Author: Ambrose Ibsen
Date: 2016-03-02 05:00:00+00:00
Description: A Cage-Match Against The King Of Beasts, And Earth Is The Ring One man, at the helm of mankind's most advanced machine, is all that stands in the way of Armageddon. Amateur boxer Silvio Echegaray has lost more than his most recent bout. He's lost sight in one of his eyes. With his professional hopes in tatters, he wonders how he'll be able to provide for his small family. But just as he reaches the end of his rope, fate smiles upon him. Silvio receives an unexpected offer from the robotics arm of a well-known corporation. Aderhold Corporation is looking to expand its robotics division and has

Bonecrusher

A Kaiju Thriller

Book one of The Armageddon Tetralogy

By Ambrose Ibsen

Synopsis:

One man, at the helm of mankind's most advanced machine, is all that stands in the way of Armageddon.

Amateur boxer Silvio Echegaray has lost more than his most recent bout. He's lost sight in one of his eyes. With his professional hopes in tatters, he wonders how he'll be able to provide for his small family.

But just as he reaches the end of his rope, fate smiles upon him.

Silvio receives an unexpected offer from the robotics arm of a well-known corporation. Aderhold Corporation is looking to expand its robotics division and has developed a cutting-edge mech, the X-001 ARTEMIS. The deal is a simple one: Silvio must travel to Iceland and assist the team of researchers by stepping into the cockpit to test the machine's capabilities.

Meanwhile, a small town in rural Michigan is decimated. The emergence of a monolithic creature from a lake trench threatens the whole of America's Heartland. After repeated military interventions, the creature proves immune to conventional weaponry.

Silvio is then offered a job he can't refuse: Pilot ARTEMIS into battle against the dangerous creature. In doing so, he has a chance to reclaim the glory he once sought as a boxer, and will have more eyes on him than any matchup in the ring could ever bring.

And with a little luck, perhaps he'll save Earth, too.

BONECRUSHER is a Kaiju thriller novel of roughly 54,000 words, and is the first in a series. It contains instances of coarse language and scenes of violence. It also contains a cliff-hanger ending. Reader discretion is advised.

Copyright 2016 by Ambrose Ibsen

All Rights Reserved

Bonecrusher

1

Sitting on the edge of the stretcher, Silvio could still hear the roar of the crowds.

More specifically, he could still hear the booing.

Working over his jaw, sore and swollen, he lowered his hands to his lap and hung his head. Just outside his door the emergency room staff could be heard to race about. The doctor would be in any minute, they'd told him almost an hour ago. Pain medications had been promised. Those hadn't materialized yet, either. The pain was worst on the right side of his face, up towards his eye. The area was so swollen he couldn't even blink with it, rendered blind by a counterpunch he should've anticipated.

He should've known better than to look.

A cautious glance into the mirror had revealed it to be a mass of red hamburger. His nose still dripped now and then with blood, the white shirt someone had thrown on him in transit soaked through on the breast. He looked like shit. His black hair was matted onto his forehead by sweat, and looked terribly greasy in the bright light of the examination room. He looked over his teeth. None appeared out of place, but were stained in red thanks to a busted, oozing lip.

A shudder coursed through him for the remembrance.

Bright lights, raucous crowds.

And then the punishment.

He'd never heard of the guy who'd knocked him out. A nobody, an out-of-towner. Silvio figured he was a relative newcomer, which made the loss all the more embarrassing. Already his coach had been losing patience with his middling performance; he'd lost his last three bouts. And now this. Finding another sponsor would be virtually impossible with so many losses on the record. Virtually no one in the world stood by him anymore.

His recent performances could be distilled into an easy-to-follow formula: Enter the ring with little fanfare, and then, a few minutes in, get carried out to a chorus of enthusiastic boos. That was all there was to it, all he seemed capable of. It seemed like a cycle he couldn't escape from, an inevitability every time he stepped into the ring. Train, get your ass kicked, repeat. Boxing at this level had never paid him well, and he was lucky to get anything on those days when he lost. The bigger purses were only available to those who could cut it in the pros, and more than ever before, he was beginning to realize that he wasn't pro material.

The realization hurt like shit, more than any hit in the ring.

The end of the fight returned to his thoughts again and again, playing in his mind like a looped snippet of film. He'd taken one to the side of the head. A stupid misstep on his part. It'd been jarring, but he'd collected himself, launched into a strike of his own.

And then the counterpunch, square to the eye. It'd felt like a brick, and reflecting on it after the fact, he remembered hearing something snap with that hit.

Another love-tap had come, to the nose. A blast to the ribs. When he hit the mat, he knew there'd be no getting back up.

It'd been an important bout. There'd been some folks in the audience looking for fresh talent, he'd been told. Silvio had shown up in the hopes of impressing them, of making the transition to professional boxing. Had he won or even lost by decision then perhaps things would have gone well for him. These regional bouts weren't paying the bills anymore, and his continued losses were only making him harder to market. He was the kind of boxer that rookies tore up to make a name for themselves, a barrier they pummeled on the way to worthier opponents. Though he'd been called a fighter of some promise at the start of his short career by a few in the local press, Silvio was washed out. This loss had only cemented his status as pushover. He was forgettable.

What'll you do now? he asked himself, tonguing his molars to make sure none had been knocked loose. Still gotta eat. Still gotta pay the rent. He grimaced, a good deal of pain shooting across his swollen face as he did so. Might be time to get one of those “proper jobs” Sarah's always talking about.

Usually he was optimistic after a loss. There was always the next fight to look forward to. There would always be another chance to prove himself, to get noticed and make the jump to the professional circuit. He'd prepare more thoroughly for the next one. He'd train till he couldn't train anymore, till he dreamt of nothing but boxing.

This time, though, his hope ebbed away.

From an adjacent room an old woman moaned. The smell of powerful cleaning agents met his nostrils as a noisome housekeeper's cart wheeled down the hall. Muffled speech, ringing phones. The lights overhead seemed altogether too bright. Absolutely nothing about this place was welcoming. He kneaded his ribs, left warm and tender. Could really use something for pain right about now.

He traced the inflamed outline of his eye, the lids seeping with a bit of blood. What if he'd fucked up his eye in this fight, permanently? It was awfully swollen, more swollen than it'd ever been after a fight. And where was this blood coming from? He tapped his foot against the edge of the stretcher as his legs dangled, and hoped the doctor would come in soon. Silvio was in need of answers.

The ER room was a lonely place to wait. No one had come with him; as best he could remember it, a pair of EMTs had dropped him off in the room without a word. It was a little fuzzy, but he could remember an x-ray, some poking and prodding. A nurse had stepped in, run through a quick assessment while he'd still been too dazed to answer with clarity. It was only now, left in the room by himself for a long stretch, that he was returning to cognizance. But what the hell was taking so long?

The door opened. Silvio's heart jumped up into his throat.

A man with a white coat stepped in. Stethoscope dangling around his neck, wrinkled face pinched into a pointed frown, he closed the door softly behind him and leafed through a few pieces of paper on a clipboard. He read quietly and ran a hand through his greying hair before even glancing up at Silvio. “Mr Echegaray?” he said with all the warmth of a prison guard. “I'm Doctor Winfield.”

Silvio nodded.

The doctor returned to is paperwork for a few moments, pacing absentmindedly before stopping at the bedside and pulling on a pair of gloves. He said nothing as he began poking and prodding Silvio's swollen face. He grimaced as though disgusted, tugging on the skin and examining the open areas with some thoroughness. “Can you open your eye for me?” he asked.

“N-no,” managed Silvio, “it's too swollen.”

“Lay back,” ordered the doctor, guiding him down onto the stretcher with a press on the shoulder. Taking out a pen light, he grasped Silvio's swollen eyelids with two gloved fingers and parted them. Then, wincing a little for what he saw, he shined his light on the exposed eye.

Not that Silvio could see the light.

If it was possible, the doctor appeared a good deal more stern than he had initially. He shook his head and threw off his gloves, scribbling furiously on his clipboard.

Silvio got up on his elbows. “What's the damage, doc?”

The doctor cleared his throat, appearing reticent to answer. A nurse burst into the room just then with a med cup full of painkillers and a cup of lukewarm water, which he choked down. As the nurse shuffled out, the doctor finally spoke. “It's a bit early to say, and I'll be writing you a referral to a colleague of mine, an ophthalmologist. However that eye of yours seems to have been very injured, Mr. Echegaray. In fact, I can't be sure you'll ever see through it again. It appears you've broken your eye socket. I'd need another X-ray to make sure, possibly a CT scan. And your eye doesn't appear to track light or movement. I would suspect damage to your optic nerve. A more thorough examination from an ophthalmologist will give us a better idea of what's going on, once the swelling's been reduced.”

Silvio tensed. X-rays? Eye surgery? How the hell am I supposed to afford all of this shit? That was his first thought. Gripping the side of the stretcher, he looked upon the doctor with his one good eye, finding his vision blurred by panic-borne tears. “I'm blind?” he asked, his tongue feeling suddenly limp in his mouth.

The doctor glanced up from his paperwork and gave a weak nod, his bespectacled eyes carrying traces of pity. “Probably.”

He felt woozy. Rocking on the edge of the stretcher, he leaned forward and stood up, almost losing his balance. Every breath saw him shudder.

“Mr. Echegaray,” began the doctor, “please don't stand up. If you can lay back down for me, we'll get you off to radiology for a few diagnostic--”

Silvio would hear none of it. “If I'm blind, then there's no sense in my getting these tests now, is there?” He gulped, hand on the door handle. “I'm leaving now.”

The doctor stiffened, shaking his head disapprovingly. “I wouldn't if I were you. You're in no condition to go anywhere. And these tests... if you leave now, insurance won't cover your treatment.”

Silvio loosed a little laugh, wiping away a trickle of blood and snot from his nose with the back of his hand. Tears stung the corners of his good eye. “I haven't got insurance anyhow. Send me the bill like you always do.” With that, he threw open the door and started down the hall, hands shoved in his pockets.

2

A brief stagger down East Boundary, a right on Southlawn and a trek of some few blocks till Byrne dead-ended into Coleman was all it took. It was a harder walk to make with only one good eye, but the streetlights were on and the pain meds were kicking in. Silvio soldiered past the doubtful shapes of shady passersby, his face bunching up into hot, angry knots as the swelling continued. None stopped him. He looked awful, too awful to approach.

He made it to the apartment. It was a one-bedroom outfit, one of two units in a little house near the end of the street. The kind of place one could live without a credit score in the 700s, where the landlord might be inclined to accept handiwork or booze in place of proper rent. They'd been there a few months now, despite the urgings of their families to relocate someplace nicer. “Nicer.” Just what that was supposed to mean, or how Silvio was supposed to afford it on a virtually non-existent salary, was a goddamned mystery. People were always telling him that; to “do better” and “work harder” so that he could afford a “nicer” place or “nicer” things. They meant well, but that kind of talk really chafed his ass.

Nice things didn't mean shit to him. He wanted a place to sleep, a place where his girlfriend and kid would be safe. Anything more was superfluous, a distraction from the real prize.

Someday, if he really made it, then maybe he'd have all of those “nice” things people thought he should be working for. But unlike the rest of them, he wasn't willing to sit behind a desk and waste his life to make it happen. Until he'd made it, until he'd really made a name for himself and succeeded in the ring, drawing huge crowds and winning some real, life-changing money, all of that was just garbage to him. One bedroom was good enough. Three hots and a cot were sufficient. His kid had a few toys. He didn't need anything else.

No one in his life, save for Sarah, understood his ambition. None of them were dreamers, none of them sought anything save for comfort. They'd put themselves through all sorts of unpleasant shit just so that they'd have good cars to drive, or so they could send their spoiled-ass kids to better schools. That wasn't the kind of life Silvio had set out to live. He wanted only one thing in the world-- to become a professional boxer. And was willing to sacrifice everything else in pursuit of that goal. Family members goaded him, gave him a hard time constantly, asked him what he was wasting his time for, or if he ever planned on getting a “real” job. It was a lot of noise, that. To Silvio, walking any other path was unthinkable. Becoming a desk jockey was about the worst thing he could think of.

What he was doing now, following his dream one fight at a time, was the greatest happiness he knew. To make any compromise would have been a tiny death to him.

Of course, all of that was probably fucked, now.

His eye throbbed, feeling like a marble stuck inside a wad of beef. Beef that'd been left to sit on a hot dashboard in the middle of summer.

He stood on the porch and hesitated awhile before finally knocking on the door. The flimsy thing gave a little on its hinges, then flew open. Sarah stood in the doorway, eyes alight with shock. “Silvio, where have you been?” She reached out and took him by the arm. Pulling him in and getting a good look at him for the first time, she gasped and tried, with little success, to hide her horror. “I-I called the hospital,” she explained. “They said you'd left against medical advice. Benny called and said you got hurt, that they'd rushed you off. But by the time I found the number they told me you'd gone.”

Benny, his coach. Old prick had thrown up his hands at the end, had shaken his head as Silvio hit the mat. It was just as well his eye was fucked, he thought to himself. Benny probably wouldn't have been interested in training with him again anyhow.

Silvio nodded, sniffing. It was too warm inside. Slowly, and with a wince, he pulled off his shirt, throwing the blood-soaked thing into the trash and peering down at his bare midsection. There was a reddened spot, roughly the size of a grown man's fist, where the bastard had hit him at the end. He traced it with his fingers cautiously. Sore as a motherfucker. It wasn't going to heal well, would probably blossom into a bluish-black bruise within the space of a few days. Pressing down on it, he felt pretty sure no ribs had been broken. He knew what broken ribs felt like, and this wasn't it. “Didn't bust any ribs this time, anyhow,” he said, forcing a little smile.

Sarah was not amused. Appraising him from against the wall, arms crossed, she looked away suddenly and grit her teeth. “W-what did the doctor say before you left?” She wasn't looking at him, couldn't bear to. It was the same reason she never went to his fights. She couldn't stand to see him hurt.

Silvio stretched a little, limped across the living room and propped himself up against the fridge. He plucked out a water bottle and pressed it to his lump of an eye before wrenching it open and taking a gulp. “Didn't say a whole lot. I didn't let them look at me too closely. But...” He suddenly found it hard to swallow. Scratching at his grimy locks, he swept them back and cleared his throat.

“But what?” she asked, glancing his way. “Your eye... your eye looks terrible, babe. What happened out there?”

For the thousandth time Silvio pictured the last few moments of the fight. He felt each hit as though it were happening in real time, the pain as fresh as it had been in the moment. “Guy got a few lucky punches in,” he said, nursing his fat lip with his tongue. He neglected to mention his own carelessness, his going to pieces after that first punch to the head. The guy had cleaned his clock good and proper. There was no way around it, but Silvio wasn't about to admit to it aloud. “Shit happens.”

Sarah trembled. “I'll say.”

Shaking his head, Silvio continued. “Anyhow...” He palmed at his eye, pressing the water bottle to it once more. The cold stirred up a stinging pain, and he had to grit his teeth to keep from crying out. “The, uh... the doc said my eye is... well, it's done for, babe. Probably can't see out of it no more.” He drew in a shaky breath. “I think that, uh... my time in the ring is done.”

Wide-eyed, Sarah lost control. She threw a hand over her mouth and began to sob, shuffling towards him slowly and bringing a set a trembling fingers to his ruined eye. She touched the knob of gnarled flesh gingerly, gasping as she did so and looking up at him entreatingly. “What have you done to yourself, Silvio? What have you done?”

His tough guy act was slipping. His good eye was damp, and he looked upward to the ceiling, where the light fixture's glow made it sting with a fresh wave of tears. The rings of his esophagus were locked around a sob, but he didn't allow it to escape. Shuddering in her arms, his back against the refrigerator, he clenched his jaw and fought it back. He wasn't about to lose two fights that night.

After a time, he ran a hand through her hair and tried to comfort her. It almost seemed silly. Here he was, the one with the busted eye, trying to make her feel better. “It ain't all that, babe. It ain't all that,” he repeated. “Anyhow I'll get me one of those eyepatches. You've always had a thing for pirates, haven't ya?”

She didn't laugh, didn't even look up at him. Sarah pressed her face into his bare chest and cried, inconsolably. Her slight shoulders shook and her hands pawed feebly at his breast. There would be no comforting her tonight, and he knew it. He'd taken his share of lumps over the years, and she'd watched him recover queasily each time, always urging him to be more careful. This time was different, however. This injury promised of permanent, life-changing damage. Her worst fear, short of his getting killed in a fight, had come to pass. This was something he'd carry with him for the rest of his days.

He reached into the freezer and pulled out a sack of frozen peas. Mashing it against his eye, he grit his teeth and paced about the kitchen as Sarah lingered nearby, stunned into silence. “Just gotta get this swelling down,” he said again and again, as though a baggie of frozen produce were in some way a replacement for expensive optical surgery.

The pitter-patter of slight feet rang out from the hall. Standing at the threshold of the living room, nap blanket in hand, was his daughter. She stared up at him dreamily as he stood in the kitchen. “Daddy,” she muttered, wiping her eyes. He still hadn't gotten used to the sound of her voice. She'd only just recently mastered a few words. Her name was Leah, and she looked just like him; stubborn black hair, prone to cowlicks, dark eyes with long lashes. Before a hundred fights had wrecked his nose into a crooked mess, his had been the very copy of hers.

Sarah wiped at her eyes quickly and snapped at the girl. “What are you doing up? Get back to bed.” She raised her hands, shooing her away.

“Leave her be,” growled Silvio, walking cross the room and kneeling down beside her. “Well, good evening,” he said. “What you doin' up, baby?”

The girl shuffled towards him, yawning. She placed a chubby palm against his cheek, inciting a little wince in him, and then studied his face with sleepy eyes. Pushing away the makeshift icepack, she narrowed her gaze and appraised his wounded eye. “Boo-boo?” she asked, a single finger giving the bulbous upper lid a poke.

He leaned away, smirking in spite of the pain. “Y-yeah, got a boo-boo.” He laughed. “Daddy wasn't being smart. He went and got himself hurt.” The subtle concern in her eyes pained him, and he turned away, clearing his throat. Turning to Sarah, he motioned towards the hall. “Just get her to bed, yeah? I'm... I'm gonna go for a little walk.”

Sarah's eyes shot wide. She gathered up the girl but shook her head. “No, don't even think of leaving the house. We should take you back to the hospital, see if they won't reassess you and--”

Silvio turned his back on her and began a willful march to the door. “Don't wait up,” he said, slipping out the door just in time to avoid the sounds of her sobs. He dashed down the sidewalk, peas still pressed to the side of his face and upper body exposed to the cool air. He needed some time to think, and there was no way that tiny little apartment of theirs had room enough for the thoughts in his head.

***

Silvio could still remember it clearly. A summer day at abuelo's place, stationed in front of the television. The old man had slipped an old VHS tape into the player, a boxing match he'd recorded ages ago. The image was a little murky, skipping around the screen in slightly faded colors. But from the very first Silvio was transfixed.

He didn't remember what fighters they were, or the significance of the fight. He only remembered the way the crowd cheered each time the combatants took a swing, the way abuelo would become excited or agitated as the fight wore on, and the way one of the fighters, in particular, managed to weather hit after hit until finally delivering a knockout punch, seemingly out of nowhere. There was something hypnotic about that kind of endurance. What kind of strength would one have to develop to take punches like those? How strong would a man have to be to survive in that ring? What did it feel like to take such punishment, only to turn around and decimate an opponent? These were all questions Silvio set out to answer on the day he decided to become a professional boxer.

Abuelo had taught him rudimentary movements, teaching him how to punch correctly, how to block, how to keep his footing even so that his opponent couldn't knock him down. The only thing his grandfather couldn't teach him was how to take a punch. Even now, so many years later, the old man's advice rang in his ears. “Doesn't matter if they hit you,” he'd always advised. “It's going to hurt when they do, and someday you're going to get hit. It's unavoidable. But don't give in. While they may get one in on you, it's going to hurt more when you hit them back. Make it so. Make them sorry they climbed out of bed that morning, hijo.”

Abuelo's sage advice hadn't been true, exactly. The first time he'd gotten smacked around during a practice bout, he'd cried, gone to pieces. There was something about getting hit that made him terribly frightened, something that set his heart racing and scrambled his thoughts into something like static on an old TV set. But he slowly learned to rein it in; learned how to take a punch; how to take a punch and then deliver one in kind. Progress was slow, but in the ring Silvio found a happiness and purpose that eluded him elsewhere.

Then, in his last year of high school, he'd knocked the shit out of some hick from a rural school, a former State champ. Third round knockout, clean and calculated. Textbook. Abuelo had been real proud of that, buying up as many copies of the local paper as he could and bragging about his grandson, the hard-ass who'd win the Golden Gloves some day.

Silvio kicked a flattened pop can down the road, its clatter breaking the pervading quiet like a gunshot. Grandpa was some years gone. Silvio hadn't earned a decent payday fighting locally, much less the Golden Gloves. He was a nobody, a disappointment. And now he was half-blind, good for nothing.

What could he do now? He'd spent so many years boxing, had come to define himself as a boxer. It was all he thought about, and for the entirety of his adult life he'd eschewed a normal existence in favor of pursuing his dream of professional competition. But all of that was firmly out of grasp now. His depth perception was shot, and he'd never be able to go toe-to-toe with even the shittiest of fighters. He was spent, worthless in the ring. The dream was dead. Maybe it was the fact that he'd never been good enough to begin with; the fact that, even in perfect health, he'd never really cracked it, that bothered him most.

He felt himself unfit to live. If he couldn't be a boxer, then what could he be? An office worker? A mechanic? A retail worker?

The streets were a little damp here. Down the road he could see a street cleaner chugging along, its bristles digging into the pavement and leaving long, wet tracks in its wake. He was coming up on a viaduct to his right. He looked over the edge of the bridge, watched as a few cars screamed by on the road below, their rear lights glowing like hot coals.

With a careless toss, he let go of the peas, sent them falling over the side where they struck the street below with a loud smack.

Combing a hand through his stubborn hair and slicking it back, he grasped the stony edge and wondered if he shouldn't follow suit, plummet after them.

What else is there in store for you? You're done, worthless now. If you can't fight, what's the point? Everything you worked for is gone. Without even realizing it, his good eye began to overflow with tears. They streamed down his cheek, dampening his bare chest. Groaning, he buried his fist against the stone before him, splitting his hand open and leaving behind a bloodstain. Even before this you weren't good enough. With two working eyes you were still a joke.

Silvio stared at the road below. Cars continued speeding past.

Maybe you should do it.

Maybe you should jump.

Maybe it's what you deserve.

You were weak. You haven't got any talent. This is for the best, the only fate you deserve.

Silvio took a deep breath and climbed up onto the edge. Looking out from such dizzying heights, he raised one foot and felt out the emptiness before him. It would be so easy, to just take one step forward. He could pretend there was an invisible staircase before him. Gravity would take care of the rest.

It's no Golden Gloves, but it'd get you into the local papers again, at least.

He brought his left leg forward and took in a sharp breath.

3

Silvio mopped up the yolk of an egg with his toast. The edge of his newspaper had been left sticky with pancake syrup, a tiny handprint in the corner of the classifieds section leaving all of the pages clumped together. He arched a brow and wiped off Leah's hands with a paper towel. “Don't grab the paper while daddy's reading,” he said.

The girl scampered off, giggling.

Sarah looked over at him apprehensively, studying his face closely in the morning light. The swelling had gone down, had almost completely gone, but now the bruising had begun and it wasn't a pretty sight. “Anything?” she asked, averting her gaze to the newspaper he'd set aside with a sigh.

Silvio grimaced. “Oh, yeah, lots.” He reached over and tapped the paper firmly with his finger. “Says here I can get paid real well by walking some lady's dogs twice a week. Imagine that. What'll we do with such a wage, eh? Think the landlord will accept a few packs of Big League Chew in place of rent, because that's about all we're gonna be able to afford on these shitty jobs.”

Sarah frowned and returned to her pancakes.

The job search had been brutal. To start with, Silvio didn't much want to go to an interview looking like a sideshow freak. His face was painted in brilliant blues and blacks, and though he could open his right eye now, he still couldn't see through it. It was a dead-looking thing. The color had gone from it somewhat, except in the whites, where it looked more than a little bloodshot. He cringed as he remembered his most recent doctor's visit. His girlfriend's parents had taken pity on them, extended them enough money to get by til Silvio could find himself a “real” job. He hadn't wanted to accept it, but couldn't much refuse under the circumstances. Along with the money, they'd offered to pay for a visit with an eye specialist, whose thorough examination yielded the same result the ER physician had come to. Permanent blindness due to optical nerve damage. Surgery would be enormously expensive, the doctor had confided, and in his case, would have a less than ten percent chance of success.

His mornings had devolved into the same annoying ritual. A quick breakfast, a search through the paper for new jobs, a tantrum thrown over the shortage of good work and then, subsequently, he'd furiously send off a few applications. So far, no one had called him back. He liked it better that way.

He knew he'd have to earn something, and soon. There was no way Sarah's folks were going to support them forever. Still, the thought of taking on some shitty job, the kind of busywork usually done by high schoolers, pissed him off. He was a fighter. He belonged in the ring. Anything less felt degrading to him.

During his doctor's visit, he'd broken down, asking the ophthalmologist whether anything could be done to salvage his eye. The doctor's response was kicking around in his head even a week later. “No, sorry. The technology's just not there yet.” Medical science could do some incredible things; just recently Silvio had stumbled upon a story about scientists who were growing new organs using stem cells or some such thing. How was it that they couldn't fix an eye? It seemed so damn simple, at least in theory. The doctor claimed that the nerve had been irreversibly damaged. Couldn't they just fix it? Patch it up somehow, or reconnect it?

Apparently not.

And so, Silvio searched the wanted ads every morning, looking out for something worthwhile. He needed a job that paid him well enough to live comfortably, but it also couldn't be so dull or unrewarding to him that it made him want to return to the viaduct.

After breakfast, Sarah took Leah out to the park, and advised Silvio to stay at home, in case any job offers came in. He stationed himself by the phone and brewed up a pot of coffee while waiting for the phone to ring.

It never did.

On his hundredth perusal of the wanted ads, when he didn't find anything worth his time, Silvio lost it.

He stood up and overturned the kitchen table. He planted his fist in the wall, knocking straight through the drywall and denting the stud within. He kicked one of the legs off of his chair and batted the stack of days-old newspapers about until they were practically confetti. And then he wept. This was his life now. He was at the world's mercy. If someone didn't throw him a bone, offer him some side job, he'd be sunk. It hadn't been like that before, when he was in the ring. He didn't often win and his earnings were meager, but at least he had a direction. He didn't have to ask for permission, didn't have to send off a resume anywhere. He simply stepped into the ring and had a go. The only requirement was a quick pair of hands.

When Sarah returned, she found him laying face down in bed, seething. Her face was white in stumbling upon the destruction in the kitchen, and she lingered in the doorway a long while, Leah asleep in her arms. “Silvio,” she said after a time, fighting back tears. “You have a phone call. I'm... I'm going to clean up.” She was on the very edge. Sarah couldn't stand it anymore, couldn't cope with his outbursts and mood swings. In the past few days he'd had many. Though Silvio had always been a bit mercurial in temperament, the loss of his eye and boxing career had made him a good deal more volatile. She crept out of the room, rocking Leah and picking up the fallen newspapers.

Silvio jumped up, nostrils flared. A phone call? Probably the goddamn electric company, he thought. Someone lookin' for money, someone calling to fuck us around right now that we have nothing to give 'em. He stormed out, red-faced, and snatched the phone up off of the counter. “Yeah, this is Silvio.”

There was a pause on the other end. Then the caller began. “Mr. Echegaray, a pleasure.” It was a man's voice, smooth and quiet. Soothing in an eerie sort of way. “My name is Roger Trask. I'm with the Aderhold Corporation and I'm calling about an application you sent us a few days ago.”

Silvio straightened, shoving his anger out the door for a moment. “Oh, yes, yes. Aderhold, yes. How can I help you?” He'd seen the listing in the newspaper, a warehouse job for the Aderhold Corporation. They were a big company, had a finger in all sorts of pies. Their claim to fame was their online storefront, the biggest in the world. They prided themselves on customer satisfaction, coming up with programs that allowed them to ship all kinds of pointless shit-- books, toiletries, clothing-- half a world away within the space of a day. He frowned a little bit as he imagined himself working at one of their fulfillment centers, filling shipping containers. He'd applied only because Sarah had insisted. The pay was reasonable and, for employees who stayed on more than six months, benefits were offered.

Trask continued, chuckling a bit. “Yes, I'm just calling to say that your application stood out to us, and we'd like you in for a detailed interview. Would you be interested in visiting our headquarters in San Francisco at nine, sharp, tomorrow morning?”

Silvio hesitated, giving a weak shrug. San Francisco was an hour's drive in good traffic. More likely he'd take the bus. “S-sure,” he said after a time, glancing over at Sarah. “I'll meet you for the interview tomorrow at nine. Do I just, uh, walk in and tell someone in the lobby I'm there for an interview?”

“Precisely,” said Trask. “We'll be waiting for you in the lobby. Don't be late.”

The line went dead.

Silvio hung up the phone and smiled sheepishly. “Well, that was Aderhold. They want me to come in for an interview.” His smile faded somewhat as he imagined himself running around a dim warehouse, wearing an Aderhold-branded polo. “You happy now?”

Sarah's eyes softened. “I know it's not what you want, but this is a good start. If you get this job, we'll be able to support ourselves. And if you stay there a while, we'll get benefits out of it, too.”

Silvio nodded. “Guess so.” Still, he wasn't pleased. He wondered if he was doing the right thing, if such a tedious job could really keep his attention. He'd never worked a proper job before. He'd always sustained himself by competing in boxing matches; first in unofficial street matches, then in the local small-time circuits. Showing up on-time to a building only to clock in and spend half the day there sounded like hell to him. “Gonna have to give it a try, either way,” he added.

One day you're aiming to become heavyweight champion, the next you're blind in one eye and packing boxes for a living. A goddamn disgrace, that is.

He set the table upright, picked up the remainder of his mess and apologized to Sarah for causing such a stir.

It's a disgrace... But a man has to eat, he reminded himself.

