Nothing makes Amyn-

Amyn…

Amy?

No. No, that isn’t right. She always hated being called that. Hated the way people would take her name and make it something short and cute simply because it wasn’t familiar to them. But it does start like that.

Amy…

Amynta?

Amynta. But then what?

Amynta… T?

T…

The prisoner pushes her tongue at the plosive sound, hoping muscle memory will supply the rest. It does not. She gives up with a bitter bark of a laugh.

Amynta is forgetting her own name.

And why not? After everything else she’s lost, why not her name too? Friends, a home, a cause—all gone, and those were once real things with real substance. Why struggle for her soul’s dregs? A name is just a sound, ephemeral, a proud echo that lives only as long as lips continue to repeat it. Nobody is left to repeat Amynta’s name. It has become meaningless. Everyone she knows is dead.

Almost everyone. There’s still her.

The mere thought of Kione Monax makes Amynta’s blood boil. It turns the plosive on the tip of her tongue into a rolling, guttural growl. All the lights are going out inside Amynta’s head—but that one, that one name, glows as bright as a fresh brand—and with it, the purest hatred Amynta has ever felt. She hated the Empire, of course, and still does, but the human mind cannot properly accommodate such depth of feeling toward something so large, so abstract. A person? That’s different. You can hate a person with your whole heart, day after day. You can make your hatred for them all that you are.

Admittedly, the Kione Monax that Amynta sees upon her regular visits to her cell resembles less and less a person at all, let alone the woman from Amynta’s dwindling memories. Through the fog of rage and the ocean of drugs they pump into her, Kione abstracts to shape and color. The black, sweeping shadow of her coat. The lurid red wound of her pilot suit. The perfect, white glare of her grin. When she appears like that in the doorway of the cell, Amynta’s world dissolves into frothing and howling, into screamed recriminations and crowing laughter, into endless repetitions of that stabbing, mocking question.

“Who are you?”

I don’t know anymore, Kione. I can barely remember my own name. Day by day it slips away from me, just like everything else. My childhood. My transition. Joining the fight. The faces of friends and loved ones. Everything I was, you took from me. So come closer. Take these handcuffs off. One good shot at you is all I need. I’ll turn your face into a red smear. I’ll rip your limbs from their sockets. It’ll be the last thing I’ll ever do and I’ll die happy knowing that you’ll be waiting for me in hell so come CLOSER YOU COWARD YOU FUCKING TRAITOR YOU MONSTER YOU-

Beyond that, Amynta remembers little of what Kione says or does to her. It’s lost in a red haze. All she knows is that afterward, those creepy, hooded menials have to force her into a straitjacket and strap her to the bed, or else the featureless corridors around her cell will echo with the sound of Amynta bashing her own forehead against the door until her skin is bloody and her mind is even more damaged than Kione intended. The violence singing in her veins will not be denied; if she cannot carry it out against Kione, she will inflict it on the very walls—or on herself. Even straitjacketed, she is not calm. She writhes and screams unceasingly, the inhuman voice that bursts forth from her throat warping and distending a little more each day from the sheer strain.

Her state of mind is not natural. Amynta is still sane enough to discern that much. Her captors want her angry. At first she thought the needles they stuck her with were full of sedatives, and she fought with all her will to keep hold of her fury. But no. The drugs make her stronger, not sleepier. More agitated. They make all her grievances bite that much deeper. When she has the clarity to spare to feel anything but anger, Amynta fears that they’re going to turn her into one of those awful, mindless dog-mech pilots from the mountainside. The ones that still feature in her nightmares. Then she stops being afraid and starts being angry again because she remembers that Kione was there too that day, and she remembers what Kione did.

It all comes back to Kione Monax. Amynta’s thoughts circle her like piss around a drain. In the dark of her cell, the obsession festers. She has replayed and studied each memory of the traitor countless times, each one becoming a knife of guilt she can turn inward. When they first met, on the rescue mission that had doomed all their souls, why had Amynta been so easily impressed? How had she ever found the mercenary’s swaggering confidence and shameless sleaze so charming? Why hadn’t she seen through her liar’s facade in all those weeks spent breaking bread? What had she been thinking each time she flirted with Kione, or that night she let her fluster her into losing at arm wrestling? And why, most of all, had she refrained from putting a bullet in Kione’s skull after what she did up on that mountain?

Most of her reflections end that way, in lurid, useless fantasies of gory vengeance. So many chances to paint the walls of Leukon base with that traitor’s blood, and all of them gone to waste. Picturing it is sweeter than any wet dream Amynta’s ever had, and gets her just as worked up—though that’s another form of release the drugs and restraints deny her. Amynta doesn’t mind that part so much. She cannot picture any face but Kione’s, and no matter how desperately her body cries for it, she’s not about to soil herself that way.

Besides, staying on edge is important. Amynta needs to keep her hate sharp. She’s not about to let herself get turned into some desperate, muzzled lapdog like what they did to Sartha Thrace. Thinking about Sartha hurts too, even if she doesn’t occupy Amynta’s mind the way Kione does. What matters is the cautionary tale. Amynta has to remain vigilant in her spite. She cannot allow herself, as she did during the bleak retreat from Leukon, to entertain delusions of trickery and double-betrayal, of secret goodness, of forgiveness and reconciliation. Those childish daydreams dissolved into thin air the day she came face to face with Kione Monax again, wearing that long, black coat around her shoulders and a shark’s sadistic grin on her face. Those are Kione’s true colors. She deserves nothing but contempt and a contemptuous death.

