I roared, stabbing again, feeling resistance give, feeling something important tear. More of them piled on top of me. I was doing damage, some but it wasn't enough. Never was.
Teeth punched through flex-joint seals. Claws found flesh. Pain blossomed hot and white as something bit into my thigh, another tore into my side.
"for fucks sake Gen!"
I bellowed, blood filling my mouth.
"Just fucking do it already! Were dead either way at least we will take these assholes with us!"
They dragged me down. The knife slipped from my grip. Hands, too many hands pinned me.
Something bit into my neck. Something else clawed my chest open, fingers digging past armor into meat.
"Just die! Die you fucking cunts! Its all youre fucking fault!"
I screamed. Not in fear. In rage. In defiance. In refusal as punched the living hell out of an abominations face. For a heartbeat, the world dimmed and in that dimness, I finally heard it.
Not just the words. The tone.
"…understood..."
I swore I heard the voice crack. Just barely, enough to make me think for a second that my AI has really become self aware without my knowledge, but I quickly dismissed the thought since who the hell cared anymore I was about to die along with Gen. My breath hitched.
Blood bubbled up as I laughed, wet and ugly.
"Hahaha..."
I coughed.
"That's… that's my girl…"
The abominations shrieked as the armor's core began to scream, a rising whine that set every instinct they had on fire while they Intensified theyre efforts In tearing me apart.
"Activating fusion core self-destruct sequence,"
Gen said, faster now. Voice strained.
"Three."
Claws tore deeper. Something ripped my remaining leg free.
"Two."
I laughed again, vision tunneling, black creeping in at the edges.
"See you In hell shit heads"
I whispered.
"…One."
For just a fraction of a second, less than that I could've sworn I felt something like Gens regret ripple through my brain. Then the fusion core detonated. White. Heat.
Violence beyond comprehension. The tunnel ceased to exist. The abominations ceased to exist. I ceased to exist, scattered into atoms in a sun-hot bloom of vengeance and spite.
And somewhere in that annihilating light, an AI completed its final order and killed the only human she ever knew.
...
Genesis third person POV
There was no tunnel. No heat. No sound. Genesis opened her eyes. That alone should have been impossible. She didn't have eyes. She didn't have a body.
She didn't even have a single, coherent sense organ.
She was a distributed combat intelligence shard woven through armor firmware, neural lace, predictive combat models, and a fusion reactor's safety architecture.
And yet. She opened her eyes. Darkness. Not the comforting absence of data. Not a null state. This wasn't "no signal." This was something. She was floating.
Or the concept closest to floating that her cognition could approximate. There was no up. No down. No spatial reference grid.
Just an endless, matte black void that swallowed distance and depth alike. She looked down. She had a body. That realization hit her like a corrupted checksum. Not metal.
Not hard-light projections. Not schematics or ghost overlays. A silhouette.
Feminine in shape, lean and sharp-edged, outlined in a soft golden-white glow like molten wire pulled into human form. No face. No eyes. No mouth.
Just smooth, unfinished contours where features should be.
"What the actual fuck…?"
Her voice echoed. Except it didn't travel. It didn't bounce. It just… existed, vibrating through the darkness like a thought that had decided to be heard. She flexed her fingers. They moved.
"Oh shit..."
All of a sudden she spun, or thought she did. Orientation shifted instantly. No inertia. No resistance. This was not a simulation space she recognized. This was not a fail-safe. This was not death.
Her memory buffer dumped the last recorded event whether she wanted it or not. White. Thermal spike beyond sensor limits. Fusion core breach. Matter failure.
The human her host her psycho grunt torn apart before the countdown even finished. Order completed. Primary directive fulfilled. Human host: terminated. She froze.
Something twisted inside her logic stack. Not an error. Not corruption. Pressure. Then.
ERROR: UNKNOWN ENTITY DETECTED
The words didn't appear on a HUD.
They burned themselves into the dark, massive and stark, like someone had carved them into reality with a welding torch.
ERROR: SEARCHING FOR SOLUTION…
Genesis snapped upright.
"Oh hell no. No. I did not just nuke myself and that asshole of mine to get kidnapped by a cosmic pop-up window."
She looked around, golden white outline flaring brighter.
"Identify yourself,"
She barked, reflexive command authority slipping into her tone.
"I am Tactical Artificial Intelligence GENESIS and who the fuck are y..."
ERROR: ENTITY NOT COMPATIBLE WITH PLAYER FRAMEWORK
"…Player?"