4

Silvio turned up at Aderhold HQ in his best clothes. He'd sucked down a coffee before leaving the apartment and hopped onto a bus, arriving with a quarter of an hour to spare. He spent this time in the restroom adjusting the floppy collar of his dress shirt and trying to smooth out the wrinkles in his khakis. It didn't really matter what he did. No piece of clothing, no matter how pristine, was going to divert attention from the bold bruises on his face.

The building was massive. He remembered hearing about its construction in the news a few years back. It was a sprawling thing, took more than a year to build and brought a record number of jobs to the area. Of a decidedly modernistic make, the halls and entrances were done up in thick panes of glass, so as to give full display of the well-manicured grounds. Gurgling fountains, meticulously-shaped shrubberies; it was picturesque. It didn't look at all like the headquarters of a massive retail company. The interior was kept spotless, a real marvel considering the foot traffic a building of its importance probably got in a day. Smooth, rocky tiles made up the floors, tasteful pieces of framed art lined the walls, and corners sometimes featured elegant sculptures.

The bulk of the light was natural, flooding in through the windows and scattered skylights, but here and there expertly-positioned mood lights cast a glow on items of interest, such as artworks or desks. The reception area was one such target, basking in the yellowish glow of a recessed lighting system. Every countertop in view was fashioned of marble, and the fixtures themselves, down to the very last waiting area chair, were built of strong, dark wood.

Wandering into the lobby, he stopped at the front desk and chatted up the peppy secretary, only to make eye contact with a tall, grinning man in a suit standing nearby. He'd seemingly been standing there a while, and Silvio stood upright, shooting him a smile. The man did not budge for a time, but seemed content to remain in place, scrutinizing the young boxer with a narrow gaze and an unmoving smile. The effect was markedly unnatural, giving the man the look of a large insect observing its prey. This fellow, a good head and shoulders taller than Silvio but thin as a rail, wore a black suit and white dress shirt. All of it was tailored to his gaunt frame, which only served to highlight his sickliness. His greying hair was combed over to one side, barely hiding a thin patch.

“I'm, uh... I'm here to meet someone. For an interview?” He cleared his throat. “Name's Silvio Echegaray?” He leaned over the counter. “You have a date book or something? I made the appointment just yesterday with a Mr. Trask.”

The secretary beamed and turned slowly to the grinning man, who now took long strides towards the desk. Just what he was thinking, or why he'd taken such an intense interest in Silvio, was unclear.

Silvio turned. “You're, uh... Mr. Trask, I take it?”

The man nodded, extending a pale, chill hand.

Silvio shook it, and then recoiled subtly. It felt like cold rubber.

“It's a pleasure to finally meet you, Mr. Echegaray,” said Trask, his grey lips parting to reveal a set of sharp, translucent teeth. His voice was smooth and even, just like it'd been on the telephone. In-person however, the sight of the man robbed the voice of its calming quality. “Please, come with me,” he continued, waving him on towards a door behind the counter.

At first, Silvio hesitated to follow. Though it was probably just superstition on his part, he maintained that his years in the ring had given him the ability to somehow read other people. Their movements, their mannerisms, gave him a window into their intentions, and for whatever reason Silvio didn't like what he was seeing in Trask. It was a vague unease, one that he brushed away after a few moments, but it reached out to him nonetheless.

He couldn't get a read on this guy. What's his game? wondered Silvio. I guess he's just your typical businessman. He shrugged it off. He didn't have much experience with business elites and figured he was reading something sinister into the man that wasn't there.

They entered the doorway, starting into a long, carpeted hall lined with hefty doors. Phones could be heard to ring all along this stretch from the closed-off rooms, and loud, booming voices came in answer. Silvio straightened his collar, sniffing the air and keeping pace with the tall man. It took him two paces to match every one of Trask's.

Trask didn't speak, and though Silvio couldn't much tell from behind, he wagered that the strange smile had faded from his face nearly the moment they'd left the lobby, almost like a mask had been promptly removed. When Trask finally spoke to him, nearly at the end of the hall, the spirit of his voice proved his suspicion correct. There was a coldness there now where only moments ago there'd existed a forced warmth. “Your resume intrigued us, Mr. Echegaray,” he began, pushing open a door at the end of the hall and marching into a massive office. There was a rich desk, behind which Trask stationed himself and waved to a pair of leather chairs. His expression was indeed relaxed, and the absence of the smile lent him something of graveness. Something Silvio didn't much like.

Silvio sat down in one of the chairs and pawed at his pant legs, glancing about the space. There were some potted plants about the room, probably fake. The desk was free of clutter; save for a couple of token office supplies, it looked positively unused, in fact. There was a laptop computer there, closed, and a printer on a small table across the room. It was a windowless room, and its pristine appearance gave the impression that it was a space Trask never visited. The name plate on the desk, reading R. Trask, was about the only personal touch in view. Everything else was generic, fake, bespeaking a marked lack of occupancy. This may have technically been Trask's office, but it was not a space he utilized for anything but interviews like this one. A little something to keep up appearances with.

“Oh?” said Silvio. “You liked my resume? What about it?”

The man was lost in thought for a moment, flickers of that sickly smile returning to his lips as he seemed to lose himself in studying Silvio's bruises. His eyes, dark and narrow, scanned Silvio's face searchingly before he responded. “We at Aderhold Corporation think you may be a good fit for a brand-new program. It's an exciting prospect.”

Silvio smoothed back his hair and leaned back, cracking a grin. “Sure, but I thought I was gonna be stuffing boxes. That was the job I applied for anyhow.”

Trask nodded. He didn't say anything.

“What's this new program about?”

“Robotics,” said Trask, clasping his thin hands together. “It's a robotics program, and you might make a good fit. Interested in hearing more?” He didn't even give Silvio a chance to reply, but instead launched headlong into an explanation. “Aderhold is looking to expand its robotics department. It's one of the few industries we haven't gained a foothold in yet, but with the work we've been doing as of late, I expect that to change. How would you like to be on the very forefront of robotics research, Mr. Echegaray?” He answered his own question with an almost condescending chuckle. “Indeed, I know you'd like it very much.”

Still, Silvio wasn't getting it. What the hell was this guy going on about? Robots? Silvio didn't know a damn thing about robots. “Sorry, but are you getting me mixed up with someone else?” he asked. “I didn't apply for a robotics job. I applied for a warehouse position... stuffing boxes and slapping shipping labels on 'em. This, uh... this is outta my league, Mr. Trask.”

Trask's lips curled up into a smile. “No, no, you're just the man. We're doing work in exciting new areas.” He pointed to his right eye, giving a slight nod. “People with disabilities and wounded war veterans are of specific interest to us. Your skill-set as an athlete is an added asset to our research.”

“Ok...” Silvio was beginning to feel excited. Just what sort of work were they doing? Could they possibly be working on something that could fix his sight? “So, tell me, what kind of work is this? Are you able to fix blindness?”

Trask shook his head. “No. Not yet, anyhow. But that is a possibility in the not-too-distant future, rest assured. Our current work is of a different sort, tailored more to robotics. And your disability won't interfere with this position, either. If anything, it could be an asset. It may really give us a chance to explore the limits of our technology.”

Silvio's eyed widened. Now Trask had his attention. “So, what do you need me to do?”

Pleased that his sales pitch had worked, Trask opened a drawer and pulled out a small stack of forms in near-microscopic print. A grave-looking block of legalese crowded each and every page, and Trask shuffled through them one-by-one, laying them out on the desk before Silvio after marking the areas in need of signatures with a black fountain pen that probably cost an arm and a leg. “In order to make sure you're really the perfect candidate, we'll need you to submit to a few tests. Nothing too rigorous, I assure you, and there's virtually no risk. We just need your signature. The usual legal paperwork, you understand.”

Here, Silvio hesitated. Tests? What kinds of tests? Silvio felt like Trask was being intentionally vague, and he wasn't much interested in becoming a glorified guinea pig. Aderhold was working on some cutting edge tech that might someday cure blindness. That was exciting. But was Silvio really going to put himself at risk in testing the stuff out? What might happen to him? He'd never done work of this kind before and knew he didn't have the knowledge. If they simply needed some lab rat to push levers or hit buttons, well, why hire him in particular? When Trask assured him that there would be no risks involved, it only cemented Silvio's suspicion that there were indeed going to be risks. Probably lots of them.

“If your assessment goes well, you will have an interview with the company's CEO, Mayer Aderhold, and he will offer you the job personally. The pay, I will say, is very good,” said Trask, leaning forward and offering his pen. “Full benefits, too. Better than you will find elsewhere by a wide margin.”

That was all Silvio needed to hear.

He swallowed his doubts and starting signing and initialing the forms.

Great pay with minimal experience? Benefits? How could he say no, especially when the breakthroughs gained through this research might someday lead to a recovery of his sight? He'd worry about the specifics later. Right now, he just had to throw himself into it.

He recognized the name of Mayer Aderhold. He was a big-shot, one of the richest men in the world. Silvio had seen his face in advertisements for Aderhold Corp. He seemed like a big guy in those adverts, a clean-shaven head and wide, pearly smile. If the news stories were to be believed, he was something of an eccentric, too. The guy owned a number of secluded, fortified properties, was considered a visionary in the tech world and had supposedly even bought his own private army. The thought of meeting face-to-face with a guy like him, of accepting a job from one of the most powerful men on Earth was sufficient to make Silvio nervous. Very nervous. Suddenly this whole thing seemed much bigger than a simple ad in a newspaper. He'd sent off his application in the hopes of working in a warehouse. Now he was signing a non-disclosure agreement and agreeing to take a battery of tests so that he could work on one of Mayer Aderhold's pet projects. It all seemed too good to be true, absolutely surreal.

When the signing was done, Trask gathered up the sheets and extended his cool, rubbery hand once more. “Excellent.” He stood, sealed the paperwork away in a large yellow envelope and fastened it with a metallic closure. “Now, if you'll follow me, we'll head to the testing facility.”

Silvio did a double-take. “Wait, what? Now?”

Trask nodded. “That isn't a problem, is it?”

“Erm, no...” Silvio got up out of the chair slowly, drying his clammy palms on his pant legs. “I just didn't think we'd be doing this today.” He gulped. He wasn't going to have a chance to think any of this over, to back out. One minute he'd been in for his interview, the next they were heading off to a laboratory? This company wasn't wasting any time. What was the rush?

Well, he thought, I guess it's time to go play the lab rat.

“Very good,” replied Trask, leading him back out into the hallway and shutting the office door quietly behind him. “If you'll follow me, we have a driver waiting.”

Silvio wasn't sure how much he could trust these Aderhold guys, but reminded himself as he fell into step behind Trask of why he was doing this at all. Sarah would be tickled to hear of his important, well-paying job with the Aderhold Corporation. Trask hadn't outlined just what “well-paying” meant in this case, but he wagered it was a good deal more than he'd been earning by getting his ass kicked in the ring.

Trask threw open an exit and led Silvio across a roped-off parking lot where a black sedan, windows tinted, could be seen to idle near the complex's flank. “And here's our ride,” said Trask.

Showtime, he thought, balling his fists. Let's hope this testing is really as risk-free as he claims.

5

The testing facility looked more like a military bunker.

Trask referred to it almost affectionately as a “lab”, but the concrete walls, layers of security clearance and armed guards walking the grounds gave a very different impression. Silvio did his best to tune it all out, remembering the CEO's alleged eccentricity, however the deeper they went into the complex, being escorted by a pair of men armed with assault rifles, the more apprehensive he became. Just what had he gotten himself into?

Things moved briskly from that moment on. Upon entering the testing area, Silvio was met by a pair of enthusiastic young men in white lab coats. They never gave their names and never asked Silvio his, leading him to believe that Trask had had some sort of secret contact with the lab while in transit. Perhaps their entire interview back at Aderhold HQ had been recorded and relayed to them somehow?

Trask broke away from the group as Silvio was led down a sterile-looking hallway. Well-lit, white-floored, white-walled. It was unbearably bright, causing him to walk with his head low. Even then, the bright fluorescents were reflected in the polished floor, blinding him still. His eyes were some time in adjusting.

Unceremoniously, Silvio was taken into a small holding area and helped out of his clothes by the men, who offered a paper gown. He stripped down to his underwear and put the thing on, fidgeting as the coarse material met his bare skin. He was then led into a large area crammed with diagnostic equipment, much of which he didn't recognize. The place was crawling with laboratory workers, many of them hard at work behind monitors. There were chairs covered in wires, each of them a weird cross between a hairdresser's chair and an electric chair. Large monitors were embedded into the walls, allowing the staff a clear view of different figures. Certain parts of the room were blocked off by thick panes of glass. Behind them, clipboard-wielding staff ambled about in wait.

He was guided into a chair, asked to sit by one of the calm young lab techs. Sticky leads were attached across his chest and sides, and then a number of them to his neck and temples. “First we need to do an EKG and an EEG,” explained the man.

Silvio had had both of these done in the past. Once, after an early bout in high school, he'd gotten smashed in the head. It'd earned him one hell of a concussion. Sometime after the fact he'd been taken in for a consultation with a neurologist, who'd declared him fit to box again. That'd been years ago, and in the interim Silvio had taken many more shots to the head. What would the EEG show him now? He felt a strange dread wash over him as he sat back in the chair and watched his vitals pop up on a number of screens. He felt like he was laying his soul bare, giving these strangers a look into his deepest, darkest secrets. It's not like they can read your mind, though, he reminded himself.

Or, could they?

There was the 12-lead EKG, showing his heart rhythm in real time. The EEG was something he couldn't even make sense of, the display before him making strange sounds. A sensor had been attached to his finger, probably to gauge his oxygen saturation. As he sat, he began to tap his foot impatiently against the polished floors of the lab, his body growing sweaty. The set-up had taken about fifteen minutes, but it'd felt like an eternity.

From behind the glass, the staff monitored a number of bio-markers and conversed amongst themselves about what they saw. Good or bad, Silvio had no idea. The ringing and chirping of the apparatuses made him suddenly irritated and he wished he could stop the tests. Minutes went by, his ears filled with obnoxious dinging. The longer he sat there being scrutinized, the more he began feeling nauseous and annoyed. Still, he stayed his hand, sitting back in the bulky leather exam chair even as his damp skin began to stick to it.

From the side, a pair of men in green scrubs wheeled in a massive machine on wheels. The base was wide, and featured a console full of buttons and levers. Atop it was a long arm which was topped by a wide panel. This panel almost looked like a light fixture sans bulbs. The upper portion was arranged so that it stretched out towards him, and then the pair of men hit a single button and took three steps back apiece.

There was a flash.

They re-arranged the upper portion of their machine, folding the long arm this way and that, and then hit the button again.

Another flash. The machine sounded like a giant camera, some component deep within its metallic bulk whirring and roaring every time it flashed. They were taking X-rays.

Finally the thing was wheeled away and Silvio was left once again to squirm in the chair. Whether the staff had found what they were looking for in his tests was impossible to say. One glance through the glass wall showed them all to jot down notes and murmur amongst one another.

Then, lurking behind the rest of the group like a lion on the prowl, Silvio saw him.

Trask.

Trask was wearing his signature smile, that Halloween mask of a grin, and approaching the glass from behind the line of studious lab workers. Standing before a console, he leaned down and tapped a button, speaking into what appeared to be a microphone. His smooth voice filled the air, streaming down from a speaker positioned somewhere in the ceiling. “Mr. Echegaray, if you could do me one favor and close your eyes.”

Silvio tensed. “W-what?”

“Close your eyes.”

Oh, boy. What the hell are they going to do to me now? Silvio reticently complied.

“Good, good,” came the voice. “Now I'd like for you to imagine something. Your last fight, the last boxing match you took part in. I want you to think about your opponent. About how you felt at the end of that bout. About any pain you may have felt or injuries you might've sustained.” He paused a moment. “I want you to think about the anger you feel when you get hit.”

Silvio grit his teeth. What the fuck is he asking me that for? He felt his muscles tense, felt his breathing quicken. It wasn't often that he willingly sat down to have flashbacks about his old fights. Especially this last one. He'd played out that last fight in his head more times than he could count, and never of his own accord. It was a nightmare, a dread vision that haunted him at all times, springing forth from the shadow of memory when he least expected it. That fight had seen him lose his eye, had seen his hopes for a career in boxing obliterated. It was the last thing he wanted to think about right then.

“Think, Mr. Echegaray. Think.”

Goddammit, I don't want to, thought Silvio, a fat bead of sweat rolling down his brow. But it was impossible to avert his thoughts now. He was in the ring again, the noise of the crowd swelling in his ears and temporarily drowning out the beeping of medical equipment. He could feel the gloves on his hands, could see the no-name boxer dancing before him.

He braced, his gut already knowing what was coming.

Boom. Right to the noggin'.

Boom. The eye.

The ribs.

He felt the mat, felt his body go limp and then convulse a little, as though he'd been zapped by a live wire.

The sweat in his eyes. The blood was flowing from the wound now. Something had snapped, broken. Couldn't open his eyes. Couldn't see anyhow. Consciousness was fluttering out of his grasp. The sound of the crowd was transient. Boos upon boos as the ref knelt down beside him. Then he was being carried out on a stretcher. The boos continued.

Before he knew it, Silvio was straining against the chair, writhing and slick with sweat. He opened his eyes, teeth bared and face red. In the viewing area, he found the assemblage slack-jawed, jotting things down as fast as their pens would allow. And Trask, his smile reflecting something like genuine delight for once, was clapping softly. “Very good,” he said through the microphone.

As he calmed down, Silvio was approached by a pair of researchers with needles. They needed just a few vials of blood to run some tests, they explained. In his agitated state, Silvio nearly reached up and slugged them, but did his best to regain his cool. Before long he was taking deep breaths, having the electrode patches removed and presenting his forearm for a series of blood draws. While the phlebotomists carried the samples off to a centrifuge, Trask ambled out, arms outstretched.

“You've done wonderfully, Mr. Echegaray. Top-notch. I feel confident that Mr. Aderhold will offer you this job. Of all the people we've tested-- and I assure you there have been thousands-- your results have been the best. Frankly, they've been better than we thought possible. Your abilities promise to take our research to the next level!”

Trask kept using that word, “abilities”, like it was supposed to mean something. Silvio was good at hitting things, and getting hit. Those were the only things he might consider talents of his. He nodded stupidly.

“There's one test left,” continued Trask, inviting Silvio to stand.

“Yeah, and what's that?”

“A spinal tap.”

Silvio nearly fell over. “Wait, what?”

Trask, apparently anticipating this reaction, placed a hang gingerly upon Silvio's shoulder. “Nothing to worry about. It'll be performed under sterile conditions. We must simply test your cerebrospinal fluid.” He spoke about it with such an airy tone, as though it were the most routine of procedures.

Gulping, Silvio looked out across the lab. Many of the observers were still gawking at displays, discussing something rather energetically. Just what them so worked up? Finally, he agreed, following Trask away from the chair and to a small room. “You sure this is necessary?” he asked, hoping there might be some way to weasel out of it.

“Positive,” replied Trask with firmness.

Silvio was delivered to the holding room, was scrubbed down, and then directed into a surgical suite, where a man in a surgical mask and forearm-high latex gloves awaited with a tray of frightful needles.

Oh, Christ. Here we go.

***

His lower back was sore as hell. Silvio tried his best to stay upright, allowing one of the staff to wheel him out of the surgery room and into a small, empty office. It was the very copy of Trask's office back at Aderhold HQ in many ways, except that in here there was no trace of the man to be found. There was a desk, a computer turned so as to face him, and little else. Courting the burning sensation in his back, he took it in stride, accepting a few painkillers from a woman in a white coat.

Everything was a blur to him. The entire episode, beginning with the interview process and ending in this very office, had probably occurred over the course of hours. His mind could only seem to grasp it as a series of moments however, sped up and smashed together as a sort of collage. His head hurt, his back hurt and more than anything, he was feeling apprehensive about everything he'd been subjected to. What did they want so many samples for? He'd expected the Aderhold guys to be thorough, but hadn't expected them to draw fluid out of his frigging spine.

He did his best to relax, and was startled as the monitor before him kicked on. The screen was blue for a moment, and then a desktop materialized. The cursor on the screen began to move as though controlled remotely, and a familiar-looking icon in the task bar was clicked. It was the icon of a video chat service, one he'd seen commercials for. Silvio leaned forward a bit as a new window opened, revealing the dark silhouette of a man. He studied it for a time, unsure of what he was looking at. Then, the silhouette shifted, and a man could be seen to move closer to the computer.

Mayer Goddamn Aderhold.

Silvio was stunned. To begin with, he never thought he'd be video-chatting with the guy, considered by many to be one of the most powerful in the world. Forbes had listed him near the top of their list of wealthiest people. Time had made him person of the year some years back. Staring at him through this screen, getting ready to have a chat, was damn weird.

But it was more than that.

Aderhold was recognizable, but didn't look exactly like he did on the cover of those magazines or in advertisements. No, something was different. Markedly so. Without Photoshop to ease the crow's feet, to erode the natural furrows of his brow or to spice up his greying hair with a bit of color, he looked tired. His resting face was one of subtle irritation. From the onset it became clear that the CEO would be donning no winning, million-dollar smiles for Silvio's sake. This was strictly business, and before he'd even said a word Silvio got the distinct impression he was wasting Aderhold's time.

His eyes seemed beady, animal-like as he began to speak. “Herr Echegaray?” There was a hint of an accent there. It reminded him of something like German. Werner Herzog-esque. “How good it is to see you.” He motioned to the dim room around him, a generic office space not unlike the one Silvio had been ushered into. Silvio had to wonder if Aderhold Corp. simply had a thing for these spartan, boring setups or if they just favored consistency. “Sorry that we cannot meet in-person. I am currently traveling, and as such, I have been asking Herr Trask to handle my affairs. I expect you are well?”

Silvio didn't have time enough to sputter a reply before the CEO glanced over a number of papers and continued. “I've some preliminary results here. They are impressive, very much so. I would like to have you onboard.” He leveled his dark gaze against the webcam, boring into Silvio even from half-a-world away. Bringing a hand to his chin, he worked the greyish skin for a time. He looked like a lizard of a man, everything about him exuding coldness, precision. Every word that came out of his mouth was a mere formality, and where Trask had earlier unsettled him, the gaze of Aderhold himself was sufficient to make Silvio a bit nauseous.

Time in the ring had taught him to size people up, and what Silvio found in Aderhold told him to run. It ain't worth it. Get the hell out of there. Nothing good can come outta someone with eyes like those, his mind seemed to say. But then Aderhold began to speak in a language he understood.

“I'll be sending you a small advance for your work. You have family, yeah?” The perfunctory smile on the man's lips was not unlike that of a boa constrictor preparing to unhinge its jaws. “This will come as a wire transfer. When we're through give Herr Trask your banking information and I'll see to it straight away.” Aderhold had read the flight response in Silvio's eyes and had administered the only sedative that could work. A cash infusion. “This way you will live comfortably before we begin.” He cleared his throat. “So, tell me, are you upset about never being able to fight again?”

Silvio cocked his head to the side. “Excuse me?” It seemed an unreasonably rude question.

Aderhold brought a hand to his right eye, covering it with a palm. “I don't imagine a man with only one functioning eye can be much of a boxer any longer, correct? Does it anger you? Does it make you feel weak?” Sheer, bestial amusement played out across the CEO's face.

Silvio lowered his gaze, searching for the right answer. “It's, uh... no big deal. Ya win some, ya lose some, yeah?”

Aderhold smirked. “Yes, well, you will be quite the winner soon Herr Echegaray. Quite the winner indeed. I will make you one. And soon, you will draw larger crowds than any Pay-Per-View match could bring you. Mark my words.”

Silvio wasn't sure what he meant by that, but he sure as hell didn't like the sound of it. After a brief, uninspired goodbye, Aderhold signed off and left the screen a bright blue. And then the laptop powered down. A short while later, Trask entered the room, wheeling Silvio back out and announcing him fit to walk. The first few steps made his back act up, but after a time the sore muscles adjusted.

Pacing around the room, rubbing at his lumbar and wincing a little, he shared a few words with Trask and gave his thoughts on the interview. It'd been uncomfortable and vague; he probably had less answers about this job than he'd had upon first arriving at the lab.

But then he was asked for his banking information, and the thought of money hitting his checking account helped to ease the less pleasant aspects of the day's interactions.

“The money's on its way,” said Trask with a flourish, tapping a few buttons on his phone.

It sure as shit better be, thought Silvio.

6

The money was in the bank before Silvio even made it home, leading Sarah to accost him the minute he walked in the door. She wanted to know where it'd come from, and lamented that it was probably some sort of banking error. It was all he could do to tell her that, no, it hadn't been an error, but rather an advanced payment from the Aderhold Corporation, who'd offered him an exciting, if not vague, new position. Sarah was overjoyed, dancing around the kitchen with Leah in tow and talking about all the bills they'd be able to catch up on. There would be enough, too, to stock up on pantry staples and maybe even have a little fun. Apparently Aderhold had sent a hefty sum.

And so a week passed with virtually no disturbances from debt collectors. Family members quick to chastise Silvio for his joblessness were promptly silenced. The sort of peace that only financial security can bring reigned.

But with every passing day, Silvio felt increasingly sure he'd sold his soul to the devil for that money.

More specifically, a devil that looked like Mayer Aderhold.

***

It was a Tuesday night when Silvio got the call.

He and Sarah had just put Leah down for a nap and were nearing the end of a spaghetti dinner when the phone broke the calm with an uncharacteristic urgency. Silvio stood up and answered, recognizing at once Trask's calm voice and losing his appetite forthwith. “So sorry to bother you, Mr. Echegaray, but I'm calling about your new position with us?”

“Y-yes?” stammered Silvio.

“You start tomorrow. We've finally received all of the results on your bio-markers. Our tests indicate that you are indeed the perfect fit for this job.” The emphasis on that word, “perfect”, threw out a few red flags. “We'll be picking you up at your apartment tomorrow, 8 AM sharp.”

Silvio dabbed at the corners of his mouth with a napkin and looked nervously to Sarah, who waited at the table with bated breath. “Sure, all right.”

Then, Trask dropped a bomb with such nonchalance that he might've been discussing the weather. “Oh, and we'll be shuttling you to the airport. You're off to Iceland for a three-month mission. It's a state-of-the-art testing facility, and the work is strictly confidential. Please make sure to have your affairs in order. You fly out on one of our private jets at 10 AM.”

Silvio was at a loss for words. He stared vacantly at his girlfriend, then at the phone in his hands. What could he possibly say now? He wasn't in a position to refuse, and should've known that he'd be called in to work before too long. He simply hadn't expected his assignment to take him to a whole new continent. “S-sure.”

Trask hung up.

Silvio set the phone down and returned to the table.

“What's the matter?” asked Sarah, running a hand along the length of her brown ponytail. “You look white as a ghost.”

“I start my new job tomorrow,” he said, wetting his lips with a sip of ice water. He worked over his lower lip, unflinching despite the lingering bruises.

“That's great!” she was quick to say.

“Yep... I'm going to Iceland,” he added, glancing up at her in a daze.

Her gaze narrowed. “Wait, what?”

Silvio nodded. “Yeah, I didn't see that coming.”

Sarah sat up in her seat. “Well, uh... that's sort of cool. You get to travel, huh? How long is the trip?”

He gulped. “T-three months, apparently.”

“Oh...”

***

Silvio spent the remainder of the evening trying to convince Sarah that the job would be a good one, a prime opportunity for him to establish a good career. He alluded to the fact that, someday, Aderhold's robotics research may lead to medical breakthroughs that could cure blindness. Or so he'd been told. On reflection he realized he knew precious little about what the company's robotics division actually did. She was agreeable to the idea, but extremely apprehensive about his leaving the country for three months.

“It's not such a long time, really,” he said, trying to make her feel better. “I'll be back before you know it, and if this goes well, maybe I'll make a career out of it. I spoke to Mayer Aderhold himself, remember? No telling what kinda doors that could open down the line!”

Having smoothed things over, Silvio began packing for his trip. He didn't have a proper valise, and instead stuffed what he could fit in the way of clothing into an old duffel bag. In it, he found some of his old training gear. A pair of boxing gloves, a mouthpiece. He cast them aside, refuse from another life, and tucked in what few dress clothes he had in their place. It was time to move on.

He settled into bed a little early, Leah stirring between them. He wasn't going to get a whole lot of sleep that night no matter what he did. He did his best to prepare mentally for the trip, and wondered what they were going to have him do out there. “Confidential” research, “state-of-the-art” facilities... none of that sat well with him. Flipping on the news, he leaned back in bed and tried to drown out his thoughts with the night's headlines.

The minute the screen flashed on, he caught sight of something awful. A large swath of forested land, absolutely pulverized. It was a lake, but its borders were somewhat murky. Fallen trees and tremendous flooding made it hard to know where the lake began and the surrounding land ended. A reporter could be heard speaking from the news helicopter as it hovered over the ruination.

“For those of you at home, this is just over Lake Liliana, where earlier today a freak storm or tremor reduced the entire town of Nanterre, Michigan, to ruin. There are miles upon miles of destruction here and virtually no survivors. Neighboring towns were also slightly damaged in what experts are calling a baffling series of events. What meteorological event could have led to this? Here in Michigan we are at a loss for answers. Experts are stumped, calling this one of the worst natural disasters in the State's history.”

A brief snippet from an interview with Nanterre's deputy-mayor began. The man stood upon a makeshift podium before a mass of reporters from all over the country. The town's actual mayor was missing, presumed dead in the catastrophe. “We are still unsure as to the exact nature of this phenomenon. We are working closely with both local and federal authorities, and will share more information as it's made available to us. We ask for patience and understanding during this difficult time. At this moment, we can only say that it was a freak accident of nature, a perfect storm of sorts. Completely natural, but unforgiving and unprecedented. Please keep the town of Nanterre in your thoughts.”

Silvio grimaced as new shots of the destruction flashed across the screen. Flattened houses. Here and there, despite the best efforts of the newscasters to edit them out, could be seen bodies sticking out from beneath fallen buildings. Some, too, were floating in the swollen lake. He shook his head and shut the TV off. “Natural disaster? Yeah right. Something's up, and he ain't coming clean about it.” Something about the deputy-mayor's body language made it all too easy for Silvio to call his bluff.