That is what Amynta tells herself, day after lightless day and night after restless night, as her mind ebbs away under the ministrations of her captor. In the endless darkness of her cell, hatred alone is her guiding star.

Until the day she wakes up and finds the cell door swung wide open.

There is no question of it being an accident. The kennels’ menials are far too careful. Besides, Amynta remembers the lock clicking shut the night before—and beyond the open, inviting doorway, a strip of red lights lining the concrete wall beckons her along. Her eyes narrow. Amynta has grown to hate that color. For a few seconds, Amynta tries to determine what kind of game, exactly, Kione Monax is playing with her. It isn’t easy. She’s even foggier and twitchier than usual. Something new is at work inside her head. A new drug, perhaps added to her food or administered in her sleep. Amynta cannot string her thoughts together. She itches to leave. To run free. To hunt.

Besides, if she second-guesses herself into staying here like a broken dog because she’s too afraid of Kione’s shadow to leave her cell, wouldn’t that be the worst defeat of all?

Amynta steps out into the corridor. No guards or menials in sight. She finds herself smiling. She feels strong. Confident. Whatever happens, this is her chance at real defiance. If Kione offers her a long leash, she’ll use it to strangle her. Amynta’s tempted to ignore the red light strip and strike out her own way, but she’s seen enough of this place to know that it’s a labyrinth. Anyway, the color red itches at her somehow. She doesn’t like it, but she feels compelled to follow the lights regardless. The path they lead her down is far from straightforward, but after many convoluted twists and turns through empty, indistinguishable, concrete passageways, Amynta senses that the ground beneath her feet is sloping upward. The air on her face feels fresher. Energized, she breaks into a jog. After a few more minutes, the cramped corridor begins to open up, then gives way to the colossal mech hangar of an Imperial base.

Amynta feels herself break into a feral grin when she sees the first familiar face in weeks. Her own personal mech suit, still in one piece. Daseatus.

It isn’t much, relatively speaking. No heroic, custom-built titan like Ancyor or Genetor. It began its first life on an Imperial production line as a Doru, and its second beneath the skilled hands of rebel mechanics after a core shot from a rebel autocannon turned the pilot into paste but left most of the surrounding frame intact. Since then it’s been rebuilt, upgraded, overhauled, and jury-rigged so many times it resembles little more than a pile of junk—and Amynta loves it to bits. She’s less fond of the thought of Imperial engineers putting their sticky fingers into its systems though. That pisses her the hell off. Since she last saw it, it’s been repaired and rearmed. They even gave it a fresh coat of paint. One more mystery to buzz at Amynta like a mosquito—along with the fact that there’s nobody else in the hangar. Just like the kennels, it’s lit by low, red emergency lights rather than the massive, cold white, overhead fixtures. And one of the hangar doors has been left wide enough open for a single mech to pass through.

It’s a set-up. If Amynta had any doubts about that before, she doesn’t now. This is a scripted scene, and she one of its performers. The same choice presents itself: does Amynta play along, or break character? She wonders if she should stop and think for a moment, should attempt to figure out what kind of game her captor is playing—but she doesn’t want to think. Amynta’s tired of thinking. Weeks and weeks spent trapped in her own head have left her sick of it, and her agitation demands action. Giving in to her instincts and racing up the metal staircase to board Daseatus is the closest thing to a release she’s had in what feels like forever.

Being in the cockpit and behind the controls is infinitely comforting, even if it’s clear that Imperial engineers have been in there too. Things have been moved around. Some of the gauges and instruments, adjusted back to a standardized Imperial configuration. That makes Amynta growl, but it’s nothing she can’t work with. The computer systems still respond readily to her auth-codes, and in no time at all her ride is purring for her just like it always did. A quick diagnostic reveals that they’ve fitted Daseatus out for CQC. All the hardpoints are given over to extra armor or emergency maneuvering thrusters, and in its left hand, Daseatus brandishes a vicious, nimble axe. A fine weapon, but in its right hand is something Amynta likes far, far more. Daseatus’s entire forearm has been replaced with a monstrous, ultradense housing featuring three banks of explosive charges that, when fired simultaneously, hammer home an immensely heavy tungsten spike, better suited to demolition work than true combat, but no doubt utterly destructive to any mech it touches.

Amynta can’t help but laugh. Those idiots have given her a pile bunker to play with.

So armed, she feels more than ready for whatever’s coming as she sets Daseatus into motion, pausing only to test her axe against one of the many inert, surrounding Dorus before she leaves. As her mech’s estranged sibling collapses to the ground, reduced to a sparking wreck from the blow, Amynta takes as long a moment as her raging blood will allow to calm and center herself before the inevitable mindfuck.

Her name is Amynta. She is a rebel pilot. Kione Monax is her enemy.

However much she’s forgotten, she can hold onto that much. They’ll never take it from her.