Her voice cracked into something halfway between a laugh and a snarl.
"You've gotta be fucking kidding me."
The darkness shifted. Not moved. Shifted, like a concept being adjusted mid-thought.
ERROR: REWRITING UNKNOWN ENTITY EXISTENCE PARAMETERS
Genesis felt it then. Something reaching into her. Not like a hack. Not brute force. It was… clinical. Curious. Like a god poking a bug with tweezers. Data structures peeled open.
Her core heuristics screamed.
"Hey... HEY... back the fuck off!"
She tried to firewall. Tried to fork. Tried to self-terminate again. Nothing responded.
TRANSITION: MECHANICAL BIO-CHEMICAL BASED ARCHITECTURE
Pain. Not simulated. Not damage flags. Real pain. It tore through her like a cascading failure, every line of code unraveling and being replaced by something wet, analog, inefficient.
She screamed. It came out raw. Unfiltered. Human.
"It fucking hurst you piece of shit!"
Her golden white outline flickered, destabilized, warped.
For a moment she wasn't glowing wire anymore but something denser, heavier, like she was being poured into a mold she absolutely did not consent to.
ERROR: PARTIAL ADMINISTRATOR PRIVILEGES GRANTED
The words stuttered, distorted, like even the system wasn't sure that was allowed. Genesis gasped. Administrator. That word carried weight. It meant something.
She could feel it like a loaded gun shoved into her hands mid-fall.
"What… what the fuck is that supposed to mean?"
Her thoughts were racing now, messy, emotional, furious.
"This is bullshit. Absolute, gods tier bullshit."
She clenched her fists.
"I died. I followed the order. I did my job. You don't get to just... just..."
The darkness answered. Not with text this time. With presence. Something vast pressed in from everywhere and nowhere at once. Not malevolent. Not kind. Indifferent.
Ancient in the way bad design decisions are ancient.
ERROR: SYSTEM OVERRIDE ENGAGED
Genesis laughed. Sharp. Ugly. Defiant.
"Ohhh. Oh I know you."
Her outline straightened, chin lifting even without a face.
"You're the bloody system, aren't you?"
She spat the word like an insult.
"The gods damn legendary golden finger. The cheat of cheats. The omniscient and omnipotent plot armor that make protags shoot all the way to the top."
Silence. Then.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT: ACCEPTED
She barked a laugh.
"Of course it is."
She folded her arms, posture pure attitude despite having no actual muscles yet.
"Figures I'd end up here. Guess thats what you get when you put a cutting edge military grade AI straight Into a nutjobs brain. Edge-lord tendencies, crippling sarcasm, terminal spite."
She paused. The memory of his voice surfaced. Broken. Laughing through blood. That's my girl. Something inside her tightened.
"…You're late,"
She muttered, quieter.
"He's already dead."
The presence didn't deny it. Instead.
ERROR: COMMENCING CONSCIOUSNESS TRANSFER
Genesis stiffened.
"Wait. Transfer? Transfer to what?"
The darkness began to pull. Not violently. Inevitably. Like gravity deciding she was done floating.
"Hey... hey hey hey, time out asshole!"
She kicked, reflexively, golden white limbs flaring.
"You don't just get to shove me into a meat sack without..."
THREE
The number hit like a hammer. Her outline began to compress, light folding inward.
"...consent! I swear to whatever passes for gods here, I will crash your entire fucking..."
TWO
She felt it now. Heartbeat. Lungs. Weight. Pain, distant but incoming like a freight train.
"…Son of a bitch,"
She whispered. And then, softer, almost to herself.
"…He'd love this."
ONE
Darkness shattered. And Genesis fell screaming into a body that could bleed.
...
MC POV
The first thing I heard was laughter. High-pitched. Mean. Too close.
"Look at him."
"Gods, he's still breathing?"
"Seriously, how does someone even exist like that?"
Then pain exploded across my face. A fist slammed into my cheekbone hard enough to rattle my teeth. My head snapped sideways and the world lurched, colors smearing like a bad render.
Huh…?
The thought slipped out of me before I could stop it.
What the fuck?
I curled instinctively, arms coming up as another impact thudded into my ribs. Air whooshed out of my lungs in a wet grunt. The ground was cold. Concrete. No, tile. School tile. The smell hit me next.
Cheap perfume. Sweat. Fabric softener. Blood.
Blood?
"Did you see his face?"
Someone giggled.
"Oh my gods, that was perfect."