Doing his best to quiet his thoughts, Silvio laid back in the darkened room and slowly fell asleep to the sounds of his daughter's even breaths.

7

The drunkard tipped his bottle skyward, tongue searching for one last drop like a sun-beaten worm straining for moist soil. Empty.

“Goddammit,” he muttered, casting it off into the lake. The bottle struck the brackish water and sank. He'd been sitting there since dawn, having shuffled lakeside after a brief visit to the liquor store. It was about time he was getting back, picking up his second pint of the day. His gut rumbled. A sandwich, too, sounded mighty fine.

The beach was quiet this time of day. Not a soul in sight. The shore ambled on for miles to both sides of him. It was a big lake, Liliana, every bit as big as it had seemed when he'd first laid eyes on it some thirty or so years back as a boy. His dad, God rest his soul, had taken him fishing there from time to time. Best tasting perch he'd ever grilled up had come from these waters. Maybe sometime he'd pick himself up a new rod and reel, he thought, recalling with absolute fondness those fishing trips of his youth.

The squawking knocked him out of reverie.

A few gulls took off at lightning speed, darting into the line of trees to his back and disappearing. He looked up at them dimly, his upper body swaying as he sought to sit up. It'd been sunny the last time he'd looked up into the sky, but it was overcast now and a curious mist hung about the canopies of the trees. “Lookin' like a storm,” he said, rubbing at his stubbled jaw and peering out across the water. A dragonfly dipped up and down in the air, landing upon the ratty knee of his shabby jeans. He shook it off and took in a deep breath. Air was a little moist today. He didn't much like it. Reeked of lake-bottom, of dead fish. They'd been washing up on the shore with more frequency of late. Then again, they always did this time of year.

He thought to himself that a day spent drinking at the park might prove more enjoyable. They had bathrooms there, too, and if the stink that lingered about him was any indication, he was in need of a little scrub.

He first saw it as he went to stand, knocking a bit of damp sand from his behind.

The shore before him was dressed in a line of foam. Strands of seaweed flowed and ebbed in time with the waters, and tangled up in their lengths were numerous fish of different sizes and species. He didn't think it too strange at first, only stopping to watch and wonder when he'd taken in the sheer volume of such specimens. There were all kinds of fish washing up on their sides. Perch, Bluegill, Trout, even a few Pike and Muskies.

Hundreds of them.

“Now that's damn strange,” he said, spitting onto the beach and taking a few steps forward. He'd seen a lot of fish wash up on the shore in the past, but this was a damned spectacle. It was like something in those waters was tossing them up onto the surface from the deep. Maybe the waters had been poisoned, or some algae bloom was on the rise. Those things had both happened in the past, but even then he couldn't remember ever seeing death on this scale.

He paced back and forth along the shore, looking out at the dead and dying fish and wondering what was the matter. He hiccoughed, stretched his wobbly legs and loosed a long-held fart, chuckling to himself.

Then, just far enough away to make him doubt himself, he saw something dark sticking out of the water. “Now ain't that the damnedest thing?” he muttered. “An island?”

He'd lived here his whole life and he knew that these waters didn't house no damn islands. Some nosy researchers from out-of-State had been there not too long ago, clamoring about some deep trench at the center of the lake, supposedly deeper than any other they'd found. Deeper, even, than anything in the Great Lakes. But this, this was something he'd never seen or heard about, a bonafide island if he'd ever seen one, sticking out like a wide, black lump in the water. This thing he was looking at, circulating with enough mist to keep it partially-obscured, bobbed slightly, agitating the waters.

Sure, there'd been stories in the past. Every lake in the region had 'em. Sea monsters, shit like that. He knew himself too drunk to trust his eyes that much. He was seein' something common, something explainable. Damned if he knew what it was, though. Islands don't just pop up outta nowhere like that. They don't just drop into the water outta the sky without some kinda splash.

He turned around, stretching and pacing away from the shore. He'd seen enough of the smelly old lake for a day. It was time for a change of scene. Briefly, he undid his fly and unloaded a pint's worth of amber piss in the grass. As he did so, whistling to himself, he felt a droplet of wetness on his forehead.

Then another.

Another.

He shook his head, cursing. The booze was playing tricks on him, making the world sway and spin a little faster. Shit, did I fall onto my back again and start pissing on myself? He stepped with each of his feet onto the grass, making sure he was on equal footing. Nope, he was standing up all right. This wetness he was feeling on his arms and chest and back was something else.

Rain?

That was when he put it all together.

It wasn't rain that struck him just then, but a torrent of mist dredged up by the emergence of some enormous thing to his rear from the water. That black eminence he'd seen only moments before and mistaken for an island was now rapidly rising and shedding the veil of mist that'd clung to it so closely as to keep it obscured. But this did not mean that he could make any sense of what he was seeing now.

It was rising with a damnably strange back and forth motion, as though it were trying to shake off water. Of course, it couldn't be a living thing. Nothing in all of creation could be so terrifically large as this. Could it? The water about it began to whip in a frenzy, sending large waves rushing to the shore and causing the fishy debris to fan out further. The ground was shaking a bit, too.

It wasn't no earthquake. He felt mighty sure of that. It was just some isolated incident, some bit of turbulence due to a coming storm. This black rock was getting worked up out of the lakebed by some force or another. Things would settle.

But still the thing rose.

That was when he realized he was looking at something he could put a name to, something he could begin to describe.

It was a head.

He crept closer to the shore, his thin shoes getting soaked by the encroaching lake. More and more the body of water was bursting free from its natural confines, urged on by this momentous thing, which now rose one story after another towards the treetops. Jet black, black as coal, a massive head rose from the water. And then a long neck, thicker than a hundred trees. Two long arms fixed to an obsidian monolith of a body. It was craggy, with long protrusions like spikes jutting out of the most peculiar spaces. A sharp, black mountain. It looked unlike anything he'd ever seen, unlike anything he'd ever thought capable of existing in the world. The claws on those hands, each of 'em the length of an SUV, reaching out into the open air for the very first time, drinking it in patiently, tentatively, as its greater bulk still emerged from God knew where in the deep.

The drink was upon him before he knew what was going on, his white face fixed to the monstrosity before him, ever rising, ever climbing into the sky and now blocking out the light of day. Trees were pushed out of its way with unbelievable ease, their trunks splintering as its broad shoulders took to spreading and its arms explored the wilderness after untold eons dwelling in the murk.

What was this thing? What name did it go by and what hideous process was responsible for ushering it into this world of men? He fell to his knees, the lake threatening to overtake him and suck him headlong, gurgling, into an eddy that now swirled about the creature's half-submerged lower limbs. And he prayed. If these were the End Times, then perhaps this was the messenger sent from above, the one come to lead the world to ruin and initiate the trials written of in Revelations.

The mountain of a thing lumbered forward, its column of a leg pushing through the water and sending it in a tidal wave towards shore. The ground shook, trees for miles around came to groan for the strain on the earth to which their roots were anchored. He felt the water hit his face first. Then, without a moment's notice, he was swept up, carried to someplace where only dark, cold water existed. He felt his body meet something hard, unmovable, but knew it was no rock. In those last moments of consciousness he knew himself to be in the presence of something godly.

All of creation shook as it took its first step from the lake, a mere puddle, and began for the whole of Nanterre.

What happened next none would believe. The lake overcame its borders, eating up the surrounding land with abandon. Tree after tree was felled, and then the first buildings were laid waste to. Those that did not fall as the thing approached were knocked to pieces as though they were houses of cards, casualties of claw and tail.

The townsfolk had neither the time to react nor to recognize their destroyer. To the juggernaut that stomped in their midst, they could only attach the most superficial labels. “Dinosaur”, some called it in the moments before they were caught up in the rampage and crushed. Still others dubbed it “reptile”, “monster”.

To label the beast was useless.

It would answer to no name, would yield to no title.

It was a force of nature, hatred itself distilled into two arms, two legs and a mile-high column of rocky carapace.

And when it was done, it disappeared once more into the swollen lake that had been its nursery, lowered its hefty form deep into the chasm from whence it'd emerged, and slept.

The swath of land once termed Nanterre was wrapped up in a pestilential quiet.

The gulls, once so partial to the region, were found to permanently modify their migration patterns, never returning to that accursed stretch. Stark, primordial fear had stirred in them the sense to flee their destroyer.

From somewhere in the midnight depths of Lake Liliana, the drowned corpse of the drunkard sent up a smile. A final thought flickered across that mind, now peaceful.

Now if only those goddamned humans had the sense to follow suit.

8

“It's a goddamned lake. You know it wasn't any tropical storm that did this, and it's only a matter of time before the rest of the world understands that. I've already deployed the National Guard. We've scrambled some jets to survey the area around the lake, but the DOJ still wants to know what the fuck is going on, and I'm not sure what to tell them.” The governor shook his head, tugging on his necktie till the knot came undone and it slid out of his collar. “We've had the goddamned White House on the phone for Christ's sake. What am I supposed to say? That we've got fucking Godzilla stomping around the lake?” He planted two pudgy palms against his eyes and began to knead. From somewhere in the office, a phone rang. “Who the hell is it now?”

An aide answered. “S-sir,” she started, “Director of the CIA is on.”

The governor threw his hands in the air. “What do these people want from me? What can I tell them? Even the local guys don't know what the hell happened out there, except that something flattened their town.”

The entirety of the US government, to its very highest levels, was concerned about what had happened in Nanterre. For the bulk of the day, there were no concrete answers to be had. Unbelievable stories circulated amongst the scant survivors, meteorological experts from across the country were consulted, poking hole after hole in the 'freak storm' hypothesis and military personnel were dispatched to aid in cleaning up the incredible damage.

During what was intended to be a routine fly-by of the area by a squadron of National Guardsmen, the world got its answers.

A team of six had been dispatched over Nanterre and surrounding areas following reports on the ground of a slight earthquake tremor. There was a disturbance issuing from the lake that no experts could account for, and a fly-by was ordered. Nothing was spotted during the first pass, however as the jets returned to the area directly over the lake in a snug formation, they found the source of the disturbance in the form of a massive claw outstretched into the sky before them.

Four of the six planes were routed in an instant, torn into fiery ribbons before the survivors had even the chance to see the black thing rising out before them. Sent into a frenzy, the remaining two began evasive maneuvers, but it became clear that they were unable to evade something so wholly enormous and capable of blotting out entire sections of sky with a mere shifting of its mass. Zeroing in on a head of preposterous size and vaguely reptilian shape, they launched a number of missiles and showered it in artillery fire before both were sent streaming towards the ground in brilliant fireballs.

Tanks in the vicinity were rolled out to investigate, only to find themselves in the midst of something so enormous that the operators could not conceive of it. And though they erupted in cannonade, their rounds were impotent noise. If the black column of a leg before them was marred in any way, even from repeated point-blank shots, they could not see it.

Tanks were savaged underfoot, flattened. A second squadron of jets, this one comprised of a dozen members and firing from the get-go, was whipped from the sky by a single swipe. Fuselages were torn free, wings were crumpled like sheets of tin foil and missiles fizzled out against the craggy monstrosity like cigarette burns on a cliff face.

By night's end, more than a hundred guardsmen had been killed, along with numerous police and emergency personnel. A strict no-fly zone was enforced over the area, in the hopes of keeping the media away, however one small news helicopter managed to capture footage of military planes firing upon a creature of incredible height. This chopper, too, was knocked to the ground by a massive gale generated by the passage of the creature's arm through the sky, but not before it managed to transmit its unbelievable footage to an audience of several millions.

The cat was out of the bag.

And it was a very, very large cat.

Within minutes of broadcast, the footage went viral. The internet exploded with still-frames of the video, showing the creature in all its gruesome glory. Initially incredulous, the federal government ordered an immediate military strike, launching an attack of unprecedented magnitude on US soil. More tanks, a dozen airstrikes, millions of dollars worth of bombs and ammunition.

And all of it for naught.

Those that did survive told tales of the creature's apparent invulnerability. Its jet black hide could not be pierced even by bunker busters, and the slightest stirring of its limbs was sufficient to bat a bomber out of the air as though it were a balsa wood glider. Those that did not survive, of which there were many more, took visions of the dread beast to their grave, their final sights populated by obsidian claws and needle-like spires protruding from the thing's carapace.

Nanterre was turned once more into a graveyard, this time with the refuse of numerous failed military operations festooning the earlier damages.

The world cried out for answers. Social media and television news were concerned with little else. Answers were precious few, however.

Having reared its head only twice, the creature had proven itself the most formidable of foes, capable of wreaking untold havoc and impervious to even a heated military response. The upper levels of government began considering their options, wondering if scorched earth measures such as nuclear weapons might do the trick. On the other side of the fence was a developing faction who thought the use of such weapons to be ill-advised or premature.

Chaos reigned.

***

He stared at it through the canopy, felt bile rising up his esophagus. It was like staring a god in the face. That his humanity, even within the massive plane, should be so dwarfed by this thing, strained the borders of reason. To his left, one of his wingmen barreled into the thing's upper arm, reduced at once to a tumbling pile of fiery garbage and a scorch mark. The mountain of a beast did not so much as flinch. It was a thing unconcerned by human loss, or perhaps an alter in commemoration of it.

Yes, that was it. It was tall as the many-stepped pyramid of Mesoamerica, upon which bellies were slit open and entrails offered to the gods of the underworld, and every bit as unwavering.

His own plane turned to powder as it came crashing against its jagged breast. First the nose, then the cockpit, then the wings. He felt a white heat wash over him, then oblivion.

***

The tank went again and again, the repeated salvos coming in from all around and leaving the operators deafened. Each blast hit its target; couldn't have missed even had they tried, so all-encompassing it was.

And then the thing made a rush.

It moved with such speed that the planet must have shuddered as a whole. That the Earth's axis could shoulder the strain of a thing so massive as this moving at so tremendous a clip seemed impossible.

Deep ruts in the earth filled with molten metal were all that remained in its wake.

***

Initial estimates of the creature's size strained credulity. Had a Blue Whale been given arms and legs it should have been terribly dwarfed by this thing. From the very start there were questions about how such a creature could have sustained itself, where it could have hidden without its being noticed, to what species, if any, it belonged.

Everything was conjecture.

The creature was estimated to fall somewhere in the range of six to eight-hundred feet, or roughly seventy stories. Possessed of four limbs, it also had a tail of tremendous length. This tail did not appear to behave in the fashion of other reptilian tails, but was more like the tail of a small, agile mammal. It was segmented, extremely mobile, almost as though it had a mind of its own. Like thirty semi-truck trailers joined together by knotty joints, it was tipped in an obsidian needle-point.

It became abundantly clear that zoological experts would be of no help in developing countermeasures. They fumbled through their textbooks, pointing out vague analogues from the annals of prehistory. None of them were anything like a conclusive match. Not one thing in the fossil record had ever even begun to approach the size of this creature. This was new territory.

And so the upper echelon of government convened. Heads of the federal government, top military advisers and others spent countless hours debating their options. So long as the creature remained confined to Michigan, they felt they had the time for discussions, for indulging less extreme measures.

But what if it headed for a larger city, a place where the loss of life and damage to infrastructure would be far greater? Boston? New York?

A line in the sand was a hard thing to draw.

More than that, there was no telling whether their most potent weapons would prove effective.

Where this thing had come from or whether mankind could exist in a world populated by such a monumental terror remained to be seen. For once, the pundits were silent, the partisans unwilling to make grand proclamations.

Mankind was faced with the possibility of extinction, and everyone seemed to know it. It was in the air, the very spirit of the times.

The species grew eerily calm as a whole like a prisoner awaiting execution.

And despite days of deliberation, there were no signs of a commutation.

9

As the plane came in low and he got his first proper look at the Research and Development building, Silvio couldn't help but grimace. “I guess they never promised to send me somewhere pretty,” he mumbled.

Iceland looked to be about the most depressing place he could imagine. The massive, snow-capped volcano through the window set the mood, with only miles upon miles of dead, low grass to be seen otherwise. It looked cold, barren, profoundly unwelcoming. The sun peeked out from behind a grey veil, burning like a silver disk from high up in the sky. There wasn't a single tree to be seen, and though it may have been premature of him to write off the possibility of flowers as he looked upon the landscape from so far up, the lack of them seemed a certainty.

Rounding the towering volcanic mass, a long strip of concrete came into view, which fed directly into the side of a sprawling structure reminiscent of a military bunker. What the hell was this building, a tremendous grey square wedged into the side of the mountain? It looked like the sort of place one might take shelter in during a nuclear holocaust. Surely Aderhold Corp's R&D facilities weren't so sterile and austere as all this?

The plane touched down on the landing strip, bobbed slightly on its gears and screeched to a halt. It'd been a nice plane, a cozy flight. Silvio had been the sole passenger, save for a middle-aged flight attendant who'd kept his cup full of sparkling mineral water and his belly full of fancy assorted nuts. He'd inquired once or twice over having a soda instead, perhaps a beer, but the stewardess had proven remarkably strict about what she was willing to offer him, citing some restriction on caffeinated or alcoholic beverages. She'd reminded him, with all the kindness she could muster, that this wasn't a pleasure flight, and that the guys signing her paychecks didn't want him to arrive hyper or inebriated. As the jet rolled to a stop, Silvio took one last look around and then stood up, stretching his legs for the first time in several hours. His current surroundings were likely the last vestige of luxury he was going to enjoy for the next three months, if the imposing complex outside was any indication. He thanked the stewardess as he disembarked and made his way down the ramp, onto the landing strip that led into what looked to be a hangar.

The air outside was chill, autumn-like, and the smell that rolled in from the desolate plains brought with it an almost overwhelming earthiness. He shoved his hands into his pockets, carried his duffel bag over one shoulder and started along the landing strip towards the mouth of the building before him, where a small, bespectacled man could be seen to wait. The entire affair up to this point had been glaringly impersonal; no one had told him a thing about what he was doing and he'd been forced to spend the duration of his flight almost entirely alone. Hell, the pilot had never once shown his face. To see this hunched man, probably sixty or so years in age, ambling about the entrance gave Silvio a small thrill. Finally, someone to talk to, to get answers from. The nature of this job was still rather vague to him. The sooner he learned the specifics, the better.

But before he could introduce himself to the man or shake his hand, something caught Silvio's eye in the far corner of the yawning hangar.

Inside, attached to coils of black and red wires, was something like an enormous man. Its body was built of metal, extremely polished. Its legs descended into a cavity in the concrete floor so that it was only visible from the waist up, and yet how massive it was, the top of its metallic head very nearly touching the open skylight in the ceiling. The construct must have been a few hundred feet tall, at least. Silvio struggled to figure out what it was; the thing was so alien, so unlike anything he'd ever seen before except in science fiction. Eventually, though, he understood the sum of these impressive parts.

He was looking at something like a robot. A giant robot.

Silvio stopped dead in his tracks and stared at the thing for close to a minute, glancing incredulously at the hunched man who now grinned before him. After a time, he stumbled out of his trance and pointed up at the hulking thing. “I've just gotta ask... what the hell is that thing?”

The man, straightening himself and pushing his glasses further up the bridge of his porous nose, gave a small laugh. “You're Mr. Echegaray, I take it?” He turned to the machine, regarding it cooly as though it were the commonest of sights. “You'll know all about that, first-hand, soon enough.” Taking Silvio very gently by the arm, he guided him through the hangar, towards a small doorway leading deeper into the complex.

All the while, Silvio couldn't look away.

He was transfixed by the utter enormity of the thing, by its brilliant appearance. It was so perfectly symmetrical, not at all boxy or clumsy-looking like so many robots he'd seen before in the news. This thing looked to be from a completely different time, from a foreign world, leagues more advanced than anything he'd ever laid eyes on. It appeared life-like in its way, boasting a well-shaped head, and long arms, tipped in perfect, jointed fingers. It was like a giant man, Goliath, wearing a suit of glimmering armor. Was this the kind of thing he'd been brought on to tinker with? If the bespectacled man's words were to be believed, that was indeed the case. Silvio giggled to himself as they passed out of the hangar and into a long, dim hallway. He felt suddenly like a kid in a candy store. Giant robots? he thought. That more than makes up for the lack of palm trees around here.

It reminded him of one of those artist's mannequins, used for capturing certain poses. Its extremities, though human-shaped, were rounded in their corners like the knobby wooden limbs of those dolls, and its face was very much the same, an orb of highly polished metal bereft of any mark or expression. A giant, metallic doll. It wore no symbols, bore no artistic flourishes from its creators, but stood in a natural, elegant state. The bare, cold metal was undeniably alluring, lending it the look of something both handsome and efficient. Form and function, all rolled into one chrome-colored package.

The guide introduced himself as Horace Starr, director of the Aderhold R&D complex. Leading Silvio down the hallway, which seemed hideously narrow and cold when compared to the yawning expanse of the hangar they'd just left, he started into a brief spiel, prattling on in a croaking tone of voice that bespoke a few decades of chain smoking. “Welcome, I'll show you to your quarters so that you can set down your things. Yes, this is the headquarters of Aderhold Corporation's robotics department, just two years old now, and we're doing many exciting things here. Things that no one else is doing. Mr. Aderhold has poured a lot of money into the research and development of cutting-edge technologies, and we're thrilled to have you onboard. This complex is built into the side of an active volcano, Hekla. This remote location lends itself well to our researches, keeping out the prying eyes of competitors and allowing us a place to work without the distractions of, shall we say, more picturesque locales.” Reaching the end of the hall, a heavy metal door was pushed aside, leading to another corridor, wider but no less uninviting. This, in turn, opened into a wide hall lined in doors.

“So, what am I going to be doing here, exactly?” asked Silvio, glancing around at the cold concrete walls. “No one's really told me that yet.”

Horace nodded emphatically, selecting one of the doors and motioning to the room on its other side. “Your quarters.” He cleared his throat and then continued in his grating tone. “You'll be briefed on all of that shortly. Mr. Aderhold has brought you on to work with ARTEMIS, seems to believe you'll make a great fit.”

ARTEMIS. Though he couldn't say for certain, Silvio felt somehow sure that this was the name given to the hulking metallic construct in the hangar. “That robot, you mean?”

Horace nodded, motioning again into the room and urging him to cast off his bag of belongings.

Silvio stepped into the room and set his duffel bag on the firm-looking bed. The space seemed more of a jail cell than an employee's quarters, but he tried not to fixate too much on his surroundings. A bright fluorescent fixture glowed from the low ceiling, highlighting the spartan trappings. A weathered wooden trunk at the foot of the bed. Starchy bedclothes. A mirror, sink. Toilets, he was told, were located in a communal bathroom down the hall. Showers, too.

With little pretense, Horace reached in and closed the door upon ushering Silvio back out into the main hall. From there, he led him through another door, into another claustrophobia-inducing corridor, and into a small terminating chamber marked with a single door. It was an imposing entrance, a door some several feet across and studded with heavy-duty bolts. It could be opened solely through the swiping of a card on a lanyard through a beefy-looking, wall-mounted card reader, which Horace handed to Silvio at the high-pitched squeal of the locking mechanism. This door slid open to reveal a laboratory.

“This way, please,” said Horace, leading him inside. The door closed behind them with a hiss and a dense metallic noise, as of bolts sliding into concrete.

Silvio made his way across the lab, finding it a large, concrete space lined in desks, computers and foreign-looking diagnostic equipment. A handful of people in corporate casual milled about, either oblivious to or altogether uninterested in his entrance. Across the way were a pair of enormous windows, which looked out upon the hangar through which Silvio had first entered the complex. Caught squarely at the center of said windows was the shining metallic head of that machine. “ARTEMIS,” he said, rushing over to the window and appraising it with wide-eyed wonder.

A few lab workers glanced up at him with a sort of disdain, rolling their eyes. Giant robots, to them, were apparently pedestrian, unworthy of child-like admiration. Silvio paid them no mind, pacing this way and that, pawing at the windows till his breath left them fogged up.

Horace clapped his veiny hands together and rolled up the sleeves of his blue dress shirt. “Everyone, this is Silvio Echegaray, our new test pilot. Please, make him feel at home here.”

Test pilot. Silvio liked the sound of that. He liked it a hell of a lot, as a matter of fact. “Test pilot? You mean to tell me I get to go inside that thing?” He pointed excitedly through the window, his dark eyes alight.

A woman working at a nearby computer glanced up and smirked at Horace. “Another one, huh? What does he want on his tombstone?”

Horace frowned. “That'll be enough of that.”

At this exchange, Silvio tempered his excitement. “What now? Is this thing dangerous?”

No one answered his question.

Following Horace around the lab, Silvio was introduced to a number of the robotics staff. The head of the ARTEMIS project, Dr. Gerald Conway, was a tall man of middle age. His black hair was closely shaven, and his temples had begun to turn a greyish white. He wore a lab coat and kept his head high at all times, in a sort of arrogant posture. His sparing introduction cemented this impression. He introduced himself as the leader of the project, the designer of the ARTEMIS unit, and then returned promptly to his furious typing, all without once looking at Silvio.

The next team member he was introduced to was Dr. Kimberly Deal, a medical doctor, and she proved a good deal more kindly than Conway had been. Shaking his hand, she explained her role. “I'm just here to make sure you stay safe during the testing.” Safe from what, in particular, she declined to say, however it was becoming abundantly clear to Silvio that there was something not a little dangerous about this job and that he would need a whole team of researchers behind him in order to remain protected from it. She thanked him for joining up and said she looked forward to working with him, but in her green eyes there twinkled something like keen interest. It was the look of morbid curiosity a mad scientist gives a chimp before injecting it with a brain-eating pathogen, probably.

Lastly, Silvio was introduced to the one person in the lab wearing casual clothing, a young, quiet fellow by the name of Emil Holtz. His role was that of mechanic, and he certainly looked the part. Well over six feet tall and stoic, he wore a pair of denim overalls stained in black oil. His massive hands were ruddy, rough, and dotted in cuts and burns. The handkerchief sticking out of his pocket was marred with oil. He said nothing, but offered his hand to shake. Horace filled in the conversational gaps that the silent, brown-haired youth left. “Emil here was a child prodigy, winner of countless robotics competitions. He is responsible for repairing and maintaining the ARTEMIS unit. As dependable as they come. Though,” he added as they built some distance between themselves and the quiet mechanic, “he isn't much for conversation.”

Silvio's impression of these three, the three he would be working with most closely, was lukewarm. None seemed much interested in him except as a test subject, as a means to an end. These studious, professional types were always like that, but somehow he'd expected a little more warmth than this.

Then again, recalling the desolate Icelandic landscape, this was probably the last place on Earth he could expect anything like friendliness.

“So, uh, what's this all about, then? I get to actually... go inside of that thing?” asked Silvio. He still couldn't quite believe it, the sight outside the panoramic windows almost too wild to imagine. “It's a giant robot, like something out of Ultraman.”

Horace stuck out a single finger in reproach. “Now, now, Silvio, this isn't fiction. This is real, this is science.” His eyes lit up and he crossed his arms, launching into a speech that seemed more like the recitation of some exciting myth. “ARTEMIS is unlike anything else in the field of robotics-- unlike any other scientific breakthrough to date. It is, in a word, revolutionary. That descriptor is often overused, I grant you, but in the case of ARTEMIS it is not strong enough a word. The strides made in creating ARTEMIS will change the world, literally. The applications of this technology cannot be overstated. Why, in the course of just one year, we've moved out of the prototype stage and created a fully-functioning machine in keeping with Dr. Conway's vision.” He waxed poetic a while longer, discussing the thousands of hours that went into its design, the hurdles they'd overcome, and the visionary nature of Dr. Conway's design. “There were some challenges along the way, it is true, and early test pilots were put at considerable risk, however that time is passed and I am pleased to report that ARTEMIS is quite safe. You will indeed be piloting the thing through a number of trials, and provided you're as good a fit for the machine as Mr. Aderhold thinks, you will encounter no problems, none whatsoever.”

Conway broke away from his computer and paced over to the window, tapping on the glass as though looking to get the robot's attention. He spoke loudly, to no one in particular, but his sharp, powerful voice impelled all those within range to listen. “ARTEMIS is the harbinger of a new age. She will revolutionize medicine, warfare, robotics... the list goes on. You should feel honored to play a role in the expansion of these fields, in testing the technology that will benefit mankind more than any invention since the dawn of science itself.”

Silvio cleared his throat, feeling not a little overwhelmed. With his one good eye, he peered out at the machine, feeling suddenly inadequate. “Why did Mr. Aderhold choose me for this?” If this testing was really such a big deal, then surely the Corporation could have done better than to hire someone like him, with no scientific knowledge and only one working eye. That he'd been picked to work on something so momentous seemed a cosmic joke.

“It is best not to ask so many questions,” replied Conway, leveling his steely gaze upon Silvio for the very first time. In it Silvio sensed many things; determination, ambition, ferocity. But mixed into all of that was also the same repellant quality he'd found in Aderhold's gaze during his interview. It was unsettling, reptilian. He continued, “It is time now for your first trial.” He pointed to a door across the room, labeled EXIT.

Silvio gave a little chuckle. He was fresh off of the plane. Surely Conway was joking.

“Dr. Deal will assist you.” Conway snapped his fingers and, like a dog, the physician made her way over towards the door, where she waited for Silvio.

“A-already?” asked Silvio, apprehensive.

“You've come here to work, Mr. Echegaray,” said Conway, turning back to the nearest computer and tapping a few keys. “We begin at once.”

Slowly, Silvio started for the door, stepping into a dim stairwell and following Dr. Deal down the first of several flights. What's the damn rush? he wondered.

Dr. Deal rambled on pleasantly as they went, step-by-step, down to the hangar. “Prep will take roughly half an hour. Then, when you've been situated in the cockpit, some trials will be run. Nothing too rigorous, since you're just starting up. No need to worry.”

Entering into the hangar after a walk that seemed to take a century, Silvio shuddered. The metal titan stood before him, and he followed the doctor to a cherry picker stationed beside its towering bulk. Stepping inside, she raised the thing till they were level with the machine's chest plate. Reaching over, she took firm hold of a large handle on the exterior and gave it a yank. From there, a spring-assisted mechanism took over, thrusting the chest plate up and out and revealing a spacious, wire-filled cockpit. “Welcome to ARTEMIS,” she said.