Like all of them, the Imperial base is set upon a high place, its rammed earth ramparts and squat, barbed wire-topped concrete walls as much symbols as they are defenses. The landscape outside is even more desolate than most; the chemical runoff from the facility is poison to even the hardiest of flora, and anything that might serve to break the screaming wind has been cleared to preserve lines of sight and fields of fire. Everything Amynta can see is gray. Everything, except for one tall, crimson shape, a fresh scar carved through the morning haze.

Theaboros stands like a dancer, posed effetely on the tips of its feet atop a rocky outcrop with the haft of its long spear swept up behind its angular torso. As ever, it looks dainty and fragile, like its slender legs should not be able to bear the weight of its high-performance thrusters or bizarre reactor, but Amynta knows that defying gravity has always been its specialty. Its Imperial rebuild has clipped its wings a little, but from what Amynta has seen it has only become more capable of bending the world to its whims. Atop its cockpit, it boasts the strange halo that draws on Theaboros’s power output to fuel an adaptive electronic warfare suite capable of overwhelming missile targeting, mech control systems, and more. Amynta remembers how, on the day she was captured, it took Kione only minutes to invade Daseatus so completely she could freeze it in its tracks with nothing more than an overdramatic wave of Theaboros’s prissy hand.

Amynta knows what the old Theaboros could do. This is worse. More dangerous. According to Daseatus’s targeting computer it is called the Theaboros Archon, and Amynta cannot wait to wear its antimatter heart on the tip of her new toy.

‘Hey there, radio girl. Took you long enough.’

As soon as Kione’s needling, sing-song voice drifts in over the radio, Amynta sees red. Her shoulders tighten. She hunches forward, white-knuckling the controls, and is a hair away from charging straight at the Theaboros Archon until she realizes that the extreme magnitude of her anger is surely of Kione’s design. Fighting for lucidity, she tries to shut off the radio channel only to find that her comms are jammed wide open. She can’t shut the traitor up.

Not like this, anyway.

“If you don’t fly away, I’ll kill you,” Amynta growls. “Your choice. I know which I’d prefer.”

Kione’s dismissive laughter is another hot nail rammed home into Amynta’s brain. ‘Good news, puppy. This little fake breakout is straight out of Her playbook, and I’d like to show Her I can pull it off my way. Letting you get this far has been fun. I don’t think She’d appreciate you getting any farther.’

Amynta doesn’t know what Kione’s babbling about. She does not know the ‘Her’ of whom Kione speaks with such cautious reverence. What is abundantly clear is that she is listening to a woman come unmoored from her sanity and her very self. This is all of her bluster and swagger, but with none of what had been behind it. A mask without a face. It’s pathetic—or it would be, if not for the things Kione has done. Amynta doesn’t feel sorry for her. Not anymore. All she feels is hate.

“You let me out just to… what? Execute me here?” Amynta hisses.

‘All you need to know is that I’m giving you a chance. Kill me, and you’re free to go. I’m all that’s standing in your way. It’s as simple as that.’

“Why would I believe you?” Amynta can hear the smug surety in her voice.

‘Why wouldn’t you? I let you get this far. I let you in your mech. And besides, what choice do you have?’

What choice indeed? Amynta is keen enough to rip Kione to shreds—but she holds back. She needs to get her head around Kione’s game. “You can hack my mech. You did it before. I raise a weapon to you, you lock me down and put your spear through my cockpit. That it? Some duel.”

Kione sighs. ‘Do you think I’d go through all this trouble just to pull the same trick twice? I want a real win. I want you to see first-hand how much better than you I am. No cheating. Not this time. I swear.’

“The word of a traitor,” Amynta snarls—but despite everything, she believes her. It’s exactly Kione’s brand of shameless, self-destructive arrogance. Besides, Kione’s right about one thing. She really doesn’t have any other choice. “Fine. I’ll make regretting this the last thing you ever do.”

‘That’s the spirit!’ Kione spins Theaboros Archon’s spear in its hand as she slips into a fighting stance. ‘Give me your best shot.’

“With. Pleasure.”

Amynta stops fighting what’s howling through every fiber of her being. She lets the adrenaline fill her system as her heart pounds a double beat. For the first time in months, she feels alive. This is what she’s been dreaming of. She matches Kione’s eager jeer with a jubilant war-scream of her own as she rams Daseatus’s throttle forward and charges ahead, axe raised. Amynta might be furious, but she isn’t stupid. She knows how good a pilot Kione is, and she understands that her foe has had every chance to prepare for this fight. Theaboros is a superior machine to Daseatus, much as it chafes at her to admit it. Her odds are not good. But she has two advantages.

One, she’s desperate.

Two, it’ll only take one good hit.

Even with her small axe, one good hit ought to snap one of Theaboros Archon’s limbs like a twig. As Amynta closes to melee range like a lightning bolt, mind on fire, she launches into a ferocious sequence of blows, drawing on all the speed at her disposal in the hope that one of them strikes true. Despite how long it’s been since she last piloted, Amynta feels good. Strong. Fast. And, gods, it’s good to feel powerful like this again. To wield a titan. With each lunging swipe she can see it in her mind’s eye—her vengeance wrought in screaming steel as it bites home, and then the next, chop after chop, insatiably hewing her way into the cockpit as Kione’s screams form a lullaby over the radio.

