans are amphibious,” Martin worried.

“What does amphibious mean?”

“Creatures who walk on both land and water.”

They touched on the old asphalt - and the real material had been forbidden by Federated decree, so the architect had to have reformulated it - and simply rested.

The Chassis, Martin felt, was doing something. It didn’t weigh him down, nor did he feel as if he’d been walking or running for a day, yet… yet there was an ache in his head and his stomach felt weirdly light.

“You tired too?”

“Dying,” Isla echoed.”I think that only adrenaline and the nanoclouds that Chassis feeds their pilots is what keeps me up.”

“Do you think we have shown our worth?”

“I stopped a mechaloid by myself, and we both found Chassis. We stopped a blow from a damn Regial and escaped a swarm. That bald eagle might have high standards, but we have to have held to them.”

In that light…

Martin had intended to agree, when a new message arrived. It was loaded, in more ways than one.

The messages…had texture now. With just mundane senses, they were texts. Fantastical things in light, hovering the air.

But with a Chassis…he could feel the intent behind the words, emotions from his own life granting the words a depth that nothing electronic should have.

“This is a copy of an environ where the Host spawned. At the time, a thriving, buzzing metropol. In modern times, it’s a Hold. But once, before the Devastation, the first Proxies defended it to buy time. Now your turn comes.”

Three fractals, each shaped like a snowflake that burned the eye, manifested before the message vanished.

A familiar head poked its way through, and Martin reacted by instinct. His fist struck the deviathan on its snout, sending it back where it went. The blow should have reverberated up his arm, yet he still felt light.

“Go,” he cried.

“No way,” Isla called back.

Two other fractals formed. Please help me. Martin struck out, the cloth of his Chassis forming a spear, cutting an ape made of red metal in two. The shimmer around the cloth dimmed.

“You’re too tired!”

“We go down, we go down together,” Isla shouted back. Yet she was favouring one leg, a sphere of glowing energy forming between her horns.

He needed to get her out of here. They were both tired, yet he still had some energy in him. Half a dozen portals spun into being and Isla turned in a wide arc, spraying a laser beam at the incoming Host.

How to…?

He stared at one of the portals.The seed of an idea came to Martin. Of course. He crossed the space between the two of them in a leap, held his breath, waiting for it…and a fractal appeared high above them.

He raised both of his arms, two stakes of cloth and shoved them into a butterfly the size of a door, its fluttering corpse held aloft-

-and through the corpse and into the portal.

The cloth shimmered blue, the portal remained stable and another bandage extended around Isla’s goat-Chassis- “what are you doing?!” - and launched her into the portal.

The last thing Martin saw of Isla was her eyes, full of hurt. Betrayed twice over now. He withdrew the cloth and the fractal disappeared, and with it Isla. He buried the emotion. Later he would deal with it, but for now he had more pressing concerns.

Yes-

* and he was hit from behind, actual pain erupting.

Another deviathan rolled into a ball-

-he threw himself to the right; a series of darts struck his left ribs, drilling; and why was he feeling pain?!

He stared down at the snow-white cloth, conspicuously absent of that shimmer. That was it. The Hesser-Achenya Field. The field which ignored the laws of physics and turned reality into something subjective, not objective.

He jumped up, high, dragging himself along the side of one skyscraper. Without the Field, he was just wearing armor. Great armor without compare, but as the North Americans had proved in their infamous Battle of the West, the Field was all.

Martin looked down.

Down, at the parking lot, stood the Host. The fractals had stopped forming, yet that was a small comfort. Three deviathans, two mechaloids, a spearhoner and several kinds of Host that he had no reference for milled around.

No Field yet. It would regenerate - everyone knew that, but in that window he might just fail, or be incapacitated. They were playing for keeps here. Berenice had jumped the ship. Isla he had sent adrift, to keep her safe. Now he was his own captain.

He glanced back, through the transparent window. Yes. He would crash through the window, down a floor, hide until the Field came back online and then take them down…that was the logical solution. The sort that Berenice would have urged him to take.

Yet.

He stared at the deviathans. Wasn’t he just running? He dropped from the skyscraper. This was mad. Just like that American stand all those years ago.

He landed in the middle. Martin stared into the eyes of the Host, stared into the object of his fears. “I’m not running anymore. So come and get me.”

A fist rushed for his face and he took a step to the right. He grabbed the arm and brought his elbow down on it with a satisfying crack. The other end of a deviathan slapped him on his shoulder and hurtled through the air, his body scraped along the asphalt.

He jumped-

-and the spear took him the chest, driving all the air out of him.

He braced his knees, the shook of the fall traveling through his body as he made land. Without the Field, physics were a concern. He rolled on the ground, neatly avoiding a series of missiles launched, threw himself up and vaulted over a deviathan.

The world dissolved into instinct. Punch, roll, dodge. Hit, and be hit.

He fought, not for long, for the Field did not come back, and not with particular skill, for he had none. He fought with courage. He broke the Host, and in turn, was broken. As the last surviving mechaloid began to bash him against the shattered asphalt, as his vision darkened, he thought that to himself.

He had not run.