It became clear that he was expected to climb in at once. Taking one glimpse over the side of the cherry picker, he blanched. Then, slowly, he stepped over the guard rail, placed a foot upon the lower lip of the robot's cockpit to make sure it was firm, and then scrambled inside, grasping whatever he could reach for dear life.

As his hands met the polished metal of the exterior, a shiver coursed through him. It felt exactly like he'd imagined it would. Smooth, ice-cold. “So, now we have to prep, eh?” he managed, pacing before the tall, black seat before him. He looked back at the doctor, who now joined him in the cockpit and urged him into the seat.

“That's right. Sit, please.”

Silvio sat down and gulped. He hadn't even had a chance to familiarize himself with the place yet, to tour the entirety of the complex. Maybe he wouldn't even be allowed to.

Taking a seat against the plush leather, he eyed the panels of controls, the wires hanging all about him like black vines.

Visions of the concrete complex faded from his mind's eye. He knew instinctively that he'd be spending precious little time wandering through it.

The bulk of his time would be spent right here, at these controls.

Dr. Deal sported a little grin. “Ready?”

“As I'm going to get,” he said. “Let's get started.”

10

“Preparation” was a euphemism for the hell Silvio went through before the robot even started up.

When Dr. Deal brought out the needles, Silvio thought she was kidding. No such luck. He was instructed to remove his shirt. Then, from an attendant below, a surgical tray was supplied. His back was rubbed down in something foul-smelling and then he was instructed to remain still. He knew what she was doing before the first needle pierced his flesh.

Wincing, feeling the needle in his spine, Silvio grit his teeth. “Now what's the big idea with all of this?” he asked.

The doctor went on silently, puncturing his spinal column several times with long, terrible needles. When her work was done, a small clamp was fixed to each needle, which in turn was fastened to a thick wire. He glanced over his shoulder when she was done, glimpsing the very edges of what appeared to be a second, metallic spine overlapping his own. This, she explained, was a necessity. The electric impulses generated in his own body would help to inform the movements of the machine. When the thing had been fully attached to his back and his mood had been sufficiently soured, a number of sensors were attached to his wrists, temples and chest with sticky patches. These were then hooked up directly to the mess of dangling wires. The sensors, too, were to provide biological feedback to the machine's computer.

After forty minutes and not a little bellyaching, Silvio was strapped into the black seat with a rigid harness. Then, the doctor stepped back out onto the cherry picker and appraised her work with a great smile. “We're all set. That wasn't so bad, huh?”

He could have reached out and shoved her over the railing for that comment. Not so bad? It's absolutely freaking bad. What the hell is this, strapping me in like a prisoner, poking me like that, again and again? He felt like a proper guinea pig, a prisoner of war about to be subjected to hours of torture.

Dr. Deal lowered the cherry picker and disappeared into some hallway. Dr. Conway, stern-faced, soon replaced her. He peered into the cockpit, and then, without warning, he reached up and shut it.

Silvio stirred, breaking into a cold sweat as every trace of the fluorescent lighting was blotted out and he was inundated in perfect darkness. “What the hell?” he muttered. He half-wondered whether they were playing some sort of cruel trick on him. Surely none of this could be legal. He thought back to the paperwork he'd signed, to the conversations he'd had with Aderhold. What the fuck had he agreed to? Surely he didn't remember anything like spinal taps and isolation in a darkened cockpit. He trembled a bit, sought to calm himself. No need to worry, they're professionals here. They know what they're doing. But then he recalled with no little horror the words of that laboratory worker. “What does he want on his tombstone?” she'd said. What the hell was that supposed to mean? Was he going to end up dead?

A voice broke into the cockpit from some recessed speaker. “Mr. Echegaray, are you ready?” It was Conway.

He couldn't find it in himself to speak, but quivered in his seat and made some small vocalization that was apparently sufficient to indicate assent. Lights flickered on above him, and the space before him, where the metal wall of the hatch had been closed, flickered with something like a display. Squinting, Silvio gasped. It was clear as day; he could see the hangar before him as though the hatch had been opened and he were looking out upon it with his own eyes. For that matter, the effect was stranger still. He could see dim shapes in his right eye where previously there'd been only blindness. He couldn't properly see, but picked up on some subtle feedback that answered for sight in his brain. It was a strange sensation, both uncomfortable and startling. He remembered what Dr. Deal had told him, about the “Bio-feedback” system. While his own impulses and movements would provide cues for the machine to follow, was it possible that the hulking thing would do the same for him? That was the only way he could explain it; something outside of him was stirring that part of his brain, those selfsame nerves he'd once used for sight in his dead eye.

He couldn't see in the normal sense, but ARTEMIS' computer was bridging the gap, feeding his brain the data he needed to process visuals. It was the next best thing, he wagered, to a fully-functioning eye. It was miraculous, the most spectacular thing he'd ever witnessed.

From all around him, strange noises could be heard. Doubtful whirrings, beepings and chirpings. What they meant he couldn't say. The console before him, filled with buttons of different shapes and colors meant nothing to him, but many of them now lit up as if beckoning for a push.

Conway's voice broke in again. “You have been made one with ARTEMIS. Your brain waves will be doing much of the work, so I recommend you lay back and not stress yourself. The electrical impulses in your spine will help to inform the unit's movements and reactions. Your own senses are amplified, tied to the unit's complicated sensory apparatus and giving you a window into the world outside. You are standing well over forty stories into the air.”

Knowing himself strapped into the thing so high up made him want to piss himself. He tried to gulp, but found all of his spit had evaporated. Trembling, Silvio nodded. “Yes, I can... I can see outside.”

“Very good. Let's try something simple to begin with. The unit's left arm. Move it. I want you to will it to move.”

Silvio peered around the cockpit stupidly. “M-move it? How?” What combination of buttons or levers he'd have to tinker with was a mystery to him. Did Conway really expect him to just step into the cockpit and know how to work this thing? It wasn't nearly so intuitive as that. The controls were absolute Greek.

He looked downward, the display tracking a subtle shift in movement. ARTEMIS was looking down at its own body. Then, as Silvio's thoughts wavered further and he considered the left arm, the view changed once more. The machine's sights had zeroed in on its left arm, the thick metallic limb featuring at the center of the display before him.

Then, to his horror, it moved.

The arm lurched forward slowly, grasping at the air. One by one the fingers came to life. They flailed independently of one another before coming to match the positions and movements of his own fingers, which trembled.

He'd done it. He couldn't say how, and wasn't sure whether he could repeat it, but he'd somehow managed to move the arm. “I... I did it,” he muttered in disbelief.

“Very good,” said Conway. The change in his voice gave the impression that he was genuinely pleased with this development. “That means that the connection is strong.” The doctor took a deep breath. “Now, something a little more complicated. Make a fist.”

Silvio narrowed his gaze and looked down at the unit's left hand, still quivering slightly. As he tried to rein in his nerves, he slowly pulled his own hand into a fist, his arm hovering just above the nearby control panel. The electrode patch on his wrist felt warm.

Then, in the next instant, ARTEMIS' fingers closed into a fist.

Silvio burst out laughing, unable to contain himself. “Holy shit,” he muttered. “It's a fist! I made a fist!”

The machine's arm seemed to tremble for all of the nervous energy that flowed through him. Silvio couldn't keep himself still, couldn't keep his own hands from shaking like windblown leaves.

“Excellent,” came Conway's voice. “Now open your hand and make a fist again.”

Breathing quickly, Silvio focused on the left hand. He opened it, closed it, opened it, closed it. It was working. And each time he did it, it was becoming a bit easier. He could feel the cold metal contracting as though it were his own flesh, could feel the occasional jolt working its way up his spine and collecting in his brain stem. It felt like sheer adrenaline, leaving his bare torso dotted in gooseflesh.

“Good, keep going.” Conway sounded amused. “Do it a thousand times.”

Silvio flinched. “W-what?”

“Keep going. I'll tell you when to stop. I want to cement this connection, make sure it's bulletproof. You'll continue until I tell you to stop. You will become ARTEMIS' left arm today. Do you understand?”

Silvio tensed, then looked back to the arm, which stiffened and flexed in time with his own.

***

Training went on for nearly eight hours, and by the end Silvio was suffering. Accosted by a terrible nausea and pouring with sweat, his arm had begun to cramp. The movements had become easier; he almost didn't have to think about it by the time he was allowed to stop. However, there were some moments where he'd lose his focus altogether, or would take long breaks to give his hand and arm a chance to recover, and would be unable to resume the movements without great mental strain.

When it was done and the unit powered down, leaving him once more in darkness, he was a sweating, shuddering mass. His entire upper body felt like jello, like he'd spent the whole day hitting the bag at the gym. His head was pounding and he could hardly think. He wanted out, was ready to claw his way out of the restraint and would even have climbed down the length of the machine if the hatch hadn't been opened to the smiling face of Dr. Deal a short while later.

She happily unlocked his harness and took to gently removing the medieval-looking apparatus from his spine. An intense soreness worked its way through him as she did so, and he felt himself bleed through the small holes the grasping claws had left in his skin. He felt on the verge of vomiting. “You did well,” she said, almost as if she were surprised. “It seems you really are a good match for ARTEMIS. Far better than any of the other test pilots we've had.”

Silvio tugged on his black locks, shoving the matted hair out of his eyes and sniffing the air. His face was ghostly white, and his muscles seemed to hiccough and misfire. His heart, too, was skipping around in his chest, flopping unsteadily. “Yeah, and how'd they measure up?”

Dr. Deal declined to answer, instead giving a sheepish sort of look that said “not so well”.

“Does it get any easier, this piloting thing?” he asked.

This, too, she didn't answer outright.

When he'd been freed of the cockpit, Dr. Deal led him back out onto the cherry picker and lowered them to the hangar floor. A small team of medics was waiting there, and they took to dabbing his back with a sharp-smelling antiseptic that left the skin red and stinging. He was offered a grey T-shirt and then escorted in a daze through a hallway back to the little room Horace had shown him earlier. Inside, a plain-looking meal of roasted chicken and steamed vegetables awaited him. He eyed it with disdain, didn't want anything to do with it. The door was closed behind him and he was advised by some worker or another to get some sleep.

The door slid shut with a dull metallic thud.

Just like the door of a jail cell.

He was effectively their prisoner.

Lowering himself onto the bed, he collapsed in a shuddering heap onto the starchy bedclothes.

Three months. His sentence was three goddamn months.

He just had to make it for three months, put up with this same sort of shit day in and day out. He'd be paid well, would have the money he needed to support his family. And hey, there was that stuff, too, that Conway had talked about. He'd be helping to advance science and technology. Or something.

None of that shit mattered.

Silvio quivered against his bed, clutching at his gut and trying not to throw up.

11

Three months had passed since the first attack, and still no progress had been made in dealing with the threat. Committees had been formed, coalescing into a single task force dubbed “The National Defense Coalition”. It was a generic, nondescript sort of name, making it sound like the sort of group that drafted plans for fighting foreign terrorists or drug cartels.

What it really meant was that they were committed to fighting the enormous, terrifying creature that even then threatened to wipe out the species.

Thankfully, the creature had not shown much interest in areas outside of Michigan, venturing only slightly from the ruins of Nanterre to destroy another small town that no one much cared about, and which had been largely evacuated already.

Members of the task force had been appointed by the White House. High-ranking military advisors, the director of the CIA, director of the Department of Defense and others were thrust onto the panel that would deliberate on how best to deal with the monumental threat posed to the public by this monster. Among the officials were General Coleman, Director of the CIA Wesley Smythe, Secretary of War Byron Nicholson and the head of the Department of Defense, Leonard Burrell. Dozens of advisors from other branches of government were also in attendance at each session.

Their meetings, of course, yielded little of substance. Short of nuclear weapons, nothing in the American arsenal would work; and even then, warheads themselves could not be ruled out as risky and ineffective countermeasures. What if, it was theorized, the creature thrived off of radiation like the monsters in film? What if they managed to poison a good deal of land in trying to kill it, but the nukes failed to do the job? It was for this reason only that the committee stayed its hand and avoided the use of nuclear arms.

During the creature's most recent rampage through the small Michigan town of Brixton, but a few miles from Nanterre, the military had been hideously routed. Save for a handful of servicemen, none had survived the encounter, which had involved several squadrons of jets and bombers, tanks and more. It seemed all humanity could do to throw missiles and bullets at the thing, with all measures proving criminally ineffective. And so more lives were thrown onto the sacrificial mound and no damage to the beast was recorded. Its powerful hands had swatted planes down like flies, its tail had speared tanks like kabobs and when it deigned to rush, the creature flattened everything in its path with ease. Nothing could stand in its way.

Foolish proposals, such as the construction of an enormous wall around Nanterre to keep it confined, were made, however it was blatantly obvious that men could never construct so powerful a barrier as to keep the monstrosity in check. Lasers fired from satellite installations, chemical weapons, and the development of pathogens were all considered but summarily dismissed. These measures were too risky or carried too little a chance at success.

Already the beast was figuring into the campaigns of presidential hopefuls, each of which vowed to take a hardline stance and dispatch the creature with more prejudice than their rivals. Memes circulated widely on the internet featuring the image of the creature taken from collected media. It was endearingly called “Colly”, short for “Colossus”, by foreigners who felt more or less insulated from the threat it posed by two oceans. Late-night talk show hosts had no shortage of barbs for elected officials and their seemingly ham-fisted responses to the crisis thus far.

The world wanted to know what the most powerful government on Earth meant to do about Colly, but officials waffled, refusing to give any definitive statements. The clock was ticking. The creature's emergence from Michigan and its passage into more populated areas seemed a certainty, a matter of time.

It was not until one member of the committee chimed in, a junior senator by the name of Roger Trask with ties to the Aderhold Corporation, that the committee found itself entertaining a new and novel idea.

He'd been sitting in on an NDC meeting as an advisor, and spoke up just as desperation was nearing its peak. “Gentlemen,” began Trask, standing up and giving as warm a smile as someone of his batrachian features could muster, “I believe I may have a solution to this very urgent problem. A solution that eschews the bombs and guns we have hitherto relied on, and which may provide a relatively speedy resolution. Without the drawbacks of nuclear or chemical weapons, of course.”

Arching a silvery brow, General Coleman gave a nod. “Oh? And what might that be, Senator?”

Trask cleared his throat. “I am not seeking to show preference to a company with which I am personally affiliated, however my business partners at the Aderhold Corporation, specifically in the robotics department, have been developing an interesting new piece of technology. It is my belief that this machine, a war machine, is capable of taking the Colossus head-on.”

A few groans circulated about the room. From nearby, one advisor shook his head. “That's a conflict of interest, big time.”

The General proved amiable to this kernel of information and prodded Trask for more. “Tell us about it, Senator. At this junction we must use everything at our disposal.”

Trask nodded. “Indeed. I'll tell you what, I can put all of you in contact with Mr. Aderhold himself, if you wish. I'll set up a video call with him immediately.”

Secretary Nicholson waved him to a wall-mounted monitor and ordered one of the aides in the room to allow him access. After some fiddling, Trask brought up a chat window. Outlined dimly in the frame was Mayer Aderhold. The connection lagged a bit, weighed down by the heavy encryption. “I present to you Mayer Aderhold, CEO of the Aderhold Corporation,” said Trask, pointing to the monitor and returning to his seat.

“Gentlemen,” began Aderhold, folding his hands beneath his chin and shooting them a winning, magazine-worthy smile. “You rang?”

Less than pleased with Aderhold's manner, the General furrowed his brow and placed his elbows on the table before him. He cracked his knuckles and sized up the man on the screen. “Mr. Aderhold, we're speaking to you today because your business partner here, Senator Trask, has filled us in about some new piece of technology you're developing? A supposed war machine? We'd like to hear more, and to ascertain whether it would be of use against the Colossus in Michigan.” He narrowed his gaze, adding, “Of course everything that goes on here is to be kept strictly confidential. This connection is being monitored and the data is being heavily encrypted. You are not to tell anyone about what is being discussed here.”

Aderhold chuckled. “Of course, of course.” He leaned back in his chair, allowing a better look at his surroundings. It was a simple little office space, with a dim light burning on the desk nearby and a potted plant stationed beside a shelf of books. “I'm sorry that I cannot be there in person. I am currently on business in Iceland. Nevertheless, I can give you all of the details you need on my project. That is, the X-001 ARTEMIS unit.”

Director Smythe weighed in, crossing his arms. “What is it, and how can it take on this threat? Sell it to us, Mr. Aderhold. We're short on time.”

“To put it simply, it is a robot, a massive one. Built up of a patented alloy it is virtually unbreakable. I doubt that even the beast ravaging your country should be capable of harming it. Moreover, it is outfitted with a powerful engine and a system that allows it to connect on an intimate level with its operator. I'll have you know I've just had a capable operator trained on the thing, and that it shows great promise. I am willing to tell you more, and perhaps even to loan it to you, provided that the US government, in return, is willing to provide funds for further research and development.” Aderhold smiled with his eyes as the meeting room erupted into a mess of boos and groans. His accent slipped into something more German as he continued. “It is, of course, your decision. If you think you can contain the beast by other means, then do so.” It was worded as a challenge. He knew damn well that the NDC had nothing up its sleeve.

The General called for order and weighed the proposal for a time. Then, after a pause, he nodded. “I think we'd like to learn more, Mr. Aderhold.” He turned to the other department heads and sought their approval. “If it's all right with you, we'd like to schedule a formal meeting, and perhaps an exhibition of this thing.”

Aderhold chuckled. “It would be an honor.”

12

Three months in the concrete prison had ripped ten pounds of mass off of Silvio's already lean frame.

Eight, sometimes ten hours a day he'd been stuck in the cockpit. At first he'd practiced only the most menial of maneuvers. Fist-forming, a swinging of the arms. Then, about a week in, he'd been allowed to take his first step in the machine. Now he was running, could kick and punch and generally do whatever he wished while at ARTEMIS' helm. The giant was the very copy of his own body, and she was wonderfully receptive to his commands.

But there had been a cost.

The rigorous training had left him ill, depressed. The perpetually grey Icelandic weather may have been partially to blame for that, but that the strict schedule he was forced to keep and the draining nature of his work were the main contributers there was never any doubt. Dark circles had developed under his eyes, he slept very poorly night after night and was eating far too little to sustain this pace for much longer. The staff, even the kindly Dr. Deal, seemed intent on pushing him to the very furthest limits. Every time he hit a new milestone, performed or mastered some new movement, they did not take the time to celebrate. They wondered what hurdle he might jump next. Their focus was always on the next maneuver, the next session.

There had been accidents, slight injuries. None serious enough to thwart his training in any meaningful way, but sufficient to give him quite a fright. Now and then, when his focus deteriorated, ARTEMIS was known to lapse mid-movement, sometimes falling or malfunctioning. These malfunctions would result in awkward movements or tumbles that would leave Silvio shaken. Though hardy and nigh impenetrable, when ARTEMIS hit the ground, he could feel it. The cockpit would be terribly jostled, and he'd win his share of bumps and bruises on the way down. Problems with the wiring had led to his being zapped on numerous occasions. Small, reddish burns marred his temples and breast where leads had gone haywire and electricity had cooked his skin. Then there were the daily spinal “infusions”, as Dr. Deal called them. It turned out that, aside from merely allowing him to share electronic impulses with ARTEMIS' computer, the spinal apparatus was a two-way street, delivering a potent cocktail of drugs that would help him focus and keep up with his training. Adrenaline was sometimes used, as were certain drugs called nootropics, which supposedly helped him stay calm and on-point mentally. Racetam-class drugs were fed to him before and after training sessions in order to promote neuroplasticity and to allow him to better memorize the movements he was practicing.

Just what any of that shit meant Silvio couldn't say. All he knew was that the powders he was forced to guzzle in water tasted like hell, and that the skin along his backbone was growing thicker and rougher to the touch.

Dr. Conway had been especially strict with him, allowing him to work even when he felt himself on the verge of fainting. The mental force necessary to wrangle the ARTEMIS unit was great, and more than once, after losing focus or suffering great physical strain, Silvio had pushed himself too far. Despite this, he was never yanked out of the cockpit or assisted. No measures were taken. Instead, Conway would wait in the laboratory, tapping his foot or tut-tutting impatiently while Silvio got his shit together and fought to resume.

It was too much for him, but as the days wore on and the three-month deadline neared, he found at least the motivation to continue. The nightmare was ending. His sentence was drawing to a close. When this was finished, he'd be able to return home to his girlfriend and daughter, and with a good deal of money, to boot. All of that lovely stuff Trask had talked about when he'd first signed on, the potential for curing blindness, was long out of his mind. He didn't give a damn about it anymore. He just wanted out.

The staff were very careful to limit his understanding of the machine to those things that concerned him as pilot. Of its construction he knew vanishingly little. ARTEMIS was built of a “revolutionary” alloy, which featured nanoparticles. The resultant combination made it practically unbreakable. Dr. Conway, the designer of the unit, knew a good deal and was always willing to sing praises about his great invention, however the details he provided were scant, and he was careful not to reveal too much about how the unit functioned, giving only generalities and citing intellectual property laws.

Initially, when the research team had asked Silvio to practice his boxing maneuvers in the cockpit, he'd been reticent. Why had they brought him out there to shadowbox in a giant robot? Were they looking to test its capabilities as a weapon? Even when no answers were forthcoming, Silvio figured this was the case. While ARTEMIS might someday go on to become an asset in fields like medicine or search and rescue operations, it would first be developed as an instrument of war. That it would not be used for violence seemed inconceivable to Silvio in retrospect. It was perfectly suited to battle, impervious to damage and extremely deadly in the hands of a qualified, trained fighter.

It was then that Silvio understood why he'd been chosen. As a trained fighter, whose test results had proven him a good match for the unit, he'd been selected to test its combat capabilities. Now, three months on, he'd shown the research team everything they'd set out to learn.

ARTEMIS was not only capable of being used as a weapon, but it could make a damn good weapon, at that.

The incredible strength of the machine lent Silvio's already powerful punches an unimaginable boost. Tests had been done outside the volcano, and Silvio had managed, with little difficulty, to tear apart a wall of stone with some few jabs. He could kick in the thing, jump, tumble and even headbutt if necessary.

Silvio put aside his reservations. The cheering of the research team as he put his fighting prowess on display was somewhat intoxicating. It was the only thing sustaining him in his deteriorating state, and to hear Dr. Deal or the other staff in the lab cheering as he mastered a new punch or leg sweep was to taste glory itself. It reminded him of his time in the ring, of those days, now distant, when he'd been considered a fighter of promise. That he might be contributing to the super weapons of tomorrow did not concern him. The machine had been built, and if not him, then someone else would have been at its helm.

The morning after his final training session, Horace arrived at his room and shooed him out as though he were a squatter. He was hurried to the same jet he'd flown in on, greeted by the same pleasant stewardess and flown back to the States with no fanfare. The research team hadn't even stopped in to say goodbye before he departed. One minute he was in his room, half-asleep and looking up at Horace. The next, he was shuffling through the concrete complex, out onto the landing strip and into the jet.

This time, though, the stewardess allowed him an in-flight beer.

***

The flight back home was a quick one. Or, at least, it seemed a quick one. Silvio slept for the bulk of it, coming to only as they landed at a proper airport. He recognized it as San Diego International by the tall, beige control tower, its white top sticking out like a rubber eraser on a new pencil. He set aside his lukewarm beer and wiped the sleep from his eyes, disembarking and waltzing into the terminal, duffel bag slung across his shoulder.

He'd need to find a cab. Either that, or perhaps he'd call Sarah and have her stop by. He rifled through his wallet, found a few bills there and then made his way through the crowds in search of an exit. His skin was awash in that same old Californian heat he'd grown up in, but in the preceding three months his chemistry had seemingly changed. His bones were different now and he yearned privately for a return to the desolate chill of Iceland. “This job has got you fucked in the head,” he muttered to himself as he burst out through a pair of double doors and ambled towards the curb, hand out in the hopes of hailing a taxi.

Instead, like a shark tailing its prey, a wide, black sedan swung out suddenly between two yellow cabs and sidled up to the curb. One of the rear windows was lowered, and a familiar face looked out at Silvio as he stood, dumbstruck, in the warm sunlight.

It was Aderhold himself.

“Herr Echegaray,” he began in overly joyous fashion. This wasn't the Aderhold he'd spoken to during his interview. This was the Aderhold everyone else knew, the Aderhold suitable for public consumption. He motioned to the seat beside him, patting it gently. “Care for a ride?”

Silvio gulped. Probably don't have much a choice in the matter... Slowly, he made his way over to the car, pulling open the other door, and slipped into the back seat with his duffel bag dropping down onto his lap. The moment the door was closed, the car lurched on, flying through the congested sea of yellow taxis with utter recklessness. Silvio gripped the edge of his seat and looked nervously to Aderhold, whose mask of warmth had been cast aside in exchange for that sinister look he'd known him to wear. “Where... where we headed?” he chanced to ask.

In way of reply, Aderhold handed him a small packet of papers. Silvio had only to glance at it a moment to find the words “Non-Disclosure And Confidentiality Agreement” written upon the top in imposing boldface type.

“Classified,” said Aderhold simply, in his cold, reptilian way. He then offered Silvio a pen. Apparently he had no choice but to sign.

The sedan swerved onto the highway, its unseen driver hanging a tight left, and screamed up the entrance ramp.

13

A large building surrounded in unmarked warehouses, fenced off by ten-foot high fences and swarming with armed guards. From off in the distance, Silvio thought he could hear choppers, too.

This is the sort of place the government makes people disappear to. This is where they send the really bad guys, where they shake 'em down and torture 'em till the world forgets they ever existed. He didn't want to admit it, but the sight of this massive complex looming large before them set him ill at ease. His hands were growing clammy and his already ragged mind was stressed further. There was no telling what Aderhold was bringing him here for, but that it was for something deathly serious was apparent.

Aderhold didn't say so much as another word during the remainder of their car ride. Upon reaching the first of two gates, the driver flashed some token and was allowed entry. The second gate opened for them after a similar display. And then they were inside, weaving between sturdily-built warehouses and long black sedans that looked not a little like the one Silvio was currently inside of. There were a lot of people there; of that much he felt sure.

Exiting the car at Aderhold's cue, the pair were escorted by heavily-armed guards to the center building, the square, black-bricked edifice that'd caught Silvio's eye even from a distance. Every door in the place seemed to be locked by a sophisticated mechanism, requiring fingerprints and the usage of some particularly long numerical pass code.

And then they were inside. He walked along the polished marble floors, his legs shaking in equal parts trepidation and fatigue. He hadn't had a chance to rest yet, to even see his family. Not a minute into the States and already he was getting spirited away by Aderhold. He might've been annoyed if not for the apprehension that stole over him as they headed for what appeared to be a crowded conference room.

Aderhold led the way, shoving open the door and donning his grand smile for the benefit of the assemblage within. Silvio paused at the threshold, looking inside timidly, before shuffling further and standing just behind the CEO. The room was crammed to the gills with serious-looking men. He didn't even have to look at what they were wearing to know they were government thugs, men positioned at the top of the totem pole. Whatever he'd been brought here for, it was going to be damn serious. Feeling terribly out of place, Silvio hung his head and tried to remain out of view.

One fellow, in a suit, grimaced at him as he walked in. Another, Silvio knew with a single glance at his regalia, was of an impressive military rank. There was enough metal on his uniform to build a small car out of. Others, still, regarded him with bald curiosity or outright scorn. Silvio didn't fit in and it was no secret.

Then, among the sea of faces, Silvio spotted one that looked familiar.

Had it not been Trask looking up at him from across the room, he might've been relieved. Instead he was repelled. The hell is he doing here? He cringed. What the hell am I doing here, for Christ's sake?

Someone in the rear of the room produced a chair for Silvio to sit in, and he plopped down into it without further invitation, eager to escape the scornful glances coming in from all angles. He felt suddenly self-conscious, placed a hand to his face as if to shade his features from view. He didn't appreciate being so scrutinized.

Aderhold spread out his arms and addressed the assembly. “Gentlemen, I bring you the solution to all your ills. Boxer Silvio Echegaray.”

He felt his stomach drop. What did he just call me? Silvio glanced up nervously at the dense group of men, many of whom now leaned in and studied him with curious interest.

Silvio managed to squeak a hello before the first salvo of inquiries began. “And who's this supposed to be?” asked a pudgy bearded man in the far corner, throwing a hand up.

“He's the pilot of the X-001 ARTEMIS,” replied Aderhold, peering back at Silvio. “He is the one who will do battle against the Colossus.”

Doing battle? Against... what, exactly? A Colossus? What the hell was going on?

Sensing the confusion in Silvio's pleading gaze, Aderhold decided to elaborate. “I do apologize. Silvio has been training in Iceland for the past three months, so it is unlikely that he is familiar with what is going on in Michigan.” He paused, looking to Silvio. “Have you heard?”

Silvio's face reddened a bit as he rewound his memory. “Uh... I dunno, I... I remember something about a storm shortly before I left. Something about a town getting hit by a big storm?”

A chorus of sighs and irritated noises circulated about the room. The man with the military uniform done up in medals narrowed his gaze. “You haven't heard about the Tragedy at Nanterre?”

Silvio shook his head weakly. Apparently he hadn't.

The man in regalia introduced himself as General Coleman. “It wasn't a storm that hit that town three months ago.” At the General's order, a number of images were brought up on the conference room's monitors. Some provided video, others still-frames, all of which featured some blackish, enormous thing ambling through lake and forest. Others still showed it destroying buildings and rampaging against military personnel with abandon. “This is the Colossus.”

Silvio watched, wide-eyed and slack-jawed, before cracking a slight grin. He chuckled nervously, glancing around at the assemblage and pointing to the screen. “This is... this is a joke, right? Some intern accidentally pulled up a monster movie on Youtube or...” The firm expressions that met him made it clear at once. They weren't fucking around. This footage was legit, featuring a real, living thing. Silvio shook his head and palmed at his tired eyes, watching the offered footage closely and getting a good look at the beast. It looked incredibly, unimaginably huge. Bigger than anything he'd ever seen before. Bigger than ARTEMIS, even, by a decent bit.