But none of her blows land. Theaboros dances out of reach of each one, so supremely untouchable it does not deign to offer a single riposte. Amynta’s frenzy turns a deeper shade of red. She was ready for a tough fight, but Kione gives every appearance of not taking her seriously at all. It seems impossible that any mech could avoid every single one of Amynta’s reckless blows so effortlessly—but the Archon is not any mech. It warps physics around itself, retreating in strange, floaty steps that always take it just barely beyond Daseatus’s axe, its momentum shifting unpredictably according to its glowing, swiveling thrusters whenever Amynta tries to compensate. It’s like trying to stab at a cloud floating on the wind.

It’s infuriating. And Kione Monax certainly knows it.

‘Is this really the best you can do?’ she yawns. ‘And after I’ve put so much time into you! Don’t disappoint me, puppy.’

“Shut…” Amynta snarls, before catching herself. Her veins are on fire, but she can’t allow Kione to rile her up. She needs to focus. Amynta throws herself right back to training. Work the machine. Keep moving forward. Keep Kione on the back foot. Shift the auto-balance, it hasn’t been calibrated for the weight of the pile bunker, a weapon far too unwieldy to use against a foe like Theaboros. Probably Kione’s idea of a joke. Switch heat purging to manual so the safeties don’t choke her reactor when she needs it the most. Check the infrared; it might let her know if Theaboros’s reactor is at its limit, or if something big is coming.

It provides no warning at all when, after yet another evasion, Theaboros Archon’s speartip lashes out in a swift, viperine strike that bites home in Daseatus’s metal flesh.

The blow rattles the cockpit and leaves Amynta hissing with fury, but a quick glance at the damage report confirms that the blow damaged her pride more than her mech. Only redundant and auxiliary systems affected. Amynta got off lucky—unless it wasn’t luck. With that speed, that power, that skill, Kione could have done much worse.

She’s toying with her. She’s just toying with her. Amynta finds herself frothing at the mouth.

“How… dare… you!” she roars. Her tongue is clumsy. She’s all but choking on her own drool.

Laughter is Kione’s answer. ‘I thought you were going to kill me, puppy. What’s the matter? Not up to the task?’

Amynta launches into a fresh flurry of attacks, consumed by a great, raging heat. “I’m going to… tear you… limb from limb!” she vows. “Your… prissy little bird… and then you!”

‘You haven’t even touched me,’ Kione ripostes. ‘And I’m not even trying.’

Amynta tries to block her out. She really does, but each word Kione speaks feels like it’s being carved into her brain with a rusted knife. The traitor has a direct line to her amygdala, a live wire, and exploits it as skillfully as she pilots her mech. Her mocking laugh reverberates within Amynta’s skull, stirring the torrent of her emotions into a bloody froth. Amynta launches another axe-stroke, even wilder than before. Another miss. Amynta tries to slow her breathing. Her lungs won’t cooperate. They’re tight. She’s choking on her anger. Careful. Mind the balance. One of the stabilizers is jammed. Don’t lunge so far that Daseatus topples. Vent heat between strikes. Check thermals. Check fuel. Make sure nothing important is bleeding from the wound in her side. And kill her. Kill Kione Monax. Just one hit is all it’ll take. Smash her out of the sky. Turn her laughter into screams. Kill her kill her KILL HER KILL HER-

‘Bad puppy!’

A sudden jolt stirs Amynta from her bloodthirst. Too late, she realizes that she’s stumbling on the rocky terrain, overbalancing forward in her desperation to reach her foe. As she fights to correct the mistake, Kione delivers her reprimand. Theaboros Archon steps gracefully to one side and commits itself to another spear strike, this time aimed at one of Daseatus’s legs. The weapon tears out a gory chunk of armor plating before Kione draws back, and Amynta is left more furious than ever.

“Stop. Calling. Me. That!” she screams.

‘It’s what you are. You’re not finished yet. Still just a pup.’

“Shut up!” The ghoulish suggestion burns at Amynta from within.

‘Make me, radio girl. Show me you’re still worth something.’

Amynta will show her more than that, she vows to herself. Already, she’s back on the offensive. Daseatus is limping, but she refuses to let that slow her down. “Shut up!” she screams again. “I’ll… I’m going to kill you. I’m going to kill you!”

‘Kill me?’ More laughter. It never ends. ‘You couldn’t beat me when you were fighting to save your friends. Now you can’t even remember their names. What are you still fighting for, radio girl?’

“I…” Amynta blinks, though momentum carries her onward in the fight. “No, they… I…” Their names. What were their names? Her comrades. The ones she lived and fought for. The words don’t come. She can barely remember her own name. What about their faces, then? The vestiges melt in her mind’s eye as she tries to conjure them.

She has forgotten them all.

Only one name—one face—remains truly clear and present in her mind.

“Kione Monax!” Amynta screams, voice so raw it shreds her throat. Everyone she held dear is lost to a red fog, and she is lost with them. “You. Took. Them. From. Me!”

She throws Daseatus forward in a desperate, headlong lunge. The sheer recklessness of the move would take most pilots off guard, but Kione is not most pilots. She sidesteps with practiced ease, then lashes out with the butt of her spear. It crashes squarely into Daseatus’s shoulder, buckling armor plates and sending Amynta spiraling as the cockpit shakes with her anguished, frustrated rage.

‘Still not good enough, radio girl,’ Kione sighs. ‘But you could be. Left you a little something to help even the odds. Check the personal compartment.’

Amynta’s bloodshot eyes narrow. Keeping one eye on her viewscreen, she reaches to pry open the small compartment. Most pilots use it to stow booze or cigarettes; Amynta half expects to find a bomb or a live grenade. Instead, she finds a set of syringes and vials, all tied into a little bundle with a red silk ribbon. Amynta recognizes them at once.

Imperial combat stims.

‘Not the ordinary stuff, mind,’ Kione remarks right on cue, like she’s watching. Perhaps she is. ‘A special batch, courtesy of yours truly. I’ve been known to partake, and I’ve been taking chemistry lessons lately so I whipped up something special. Go ahead, puppy. Help yourself.

Amynta stares at the set of syringes for a moment. Then she takes one, pulls the cap off with her teeth, and slams the needle straight down into her thigh.

Stupid? Obviously. But what the fuck has she got left to lose?

You don’t fuck with Imperial stims. That’s one lesson they teach every new rebel. Not worth it. Not worth the addiction, the nausea, the irritability. Amynta has never touched them before. But after a few seconds, she sees why the warning needs to be given so often and so firmly: they work. As soon as the drug hits her system, she’s hot to go. Suddenly she can think twice as fast. Suddenly, the way the Archon is moving seems downright sluggish. Amynta coughs up a thick wad of bloody saliva that ends up drooling down her chest, then grins.

Just what she needed. And if she’s even more inhumanly pissed off than she was before, all the better.

Amynta throws Daseatus back into the fight like a meteor—and now, for Kione, dodging isn’t enough. Amynta can keep up, and so Kione starts fighting her—actually fighting her—using Theaboros’s spear to deflect and parry, or to launch lightning-fast strikes of her own to keep Amynta at bay. Suddenly, both of them are laughing. Kione, because she’s getting the fight she wanted. Amynta, because now she knows she can win.

Vent heat. Mind the auto-stabilizer. Shut off the stupid alarm that keeps triggering. Amynta knows she’s keeping her sixty-foot metal colossus on a tightrope, always about to slip into the abyss. She needs it that way. Momentum is the only thing keeping Daseatus on its feet, and with fire and fury in her veins, Amynta is not afraid to lean into it without heed for her own safety. Watch the terrain. Eye the thermals. Keep attacking. Don’t give her a moment. Win. Win. Win. For all their sakes, win.

For… who?

That question keeps snapping at Amynta’s heels, troubling her even amidst her drug-induced bloodthirst. She cannot remember—but the answer is close at hand. The ghosts of faces and names are returning to her. Snippets of conversation, moments of warmth. The amphetamine clarity of the combat stims is bringing her memories into focus too. Amynta is the closest she might ever get to recovering her ruined mind.

And it’s a distraction.

As Daseatus and Theaboros trade blows, the memories that pluck and sting at Amynta threaten to rob her of her concentration when she needs it the most. Kione isn’t pulling punches anymore. Oh, she’s still putting on a show, taunting Amynta with mocking feints and needless flourishes, but she’s aiming center mass, each thrust and sweep a lethal blow in the making. There’s no time to wonder about what was. Amynta needs to win. She needs the satisfaction only Kione’s corpse can bring. Which means that, right now, she needs the memories to stop.

It would be so simple. All she has to do is stop trying to hold on. Her sanity is a muscle that has ached for weeks with the strain of keeping her together. The moment she stops trying, it’ll all be that much easier.

But what about her memories? Her friends?

Theaboros Archon leaps straight up over one of Daseatus’s lunges, high into the air, then Kione cuts the anti-grav thrusters and her machine suddenly drops, spear extended downward as if to pierce Amynta from above. Amynta wheels out of the way and continues her assault, but it’s a reminder: even with combat stims in her system, she’s only just on Kione’s level. She needs every edge she can get. If Kione dies, it’s all worth it. If Amynta does, it won’t matter whether or not she remembers all the ghosts waiting for her on the other side.

For a fraction of a second, Amynta closes her eyes. She gathers up all of those half-remembered friends—and with them, a thousand moments of comradeship and tenderness—and lets go. She lets them sink into the red fog. She feeds them to the fire burning through her mind.

When she opens her eyes again, she’s hotter and sharper than ever before. And she does not even recall the value of what she has forgotten.

‘Atta girl!’ Kione coos, as Daseatus’s axe finally scratches the paint on her state-of-the-art monstrosity. ‘This is what I was hoping to see!’

“Shut! Up!” Amynta screams anew. With her memories shed, she is more a weapon and less a person. More an animal. More a conduit for the inhuman fury that suffuses her every cell. With every heartbeat, she feels herself burning—and she welcomes it. Whatever it takes. Just as long as she burns hot enough to take Kione Monax with her. “I’ll. Kill. You. I’ll. Kill. You!”

‘Not today, radio girl. Not today.’