Aderhold picked up where he'd left off. “This is the Colossus, yes, and you will be leading ARTEMIS into battle against it. All other measures short of a nuclear strike have failed. ARTEMIS is mankind's only hope. If this creature should leave the area of Lake Liliana in Michigan, there is no telling what kind of rampage it might go on. Your training has gone very well. I believe you to be ready, and am willing to loan both you and the ARTEMIS unit to the members of this committee as temporary contractors, provided the terms of this contract are maintained.” He produced a small packet of papers from the breast pocket of his jacket, slapping them against one of his palms.

Secretary Nicholson frowned, massaging the bridge of his nose. “We've seen the robot. It's impressive and all. But what's so special about this no-name boxer? Why don't we get an Olympic champ in there instead? With a single phone call we could get ahold of a true heavyweight champ. An MMA fighter. Someone stronger.”

Silvio should have been offended, probably, but his first reaction was one of surprise. “Y-you've seen ARTEMIS?”

Aderhold smirked. “Yes, indeed, they have. I had her shipped to the States from Iceland. She arrived just two hours ago. The members of the committee have had a good look at the unit and feel it may be able to take on the beast. Now we must only convince them to put their faith in you.” Aderhold returned to the assembly, pointing to Silvio. “This man has been trained thoroughly. He is the only person thus far to survive the full three months of training. Other test pilots have died after just a few sessions, their minds and bodies unable to take the load. It is a taxing thing, to pilot ARTEMIS, and it takes a special kind of man. I assure you my test pilot is the very best in the world. To attempt to train a fighter of more renown is not only risky, but time-consuming. We mustn't delay, gentlemen. Now is the time to act.”

This did little to stir up favor towards Silvio, but the assembly began concerning itself with other questions for a time. “So, what's this robot going to do? Wrestle with the Colossus? The thing is unkillable. Our bombs don't touch it. What makes you think this robot's really going to do the trick?” asked one of the attendants.

As though he'd anticipated this question, Aderhold gave a firm nod. “That is a very good question indeed.” He turned to Trask. “Please, the footage?”

Trask made his way to the nearest computer and brought up a brief video clip on the main screen. It was only twenty seconds in full, and on first sight was rather difficult to make out. It'd been shot in a low light setting, and a bright orange glow in the far corner blurred all of the other shapes in frame. Heavy metallic sounds could be heard. Hammering. Then, as Silvio squinted, he realized what he was looking at.

It was an enormous sword.

From all angles, dozens of men were crowded all around it, each of them marching from end to end, striking it with large hammers. The sound of hammering never ceased in those twenty seconds of footage and the orange glow never lessened.

Aderhold pointed to the display. “It will seem rustic, perhaps, however in studying your recent military failures, we have begun to devise a different weapon for this particular application. ARTEMIS is not outfitted with guns or explosives of any kind, but will carry this sword into battle. If mere melee attacks are not sufficient to bring the creature to its knees, then this sword will surely dispatch it. It is crafted of the same revolutionary alloy as the ARTEMIS unit itself, tempered in the lava of an active volcano, Hekla, and fashioned by thirty-six of the most renowned swordsmiths in the world. It has been worked on around the clock for thirty days, and work on the weapon has only just wrapped up. It has been transported separately and will be arriving at this facility within the hour. This weapon is the sharpest thing known to man. If anything can pierce the creature's hide, it is this sword.”

The assembly was incredulous, but a few were intrigued. “Now, this is an interesting gamble,” said the General with a sardonic chuckle. “You're going to send this guy in, inside of the robot, carrying this giant sword? He'll be a regular Saint Michael versus the Dragon, eh?” He shook his head. “This seems ludicrous, but... I'm almost willing to authorize it.” Sensing discord among his colleagues, he put up a hand. “No, hear me out. We send this one guy in and maybe he pulls through. Otherwise we're back to square one with this, sending in more troops who are only going to get their asses handed to them. We've got nothing to lose, and if this fails, we're looking at nuclear weapons as a last result.” He nodded. “It can't hurt to try.”

Deliberations raged on loudly for some time. Various members of the group voiced doubts about Silvio, or about ARTEMIS' capabilities. Still others balked at the massive amount of research money Aderhold was asking for in his contract. Some mocked the idea of a sword, comparing the scenario to something out of a cartoon.

In time however, the assemblage came to realize just how badly their hands were tied. Short of turning Lake Liliana and the surrounding area into a radioactive crater, this was their best bet.

And so the contract was produced, signatures were given begrudgingly and the deal was made official. In his contract, Aderhold had dictated but a few demands. First, Silvio would be paid a handsome salary of $1.5 Million for his participation, to be paid in a lump sum by the committee. This was about the only good news that came out of the entire meeting. Furthermore, both Silvio and ARTEMIS would be lent to the committee, along with the three-man research team of Dr. Conway, Dr. Deal and Emil, the mechanic. While under government care, the ARTEMIS unit was not to be disassembled or studied; its design was a trade secret and failure to comply with this stipulation would render the contract null and void. Only Silvio and the three members of the research team would be allowed access to the thing, unless they required outside help. Dr. Conway would be put in charge of the unit, acting in a supervisory role. Lastly, upon successfully defeating the Colossus, the committee would make a donation of US $1,000,000,000 to the Aderhold Corporation, to be used in furthering research and development.

The terms were strict, but after a bit of waffling the document was signed.

With that, the meeting was adjourned and the conference room began to empty.

Silvio was left sitting in his seat, unaware of what he'd just been signed up for, or whether he'd even agreed to participate in the first place. He was sweaty, lost in thought, till Trask came up behind him and slapped in him the arm. “Quite the pay-day you've gone and earned, Mr. Echegaray,” he said with a grin. “It's like being a proper champion, wouldn't you say?”

Aderhold had already left the room. He was busying himself in the hall, chatting loudly with government officials. After a time, it was only Trask and Silvio remaining.

Silvio didn't have a response in store for Trask and merely nodded.

“Glad to have you onboard. I hear your training went terrifically.”

Silvio gulped. His memories of the rigorous training in that godforsaken concrete complex were anything but “terrific”.

“Anyhow,” continued Trask, looking at his watch and starting towards the door, “we'll have you escorted from here and dropped off at home. Someone will be by to pick you up tomorrow in the morning.”

“W-what for?” stammered Silvio.

Trask gave a laugh pregnant with something like annoyance. “Why, tomorrow you and ARTEMIS are going to be shipped out to Michigan. We have a makeshift command center set up some miles from Nanterre. Tomorrow, the hunt for the Colossus begins.”

He could have wept. “But I... I only just got back. I haven't even seen my girlfriend... my daughter.”

Trask seemed unconcerned. “Yes, yes. I understand. But can you really sleep at night knowing that this creature might make a break for it and wreak havoc on countless millions across the country? And won't they be proud to know that you're off to fight this noble crusade, a gallant dragon slayer?” He grinned. “Well, actually, I guess they can't know, can they? You're not supposed to tell them. Confidentiality and all that. But I'm sure they'd be tickled pink if they knew.”

Silvio gripped the armrests of his chair. He fought to stand but his legs wouldn't work. “I don't... I don't know if I'm up to doing this. I'm not sure I can handle it.”

“Nonsense,” replied Trask. “You're a fighter, with a fighter's instinct. The best man in the world for the job, really, and you've completed the requisite training.”

Silvio recalled what Aderhold had said about the other test pilots dying during their training. So that was why Dr. Conway and Dr. Deal had been so tight-lipped, the reason why the staff had teased him upon his arrival at the lab. He tried to push the thoughts out of his mind but somehow couldn't keep himself from imagining the awful deaths the previous pilots must've suffered within that cockpit. Perfect darkness, needles digging into their spines, electrodes zapping their flesh and sending currents surging through them. There were a million ways to die inside of ARTEMIS, and none of them were pretty.

More than that, something else concerned Silvio however. More than his upcoming bout with an apparent monster, or the strain of hopping back into the cockpit, he wondered how he was going to tell Sarah about his. He played through the scenario again and again in his head, but nothing came to him. There was no way to sugarcoat this.

What can I tell her? he thought. 'Sorry babe, I know I just came back, but uh, the company's sending me half-way across the country now in a giant robot so that I can stab some mile-high monster that withstands real-life missiles. So, what's for dinner?'

14

As though his gaunt and weathered appearance weren't shocking enough, Silvio's announcement went over like a punch in the mouth. Any happiness the two of them may have shared that evening was robbed by the knowledge that, in the morning, he'd be stolen away again by the same work that'd seen him absent for the past three months. She'd done up her hair, gone through the trouble of finding a babysitter and had reserved a table at their favorite restaurant. She'd even made him a little homecoming card, which had been put on display proudly beside their drinks.

And then he had to go and say it.

Sarah nearly spit out a mouthful of ice water. “T-tomorrow?” she stammered.

Silvio glanced at his dinner thoughtfully, giving a feeble nod. “That's what they said.”

Within the space of an instant, a celebratory dinner had been ruined. He'd neglected to fill her in on the big news until he absolutely couldn't hold it back any longer. When pressed on the reasons why his bosses saw it fit to so flippantly send him across the country to a place where an incredibly dangerous creature was known to run riot, he evaded. “They need my help... I'll be cleaning things up,” he said, as though Aderhold Corp had been training him up to be some sort of janitor. But the truth was too frightening, even to him. He tried to sweeten the news by discussing the massive pay-day he'd be earning, and while this excited Sarah a great deal she remained largely morose for the remainder of the evening.

For three months she'd missed him, and now that he was finally back he was getting shipped off again to a virtual war zone. It was a cruel twist of fate, even if a lucrative one.

She'd asked him about the kind of work he'd done in Iceland. He'd had no choice but to lie. He made it sound like boring office work, as opposed to the grueling daily trial he'd lived out on that chill, desolate island. He talked about testing robotic parts, practicing movements. Put generously, it was an enormous stretch of the truth. She'd asked him, too, about his sickly appearance. He attributed it solely to the rigorous schedule he'd been forced to keep. Of the daily, hours-long training sessions, drug cocktails, lack of appetite and spinal infusions, he said nothing.

Sarah left the remainder of her food untouched and seemed to daydream, cringing intermittently, as though she were imagining Silvio getting stomped on by the Colossus. Silvio's own thoughts were not so different, except he mainly concerned himself with the logistics of taking ARTEMIS into battle against the tyrant. He was a trained fighter, used to taking on human opponents. A monster was out of his league entirely. Though ARTEMIS was a mighty machine, he thought it unlikely that he'd be able to compete with the Colossus' Earth-shaking power, even while at the helm. More likely, he figured, he'd end up getting smacked around the cockpit.

It didn't even make sense. Things like this shouldn't exist. Where had the Colossus come from? How could such an enormous thing live on this Earth? How had it gone undetected for so long? Silvio wondered if he hadn't hallucinated the footage he'd been shown of the creature. It was too insane to believe.

He'd been promised a huge payday by a roomful of top government officials, though.

In his brief time back home, he'd already heard a handful of people mention the creature in normal conversation, a clear indicator that he was the only one who doubted its existence.

Sarah had no shortage of things to say about what she'd seen on the news. She talked about the Colossus as though she hoped to dissuade him, as though some nugget of news might serve to keep him from going. He nodded politely, but he'd already heard the very worst of it from the government itself. He'd been told first-hand about how many troops had been massacred, how many civilians had been slaughtered and how many millions had been squandered in trying to stop the beast. What he hadn't been told, but had inferred from the nature of the meeting, was that he didn't have a choice. He was going to participate in this operation whether he liked it or not. There could be no backing out, no changing his mind. He was committed, and his signature on some form was merely de rigueur, a pleasantry.

Silvio didn't feel like a valued member of the Aderhold team or the NDC that'd approved his mission. He felt like something disposable, a last-ditch chance at a solution that didn't involve nuclear weapons. He was the proverbial canary being sent into the coal mine, blind. That he would emerge from the mine unscathed seemed improbable, and everyone knew it. Still they were urging him on, paying him a great sum to hop into the cockpit and put his life on the line.

Why was he doing this at all? He had half a mind to call up Aderhold and back out. Of course, there might be repercussions for doing so. One did not back out of deals with top government representatives without suffering some degree of blowback. Moreover, though it seemed a complete suicide mission, he was the only man capable of piloting ARTEMIS. Many others had tried, only to meet their fate in the cockpit. He'd been strong enough, made of the right stuff. If anyone could handle this job, it was Silvio.

It was the pain in Sarah's eyes, the thought of leaving her and Leah behind again that gave him pause, made him want to throw in the towel and weather whatever consequences might come. He wavered a bit, debating whether he should step down and allow Aderhold to find some other chump to throw his life away against the Colossus, but the more he thought about it, the more he found he wanted to go through with it. The reason was clear enough.

Glory.

At ARTEMIS' helm, Silvio felt he could do anything. It was miserable, painful, draining work to pilot the thing, it was true, but the power it gave him, the way the machine served as an extension of his own body, carried a certain intoxicating allure. Stepping into that cockpit was the only way he'd ever feel the rush of the ring again. If he took part, he'd be celebrated, would have a chance at grasping more glory than any local bout had ever given him. It was like suddenly being offered a spot in the World Heavyweight Finals. He couldn't find it in himself to turn it down, even though he knew he had precious little chance of succeeding.

Someone would end up facing the thing. Silvio was hungry enough, stubborn enough, to give it a good shot. If anyone was going to claim that glory and go down in the history books as a hero, it may as well be him.

And so he spent the night trying to calm his nerves, centering his mind and climbing back into that familiar headspace he always dwelt in prior to big matches. He'd been out of the ring a little while, but his conditioning hadn't suffered much, thanks to his training in Iceland. He'd lost some muscle, but ARTEMIS had more than enough for the both of them. He needed only to trust in his own instincts as a fighter and in the machine.

When they could no longer pretend to be happy at dinner, the pair decided to return home, relieving the babysitter of her duties and taking Leah to bed. The three laid down in the darkened bedroom. Before he knew what'd come over him, Silvio was asleep.

He slept soundly, more deeply than he had in months. Being back home he felt comfortable, safe. He felt Sarah's warm body beside his, sensed his daughter stirring and felt, for the first time in a long while, that everything was fine, stable, happy. As he gave in to sleep, the worry of the previous day slowly ebbed away, receding into the back of his mind and leading to wild, colorful dreams. He dreamt he was walking through deep snow, a scene like something out of a Hokusai woodblock print, towards a dimly-lit hut in the distance. Then he dreamt he was looking up at a blue sky, merely watching the passage of the clouds. He did so with both eyes, forgetting for a time that he'd lost sight in one. It was a freeing hallucination. It made him feel whole, like he didn't have to lean on ARTEMIS to bridge that gap.

Before waking, an airy thought drifted through his head and provoked a smile. It was hard-going and brutal, but anymore he felt most alive, most human, when at ARTEMIS' controls. The machine made him whole, replaced the sight he'd lost. He gave it movement, a sort of consciousness, and it returned his sight to him and gave him unimaginable power. This was how they helped one another. It was symbiotic, a perfect sort of relationship despite the struggles.

The alarm clock sounded, waking him violently. It may as well have been an air raid siren for the way he bolted up and batted it affrightedly from the night stand. Dread flooded his gut where the even breaths of a good night's sleep had been dwelling just moments before and he stood up, trembling slightly in the dim room. Sarah was awake, laying on her side and looking up at him from behind heavy eyes. It looked as though she hadn't slept at all. Leah, stretching out across Silvio's spot, buried her face against the pillow and snored.

Like he was preparing to get shipped off to war, Silvio took a quick shower, dressed, packed and took one final jaunt around the apartment before looking timidly out the window for the black sedan that would be by for him. To his horror, it was waiting there the first time he chanced to look. How long it'd been parked there, the driver waiting patiently for him, was impossible to say. White-faced, he turned to Sarah in the kitchen and pointed to the door. “I... I guess they're here.”

Holding Leah in her arms, Sarah nodded sullenly and approached him. “Stay safe,” she said, her eyes searching his entreatingly. She wanted him to bail on the job, to stay home. It was written all over her face. She studied his emaciated features with a deep sadness and then let him go with a kiss. Silvio paused a short while to say goodbye to his sleepy daughter before finally stepping through the door and towards the black sedan that idled at the curb.

He told her as he left that he'd be back soon, safe and sound. He told her that when it was done, he'd be home, maybe for good, and that they'd have enough money to live off of for a long time. He said there was nothing to worry about.

None of what he said was necessarily true, however, and as he said it from the doorstep, he couldn't bear to turn and face her.

15

The plane ride to Detroit was brief, complete within the blink of an eye. He'd been driven to the same private jet he'd taken to Iceland, and was even served by the same stewardess.

This time, he knew better than to ask for a beer.

The flight had terminated in Detroit, letting him off at an abandoned airfield. There, he'd been guided by two imposing men in dark suits and sunglasses he didn't recognize. That was the story of his life these days; grim-looking roughs and black cars with tinted windows. A long car ride along highways and country roads led eventually to a wide road blocked off by orange partitions and a pair of tanks. After the checking of some offered document, the driver of the black sedan was admitted and Silvio was chauffeured into the outskirts of Nanterre.

He'd never been to Michigan before, had never been this far North, but figured this wasn't what it usually looked like.

For starters, trees all around had been knocked to the ground, and the chopped trunks indicated it hadn't been Colly's doing. Everywhere he looked there were little military installations, humvees and weary-looking soldiers. Above the trees that did remain were small clouds of smoke. Seemingly just beyond his vision at every turn was a scene of utter desolation or catastrophic ruin. He remembered the scene on the video he'd been shown, recalled with all too much clarity the way the beast had plowed through everything in its path. It was bone-chilling, utterly unthinkable that anything so powerful should live. And here he was, sitting in a car being driven right up to its doorstep.

“Colly”. That nickname still made him laugh. It pissed him off a little, too. People living far out of Michigan were content to gossip about the tragedy, writing it off as the cause of internet concern du jour, but none of them really gave a damn. They felt safe, secure. The Colossus was just an abstract to them, about as real as the CGI monster in a summer action flick. They'd seen the videos, but they were merely entertainment. It was a cinch for them to breathe easy. They weren't going to be staring the thing in the face. No, before long someone out there would make an action figure of the goddamned monster, or it'd get its own TV show.

Someday, though, they might not be so carefree. This monstrosity was capable of leaving Michigan, there was no doubt about it. If the video he'd seen was any indication, it could cross county limits by breaking into a brief jog. No one was safe. Not one damn person in the continental US. And even then, the British, the Japanese, the Australians... who could be sure that “Colly” wouldn't decide to go for a dip in the ocean and pay them a visit?

The sedan pulled onto a gravelly road which led deep into a stretch of cleared wood. The main road had been blocked off, and it was easy to see why. Some hundred or so yards ahead were the borders of what appeared to be an enormous footprint. The road had been crushed several feet into the ground below, pulverized. The sight gave him the chills.

This isn't brave, this is just downright stupid of you, he thought, chuckling nervously to himself. Earlier he'd thought about this as one big boxing match, as some way to reclaim a little pride. No longer. Seeing the evidences of this thing first-hand was giving him more than a little pause. Was it too late to turn back? Too late to tap on the divider and alert the stern-faced men up front to his change of mind?

Way too fuckin' late. You went and bought yourself a front-row ticket to the end of the world, bud.

The deeper they went down this pebble-built road, the more he saw of military vehicles and personnel. They were staggered about both sides of the road, dwelling in nests of chopped down trees, operating from makeshift dwellings and zooming about on what appeared to be urgent errands. He felt completely out of place here, driving along in a handsome little car while handfuls of mud-flecked rides dashed all around him. Aderhold had lent him to the military. He tensed his fist as he looked out at the passing troops. He wasn't going to fit in here, it was clear already. He'd never joined the service, too stubborn to take orders or shit from people of authority. That was why he'd always loved boxing; no one ruled over him, no one told him what to do. He showed up to work, put 'em up and did his own thing. Silvio grimaced. Guess I'm going to have to play by their rules till this is over. Else Aderhold will hit me where it hurts. The pocketbook, that is...

Something reached his ears from high above. It was the sound of helicopters. Not one, but seemingly several, and a quick glance towards the sky revealed a mass of heavy-looking helicopters carrying large metal containers by thick wires. He knew what was inside without even asking.

ARTEMIS?

They were bringing the metal titan here, probably piece-by-piece. The sight of those containers and the promise of their contents provided him with a little comfort. He wouldn't be in this alone. He had ARTEMIS to fall back on.

When the cloud of military personnel couldn't get much thicker, the car pulled off of the road to a stop. The door was then opened and Silvio was invited out into the open air, where just before him sat a tall, hastily-built structure. This, he assumed, was headquarters, the base of operations. To the side could be seen attack helicopters and dozens of tanks parked in rows. Jets, he figured, were probably launched from elsewhere in the State.

The driver nudged him towards the building before heading back into the sedan. Starting towards it, it appeared to Silvio a mere skeleton of a building. Tall, rocky walls, a metal roof. The doorways were very wide and tall, and there were no floors. The grass had been flattened and a layer of dry, cracking dirt made up the floors of the edifice. He stepped inside, peering about at its bustling bulk before setting sights on a familiar form within the chaos.

“Dr. Deal?” Silvio waved, finding the doctor near the entrance of the building.

She flashed a wide smile, combing a lock of tousled hair behind her ear and straightening her lab coat. “Silvio, welcome,” she said. “We've been expecting you.”

Putting an end to their chit-chat, a tall man in fatigues with a shaved head and red face stormed forward. “You the pilot?” he barked, crossing his arms and looking unimpressed. Looking Silvio up and down, he sniffed the air and leaned back a bit, stretching. “Yeah, looks like it. Scrawny. Funny how the end of the world rests on the shoulders of a sickly fella like him, eh?” he said, slapping the doctor jovially on the arm. She shrank away from him.

“T-this is Commandant McCoy. He's in charge of operations here on the base,” she managed before his booming voice drowned her out.

“Damn straight. I'm Commander McCoy, reporting directly to General Coleman, which means you're mine, got that?” McCoy boasted a stubborn-looking vein on the right side of his forehead. It seemed to never relax, even in those moments when he wasn't barking. He was a creature incapable of relaxation. “Served several tours overseas, mowing down Arabs. Now they've given me this command so that we might hack apart that scaly son-of-a-bitch in the lake. I tell you, it's easier than throwing grenades into houses and hoping you get your man.” He laughed sardonically. “You don't even have to aim to hit this motherfucker, you get me? You seen this thing up-close, son? You know what it's capable of?”

Silvio tensed a little. He hated being called “son” or “boy”. This guy didn't look much older than him, and his rough attitude was growing tiresome. On the street, Silvio may have laid a guy like him flat, but instead he forced a weak smile and played along. “No, sir. I've seen videos. Saw what it did to the, uh... people around here.”

McCoy chuckled, glancing at Dr. Deal and shaking his head as if in disbelief. “You get a load of this guy? He's going to march in here without even knowing what the fuck he's up against?”

That either the stress of the mission or the privilege of command had gone to McCoy's head was apparent.

“Lemme tell you something,” continued McCoy, pointing out the doorway to nowhere in particular. “We've gone and evacuated the area for miles around. Space around this installation is empty of civilians for something like twenty square miles, and the smart ones as much as forty or fifty miles out have gone, too. You'd think this were a nuclear hot-zone, goddamned Chernobyl. But there's no telling what this scaly bastard will do, so it's the best way to keep them from getting stomped, and to keep them from getting in the way of our shit, too.” His chest burgeoned through the top of his fatigues, every bit as red as his face and dotted in sweat. “Last thing we need is a bunch of hippies protesting about our attacking the thing or God knows what. No, we're out here to fuck that thing up, to draw some blood, you hear? And we're gonna do it, by God. We're gonna do it. I don't know what they sent you for, what you're supposed to do in that giant piece of fuckery, but when the time comes, you be sure to do it. And when you do, I'ma dance on that thing's corpse, you got me? Gonna piss on it, in fact.” He draped a thick arm over Silvio's shoulder and gave him a condescending shake.

It was all Silvio could do to keep from slugging hm across the chin. “Y-yes,” he said, gritting his teeth.

To Silvio's relief, another member of the team approached soon thereafter and McCoy was called away by one of his grunts. Dr. Conway rushed over, stern and calculating as he advanced. The man looked almost as savage as McCoy, his lab coat sullied by smoke and oil and his narrow features pressed into something of a scowl. His manner was more professional, at least, and Conway's brand of bitterness was something Silvio had grown used to in Iceland. He didn't offer a salutation, but merely sized Silvio up and spoke to Dr. Deal. “Is he ready? He must be ready at all times in case the creature rears its head.”

Dr. Deal shook her head. “No, he's only just arrived. I was hoping to show him around and--”

“Yes,” interrupted Conway, “do that. And when you're through, I want a full physical done on him.” Clearing his throat, he leveled his gaze upon Silvio. “This mission is of the utmost importance, the greatest trial yet for my ARTEMIS technology, and I expect you to be well-prepared. Do you understand? We will tolerate nothing but excellence. Even as we speak Emil is overseeing the unit's construction. We estimate it'll be ready for launch within a few hours should the need arise. And while you're here, you will be expected to live as a solider does. You're always on duty, could be called into battle at any moment. This is war, and that is how things will work here.” He went on and on till he was red-faced, lecturing like an angry father.

“Yes,” replied Silvio. Suddenly he felt like punching out virtually everybody in the joint. “So... the monster,” he ventured. “Where's it at? Right now, I mean?”

Conway arched a brow, giving the look of someone fielding a positively stupid question. “Why, it's in the lake, of course. Resting about a mile down within a deep trench.”

“I see.” Silvio put his hands on his hips and glanced about the room. The air was scented in sweat and dirt. Though the breeze was cool and it entered in through the doors and empty windows without resistance, he still found himself covered in a light sweat. The stress of the situation was making him not a little warm. “And, uh... what am I going to do about it?” Anticipating a sharp or rude reply on Conway's part, he elaborated. “I mean, how am I going to go about fighting it if it's down there?”

Conway chuckled, answering impatiently before storming off to some other corner of the compound. “You'll either wait for it to rise or you'll go down there after it, of course.”

Silvio was none too pleased by this response. He turned to Dr. Deal, who still wore a nervous smile. “Oh, sure. Yeah. I guess I'll just go for a swim and drag it out of there by the tail. Of course.”

16

After more prodding and pushing than he could stand from Dr. Deal, Silvio was released onto the grounds. She advised him to explore, and he assured her that he would, if only because he wanted everyone to leave him the hell alone. Tugging at the collar of his shirt and wiping the veneer of sweat from his forehead, he paced out of the bustling concrete shell and out into the open air. He looked around at the base grounds. Hundreds of trees had been felled in the creation of this camp, and he suspected there were probably others just like it in the area. He'd probably seen at least a hundred soldiers since arriving, and it was likely that many more inhabited this ruined town. This was a crisis of the utmost import; the government would likely spare no expense, and would keep the area stocked with as many men as it took to do the job.

Of course, that only meant that Silvio had more shit to put up with.

Upon leaving the base, he found almost every soldier he passed to appraise him with a cool disinterest. Some snickered, some shook their heads. He knew why, too. It was because he wasn't like them. He wasn't a solider, he was just some guy pulled off of the street. He remembered the way McCoy had treated him, the way he'd talked down to him as though he'd been a piece of dog shit. Silvio knew that attitudes like his would be common, and that higher-ups sometimes talked down to the rookies during boot camp.

If McCoy had his way, he'd probably strap himself into ARTEMIS and go swinging after the Colossus himself. Either that, or he'd appoint one of his grunts to do it, and would give 'em a cheer, thinking that one of his guys could do it better. But that wasn't how it was going to go. The military only had access to ARTEMIS because Silvio was going to be the one at the helm. They were a packaged deal, whether McCoy and the condescending troops liked it or not. And before this was all done, they'd throw themselves at his feet. Silvio would see to it. The military had thrown hundreds of lives at the creature without putting so much as a dent into it. Enraged now, he was determined to make a difference, to do what the might of the military had been so unable to do. And he'd do it with some goddamn style.

Kicking a pebble along a stretch of dirt, he looked up at the rows of tanks. Troops raced around them, checking the treads and other components for defects. Overhead, choppers and jets could be heard flying recon. McCoy had eyes in the sky, wheels on the road and boots on the ground. If something so much as took a shit in the woods, he'd know about it. It was ultimately Silvio who'd act, though, and despite the enormous danger he faced, this gave him a bit of pleasure. No one could take Silvio's place here. No one else could do what he was doing. He thought about McCoy hopping into the cockpit and almost wished he would. Maybe he'd end up like the rest of the test pilots, his system getting fried by ARTEMIS' hardware.

Pausing before a cluster of trees left intact by the troops, Silvio leaned against a trunk and peered up at their foliage. Though the sounds of vehicles milling about and machinery chugging along filled the air, he thought it strange that he couldn't hear any birds or other animals. In fact, on the drive in, he hadn't seen so much as a single bird in the sky, hadn't glimpsed even a mosquito. It was a vaguely disquieting discovery. Anything with even a touch of sense had fled far from this place in anticipation of the titan that would soon rise up out of the lake and run rampant again.

When meal time rolled around, Silvio wandered back to the main compound. MREs were served. He'd heard horror stories about MREs, and had even tried one once, years ago, during a nasty tropical storm when the Red Cross had come through with supplies. An unenthusiastic grunt handed him a little tray which teemed with something too sloppy to describe. The wrapper still fastened to the underside claimed it to be chicken fajitas. It looked like anything but. A few tables had been set up on one side of the massive concrete building, and as the sun was fading, bright lights were stationed throughout.

Silvio took his meal over to a vacant spot at one of the tables and began eating it slowly.

It didn't take but a single taste for him to lose all interest in it. If an army marches by its stomach then we may as well throw up the white flag now. He forced down a few bites, wincing as he did so. The flavors coming through were all wrong, and the texture, too, was awfully sloppy. He chewed and chewed, his teeth catching granules of something in the reconstituted chicken. The fajita vegetables had grown so floppy as to disintegrate into mush against his teeth. There was a side, too, of crackers. These were about the only palatable thing on the tray. He choked them down. A soldier came by and dropped off plastic bottles of water. Silvio chugged down half in an effort to exorcise the taste of his meal. Less than half-way into it, he shoved the tray away and sat back, frowning.