With each passing, burning heartbeat, the exchange of blows quickens. Axe meets spear again, and again, and again, until the very air is stained with clashing sparks and the scent of burning metal. Amynta was only ever a solid pilot. Now, for the very first time, she understands what it means to be an ace. To live in the future, never reacting, always anticipating. She’s fighting to keep one eye on the fundamentals—balance, heat, infrared—but she is entering a state in which she is no more directly aware of those things than she is of her own heartbeat. They are simply part of her. Daseatus is part of her. It is her body. It is the instrument of her revenge. It is the blade of her will, bared against Kione Monax’s throat.

And it still isn’t enough.

For all the speed and fury at Amynta’s disposal, it isn’t enough. The combat drugs have made her a savant, but Kione Monax is a master. The mercenary-turned-traitor rises to meet Amynta’s challenge without hesitation or fear, her Theaboros as precise and nimble as a surgeon’s scalpel. As Amynta wheels around one thrust, preserving her momentum for a roundhouse sweep with her axe, she finds Theaboros in the air again, leaping back, then powering towards her using its thrusters. The flurry of strikes that follow are so fast, Amynta is forced to take them with the reinforced housing of her pile bunker—and even then, Kione pivots so that her blade bites into Daseatus’s hip, sending up a spray of sparks as it damages crucial armatures.

‘Cmon’, Kione taunts, as Daseatus reels from the strike. ‘You’ve been talking such a big game! Don’t get me worked up like this if you’re not going to fuck me properly.’

“Die. Die. Die!” Fuck Kione Monax? Amynta’s mind rebels at the notion even as her body, disturbingly, hearkens to it. She ignores the reaction and keeps coming, refusing to be put on the defensive, but again Kione is ready for her. She sweeps down, using her weapon’s weight to pulverize the rock beneath Amynta’s feet, stealing her footing at the crucial moment and allowing herself to land safely and draw back.

‘See?’ Kione purrs. ‘I’m simply better.’

“Sssshut. Up.” Amynta froths. “You’re. Worthless.”

‘Yet you needed me to save you, time and again.’ More hot nails. More fuel for the fire. ‘Like up on that mountain. Do you remember, radio girl? Do you remember how you failed them?’

“I…”

Who was it who died up there?

Amynta cannot remember. She burned her memory to ashes in her own mind. It’s Kione’s fault. It’s all Kione’s fault. Fury drives her onward. Her appetite for revenge is bottomless. The only thing that matters is winning.

And she has another two vials of combat stims.

She’s come too far to start hesitating now. Amynta doesn’t care if it stops her heart in five minutes. That just means she has to win in four. She uncaps the vial and shoots it into her leg.

Her entire body catches fire.

It’s agony. Each beat of Amynta’s dangerously erratic heart pumps lava through her veins, leaving her howling in a voice that grows steadily less human. The first dose felt good, in a way. A perfect cocktail of aggression, alertness, and speed. Like adrenaline but better. Angrier. The second dose—the overdose—is a nightmare. Everything is overstimulating. Every muscle in Amynta’s body is twitching, every nerve misfiring, every carnal urge in irrational overdrive. Her every thought is mindless violence. Something primal and atavistic within her is wide awake, an animal urge that demands simple destruction as much as retribution.

“You…” Amynta slavers. She’s all but drowning on her own drool. Her tongue is clumsy. “You. K-Kione. You.”

Kione gasps in delight. ‘Oh? Puppy took some more medicine?’

Amynta’s head throbs. The traitor’s voice is unbearable. Without thinking, she hurls Daseatus forward. “S-shut. Up. And. D-Die!”

Now Amynta is a whirlwind. Her blade is everywhere, moving too fast for the unenhanced eye to track. In her hands, Dasteatus dances just as Theaboros does in Kione’s. Balance, heat, infrared—these things are forgotten. It’s just her. Her body. Her beast. At long last, she has Kione on the back foot. The traitor can still keep up—but only just. Her endless retreat across the rocky plateau outside the base is no longer a mere taunt. Every swing of Amynta’s axe is a killing stroke in the making. In moments, she carves a dozen scars into Theaboros Archon’s paintwork as Kione struggles to wield her spear quickly enough to fend off the blows. Ruining the red angel’s pretty face makes Amynta’s raging blood sing—but it isn’t enough. Not yet.

She needs blood. She needs sparks and ruin. She needs the scream of twisting metal and the crunch of shattered limbs. She needs to see Kione Monax ruined in every way imaginable. She needs to see her guts spilled all over the inside of her broken cockpit. Her yearning for it has her straining against her harness. It has her drooling from her lips and leaking between her legs. It’s the only way to pay for the way she betrayed…

What?

It’s slipping away from her.

Mind and memory are structures. Once you start pulling out pieces, the entire edifice begins to collapse. There’s a physical sensation to it, a hot, anxious prickling as Amynta’s tortured mind reaches into itself and finds a wounded hollow where her personhood once lived.

Without faces and names, memories lose their coherence. Events become meaningless. Dates, places, people—all of them slip through Amynta’s grasp as she fights. It’s like they’re stained with oil, slick, impossible to hold, details slipping steadily out of view. Her very context is collapsing. She still remembers Kione and the mountaintop, but not the others. Not even what she was fighting for. Only the rage, and the sorrow, and the hate. More than enough to keep her pointed in the right direction, but the sheer cognitive dissonance brought on by Amynta’s shredded memories is skull-splitting. It’s unbearable. And worse, it’s distracting.

Amynta already knows what to do. What she must do. There’s already so little of her left. Killing Kione Monax is worth any price. All she has to do is give up. All she has to do is take the parts of herself she does not need, and feed them to the fire. She’s already given names and faces. Now for the rest. Now for the cause.

Her name is Amynta. She is a rebel pilot.

Her name is Amynta. She is a re-

Her name is Amynta. She is a…

Her name is Amynta. She is a pilot.

And Kione Monax is her enemy.

With each burdensome piece of her selfhood she sheds, Amynta’s clarity crystalizes. Hatred like hers does not demand justification. It is enough to know that Kione Monax is her enemy. Her hated foe stands before her, and Amynta has an axe in her hand. Nothing could be simpler.

“Not. Laughing. Now,” Amynta growls through her teeth as she presses her advantage, flowing from each strike to the next with ease only her superhuman, drug-induced proprioception can provide. Now, at long last, Theaboros Archon seems slow. Seems weak. Not some eldritch angel anymore. Just prey.

‘We’ll see about that, puppy.’

Amynta can hear the strain in her enemy’s voice. It’s a red rag to a bull. She’s so close now, and each strike of her axe comes closer still. She feels herself on the cusp of splitting Theaboros Archon open like a dead tree, and it spurs her onward. Strike. Advance. Strike. Advance. It is as instinctive to her now as the rhythm is relentless; so too is the way her chest aches with each pounding heartbeat. She is at the very limit of humanity now. She walks a tightrope between beautiful clarity and messy incoherence. She stands above the abyss. She does not know why she is fighting, but she can keep going for as long as she does not look down.

She is Amynta. She is a pilot. Kione Monax is her enemy.

The only thing that matters is winning. Amynta is a pilot, yes, but so much more now. She is an avatar of violence. Every part of her seethes with a rage that cannot be sated. Her fantasies grow more lurid with each passing moment. She wants to taste Kione’s flesh between her teeth. She wants to slake her thirst. She wants to break her body, then use her ruin to satisfy every foul urge her strange drugs have awakened. There is no after, in the fantasies. No purpose. No escape nor sanctuary. This is Ragnarok. Kione’s death is the apocalypse itself. The last mark on the clock. The fulfillment of the world. It is all that matters.

“Die,” Amynta grunts, leaning forward in her cockpit, drooling all over the controls. Her voice grows less and less comprehensible with each drumbeat repetition. “Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die.”

Cut. Stamp. Sweep. Dodge. Riposte. Strike. Strike. Strike. Advance. Leap. Pin her. Break her. Smash her. Ruin her. End her. It’s so close now. In Amynta’s infrared second sight, Theaboros Archon is ablaze with heat it cannot easily shed. Its reactor must be straining as much as Amynta’s heart. One way or another, this is the end.

But not just yet. Even now, impossibly, Kione Monax can keep up. Well enough to stay alive, anyway. The needle of her spear keeps Amynta’s vengeful axe at bay with infuriating dexterity. She is a whirlwind, turning aside the storm of Amynta’s reckoning. The sheer closeness of their contest is an agony. To come this far—to sacrifice this much—and to fail is unthinkable. The very prospect burns Amynta up. Kione was always a tease; Amynta has broken her guard a dozen times now, but she always dances back out of reach at the last second. All she needs is to be that little bit faster. All she needs is that final edge.

She has one more vial of combat stims.

Suicide seems now a meaningless concept. Amynta does stop careening forward as she shoots herself up one last time. She does not hesitate as she summons up the last vestiges of herself, the last distractions, and feeds them unto the flames. If there is to be nothing left, let her burn hotter than the sun.

She is Amynta. She is a pilot.

She is Amynta. She is…

She is Amynta.

She is Amyn…

She is A…

She…

She is ready. Though all her maddened senses tell her the entire world is on fire, she is ready. The pain is infinite and nothing. Pain is just a sensation. She does not remember a moment that does not hurt. She is a knife, fresh from the forge fire. She is sharp and nothing more. Kione Monax is her enemy. She is a force of infinite division. A blade cuts. An axe splits. She kills.

From within her metal god’s body, she carves a path past the tip of Theaboros Archon’s spear. Daseatus gives all of itself and then more, mortal concerns like venting its heat long forgotten. Let it all melt. Let the world burn. She batters Theaboros’s defenses aside again, and again, and again, and again, until Kione is, at last, dazed by the sheer ferocity of the onslaught. She grins. Victory. She wheels Daseatus around into Theaboros’s blind spot—then pulls the trigger. The surging roar of her pile bunker as it primes itself for detonation is the song of victory itself. All she has to do is complete the motion, bringing its tip to bear against the red angel’s delicate spine, then watch as its torso breaks open like a blossoming flower. It is the only thing she has ever wanted. Her life begins and ends with this. She-

Her viewscreen goes red.

At first, she thinks her mech’s computer systems have crashed at the worst possible moment—but no. It’s simply the blinding glow of Theaboros Archon’s strange, fearful halo coming to life. She tries to ignore it, tries to deliver the killing blow. She cannot. Daseatus is no longer hers. It’s just like that day, the one she now barely remembers. Complete system lockout. Daseatus obeys a new mistress and, in service to Kione Monax, it purges its own reactor, leaving its former pilot to hammer her impotent rage against the metal walls of her cockpit until her knuckles crack.