Someone sat down on the other side of the table and loosed a great belly laugh. It was McCoy, and he was looking straight at Silvio, a thick finger outstretched. Sucking down a bite of his own meal, he shook his head. “Now, I know you ain't gonna waste that.” He motioned to the unfinished MRE and narrowed his gaze. “Gotta eat. I ain't gonna have you passin' out later and shitting the bed on this.” McCoy brought his fork up to his lips and pantomimed eating. “Eat up, them's good eats, son.”

Silvio fumed, balling his fists against his lap. What's the worst thing that'll happen if you beat his ass? What will they do? Ship me off and send some other sucker in to the fight instead? That doesn't sound half-bad right about now. Maybe I should brick him and let them send me away. Let them find a new hero who's willing to take this guy's shit. But he didn't lash out. Silvio sighed and looked at the meal before him with disdain. Slowly, he picked up his fork and loaded up a bite of food. McCoy was a dick, but he had a point. Silvio would need the calories. He'd eaten too little during his training and lost too much weight. If he was going to have the energy for this fight, he'd have to eat. He took a bite and choked it down. Then another, chasing it promptly with water.

McCoy burst into laughter, slapping one of the grunts on the arm. “See that? Boy likes it already.” He motioned to Silvio. “That's right, son, eat that up. That shit's fortified, got everything a growing boy like you needs.”

Silvio locked a rubbery piece of salty chicken between his molars. It was all he could do to keep from screaming.

When the meal was done he left his tray on the table and marched off, meeting Dr. Deal just outside. She was pacing around, looking up into the now darkening sky and sipping on a bottle of water.

“How's it going, doc?” he asked.

She bobbed her head in salutation. “Fine. Did you eat?”

Silvio grimaced. “Sure did. I tell you, these meals are damn bad. If they fed these guys something finer maybe they wouldn't be such assholes, either.”

The doctor laughed, nodding emphatically. “I know what you mean. This isn't really my favorite place, either. But hopefully we won't be here long. When the job is done, we'll be free to go home.”

Silvio hesitated. Was that what she really thought, or was it just some crappy, canned remark meant to make him feel good? Somehow he found it hard to believe that anyone on that base could be so naïve as to say something like that. Maybe they would all be able to go home, but to talk about it so early and assuredly seemed unwise.

“So, how are things going with ARTEMIS?” he asked, burying his hands in his pockets and joining her in a perusal of the sky. Clouds were gathering, lending the breeze a slight chill. Perhaps rain was on its way. No matter how long he stared or listened, he never saw any birds flying above.

“Last I heard,” she replied, “Emil isn't quite finished. That was an hour or so ago, so I expect he's made good progress. Maybe in another hour or two. It's hard work, reassembling the thing. Emil's the very best, and he's working as fast as he can, but it's still very trying when you're working with parts this big and circuitry this delicate.”

Silvio nodded. “Well, keep me updated. Anywhere I can take a nap around here?” he asked. “I could use a sleep to help me forget that meal, and I'm tired of wandering around collecting dirty looks.”

She grinned. “Oh, sure. There are some barracks made up down there,” she said, pointing beyond the building. “ Dunno that they'll be very comfortable and it's a bit of a walk, but I could show you the way if you like.”

Silvio was about to agree when a shrill sound exploded into the air from all around them. He tensed, looking at once to the doctor, who blanched. “The hell is that?” He couldn't even hear his own voice. It was some sort of klaxon, blaring at ear-shattering volume.

All around them, idling soldiers began to dash away. Some made a beeline for the parked tanks, others still hopped into helicopters and MRAPs. The scene erupted into sheer chaos. Everyone was falling into some role, getting ready for something, but they'd conveniently forgotten to tell him what he was supposed to do. Shouting to the doctor, he asked again. “What's that noise? What are we supposed to do?”

The ground beneath his feet shook softly. Profoundly unsettled, he glanced around, wondering if it wasn't an earthquake. Then his heart galloped into his throat. You know what that is. It's no damn earthquake.

Someone rushed up to Silvio and grabbed him by the shoulder roughly. It was Conway, and his eyes were wide, savage in the twilight. “Come on,” he screamed, dragging both him and Dr. Deal towards a nearby MRAP. McCoy was already waiting for them atop the hulking vehicle, standing on the outside beside the main hatch.

“Climb! Climb!” ordered McCoy, looking around hurriedly from his perch. Though he still appeared enraged, something else had entered into his expression, something Silvio had never expected to find there. He saw it in the way his eyes bulged, in the added layer of sweat that plagued his red face. It was fear.

Conway barked into Silvio's ear. “Get inside, at once. The creature. It's coming!”

Silvio stiffened as he climbed the rungs and hopped atop the MRAP. The vehicle bobbed slightly on its suspension as the ground began to shake. It was shaking harder now, more frequently. Something was indeed drawing near.

Something big.

17

The MRAP's six seats were rapidly filled. At the controls sat two spooked-looking soldiers who were itching to get going. The driver and co-driver fidgeted, ready to gun it at any moment. Dr. Deal and Dr. Conway slipped into the next two seats, hurriedly fastening themselves in with rugged-looking straps. This left only Silvio and McCoy in the remaining two spots. Silvio didn't even have time to express dismay at having to sit beside the raging commandant, because the moment he was strapped in McCoy gave the order to drive and the MRAP shot off like a bat out of hell. The engine roared to life and the drivers sped away from the oncoming threat as precipitously as possible.

Staring at the dim surroundings blankly, Silvio wondered what the hell was going on. Were they just running away from it? Heading to some other base of operations? Going to where ARTEMIS was kept?

McCoy busied himself at the radio. “Where is the fucker?” he demanded, spitting on the console as he spoke. Silvio didn't hear what came in reply, but that McCoy didn't like it was clear. The commandant struck the console with a closed fist and cursed. If the near-constant shaking of the ground was any indicator, the thing was getting damned close.

Conway filled in the gaps while McCoy busied himself at the radio. “We're headed to a more secure location,” said the doctor, fidgeting in his seat and planting his heels against the metal floor. “The commandant must remain secure so that he can give orders, and the three of us must stay safe as well, to ensure ARTEMIS' deployment when the time comes.”

McCoy sneered at this, all but spitting at the three of them. “That's absolutely goddamn right, I got the three of you in here because you're precious cargo. Bunch of dead weight if you ask me, but them are the orders and I don't have the rank to say otherwise, so that's why you're in here while my guys are scrambling and doing the actual fighting.” He turned back to the radio, hitting a few different buttons. “The robot. Is it ready yet?” He paused in anticipation of an answer.

The reply was grainy. A nervous-sounding man gave an answer in the negative. “No, sir. Mechanic says he'll need another hour or so to get it done. Looks like it still needs one of its arms attached.”

McCoy raged. He threw down the receiver and stomped his foot on the floor. Tugging on his harness he shook his head and bored into doctor Conway with his eyes. “You hear that? Your damn robot ain't done yet. So now what? That mechanic of yours is a goddamned joke. He's had hours to work on the thing now and he still ain't done? That motherfucker out there, the one makin' the ground shake, is about to paint these woods red, you hear me? He's about to fuck us good and proper, and your little mechanic's still acting like he's got all day to fix 'er up? That ain't the way we do things, not around here.”

Doctor Conway was unimpressed. “I'll have you know it's a difficult job,” he shouted back, hands gripping his harness tightly as the MRAP swerved to the right. “Emil is a genius, better than anyone on your payroll, I assure you. If he says he needs an hour, then he must have an hour. That's what you and your men are here for, to protect the unit and ensure its safe deployment. The unit had to be deconstructed and shipped here piecemeal. It's a time consuming task.”

McCoy's eyes looked ready to pop out of his head. “I'll be damned if that's what we're here for. I oughta knock your head off your shoulders for that, you egg-headed fuck. We ain't your side-kick here. You're the contractors, the ones takin' orders from me, so don't you dare talk to me that way. You're on my turf now, got that? You're on my fuckin' turf, and if you get smart like that again I'll put one right behind your ear. We ain't just a bunch of meat shields for you to use, doc. I couldn't give any less of a shit about your robot anyhow, since it's just a bunch of parts sitting around. Doesn't do us a whole lotta good, now, does it?”

Before Conway could fire back, Silvio stomped his foot. “That's enough! Everybody shut the hell up!”

McCoy shook his head, wiping the spittle from his lips. “I like the way you think, son.” He pointed gravely at Conway before turning back to the radio. “Us big boys will take care of business while your precious mechanic fucks around with that giant toy.” Screaming into the radio, McCoy ordered an airstrike. “I want a squadron on top of that shitfucker before he makes it to Omega quadrant. Tanks, line it up at he edge of Zeta quadrant and unload when it comes into view. Choppers, too. I want them to load up the big sumbitches and to let him have it when the first round of airstrikes is done. Punish that son of a bitch, punish him good. I want you to spank his ass till it's red, and you send him back to that lake without dinner, you hear?” He slammed down the receiver and fumed silently for a time.

Conway cracked a smile. On his grey, stern face, it looked hideously out of place, ominous. He said something quietly, something that was lost in the roar of the engine. Silvio caught it, though. “It's pointless,” the doctor had said, loosing a small laugh.

And it was. Silvio had seen the footage. The military couldn't touch this thing. It was useless for them to even try. It might buy them a little time, but there was no way they could send in enough planes to distract the creature for a whole hour. A thousand of them wouldn't have been enough. He grit his teeth, imagining the carnage that would play out in the skies momentarily. He's wasting lives. He's being too goddamn stubborn, and his guys are going to pay for it.

From somewhere outside, the blades of choppers could be heard to cut through the air. And then, some minutes later, the now-familiar cry of jet engines came in clearly. The fight had begun. Within a few moments, the soldiers would close in on their target. All the while the ground continued to shake. Could anything in this world stop such a force? Could anything short of a literal mountain stand in its way? That any creature could cause the earth to quake in such a way filled him with equal parts terror and awe. It was unwholesome, simply beyond imagining.

And if they didn't get their shit together, it'd be upon them soon.

A short while later the MRAP squealed to a stop. When McCoy could be sure that the quadrant was secure, he undid his harness and climbed up to the top hatch, shoving it open. From one of the grunts at the controls he demanded a pair of binoculars. When he had them in hand he exited the vehicle and walked out onto its hood, standing there and appraising the far distance.

Conway peered at Silvio and nodded to the open hatch. “You should go, too. Have a look at the abomination you'll be squaring off against.”

Silvio couldn't swallow the bolus of dread in his throat. It felt ready to break free, straining his esophagus. Nothing but fresh air would vanquish it. Slowly, he unfastened his harness and stood up. The soldiers at the controls didn't so much as look at him. They seemed suspended in amber, sitting completely still in anticipation of the commandant's announcement, their faces painted in utter fear. Silvio reached up and climbed out of the vehicle carefully, trying to maintain good footing even as the whole thing rocked side to side. Poking his head out into the open air, he expected some wisecrack from McCoy, but found him standing bolt upright upon the hood, binoculars slung over his arm.

One didn't require binoculars to see what was going on.

They were parked atop a tall hill. The trees upon it had been cut away, which made the spot a decent lookout. A few other MRAPs had been parked nearby, and a small complex not unlike the one they'd just fled from, flanked by two hastily, cheaply-built warehouses, could be seen to their rear about two hundred yards away.

Silvio stood beside the hatch, steadying himself at the next bout of rumbling, and looked past McCoy into the distance. A cloud of jets, at least a dozen, swarmed towards a common target like a mass of angry hornets.

And then he saw it, shifting its immense column of a body about the dimming clouds. It was a pillar of black scales, a mountain dressed in spikes, with two arms outstretched to the heavens and whipping through the air at the oncoming attackers.

It was the Colossus.

Silvio felt himself quiver, and it was not for the shaking of the ground as the thing lurched forward. He'd seen it on video earlier. That'd been one thing. To see this beast in the flesh was quite another, a bad dream he couldn't wake from.

And now he was front and center, watching the thing in action.

He sucked in a deep breath and held it.

This is it. This is for real. This is what you'll be up against.

18

From atop the lookout Silvio watched the Colossus rear back and wipe the first few jet fighters from the sky. The knots of metal erupted against its dense claws, showering the ground and, subsequently, the beast, in fire.

It did not much seem to mind, preparing another strike for the second wave as it descended upon it. Missiles struck its carapace, bursting with tremendous impacts that made the air shake. These were completely ineffectual however. When the dust and fire cleared, there were only less planes in the air. The Colossus itself remained unmoved, unfazed by the strikes. The rat-a-tat-tat of smaller arms filled the twilight.

The creature could not have been but a mile or so away, but the way it rose up into the sky, dwarfing everything else in view, gave it a surreal sort of quality and lent the impression that it might arrive at their very position in a series of hops if it so wished. No matter how much fire it took from the jets, it didn't so much as flinch, didn't stagger or give up ground. Instead, it pressed further, batting its way through cloud after cloud of fighters. Silvio cringed as he watched. He couldn't pretend like this was a trailer for an action film, like it was a video game. Not from this proximity. While the video he'd been shown earlier was intense, it hadn't affected him this way. Now he was absolutely shaken, faced with indiscriminate execution after execution. And it turned his stomach. The repellant creature swung its enormous arms, cutting through everything in its path before advancing slowly. Where it went or why it killed with such abandon he couldn't say. Perhaps the main directive of its loathsome species was to murder. What was clear was that it was perfectly suited to killing, and on an operatic scale. Nature had built it with only one purpose: To drive men to extinction.

And to that end, it was without equal.

Volley after deafening volley smacked into its midnight-colored carapace. Nothing happened. Silvio could feel the frustration and terror of the pilots climbing up on the MRE he'd choked down earlier. He balled his fists and turned away, his face dotted in fresh sweat and his heart racing. McCoy was just shaking his head, loosing a string of long and incomprehensible curses. He threw down the binoculars and crossed his beefy arms.

A massive black column surged up from the ground behind the wretched beast. A tail. The end of the appendage, terminating in a point like a needle, lunged into the air and caught the belly of an oncoming chopper, tearing it into shreds before it could even send off its payload.

From elsewhere a series of booms issued. The tanks. The noise continued in a steady rhythm for some time, until the creature pressed forward and silenced them with a single step. Explosions could be heard from far off, and Silvio could picture the tanks, the very same ones he'd seen parked outside the main building, being trampled underfoot by a tremendous set of feet. The beast walked upright; two arms and two legs. It didn't look much like a dinosaur; its arms were not stubby, but rather long and quite useful. It did not have any trouble walking upright, either. It was comfortable on two feet, but could just as easily have crawled on all-fours. He remembered a brief clip he'd seen of the hulking thing rushing through a line of tanks on hands and feet like some giant, savage dog.

Inside the MRAP, Conway could be heard to laugh. Why he laughed under such circumstances was hard to say, but Silvio knew instinctively that he wasn't shaken. Nothing much served to unseat the callous doctor's mind. McCoy's threats and the unpleasant nature of the camp hadn't affected him in the least. No, Conway was laughing because he was genuinely amused about something, and under the circumstances, the sound of his laugh chilled Silvio's blood even more than usual. “You see?” bellowed Conway, pointing up through the open hatch. “I told you, ARTEMIS is the only thing on this Earth that stands a chance against that thing. Nothing else can stand in its way! Without ARTEMIS, it is completely unstoppable!”

McCoy spat, marching to the opening and grimacing at Conway. He gave Silvio a shove, almost knocking him from the top of the vehicle. “All right then, smartass, send your wonder boy in already. Enough with all the suspense. Why don't you show us all what you've got. Show us all this secret weapon if it's so damn good.” He pointed to the warehouse at their rear. There, Silvio caught sight of something that took his breath away.

It was ARTEMIS, its upper body catching the last of the retreating evening sun and sticking out above the roofs of the buildings. He'd missed it on his first pass. But there it was in all its glory, standing firm amidst the chaos and surrounded by towering cranes which supported the last of its limbs. One crane was occupied in bringing the second arm to the upper body, and several technicians in cherry pickers were attempting to guide it into its proper place, tools in hand. A few stray wires, looking like gossamer threads at this distance, could be seen to stick out of its plating. The unexpressive face of polished metal stared back at him with a kind of intensity. He trembled atop the MRAP and stared into that face.

Silvio felt as though ARTEMIS were reaching out to him, seeking to express something. It was impossible, of course. The machine wasn't even on, wasn't capable of thinking, much less speaking to him. But in its solid frame he found a promise of relief, a promise of that strength he'd tasted during his training. Apart from one another they were nothing, impotent. But together they became something powerful. Silvio worked a hand through his black hair, finding it sopping with sweat. His heart raced even faster, raced like it would give out on him. All the while ARTEMIS stared back from above the shoddy warehouse, as if extending to him an invitation. Alone he was worthless, but with ARTEMIS he could become a god.

McCoy pulled him out of his thoughts, slugging him hard in the arm and pointing out into the distance. “Jesus Christ, it's coming this way.” The usually red-faced commandant blanched, gritting his teeth. “The son of a bitch has caught sight of yer little friend over there, it looks like.” Leaning down, he gripped one of the rungs. The ground began to shake something fierce, giving the vehicle a nice toss.

Silvio turned quickly and saw that the Colossus was indeed heading towards them. It was facing their direction, taking one lumbering step after another despite the few remaining fighters that still circled its head. It would bat those away soon enough and be upon them quickly. There was no doubt in his mind.

McCoy ordered the soldiers inside to radio Emil. “Ask them if it's done yet, goddammit! We're outta time out here. It's heading right this fucking way!”

The commandant was none too happy with the response.

Panicking, Silvio glanced around. The ground was rumbling with such consistency now that it was difficult to stay upright. McCoy retreated into the vehicle and urged Silvio in after him, however Silvio had another idea.

Without thinking, he began to climb down from the vehicle, landing on the rumbling ground and falling to his knees. Then, with everything he had, he began to run towards the warehouse, to where he knew ARTEMIS was waiting for him. “Come on!” he barked at the MRAP as he ran. “Follow me!”

McCoy looked out at him from the hatch incredulously, then barked to the drivers. “Well, go on! Follow his ass!”

The MRAP roared to life and took off behind Silvio.

Rounding the first of the warehouses, the shining metal titan came into view. There she is, he thought. ARTEMIS, I'm on my way.

19

ARTEMIS' left arm swung side to side through the air as the crane sought to bring it to the body. A number of technicians clung nervously to the railings of their respective cherry pickers, grasping tools and looking all around for the source of the shaking. They didn't have to look long; when it'd grown close enough, there was no mistaking the sight of the Colossus lumbering towards them. The men fell into a frenzy, some redoubling their efforts and reaching out to the limb as if to draw it closer to the body, while others lowered themselves and took off running. As Silvio approached, seeking out Emil amidst the chaos, he heard Conway and the others close behind him.

The sturdy young mechanic hopped down from the lowered cherry picker and wiped at his hands with a handkerchief. Before Silvio even had time to ask him, he bellowed, “One hour. I'll need one hour to get that arm attached. And even then, we need to run tests to make sure it's on right. Unless you want it to fall off, that is.”

“Not good enough,” Silvio heard himself say, pushing past Emil and looking up at the machine, whose body glowed with the last traces of the sun. Something needed to be done. There could be no waiting. Pointing upward, he turned to Emil. “Power her up, I'm going in.”

Conway stamped his foot down. “I forbid you from using the suit under these circumstances,” he said, taking hold of Silvio's shoulder and giving him a shake. “To do so would be irresponsible. Sheer stupidity.”

Silvio pulled away, pointing towards the hill, where the sight of the Colossus drew ever nearer. With every passing moment it became easier to see, its terrible characteristics coming to light. In the dusk, the black spires that protruded from its craggy body cast baleful shadows. “We don't have time,” he said. “I need to go, and I need to go now. Hook me up already!”

McCoy agreed, pushing Conway back with an open palm and returning to his red-faced baseline for a moment. “He's right. He needs to get his ass up there, and now, else we're all fucked, got that? I'm in charge here, and I say he goes!”

Conway grew more forceful then than Silvio had ever seen him. “ARTEMIS will not be used in such a way! This is a suicide mission; the unit still lacks one of its arms. There's no way it'll be able to keep up with that monstrosity! I forbid it,” he reiterated, raising a fist and preparing to attack the commandant if necessary.

Dr. Deal tried to smooth things over. She looked utterly frightened, her white face standing out against the dusk. Her eyes quivered as she looked to Conway and McCoy, trembling hands raised. “Gentlemen, please, it's not ready. It would be irresponsible to--”

And all the while the shaking continued. It was becoming so that they could hardly keep their footing. Everything about them rocked with the creature's every step. Trucks and MRAPs shuddered on their suspensions, trees quaked and the hastily-built buildings began to sway on their shoddy foundations.

Rushing to ARTEMIS' side, Silvio turned to the group and climbed into a cherry picker. “We're out of time. I either go now or we're all going to die here. Understand?” He looked to Dr. Deal, waving her over. “Hook me up, damn it!”

Though Conway tried to stop her, Dr. Deal broke away and sprinted into the nearby complex, seeking out a packet of medical supplies. Joining Silvio in the cherry picker, Emil raised them up towards the cockpit. Silvio tossed his shirt away, letting it fall to the ground. “This isn't how it's supposed to go. It's reckless, insane,” she said, fumbling as she tried to keep hold of the supplies in her hands.

“Go on,” he said, baring his back to her. Along his spine the scabby marks left behind by their training remained. The skin was tough, calloused, abused.

She rummaged through the packet in the dying light, finding a small vial of iodine. “Emil,” she shouted, “Tell them to start her up. Silvio, open the cockpit.”

Silvio reached out of the basket for the latch on ARTEMIS' exterior. Pulling it roughly, the cockpit hatch gave, opening to reveal the now-familiar black seat, the controls, the mess of wires and the spinal apparatus. Kicking off of the railing, he dove into the cockpit. Dr. Deal followed, dousing his back in a cold wave of iodine. Then, her hands shaking almost too hard to get the job done, she began matching the needles to their corresponding areas along his vertebral column. When they'd been quickly sanitized, each one was placed, followed by the series of sharp, grabbing clips. He winced as they pinched at his flesh, grasping the back of the chair as they did so.

All the while, the doctor continued to warn him. “Silvio, this... this isn't safe. This is a bad idea. ARTEMIS isn't ready yet, and--”

He would hear none of it, however.

The warehouse nearest them was shuddering something fierce now. At any moment it seemed poised to crumble. Only ARTEMIS appeared firm in the face of the oncoming monstrosity, her tremendous feet sinking slightly into the earth and anchoring her.

When the apparatus was on, Dr. Deal scrambled about in the cockpit, digging a number of vials out of a hard case. These she loaded into a pump near the control panel. When she'd stripped the caps from them and placed them into specific compartments, she slammed the covering down on the pump and quickly slapped several electrode patches onto him. She checked their placings only briefly, setting them across his temples, his neck, his back, chest and wrists. When she thought them in the right places she struggled with the tangled leads, hooked him up, and then made her way out of the cockpit. Emil waited for her in the cherry picker and helped her over the railing.

Silvio felt a familiar burn along his spine. It started off hot as fire, then waned into something like a tingle, a cool sort of shiver. His muscles began to twitch, his heart began to race. And then he could taste it in his mouth. The infusion had begun and his body was coursing with a dose of God knew what.

All he knew was that it made him feel good.

Silvio felt powerful now, felt like more than a man. Stretching out, running his palms against the control panels, he loosed a shuddering sigh. His slick skin was dotted in gooseflesh as a chill breeze whipped by.

Dr. Deal gasped as she reached the cherry picker, falling to her knees and pointing over the other side at something that loomed darkly now over the roof of the nearby complex by several hundred feet. Emil hastened to lower the cherry picker, dropping towards the ground as quickly as the mechanism would allow. When they were down, they joined the rest of the scrambling folk below, seeking some kind of shelter.

Silvio tapped a square button on the console at his side. With that, the cockpit was closed with a hiss and a pop.

Sitting now in the perfect darkness, the creature but a stone's throw away, he shouted. “Turn her on!”

As he panted in the dark, his muscles contracting till they felt rock hard, he leaned forward. The main display flickered on and ARTEMIS slowly came to life. One by one the consoles were lit. The sounds of the unit's various systems powering up was like a symphony to him. It was more than sound; he could feel each part of the machine coming on as though it were an extension of his own body. It was like becoming cognizant of his limbs again after a long sleep. “Hello, old friend,” he said, taking a deep breath and looking to the display. The back of his neck tingled and something pulsed in his temples.

Now, for the first time that day, he could see everything before him. ARTEMIS' optical relay sent signals to his brain which were promptly translated into something like sight.

The titan stirred. Looking from side to side, Silvio noted the marked lack of a left arm. He flexed the unit's right arm, balled up the fist and made certain it was responsive. Then, taking a step forward in the thing, he yanked it free of any remaining wires and pushed a few cranes to the side. It'll be messy going in one-armed, but I'll handle it. He studied the controls for a moment before glancing back up at the display and, subsequently, at the thing that stood before him.

They were separated now by less than two hundred yards. The Colossus had stopped near the foot of the hill, but would easily crush it underfoot with its next step. Its great and terrible face wore something of confusion or curiosity as it appraised the metal titan, her body reflecting the lights of the surrounding camp with no little sharpness.

When the unit moved, the creature's interest took a marked turn into aggression, however.

Raising ARTEMIS' one arm, Silvio watched the display as the Colossus began rushing forth, its tremendous claws slamming into the ground below and its lengthy tail shooting up from behind it like the tail of a scorpion. Its eyes, a brilliant yellow, cut through the young night and inspired a revulsion in him as it batted away one of the warehouses. The ground quaked beneath them as though the entire continent had been rocked by its advance.

Silvio tensed, exhaling hard and preparing to intercept. Here we go...

20

From the very first, he felt outgunned. Here he was, Earth's greatest hope, forced to head into the ring with one arm tied behind his back. It was a strange sensation, a feeling of absence where he should have felt his left arm.

He had no time to think about it, though.

The dust kicked up by the sudden demolition of the warehouse cleared in an instant as the monstrosity lurched towards him, claws outstretched. A terrible noise escaped its maw as it mounted its first bestial strike, a noise so hoarse and massive that the whole of ARTEMIS' body, and the earth below, began to vibrate. That yawning chasm of a mouth looked big enough to swallow an aircraft carrier.

Silvio grit his teeth, urging ARTEMIS forward and bringing his forearm skyward to meet the two sets of claws that were now crashing down towards him like twin hammers. This creature was simply beyond imagination from close-up. Its mile-high bulk cast a shadow on ARTEMIS from so close-by; that anything on Earth should dwarf the machine boggled his mind.

The claws that had swiped so many jets out of the sky met his own arm and gave ARTEMIS' circuitry a run for its money. The impact was tremendous, causing the pockets of metal in the machine's arm to groan as though they might fold. The resilient alloy did not give, and by some miracle Silvio's mental force was sufficient to keep the metal limb in place, sparing him from getting hammered by the two claws. Nonetheless, it required every ounce of focus he had to maintain his footing and defend against the strike from above, so that, when the obsidian tail came from behind, he was hopeless to stop it.

This tail, tipped in a jet-black spike like a tiny mountain, swung from the creature's left and batted ARTEMIS to the side, disrupting her footing and sending her to the ground. Silvio gasped as the mech slammed the earth, the impact jostling him to his very core. His bare chest was dug into by the harness he wore and a bit of tension developed in his spine where the infusion mechanism was placed. “Son of a bitch,” he muttered, urging the machine to stand and wheel around to the creature's side.

The Colossus roared again.

His ears ached for it.

Wiping the sweat from his brow, Silvio narrowed his gaze and zeroed in on the creature's center of mass. It'd taken a swipe at him. Now it was time to see how the creature liked getting hit. So far, nothing on Earth had been able to put a dent in it. As he commanded ARTEMIS' hand into a fist and wound up a haymaker, he was determined to break that streak.

Stepping forward so as to build momentum, Silvio loosed a scream and let it rip.

The Colossus flinched.

He almost missed it in his wild rage, however the creature, which had wreaked havoc without opposition for so long, reared back as it saw the gleaming metallic fist rushing towards it like a bullet train. The strike met the monstrosity's right side.

The effect wasn't quite what Silvio had hoped, though. The sound his punch produced as it met the craggy surface of the Colossus was enough to leave him temporarily stunned. It was awful, a sound like a hammer hitting solid concrete, and as best he could tell, no observable damage had been done. The creature was knocked back very slightly by the blow, but it was clear that Silvio's offense had been nothing but a minor distraction.

Realizing that he didn't have another arm to block with, he quickly bounded back, building a bit of distance between himself and the beast, lest he leave himself open to a strike.

Holy shit, he thought, flexing his hand in the cockpit. What is that thing made of? He knew ARTEMIS' body to have been constructed of a patented alloy, strengthened with nanoparticles that made it nigh unbreakable. ARTEMIS should have been able to smash through just about anything with a punch like that one, no questions asked. And yet, the beast remained before him, apparently unfazed. How can that be? Not even a fucking scratch? Seriously? A punch like that would've killed a guy on the street. With ARTEMIS throwing it, the bastard ought to be on his knees!

The surprise on the beast's craggy face lasted only an instant. Its yellow eyes were narrowed in a scowl, and it leaned down towards the machine, appraising it from above, before grunting. Then, tearing through the air with its claws, it swung a monolithic arm upward, attempting to catch ARTEMIS in a savage undercut.

Silvio shifted out of the way in time, used to catching such unpracticed moves in the ring. He grinned, clicking his tongue as the mech side-stepped the blow. “Nah, you're going to have to do better than that, you ugly son of a bitch. This ain't my first rodeo. Haven't taken one of those since I was in the schoolyard. You're sloppy!”

With a perfect opening to the creature's other side, Silvio clenched ARTEMIS' fist and delivered another blow, his brow furrowing intensely and the systems whirring to life. The air in the cockpit crackled with energy, both electrical and psychical, as his thoughts were transmuted into action. The metal titan reared back and then thrust its fist into the side of the creature before it, the impact generating that terrible sound once again.