“Yyyooouuuu!” she screams, barely capable of human speech. “Yyouuuu. Cheeeatteedddd. Youuuu. Saiddd.”

‘And you believed me?’ Kione laughs breezily. ‘Poor, stupid puppy. Haven’t you learned by now? I’m the girl who’ll always let you down.’

“Yyyyyouuuu…”

There is no rage like that of the powerless. As Daseatus cools, Amynta grows hotter and hotter. She’s going into meltdown. Her own biology rebels against the cocktail of stimulants and agitants she has pumped into her own system. Her mind is on fire. When she opens her mouth again she cannot speak, only howl like a cornered wolf. The flames within her head have claimed all the fuel that is left for them. As her sanity cracks, Kione Monax delivers mercy. With what little energy is left in its systems, Daseatus raises its arm and brings the tip of its pile bunker to bear against its own head.

‘So long, radio girl.’ Now, at the very end, Kione sounds strangely sorrowful. One last ploy, perhaps. One last twist of the knife. ‘It was nice knowing you.’

The pile bunker fires. Its spike slams home, destroying all the crucial cameras and sensors contained within Daseatus’s steel skull. More a disabling wound than a killing one—but the sheer force of the immense weapon topples it to the ground. As it lands, the impact dashes the pilot’s head against one of the cockpit walls. She hears a loud cracking sound. Blood flows from her nose, from her ears, from her brain. The world goes black. The world goes red.

And Amynta Tet goes away. Forever.

It is a wounded and terrified creature that awakens at the sound of the cockpit being breached. The first thing it sees is its own blood, leaking from a vicious head and splattered across the walls around her. It catches sight of its reflection in the pane of glass covering a now-broken dial, and barely recognizes what it sees. Its peach-blossom eyes, its ashen oak skin, its sharp brow and moon-round cheeks—it’s like looking at a stranger in a dream. As it watches, blood trickles down the cockpit wall to stain the useless instrument panel. Its reflection turns a deep red.

After a long moment, the pilot apprehends what has happened. Its mech has fallen; the hatch is far above it now, and the pilot cannot find the strength to clamber out of the seat. Every animal has a sixth sense for when it is dying. All the pilot can do is hope, as all desperate things do, that salvation will appear.

The hatch opens. Light filters in from above. A moment later, Kione Monax appears. Veiled in a starlight haze, she perches loftily on the edge of the open hatch, black coat billowing in the wind, and regards the wounded pilot with a strange expression. The pilot growls at her with what little strength it has. It feels… something, for this woman. Something strong. But it isn’t sure what. It isn’t even sure how it knows that her name is Kione Monax, especially when her own name is gone. When her own mind is gone.

“Do you know why you lost?” Kione Monax asks softly.

Her voice stills the pilot. Lost? Yes. Yes, it remembers that too. The two of them fought, and it was defeated. But why? That much it cannot recover. The events of mere minutes ago are oblivion. It cannot answer. It isn’t sure it can speak. Even thinking is too much for it.

“Because you’re weak.”

The pilot growls again, but without force. However much it resents the accusation, it cannot deny it. They fought. Kione won. Kione is stronger. It is weak.

As it absorbs that fact, Kione cilmbs down into the cockpit with her to stand atop the ruined control console. Still that strange, unreadable expression. Now the pilot shrinks before her. The weak in the jaws of the strong. Its fate is in Kione’s hands.

“I understand how that feels,” Kione offers softly. “I once sacrificed everything to save someone I cared about, and lost anyway. I was weak then too.”

Cautiously, the pilot nods. In this moment—the moment it is nothing—that sympathy means everything. When Kione crouches and reaches down to wipe a forgotten tear from the pilot’s cheek, it musters the strength to gnash its teeth—but when Kione’s fingertips grace its skin, it is stilled. It melts into the infinite warmth of Her touch. At once, their bond is iron.

“This is what I offer you.” Kione reaches into one of the voluminous pockets of her coat and produces a small, metal wire cage with a set of straps trailing under it. She holds it out to the pilot, who turns its head up and away out of a forgotten fear. “Take my hand, and I will make you strong. Accept my collar on your neck, and you will become so strong you will never fear defeat again.”

Her words have the sense of a choice. The suggestion of another road to take. But what? Refusal would be meaningless. In its precious few minutes of life, the pilot has learned that Kione Monax and itself are kindred beasts. In a pack, the weak submits to the strong. It is the way of the world. However broken its mind is, the pilot understands that much. If She can make it strong as well, why reject such benevolence?

And besides: what else does it have?

The pilot bows its head in submission. Kione pets its hair fondly for a moment, then begins to fasten the muzzle around its face. The sensation of the straps being tightened into place prompts another stirring of whatever violently-intense emotion it feels for Her. It must be love, the creature that was once Amynta Tet decides, crimson-bright and so ardent it stirs her blood to arousal even now. With love comes resolve. From now on, wherever Kione Monax leads, the pilot will follow. It knows exactly who it is, and what purpose it serves. Once it is muzzled, Kione offers Her hand to help it up out of the cockpit.

The pilot takes it. The hound is born.