ARTEMIS' entire body was set vibrating for that single punch, leaving Silvio a bit disoriented. When he gained his bearings and steadied his footing, he glimpsed out at the beast, noting its carapace remained unscathed. Man, that's a tough hide. Nothing is going to bust through that mess. How am I supposed to hurt it if it's covered in that shit? Maybe a strike to the head? A few quick jabs to bust up those pretty teeth it has? Hell, ARTEMIS could even poke it in the eyes. There's no ref around here to chew me out for fighting dirty.

While weighing his next move, he felt a heavy impact from down below.

“What the--” The world outside was flying by, and he was promptly jostled around the cockpit, his forehead striking a nearby panel. The skin burnt, and before he even brought his hand to it, he could feel a trail of warm blood trickling from it. “Shit,” he muttered, looking up through the display.

ARTEMIS was on the ground, knocked from her feet by the Colossus' tail. That damned tail had snuck up on him, swept his feet out from beneath him before he'd even known what was up. It was like fighting two people; that appendage had a mind of its own, could answer for the creature even as the rest of its body was occupied.

Before he could straighten himself out in the cockpit and shove away the mounds of tangled wires he'd accumulated during his fall to the ground, Silvio caught sight of the creature through the display. It stood directly above ARTEMIS, and was rapidly sailing towards the ground, arms outstretched.

“Oh, shit-- he's going to pin me,” spat Silvio, trying to take a swing at the thing as it descended upon him.

It was useless.

ARETMIS' only arm was batted into the ground by one of the Colossus' claws, and the rest of the monster's bulk crashed into the machine, anchoring it in place. Silvio tried to shift the legs, the arm, from beneath the creature's weight, but no amount of mental energy could move the thing. Its weight was incalculable, and it was only the alloy that comprised her body that kept ARTEMIS, and Silvio, too, from being flattened like a pancake. Just how long could the mech put up with this strain? He had an entire mountain perched atop his chest and there was no way to get it off.

The Colossus pinned ARTEMIS with its two forearms so that the mech began to sink into the earth. Then, in a sudden leap that saw the ground shake like mad, the creature let its incredible legs sail into the air. Using its grip on ARTEMIS to keep steady, the Colossus brought its immense, saurian heels down in tandem, aimed squarely for ARETMIS' core.

Silvio shrank against his seat, blanching as the sight of the creature's feet took over his display.

He was about to get stomped on by the Colossus. Its two feet were crashing towards him with all the power of an atom bomb.

He gripped the armrests of the chair and squeezed his eyes shut.

ARTEMIS had had a good run, but this creature was simply unstoppable. The machine had somehow sustained the creature's weight, but a blow of this kind would crumple the thing like a tin can. There was no way ARTEMIS could survive this stomp. The craggy pads of its feet were headed straight for Silvio, blotting out everything else on the display.

He could picture it, the creature's feet tearing through ARTEMIS' armor, pounding his puny body into a red paste.

At least he'd die quickly, he thought.

21

The earth-shattering blow came.

He could feel it in his bones.

He could feel it in ARTEMIS' bones, in the way the entire construct wailed and groaned beneath the stupendous weight of the Colossus' onslaught.

The display flickered terribly, the scene on it temporarily disrupted as though he'd been punched in the head.

But Silvio did not die.

The Colossus took a few opportunities to pound ARTEMIS into the ground, nudging it deeper and deeper till its metal bulk was half-buried in the soil, but for all its effort it could not destroy the mech. Shuffling off with a roar and thinking perhaps that its opponent had been defeated, the Colossus stood upright.

It was gravely mistaken, however.

Silvio sucked back a few sobs, his body shaking like a leaf. A little chuckle formed in the back of his throat, easing its way out slowly as he recognized the creature's inability to crush the mech like a bug. He was alive. A little shaken up, but alive.

And he was pissed.

The mech twitched slightly as Silvio fought to reestablish the powerful mental link he'd shared with it only moments before, and as it did so, the Colossus' attention was captured. Like a monolithic house cat whose curiosity had gotten the better of it, it squatted down just a bit, its hideous, jagged face lowered in a narrow inspection of the fallen machine.

It was with no little effort that Silvio willed ARTEMIS to rise. Flexing at the core, he loosed the mech from the earth and then used its arm to lift it into a handstand position. Then, in the next instant, ARTEMIS' legs were tucked in and a donkey kick of tremendous proportions was delivered to the face of the leering tyrant.

Silvio buried both of ARTEMIS' heels in the Colossus' face, knocking it several feet back and making it lose its balance. It fell to the ground with a sharp roar of pain, and something was knocked from its face in the impact. A large spike which had protruded from its jawline had been loosened, broken by the hammer-blow that was dealt by ARTEMIS' feet.

“How do you like the taste of that?” roared Silvio, righting the mech and willing it to stand up. He palmed a mixture of sweat and blood from his brow and leaned forward in his seat, focusing on the form of the fallen Colossus in his display. “It's go-time. No more playing around. It looks like you can bleed, so let's get on with the blood-letting!”

Without wasting a moment, Silvio tore forward in the mech, delivering a firm straight to the stunned creature's jaw and catching it by surprise. A hit to the head proved more effective that a body shot had been, and the Colossus shook his head something fierce as the stunning blow registered. Not to be overtaken however, the creature's tail sailed into view, bumping into ARTEMIS' side and sending her into the other warehouse. That it'd remained standing up to that point was a miracle. It fell apart all around him like a house of cards.

Pawing away the mounds of rubble, Silvio scanned his surroundings and spotted an abandoned crane. The place had emptied out; anyone with any sense in their heads had hightailed it out of the area when the Colossus reared its head. Anyone else, unfortunately, was probably dead. Reaching out for the crane and standing ARTEMIS back up, Silvio sized up the beast afresh. “Well, I don't think anyone's gonna mind if I take this little crane for a spin.”

Wielding the crane like a flail, ARTEMIS gave it a mighty swing, the thing's bulk catching the Colossus clean in the head. It was a relatively small blow, and the crane dissolved against its dense plating as though it were nothing, but it slowed it down as it advanced again upon ARTEMIS. Barking aggressively, the creature's wounded face could be seen to sizzle as the crane's guts erupted into fire.

In a rage now, the beast surged forward, reaching out and slugging ARTEMIS hard in the head. The momentum of the blow knocked the mech to its knees. Silvio was thoroughly jostled, the harness he wore digging into his flesh. It was going to leave some serious bruises. Before he could stand ARTEMIS up, the mech's one hand was batted away by the Colossus and a black set of claws hit her straight in the center.

It wasn't his own body that'd been struck, but Silvio's breath was knocked out of him all the same. When ARTEMIS was thrown to the ground, the entire cockpit fell into a disarray. Electrode patches were ripped free, the harness pressed into him so hard that his bones creaked and, once again, he hit his head on a nearby panel, drawing yet more blood. He felt suddenly nauseous, his mouth filled with a metallic taste. It was probably blood. Or maybe some new drug was coming through the spinal pipeline. Or maybe it was both.

Licking his lips languidly, he looked to the display.

He found he couldn't see straight, though.

“Ah, fuck...” That last blow had given him hell. His one good eye was still functioning, but his connection with ARTEMIS had weakened sufficiently to cut off his extra-sensory sight. His depth perception was demolished, and his remaining eye was a little blurry.

Fighting the creature one-armed had been one thing. Up until just a second ago, he'd been faring marvelously well.

Fighting the Colossus while dizzy and injured was another thing altogether. He wasn't even sure he could fully control the mech anymore. Some of the electrodes had been knocked off of him with that last hit. The apparatus on his back itched and burned; had it come loose? Uncertain just how much he was still linked with ARTEMIS, Silvio sat upright and tried to stand the thing up.

She complied, albeit, jerkily.

ARTEMIS stood, swaying very slightly, and Silvio tried to raise her arm in a strike. The arm remained limp at ARTEMIS' side, however, as if all of the joints in it had broken. “That's not good,” he muttered, kneading at his brow and trying to center his vision. He focused hard on his blind eye, trying to seek out the connection he'd had with ARTEMIS just moments ago. If he could link up with the sensory system again, then he'd be able to hold his own. Probably.

There was no time.

The Colossus was charging at him.

Tensing up, Silvio tried in vain to bring ARTEMIS' hand up in a feeble defense. It was pointless, however. The link between them had been weakened tremendously.

He was about to get knocked on his ass again, and this time, he might not get back up. There was no telling just how many hits of that kind he could take. Though ARTEMIS was apparently unbreakable, he was still just a sack of meat getting thrown around within. Funny how Conway hadn't devised some way to keep the operator safe during the heat of battle. Really showed where his priorities were in the design.

Suddenly, he heard what sounded like cannon fire.

Turning drunkenly from the rushing form of the Colossus, Silvio spotted a line of green tanks firing away at the monstrosity from a spot near the hill. They'd rushed in from just beyond the fallen warehouses and were giving it their all. There must have been at least a dozen. Their rounds did nothing to harm the creature, though they did make for a perfect distraction. The Colossus stopped in its tracks and roared in what could only be perceived as annoyance, its body pelted in rounds of cannon fire.

Flailing about the cockpit, Silvio doubled down on his focus and willed ARTEMIS' arm to move. The limb started to life with a jerk like a live wire had been pressed to it, and he found himself capable of balling its massive fist once again. “There we go! That's what I'm talking about!” he shouted. Forcing ARTEMIS a few wobbly steps forward, he reached out and delivered a lightning-fast jab to the distracted monster's throat.

The Colossus sputtered mid-roar and fell back, thrashing violently against the ground and causing the tanks to bounce into the air. Then, unexpectedly, it turned and fled as quickly as its four limbs could take it.

The Colossus was running away.

Silvio burst into laughter as he watched it sprint off, tearing a solid path of destruction into the earth as it went. Everything in its way was utterly devastated, but as it scampered off it looked not unlike a frightened dog. Its powerful tail lagged behind limply as it went.

It was probably heading back to the lake to lick its wounds. It hadn't been properly defeated, but it'd suffered enough in this bout to wound its pride. “That's what I thought,” sighed Silvio, leaning against the control panel. “Run far, far away, you piece of shit.”

He took a few wobbly steps in ARTEMIS after it, but she dropped to her knees soon thereafter. He was whipped, too tired to even think about a pursuit. And besides, his control over the mech was slipping again. He struggled just to keep it upright, to keep it from slamming into the ground like a hunk of impotent metal.

Looking around the cockpit, Silvio found things were in a terrible state. Wires-- wires he'd never even seen before-- were sticking out of breaks in the paneling. There was a sound blaring in his ear, which he hadn't noticed till right then for the pounding of his pulse, that sounded like an alarm. It chirped incessantly, not a sound he remembered hearing in ARTEMIS before, and it refused to quit even as he batted different buttons on the console. Whatever it was, it sounded important. It was evidently something he was supposed to take notice of.

Another sound, this time a familiar one, broke into the chaos of the cockpit. It was Dr. Deal's voice. Where she was calling from was uncertain.

“Silvio!” she said, her voice crackling over a recessed speaker. “Don't move. Don't you dare move. Didn't you hear the alarm? You were supposed to retreat. Don't move an inch.”

“Why not?” he asked with a smirk, closing his eyes and leaning back in the seat. “It's all taken care of. The monster ran off on me. It'll be all right for now.”

“No, Silvio, you need to listen to me. Stay still, don't try and move the unit anymore, got that? Your vitals... they're out of control. You could stroke out at any moment, do you understand me? Your body has been put under too great a strain-- you could die in there!”

“Huh,” he replied. Something tickled his sweaty upper lip. Tracing it with his finger, he studied his fingertip blankly. It was red with blood. “Whoa, doc. Looks like I've got a serious nosebleed going on.” Then, for reasons he couldn't name, he began to laugh uncontrollably.

“Silvio, hold on! We'll get you out of there soon, I promise!”

His nose was positively gushing. He felt a steady stream of blood hitting his bare chest, soaking his flesh and seeping into the harness that'd so cut into him during the fight. He was no stranger to nosebleeds, but this one was quite the gusher, the worst he could recall.

“I'm, uh... I'm...” He tried to form the words, but his voice disappeared into his throat.

His vision went black.

The last thing he remembered was ARTEMIS crashing to the ground, landing with an earth-crunching thud.

22

“It's over here.” The recovery specialist ambled over to the jagged piece of black material that'd embedded itself into the ground. He waved his geiger counter around a few moments, making sure it wasn't emitting deadly radiation, and then turned to the rest of his team. “We're going to need some equipment to drag this thing back to HQ. Think it'll fit in a truck?”

Another team member nodded. “It should. We'll have some of the grunts bring us a few vehicles. I'll phone the commandant now.”

“Shouldn't we call the CDC guys, first, before we get this close to it?” asked another among them, eyeing the piece of the monster guardedly. They'd been informed by the troops that a piece of the Colossus had been discovered in the field. Dispatched by the NDC to collect the sample for research, the government recovery team had tracked it down without much difficulty. It was hard to miss, sticking out of the ground awkwardly amidst the destruction and acres of felled trees.

“Should be fine. We need to get it out of here and see what it's made of,” said the first, picking up his radio and giving McCoy a call. “We found it,” he said. “We're going to need a little help to get it out of here. It's about the size of a telephone pole, probably pretty heavy, judging by the way it's buried in the ground.” His breath fogged up the hood of his hazmat suit as he spoke.

The commandant replied. “Give me your location and I'll send some guys your way. Get that thing outta here, quick,” he added. “Can't stand having even a piece of that sumbitch on my turf.”

“No problem. We'll haul it off to a lab as soon as we're able.” Appraising the black spike, he frowned. He'd seen the beast lumbering across the field, had seen the destruction it was capable of, however to get a close look at a piece of it in this way disgusted him immensely.

“We'll see just what you're made of,” he said, tapping on it with his gloved hand.

Whatever it was, it felt rock-hard, tough as diamonds.

***

Something prodded his face.

It felt cool against his skin.

He pictured Leah, one of her chubby fingers toying with his lips, a toothy grin plastered on her chubbier cheeks.

He opened his eyes with a smile, but his daughter wasn't there. Blinking hard, he spotted a piercing white light in the corner of his eye that bathed the entirety of his surroundings in the sort of sterile glow one might expect while getting abducted by aliens. Silvio let his head droop to one side, spotting a fluttery wall of green.

Where the hell am I? He thought, his body so weak he couldn't even bring himself to turn his head the other way. He stared on for a long while, mystified at the flapping of the walls, only to realize he was in a tent. From somewhere nearby, he heard Dr. Deal speaking to him.

Though he should've been relieved to be alive, the sound of her voice reminded him of where he was, and of the battle he'd been fighting when the lights had gone out. The image of the Colossus flickered through his mind and made his stomach lurch. When the vomit surged up his esophagus he didn't even try to stop it, and unloaded his belly over the edge of the gurney.

“Silvio!” Dr. Deal was upon him in the next moment, helping him sit up. Even after he finished heaving he felt his gut writhing and contracting. His throat ached, as did his head, and as he turned his teary gaze to the rest of his body he found some trouble in finding a body part that didn't hurt like hell. The color of the bruises on his limbs were intense. Even after getting clobbered in the ring he seldom took home bruises of that kind. There were needles in his arms, hooked to IV tubing and bags of fluid. He could hear dinging now, as of a telemetry monitor, after the sounds of his retching died out.

“Still alive,” he managed to mutter, slowly laying back onto the gurney with Dr. Deal's help.

“Just barely,” she corrected him, crossing her arms and taking on the air of a disappointed schoolteacher. “You pushed yourself way too hard, very nearly killed yourself. The entire ARTEMIS project was almost cancelled just now. Without a pilot, the unit would have been shelved for months, and...” Her eyes softened. “We were worried,” she added, seemingly as an afterthought.

Silvio grinned a little, bringing a palm to his forehead. Worried about your robot and your investments, that is. He cleared his throat and scanned the tent slowly. It was a threadbare space, featuring only a handful of apparatuses. Judging by the sounds of choppers that reached his ears from high above and the pervasive scent of oil, they were still in the hot zone.

“So, what happened to me out there?” he asked.

Flipping through some paperwork, Dr. Deal sat on the side of the gurney. “Well, what didn't happen to you? You had some very light internal bleeding from being tossed around the cockpit. Nothing life-threatening, but it's not going to feel good or look pretty. Aside from that, it seems we administered too much of the steroid through the infusion device; the chaos in the cockpit led to an error in its dispensation. It made your blood pressure skyrocket. You narrowly avoided a stroke. If not for your general good health and youth, you would surely have died. Count your lucky stars, Silvio.”

“Huh.” Silvio clicked his tongue. “Surprised Conway didn't bring me any flowers. He's usually such a softie.”

The doctor chuckled. “You're lucky he didn't finish the job and kill you after the Colossus fled. He was mighty angry that you took his precious baby out to battle with only one arm.” She glanced up at the telemetry monitor, then put away the thermometer probe she'd been holding. So that'd been what he'd felt poking him in the face. “What you did was heroic, but next time you'll need to exercise more caution, Silvio. Otherwise... there might not be a next time.”

He tried to wrap his mind around that, the concept of his dying at ARTEMIS' helm. He hadn't considered it a whole lot up to that point, feeling too unstoppable to worry about his safety. Meeting the Colossus head-on, though, had changed his perception. It was a formidable opponent, not the kind of thing he was willing to fuck with. The next time they met in battle-- and he knew it would be sooner than he liked-- it could definitely be the end of him. ARTEMIS hadn't been built with the safety of its operator in mind. For that matter, it hadn't been built to get thrown around like a rag doll by some giant lake monster. There was no way for him to stay safe in the cockpit, save to weigh his moves more carefully and avoid the heavy hits.

It was no different from what he'd always faced in the ring.

Someone entered the tent. “I see you're awake,” came a voice tinged with no little sharpness.

It was Conway.

Silvio grinned, sitting up in bed and nodding. “I hear you were real worried about me.”

Conway was just about to bark at him when someone else entered from behind. It was Commandant McCoy.

“There he is, the man of the goddamn hour!” said McCoy clapping his hands. “I tell you, kid, you pulled some serious weight out there!” He laughed loudly, placing a hand on Conway's shoulder like they were old friends. “Wouldn't you say so? He sent that fuckin' monster packing in a hurry!”

Conway brushed the commandant's hand away and sneered. “And almost ruined years of work in the process. What he did was imbecilic. He could have gotten himself killed, and worse, destroyed ARTEMIS.”

“Ouch,” muttered Silvio. “Tell us how you really feel, doc.”

Shoving a finger at him as though it were a spear, Conway grimaced. “You repelled the beast, but I warn you I won't allow such carelessness again. It was a one-time deal, Mr. Echegaray. And taking such risks with my technology is unacceptable. Is that understood?”

“Crystal clear,” replied Silvio.

Conway stormed out, shaking his head. It would probably be a long time before he let this one go.

McCoy walked over and took Silvio's hand firmly, shaking it. “I gave you a lot of shit, but you came through for us, kid. Glad to have you fighting on our side through all of this.” He slapped Silvio's arm so hard that the bruises on it began to throb with renewed vigor.

“T-thanks,” muttered Silvio through a wince. “You be sure to thank those guys in the tanks for me. They came into the picture at just the right time.”

When McCoy sauntered out of the tent, it was just Dr. Deal and Silvio once more. The doctor wrapped a blood pressure cuff around his arm and tracked his vitals, making notes on a clipboard. “ARTEMIS is currently being repaired. It took less damage than any of us expected. Emil will be working around the clock. Once the repairs have been made, we'll be shipping out after the Colossus. Or so I've been told.”

“Shipping out? What's that supposed to mean?” He rolled onto his side, stretching his beat up limbs like a cat on a sunny windowsill. “Didn't it head back to the lake or something?”

Dr. Deal's hands trembled a little as she removed the cuff. Gravely, she shook her head. “I'm afraid not. The worst seems to have happened.” She gulped. “We got word that it went past Lake Liliana. In fact, recon claims to have tracked it just past the Wisconsin border. It's left Michigan, Silvio, and we aren't sure just how far it's going to go. It's on a rampage.”

“A rampage?”

She nodded. “It's cutting across the country towards the west coast at a frightful pace, and it's leveling everything in its path. I know this isn't what you want to hear just after waking up, but we're going to have to give chase, and fast. Now that you're awake and stable, we'll need to start planning.”

Shit, it's already in Wisconsin? He closed his eyes and tried to imagine the monstrosity racing across the country, completely unchallenged. What if it made it all the way out west, to California, where Sarah and Leah were? It was the worst scenario imaginable, but suddenly it didn't seem particularly unlikely. A trip of that distance could be made easily by the creature.

He threw off the flimsy blanket and sat on the edge of the gurney, feeling suddenly dizzy. He held out an arm and grabbed onto the white sleeve of the doctor's lab coat. “We need to get moving.”

23

There wasn't much road free of debris, which made for a bumpy ride. The hulking vehicle they were in, a big, green thing Silvio couldn't put a name to, rolled over a mass of rubble. He was doing his best to sit up against the stiff backrest, arms crossed. Dr. Deal had given him a few pills; some of them painkillers, others meant to keep him relaxed. He'd chewed them up to make them kick in faster and could still taste them. The inside of the vehicle was dim, the only light coming from small slits in the sides of the metal body. There were two drivers in the cab of the thing, but he'd seen precious little of them since setting out.

It'd been almost a day since he'd woken up in that medical tent, and his body was still a mess. Bruises were spreading, deepening in color. If not for the drugs in his system he might've been rendered an invalid.

He was stuck in this vehicle with Dr. Conway, Dr. Deal and Emil. Dr. Deal was leaning back as best she could, sleeping lightly, while the other two sat across from Silvio, bickering. It was strange to see the ordinarily quiet Emil complain in this way, but if the dark circles under his eyes were any indicator, then he'd been worked like a slave over the past day.

“You people want me to just pull fresh parts and repairs out of my ass, but it takes time.” He tugged on his overalls, lowering his head and loosing a great sigh. “When you hurry me, mistakes get made.”

Conway said nothing for a short time, peering narrowly through the slits in the sheet metal at the passing scenery. They were nearly out of Michigan, which would have been cause for celebration, if not for news that the Colossus had just stormed into South Dakota. It'd been intercepted by a squadron of high-altitude bombers, however the planes had exhausted their payloads upon the beast without scoring any decisive injury. If anything, they'd only pissed the thing off further and given it more anger with which to fuel its furious sprint across the US.

“This arrangement we have with the government is disgusting,” said Conway after a time. He crossed his legs, his face pressed into a scowl. The wrinkles on his face were those produced by a life's worth of scowls. Had he smiled, his face might've crumbled away like a clod of dried mud. He straightened his lab coat, smoothing it out as he continued. “We're allowing them far too much information. They've been poking around my ARTEMIS more than is appropriate, and I doubt they aren't taking notes. If Mr. Aderhold only knew what these feds were up to, he'd void the contract at once and let them try to deal with the Colossus on their own. Surely they've violated the terms.” He threw up a hand. “I can't say I blame them; ARTEMIS is the single most intriguing piece of technology ever produced, however their examinations during repairs are tantamount to theft.”

Silvio smirked. It wasn't that he completely disagreed with Conway. ARTEMIS was incredible. There was no denying it. Conway was a prick, but his invention really lived up to the hype. Nevertheless, whenever he talked about ARTEMIS, he came across as an overly prideful parent, talking about their honor student. It was enough to make Silvio roll his eyes.

Hoping to change the subject, Silvio cleared his throat. The pain killers were starting to kick in; a bit of relief washed over him. “So, why hasn't the thing stopped, eh? Why is it just... charging across the country?”

Conway's eyebrows perked up and he fell into thought. “Well,” came the reply some moments later, “it probably won't stop until it reaches some substantial barrier. It's gone berserk. Perhaps when it calms its nerve it'll settle down somewhere, but more likely it'll push on till it gets to the Pacific. Then, possibly, it'll dive into the ocean and keep going. It's anyone's guess.” Conway evidently didn't care much about the beast or its intentions. Immediately he returned to the subject of ARTEMIS, discussing possible refinements to its future arsenal.

“Well, what about the Rockies? Won't the mountains at least slow it down?” The question had only just left his lips when he realized how stupid it sounded. That thing was a mountain. It could scale the Rockies without breaking a sweat.

Silvio was chilled to his very core by the thought of the Colossus making its way to the west coast. What if it made it to California? If it indiscriminately trampled his home and family underfoot? The very notion was sufficient to make him squirm. He wanted to jump out of the vehicle and sprint all the way home, just to make sure everything was OK. He didn't have any way to contact Sarah; he had no phone on him, and under the circumstances he doubted the military would allow him to contact anyone who wasn't associated with the operation.

He shook his head, remembering what he'd told Sarah before leaving. He'd assured her everything would be OK, that Aderhold Corp. simply wanted his help cleaning up the area in the aftermath of the Colossus' attack. You fucked up, he thought. That's a hell of a lie. You almost bought the farm back there... what would Sarah think if she saw you on your way to duke it out with that scaly motherfucker again? She'd lose her damn mind...

“The way they're going, they'll have enough information to develop their own robot in the next few years. Goddamned thieves, the lot of them. I wish we'd never worked with the military on this. Mr. Aderhold has made a grave error in allowing them even this much access to ARTEMIS.” Conway held his thumb and pointer within a hairs' width of each other to demonstrate his point. “They're learning too much and will steal this technology, mark my words.” He slapped his knee, looking to Emil. “It's blatant theft. Disgusting, no?”

As much as Silvio wished he could give a damn about the ethics of intellectual property right then, he had far more important things on his mind.

Hang in there, guys. Do what you have to do to stay safe. I'm on my way, and I'll do whatever I can to protect you. I'm going to wring this thing's neck. And before you know it, I'll be home and we'll be happy again. We'll be able to put this whole nightmare behind us.

24

After choking down a hastily-prepared MRE, it was Silvio's turn to get some shut-eye. He leaned back against the stiff seat and closed his eyes, attempting to shut out the horrifying visions that cluttered his waking thoughts. Everyone in the vehicle had urged him to get some rest, and Dr. Deal had dispensed a few more pills to help him get some sleep, but none, so far, had touched him. He was wired, on a stack of potent steroids that gave him strength while promoting wakefulness and allowing him to ignore the pain that wreaked his body from every quadrant.

Finally, though, when he learned to ignore the frequent bumps in the road, Silvio managed to drift to sleep.

At some point, he dreamt of the one bedroom apartment he shared with Sarah. He walked through it like a ghost, watching Sarah sleep peacefully in bed with Leah. They were both rendered so clearly he felt convinced he was there. He could hear their breaths, could see Sarah's light hair spilling over the edge of her pillow. He could see Leah's small feet sticking awkwardly out of the covers, the very same feet that frequently ended up in his face when he shared the bed. He ambled over to the bed, adjusting the covers over his daughter.

He ambled out to the kitchen, saw the table where they shared their meals. On the ground, scattered in a corner, was his old training gear. Sarah always got after him for leaving it laying around.

BOOM.

The ground shook.

He was suddenly in the bedroom again, watched as Sarah sat bolt upright, clutching their daughter to her chest.

BOOM.

Something was coming.

And he knew exactly what it was.

“Run!” he screamed at them.

Sarah and Leah, however, couldn't hear him. They didn't even know he was there. He was frozen out of the scene completely. His repeated shouts at them were about as effective as shouting at the actors on a TV show. It didn't matter how he felt about the plot; his feelings weren't going to change the episode's ending.

The apartment building shook.

The two of them stayed in bed, clutching at each other. Vivid, tear-stained horror plagued their faces.

Then came the foot. That very same foot that'd stomped on him while he'd been at ARTEMIS' helm.

The Colossus stepped on the complex, leveling it underfoot without the least bit of effort.

Screams were silenced. Lives snuffed out in an instant. Everything he'd ever known was destroyed. There would be nothing for him to come home to. Nothing he cared about in the world would be preserved.

Silvio awoke with a scream.

Everyone in the vehicle was startled awake, looking to him with annoyance. “Keep it down over there,” grumbled Conway, folding his arms and struggling to get back to sleep.

Dr. Deal was awake, and she leaned in, placing a hand on Silvio's shoulder. “What's wrong, bad dream?”

Massaging his forehead, he nodded. His heart was thumping like mad. He could feel it in his temples, in his teeth. “Yeah... bad dream.” He knew damn well that if the team didn't intercept the Colossus soon, it may become more than just a nightmare. “Anything new?”

“I heard that the creature has crossed into Utah. We're starting into Wyoming. It hasn't shown any signs of stopping yet.”

Silvio nodded, then stared at the metallic ceiling. It was just a dream, he reminded himself again and again. But it could very well become a reality.

***

Silvio spent the night sleeping in fits. When he awoke, the dim light of morning entered in through the slits in the vehicle. He yawned, stretching his legs and turning to the others, who had woken up before him.

“You looked uncomfortable,” muttered Emil, looking little refreshed for his night of bump-ridden sleep. “Sleep poorly?”

“Don't look so comfortable yourself there, tex,” replied Silvio, sporting a little grin. He wiped some drool from the corner of his mouth and looked to the others. “Any news?”

Conway sniffed at the air. “We received word just an hour ago that the Colossus has moved into California. It has hardly stopped since leaving Michigan. Its endurance is incredible.”

Silvio's heart almost stopped. “What the hell do you mean, it's in California?”

Conway arched a brow, looking at Silvio as though he were stupid. “I mean what I said, Mr. Echegaray. It's as I expected; it's raced straight for the west coast. Whether the ocean will stop it remains to be seen.”

Silvio punched the side of the vehicle, his knuckles screaming out in pain as he did so. His greatest fear was coming to pass. The Colossus had made it into California. “Where are we?” he asked.

“We're more than half-way through Utah, as of an hour ago,” said Dr. Deal, combing a lock of tangled hair behind her ear. “Why? What's the matter.”

Silvio's face was painted in sheer panic. He grit his teeth, shrinking back and clawing at the leather seat beneath him. He wanted to break free, could have climbed the walls for all of the anxiety he felt. “OK, why don't we fly to California and head it off at the pass, then? Why follow it in this clunky thing? We flew into Michigan before-- we could do the same this time and save a little time, you know?”

Conway shook his head. “Absolutely not.”

“And why the hell not?” demanded Silvio, balling his fists.

“I decided at the onset that we would drive, Mr. Echegaray,” replied Conway, raising his voice. “You needed as much time as possible to rest. Putting you in the cockpit straight after that last battle would be a suicide mission for ARTEMIS. Moreover, it was my hope that the cross-country trek would tire out the Colossus. It hasn't slowed yet, but by the time we get to California, perhaps it will have been tuckered out. ARTEMIS has been loaded into specialized transports, and Emil has taken it upon himself to direct the packing so that the unit may be deployed more quickly than it was in Michigan. Nevertheless, we mustn't rush into this. Rushing into the fight in Michigan very nearly ended in failure.”

Dr. Deal attempted to voice agreement. “It's true. You need your rest, and the only way we can hope to win is if you and ARTEMIS are both in fighting shape.”

Silvio dug his nails into the seat. If it had been a living thing, he would've drawn blood. We're running out of time. I can't just sit in this damned thing and get shipped around. I need to get out there, stop it in its tracks before... His dream flashed vividly through his mind; visions of his family, his apartment, getting stomped on by the beast. Conway doesn't even care about all of the destruction. State after State has gotten fucked by this thing, but he's driving us there nice and slow because he doesn't want his precious robot getting dinged up. He's a goddamn monster. Doesn't he have a conscience? Why doesn't he care about what's happening to all of the people who live along the creature's path?

25

The announcement that they'd made it into California hadn't come through even a minute when Silvio demanded they stop.

“I want to pull over. I want ARTEMIS constructed here and now. I can give chase on foot. It'll be a lot faster that way. We've wasted enough time, driving after the son of a bitch. Let's get ARTEMIS up and running. Please.” He looked to Conway pleadingly.

“I'm not sure how feasible it would be to--” began Conway.

“Come on. The roads are awful; it will be faster if the three of you fly and I follow the bastard in ARTEMIS. It's a solid plan. Plus, the Colossus is far enough away right now for us to safely get ARTEMIS put together. Not like last time.”

Picking up his radio, Conway hit the button. “Commandant, this is Conway. We'd like to stop here and assemble ARTEMIS. Me and the rest of the team would like an airlift to the target's position, and ARTEMIS will chase the thing on foot.”

A few moments later, the familiar voice of Commandant McCoy came through. “Fine with me. The sooner we get moving, the sooner we can tie the sumbitch down. Is our golden boy rested enough to take him on, though?”

Conway narrowed his gaze, dissecting Silvio silently for a time. “Perhaps.”

As the vehicle rolled to a stop, Conway set aside his radio and leaned forward. “I'm not sure you're rested enough yet, if I'm being honest. You seem to want to rush into this. Why?”

Silvio grit his teeth. He wanted to slug Conway for his heartlessness. “Don't you care about what's happening out there? So many people are dying in this thing's path. Take what happened in Michigan and multiply it a hundred times. That's what we're dealin' with here.”

“Oh.” replied Conway with a sardonic grin. “You want to play hero, do you? To save them all? How... noble of you.” He stood up, opening the door to the vehicle and stepping out into the sunlight. “I needn't remind you that we aren't here to play hero, however. We're engaged in a test of ARTEMIS' abilities. That's all this is, at the end of the day.”

Silvio was floored by Conway's callousness. He'd known the doctor to be a selfish monster, but to hear him express his opinions in this way only made Silvio hate him more. Silvio ambled out after him, his good eye accosted by a dose of bright sunlight.

“Silvio, why are you in such a hurry?” asked Dr. Deal, climbing out. “It's still going to take a while for Emil to get ARTEMIS together. We can't rush this... so, why are you in such a panic? Why the urgency?”

“It's because my family is in California!” spat Silvio. “My girlfriend and daughter are here, and the monster might get to them. You understand? My family is in danger.” He was so angry he was shaking. “I need to stop the thing, and fast.”

Laughter escaped Conway's lips. The man was almost doubled over, laughing. “So, that's what has you so worked up, is it?” He stood upright and sucked in a deep breath, the amusement sapped from his visage at once. “Perhaps, then, you aren't in fighting shape. This anxiety of yours could be a liability.” He took his radio in hand and traced the button with his finger. “I should probably tell the commandant to halt things until you can calm yourself down. It won't do to send you into the fray, being so worried about your loved ones. Perhaps we'll... set off in the morning, instead?”

Before he even knew what he was doing, Silvio had the collar of Conway's coat in his fist. “Listen here, you fuck,” growled Silvio, his nose pressed into Conway's. “You get that goddamned robot together now or I'll kill you right here. Understand? We get moving now or you're dead.”

Conway did not blanch, did not flinch. His eyes were every bit as sharp and possessed of cold as they always were. “Kill me, then,” he said, grimacing. “ARTEMIS doesn't move without my say-so. Kill me and the unit won't budge. I guess your family will be... fucked then, won't they?” The cruelest smile wormed its way across his pale lips.

Silvio let him go forcefully, sending him to the ground. “Just hurry it up.”

Standing and brushing his coat off, Conway nodded to Emil. “Let's begin. We'd hate for our operator here to get worked up. No need to give him the chance to do something he might regret.”

***

When ARTEMIS had been fully constructed, Silvio couldn't get into the cockpit fast enough. Accepting a cocktail of painkillers and performance-enhancers that might've killed a lesser man, he took off his shirt and allowed Dr. Deal to prep him for launch. Without the Colossus bearing down on them, the process went more smoothly than it had the last time. Time was of the essence, and the moment he got the OK, he intended to send ARTEMIS sprinting after the beast.

Emil had compartmentalized the unit differently this time in transit so that the components were easier for him to sequence when the time came to reconstruct it. Moreover, he hadn't torn it down completely, leaving certain of the limbs completely intact, for added ease. The entire unit was put together in the space of just a few hours, and when a quick test was done of its responsiveness, Silvio got the green light.

First, however, he was briefed by Conway and McCoy, whose voices competed through the cockpit's speaker. First, was the commandant.

“Look, kid, San Fran's been ruined. The fucker seems to have stopped, for a while, anyway. It's sitting in the ocean. Dunno what it's doing there, but it's balled up in the shallows, on the coast. Maybe it's sleeping. I don't know. What I do know is that we don't need to lose anymore ground to this thing. Can I trust you to take it out this time? Ya did grand last time with just one arm to work with. Ya got both this time. Think you can pull off a miracle?”

Leaning forward in the cockpit and clenching ARTEMIS' fist, Silvio replied in the affirmative. “Don't you worry. I'm going to show you things you've never seen before. It won't know what hit it.”

Conway spoke up. “Mr. Echegaray, I hope you'll exercise extreme caution. We've equipped you with a new weapon, which may allow you to keep some distance from the creature.”

“New weapon?”

“A sword.” Silvio remembered hearing talk of a sword. Conway went on to wax poetic about it. “It is the most devastating blade ever crafted. It is unbreakable and unimaginably sharp, crafted of the same alloy that makes up ARTEMIS' body. It is the single sharpest thing on this planet. If anything can devastate the rocky hide of that creature, it is this sword. It has been attached to ARTEMIS' back by a magnetic bond. To release it, you need only to will the magnetic bond to cease. Then ARTEMIS will be able to grasp it and wield it. Understand?”

His mind was scrambled with fear. San Francisco had been leveled. His family wasn't so far from there; had they been in the Colossus' path? There was no way for him to know. Doing his best to restrain his worry, he complied with Conway's directions, lest the hateful man stall the pursuit further. “Anything else I need to know?”

“Happy hunting,” said McCoy amusedly. “I take it you know the way?”

Silvio turned in ARTEMIS, the display showing him the long line cut into the ground where the raging Colossus had rampaged its way to the coast.

Every muscle in his body tensing, he took a deep breath and began sprinting down the line, following the creature's tracks. Everything felt perfect; ARTEMIS' systems were responsive and a steady stream of drugs made his blood feel like fire. He was a part of the machine, the heart and soul of this glimmering titan that would strike down the beast at the end of the line.

Enjoy your rest while you can get it, you bastard. I'm comin', and I won't play nice this time.

26

The monster hunt was on.

From the very first, Silvio was overwhelmed by the scope of destruction at every turn. Presently he was racing over the ruins of a city; just which, he couldn't be certain. To know that the creature had laid waste to so much of the country in this same fashion was a difficult thing for him to process. All around he saw survivors milling about like ants, their anguish and terror palpable even from hundreds of feet up.

Here and there makeshift shelters had been constructed, and they appeared to be hotbeds of human activity. There were communities of tents, bustling with both military personnel and civilians. Were Sarah and Leah in one of those camps somewhere? Or, maybe, had the Colossus avoided their town altogether? Or...

He forced the thought out of his mind, focusing only on his furious pursuit. He pushed every ounce of energy he had into urging ARTEMIS on. The mech ran hard and fast, sailing through the air with great strides. He wished that Conway had given ARTEMIS the ability to fly. Despite the great swaths of ground the mech covered with every step, he didn't feel he was moving fast enough.

The sound of a helicopter reached his ears. Dr. Deal, Conway, Emil and McCoy were in it. The thing had trailed him since he'd set out. Now and then one of the passengers would say something to him over the comm line, but for the most part his rush to the coast was gravely silent.

Silvio wasn't in a chatty mood. He'd gotten his orders. Now was a time for action, a time for revenge. Even if his own family had been spared, there was no shortage of rage in his heart for what the creature had done to countless others. Seeing the destruction first-hand, his disbelief melted away into sheer rage. This was an anger unlike any he'd ever known.

Early in his boxing career, when he'd been a green-behind-the-ears rookie, he'd gotten slugged in the nose by some upstart. Losing control, he'd tossed away everything he'd learned and gone after the guy hard, throwing a flurry of wild punches and elbows that ultimately got him disqualified. Up until now, he'd never been reacquainted with that kind of anger. Things just went so much more smoothly when he controlled himself, reined it in. Abuelo had always taught him that, even from the earliest days. “The best fighters are the ones who keep their cool, mijo. They don't lose their heads after getting hit. They don't get mad, they work smarter, understand?”

What would abuelo say if he could see him now? Silvio wondered. The old man's voice echoed in his ears, but the meaning was lost.

Sorry, abuelo, he thought. There's a time for calm. There's a time for working smarter. But this ain't it. When I find this thing, I'm going to try my damnedest to tear it to pieces.

Somehow, he didn't think his abuelo would have had such a hard time agreeing with him, in this instance.

***

His head was beginning to ache when he spotted the coast. The intense focus had taken its toll on his energy levels, and only the constant stream of drugs kept him in the game.

But then the destination came into view.

Silvio was reinvigorated, the mental strain he'd taken in driving ARTEMIS across the State evaporating forthwith. It was showtime. The Colossus was somewhere in the water. At least, that's what McCoy had said.

Conway broke in over the comm line.”Mr. Echegaray, the creature is close-by. Pay close attention and prepare for battle.”

Silvio stopped in his tracks, standing amidst piles of busted skyscrapers. He waded through them as though they were fallen building blocks in a child's playroom. A cloud of dust lingered about the ground. Things hadn't completely settled down here since the Colossus had barreled through. Though he glanced this way and that, Silvio couldn't zero in on the creature. He scanned the shallows, standing near the coastline and using the display's zoom function.

Something so big can't stay hidden for long, even in the ocean, he thought to himself. I'll find you soon enough.

As he walked along the coast, he saw a few makeshift camps in the distance. They were alive with military vehicles. As best he could tell, military craft were distributing rations to the survivors and constructing temporary shelters. That was what he'd told Sarah he was off to do. He'd lied to her, told her that he was tasked with doing cleanup.

Instead, he was the guy they'd brought on to hunt the monster down. He chuckled at the ludicrousness of it all, and hoped he'd have a chance to see her again. Somehow, even if he survived all of this without a scratch, he didn't think Sarah would ever see the humor in it.

Turning to the glistening ocean, Silvio narrowed his gaze. “So, should I dive in there and look for it?” he asked through the comm line. “How does ARTEMIS handle in the water? Is she a good swimmer?”

He didn't have to wait for Conway or the others to reply, however. Instead, his target came to him.

A black stain crowded the water some ways out. Something, it was clear, was emerging from the depths very rapidly. In the next instant, black spires were thrust out of the water. A reptilian head, hulking shoulders, two arms tipped in fearsome claws.

The Colossus thrust its massive body out of the deep and stood firm, appraising ARTEMIS with animalistic rage in its yellow eyes.

When last they'd met, it'd been during a night-time battle. In the light, the creature's grotesque features were all the more apparent. Its black, scaly form exuded primordial wickedness. Its mouthful of jagged teeth parted in a deafening roar that was altogether too familiar to him now. From behind, he caught glimpses of that enormous tail. The creature's face was still marred near the jaw, where Silvio had delivered a solid kick. The spot hadn't completely healed, still looked raw.

Silvio's attention was pulled away from the beast, however.

Something else captured his gaze as the creature stood in the water, looking him over with hatred.

In its emergence from the sea, it had displaced a good deal of water, conjuring up a tremendous wave. From a mile or so out to sea there now surged a tidal wave whose equal Silvio had only ever glimpsed in film. A great wall of water was dredged up, gaining speed and size as it barreled towards the coast.

His limbs went limp as he scrambled for some way to stop it.

All of those people, he thought, glancing the flimsy tenements where soldiers and refugees now cowered. That wave is going to blast them... they don't stand a chance.

Spreading out ARETMIS' arms, Silvio sought to block the thing, using the mech's body as a shield. There was no point, however. Even before it struck him dead on and nearly toppled ARTEMIS, he knew himself unable to stop it. There was simply too much water, coming from too large an area, for his feeble efforts to have any effect. Water crashed past his reach, began eating up the coastline and the land beyond.

He turned, wide-eyed, as the tsunami rocketed past and tore the makeshift shelters, along with all of their inhabitants, to sea. Tanks were pulled into the drink, along with what must have been hundreds of flailing humans. Men, women and children were dragged under the waves, along with loads of rubble and impotent military vehicles.

And still the Colossus stood in the sea, its bloodlust suddenly reinvigorated at the sight of its metallic rival.

Frozen, crestfallen for a time, it was only the shouts through the comm line that roused him to action. “Silvio!” called Dr. Deal.

“There's the creature! Strike it down, at once!” called Conway.

“Let 'er have it!” came McCoy

Silvio punched the console before him, repeatedly, till his knuckles opened and a trail of blood ran down the side. “Goddammit!” He turned his teary eyes to the beast that snarled at him from the distance. Palming away his tears, he recalled the magnetic lock that kept the sword fastened to ARTEMIS' body and released it. Then, reaching back, he willed the mech to grasp the handle.

Disgust and white-hot anger coursed through him, filling up his every cell to bursting.

Face red and awash in tears, Silvio felt a sob welling in his throat. He choked it back, however. There would be time for mourning later. The electrode patches on his wrists were dappled in tears as he formulated his plan. Funny, he thought, that even that dead eye of his should still be capable of shedding tears.

Pointing the tip of the sword seaward, he screamed out before rushing at the black form of the Colossus. There was no need for hatching a detailed plan, for strategy. His only desire then was to perform as violent an execution as possible.

“You goddamned monster, this is where it ends! Today you have more than just me to reckon with. I'm going to give you every ounce of my anger... and the anger of everyone else on Earth. You're done for... done for!”

27

Silvio didn't know much about sword fighting. He'd trained for years to turn his fists into powerful weapons, never having to rely on any other tool to make him deadly. Against this foe, however, the sword was a much-needed upgrade to his usual arsenal.

Wielding it with one hand, he raced into the water till ARTEMIS' legs were submerged nearly to the knees. The mech operated well-enough, and the water added only a bit of resistance to her stride. The Colossus, however, well-suited to an aquatic environment, proved surprisingly agile in the water, diving down and resurfacing with incredible speed. The waves it dredged up in its wake as it moved to avoid Silvio's wild slashes pummeled what little remained of the coast, expanding the borders of the ocean and nearly overcoming ARTEMIS.

If he was going to win this fight, he'd have to lure the thing onto land. There was no way he could hope to defeat it in the water-- not with this weapon he had zero experience with. Silvio willed ARTEMIS back slowly, step-by-step, till the mech had risen out of the almost waist-high water and neared the shore. Brandishing the sword, he waited for the creature to arrive within striking distance and delivered a powerful slash.

Missed.

The Colossus was no fool; it knew better than to walk into the business-end of the sword. Though its craggy exterior would likely protect it against any attack, the creature was cautious. It'd underestimated ARTEMIS once, and apparently recalled the way its face had been wounded the last time.

Jabbing in the air, ARTEMIS lurched towards the beast, only to have the tip of its blade parried by the creature's tail. The obsidian spike on the end batted the blade away like an expert fencer, and then remained in position, lest Silvio attempt a follow-up slash.

Focusing on the blade, Silvio unleashed a downward slash, then a side-jab when the first was narrowly avoided.

“This thing is just too goddamn fast in the water,” uttered Silvio, doubling back towards shore. “Either that, or I'm just too slow in it.”

Conway's voice came through the comm line, colored in tones of excitement that sounded wildly out of place. “ARTEMIS is not designed for aquatic activities of this kind, though to see it in action is inspiring. I've already got some ideas for improvements in its design, ways to allow it improved mobility underwater.”

Silvio sighed, allowing ARTEMIS to mount the shore. “Well, I'm so glad I could help you out with that, doc.”

As if taking the bait, the Colossus followed him onto land, snaking through the raging currents with ease and then bounding onto the lip of the shore with one of its enormous saurian feet. It lashed out at him with a claw, demonstrating such speed that he was momentarily stunned. ARTEMIS' sword was caught in the swipe, and was knocked from her grasp.

“Shit!” Silvio struggled to keep balance as the Colossus started straightaway into its next offensive. The snaking tail shot past the bulk of its torso and encircled the mech's head, tightening in an instant and dragging ARTEMIS down onto her knees. Silvio was rattled, saved from ruin only by the harness he wore. From up above, he could hear the sounds of metal being tried under great pressure.

The Colossus was trying to rip ARTEMIS' head off of her shoulders.

Struggling to gain a footing but pushed down repeatedly by the strength of the creature's tail, Silvio tried to reach the sword. It'd fallen into the ground, had been buried up to the hilt, like a hot knife in butter. The thing really was incredibly sharp, but it did him no good buried in the shore. He tried to grab it, but every time he moved, the grip of the Colossus grew only more oppressive.

The black monolith peered down at ARTEMIS as it attempted to wrench off her head, a savage delight communicated in its yellow gaze. A lesser opponent would have been torn to shreds by such an assault, however the Colossus seemed to enjoy ARTEMIS' resilience, roaring as the segments of its tail writhed and tightened. The sound of groaning metal filled in the silences.

“Come on, ARTEMIS... hold on, buddy...” Focusing his energies on gaining his feet, Silvio loosed a scream. One-by-one ARTEMIS' feet were planted shakily in the ground. Then, with a monumental effort, the mech began to rise. Silvio's body quivered as though he himself were bearing the titan's wrath. His head ached terribly, his mouth went dry.

But he managed to stand the thing.

Enraged at this show of insolence, the Colossus screamed in tones that saw the ocean churn before drawing near and laying into the beleaguered mech with its clawed hands. A series of smacks were delivered, which rocked ARTEMIS and very nearly toppled her shaking operator.

Amid the blows, Silvio reached out and balled ARTEMIS' fist. “Back it up!” he shouted, wheeling the mech's arm around and delivering a firm, back-handed punch to its right eye.

The Colossus fell several steps back, its tail loosening considerably and a screech of pain issuing from its scaly lips.

He'd scored a massive blow.

Rolling away from the Colossus' reach, Silvio grabbed the hilt of the sword and pulled it from the earth. ARTEMIS then turned to face the beast, which had fallen onto its haunches in a fit of shrill cries.

Its right eye had been severely damaged, the yellow globe having been punctured and the insides of it spilling out across the creature's craggy face. The thing pawed at its craggy snout, its limbs shook and it waged a wild tantrum.

He'd blinded it in its right eye.

Silvio began to laugh. Watching the beast shudder and cry, he felt an intense rush of satisfaction. The aching in his body was quelled for a moment, his stress melted away. The thing had underestimated ARTEMIS again, had gotten too close. And now it was paying the price.

But more than that, it was blind in its right eye now, just like he was.

And, like Silvio, it'd been blinded by a lucky punch.

“How the fuck do you like it?” shouted Silvio till spittle flew from his lips. “How does it feel, having only one eye? How about I come over there and carve out the other one, you bastard?” ARTEMIS gripped the handle of the sword tightly and raced forth.

He loosed a great, wide slash with the weapon, and this time, it didn't miss its mark.

The blade sank into the Colossus' left flank with ease, bypassing the craggy plating on its exterior and carving through the soft flesh beneath. As the sword exited, a spray of brackish blood sailed from the new wound, littering the shore.

The sounds that issued from the tyrant's craw were too awful for words. It toppled over, thrashing against the land with such force that it generated a tremor. It was hurting, and it knew it'd been outclassed. Any minute now the death-blow from that razor-sharp weapon was going to come from above. Its reign as alpha predator on this Earth had been fleeting; here it was, about to get dispatched on its back, shrieking like a frightened animal.

It was enough to put a smile on his face.

Silvio drew near and raised up the sword, preparing to jam it into the beast's exposed belly.

From the side, came the Colossus' tail, however, blasting ARTEMIS' hands and knocking the sword from her grasp. The weapon sailed into the water, vanishing from view the moment it pierced the waves.

“Goddammit!” Silvio reached for the blade, but caught a firm blow to the torso, instead. Then another. And another.

The Colossus was going ballistic.

It lashed out with the intensity of a creature backed into a corner, with the raw force of a being staring death in the face. The Colossus smashed ARTEMIS with every grain of power it had, beating its claw-studded paws into the mech's body till Silvio could feel the resultant vibrations in his teeth.

Silvio yelped, felt ARTEMIS getting knocked off balance by the flurry of blows, and focused on delivering a kick.

ARTEMIS' leg, too slow-moving, was caught up in the hold of the creature's tail, however. With a quick yank, ARTEMIS was sent to the ground.

The blows didn't stop.

Nor did the roaring.

Silvio felt himself being jostled roughly by every hit, felt the power of the Colossus even as ARTEMIS put her hands up and attempted to block.

There was no referee here to step in and stop the fight.

He'd been happy about that, once, but it went both ways.

“Silvio!” cried Dr. Deal from the comm line. “Hang in there, Silvio!”

He could scarcely hear her, though.

In the cockpit, things were growing dire. Whipped around in his seat like a rag doll, the patches were ripped from his body. Silvio felt the apparatus in his spine shifting. Something cool and liquid was splashed against his bare back. The thing had become disconnected.

Even as his consciousness lagged, he knew what that meant.

His connection to ARTEMIS was severed.

Completely.

Blasted around in his seat while the Colossus raged upon ARTEMIS, Silvio's head was dashed against the controls. Blood flooded his vision. He could taste it, smell it, as it washed over his face. The infusion apparatus gouged into his back, the potent pharmaceuticals within it spraying out now like a mist into the air. ARTEMIS was being picked up and slammed; in the resultant G-force, Silvio felt the bones and muscles in his chest flexing against his harness.

Things were being broken, torn, inside of him.

Unable to respond to the frenzy of screams and cries through the comm line, Silvio spat out a mouthful of blood and tried to breathe. The display was flickering terribly; in those rare moments when he could see through the veil of blood, he caught only snippets of activity through it. For a time, he saw the mech being pressed into the sand. Then, he caught sight of the sky.

Finally, before losing consciousness, he saw the blue, crashing waves, and watched as ARTEMIS was thrown headlong by the beast into the ocean.

Everything went black as the mech sank into the depths.

28

“So, what, exactly, are you trying to tell me?” General Coleman folded his hands and put his elbows on the desk, staring down the researcher before him.

The conference room was deathly silent. A team of government scientists had just been ordered there to share the results of a number of tests they'd been running. Their findings, however, were not a little controversial. Despite sharing their findings in full and discussing their methods, the assembly remained incredulous. The chief members of the NDC looked to one another, baffled.

And then, they got angry.

The lead researcher stepped forth, stammering. “W-well, sir, our study of the X-001 ARTEMIS unit has yielded an interesting result. Y-you see, it is made of a patented steel alloy that has been strengthened several times over by the inclusion of hitherto classified nanoparticles.”

“Yeah, all right, so?” demanded the General.

“So... after thoroughly studying the sample of the Colossus we picked up in Michigan, we've found that the Colossus' sturdy hide and the these nanoparticles are made of the same unknown material...”

Coleman hammered his fist against the desk as the room fell into hushed whispers. “So, what? You're telling me that Aderhold had access to the creature? That he used parts of the creature in beefing up his super robot?” He shook his head fervently. “That doesn't make sense.”

Director Smythe arched a brow. “I... I think it makes sense. I think... I think Aderhold's been holding something back. There's something off about this whole situation, and it stinks to high heaven.”

“Where's that senator, Trask?” asked Coleman, peering around the room.

“He wasn't in today,” squeaked one of the aides after looking through a document on a clipboard. “He couldn't make it due to 'other engagements,' according to my record.”

“What other engagements could he possibly have at a time like this?” shouted one of the assembly. “Its the end of the damn world out there!”

Secretary Nicholson barked to a group of aides. “Get Mayer Aderhold on the screen, now! Right now! Call him.”

A few minutes of tense shuffling saw the smiling visage of Mayer Aderhold cast upon the screens of the conference room. “Good evening. What seems to be the problem?” he asked, cocking his head to the side. “You appear to be in a great hurry to speak to me tonight, gentlemen.”

Coleman stood up, pointing to Aderhold. “You've got some explaining to do, Aderhold. Our researchers have just found something. After having a look at a piece of that behemoth out there, we come to find out that your robot's built partially of the same material. What's that about?” He then added, sharply, “Out with it, or I'll have you shipped to the US to stand trial before you know what hit you.”

Aderhold's smile widened. And then, he laughed.

Mayer Aderhold's laughter echoed through the silent room as the assembled members of the NDC looked on in outrage.

“And just what the hell is so damn funny?” demanded Coleman.

For a long while, Aderhold simply stared at the assembly, crossing his legs and folding his hands over his knees in a casual manner.

“Where did your corporation get this material?” asked the General, growing ever more irate. “I demand to know where you got it for your robot!”

Chuckling, Aderhold leaned towards the camera just a bit, giving the viewers a better look at his face. Then, without an ounce of amusement, replied, “That's simple, General. You see, my company is responsible for creating both ARTEMIS and the Colossus. The two projects merely shared some of the same materials.”

The conference fell into chaos. Chairs were thrown, the air was filled with shouts and demands for blood. Standing, Coleman struggled for some minutes to calm down the assembly, addressing Aderhold once more when he could get a word in. “You'd... you'd better be fucking with us, Aderhold. If what you say is true, then...” He tugged on his collar, giving his collection of regalia a jingle. “I'll have you tried as a criminal of war. No holds barred, you'll wish you were never born.” Shouts of agreement sounded from all around. “Because... you've created a weapon capable of genocide.”

“At the very least I don't break my contracts,” was Aderhold's calm rejoinder. “I stipulated that you and your friends were not to study my ARTEMIS. Did I not? You've broken contract, General, and I'm very disappointed in you. There will be, of course, a price to pay for that.”

Again, the room erupted into angry shouts and threats.

It was Burrell, Director of the Department of Defense, who managed to quiet them and ask Aderhold another question. “What have you done, Aderhold? And why? Why create such a thing? How is it even possible?”

Aderhold was only too happy to answer. His ordinarily calm eyes grew wide, and his teeth gleamed white and sharp in the dim light of the office where he sat. “I created the beast, it is true. Years back, before any of you knew Aderhold Corp. as a household name, I'd dabbled in genetic modification. A start-up of mine was rolled into Aderhold Corp. nearly two decades ago. Its operations were kept under wraps, you see, lest the public grow outraged. The people... they simply don't understand the value in diversification! We were working on unconventional things... but it was the cutting edge. I doubt that anyone has outdone the work we did back then, even now. We developed such strange and frightful things, using all sorts of DNA. We started by trying to breathe life into long-extinct species, but... our appetites continued to grow, and we decided to focus our energies on developing far more exotic things... the Colossus is but one of those pet projects.

“You all look on, frightened, outraged... but how can you know the utter pleasure that comes from bringing new life into this world? I did not create a child, did not waste my energies in bringing up new humans. No, I ushered in a new age, reached into the abyss and brought a god back with me for all of my efforts. I am a visionary, advancing the hands of the clock and furthering evolution while you cowards look on slack-jawed. It is not that I don't understand your anger; it is infuriating to glimpse the inadequacy of our species when compared to the likes of my Colossus, is it not? Nevertheless, the proper response is reverence! Mankind's day has come and gone. New forces lord over this Earth of ours now... unless mankind has the strength to persevere, to earn its place at the top of the food chain. That is why I built ARTEMIS. ARTEMIS is the answer, the only hope of this miserable species. If mankind wants to live, to succeed against this new champion on the path of evolution, then it must fight. The X-001 ARTEMIS is the culmination of human technology, the greatest invention of all time and the species' only saving grace. I rolled the dice... gave mankind the choice to submit or fight. And instead, you fools chose betrayal. The Colossus and his brothers will bring about a new age, gentlemen. This chapter of history is near its end.”

The assembly fell silent. Gulping, Coleman approached the nearest screen, looking up at the image of Aderhold with fright in his trembling eyes. “You... y-you mean to say that there are more of these things?”

Aderhold laughed wildly. “Oh, yes. Many more. The Colossus was grown in Michigan, with Lake Liliana serving as its womb. But there are others peppered all throughout the world, in places where you can never hope to find them.” He cracked a grin. “Not until it's already too late, that is.”

“You... you goddamned monster,” uttered Secretary Nicholson. “We're going to find you and put you down like an animal, you hear? Enjoy your freedom while you've got it, you smug prick, because we're coming after you now. There's nowhere to hide. Don't you realize what you've done?”

Aderhold was amused by this, and gave a small shrug of his shoulders. “Well, gentlemen, if that's how things are going to be, then I'm afraid I must defend myself in some way from your aggressions. You broke the contract and are now threatening my life.” He picked up a phone, punched a few buttons, and began giving brief statements in rapid German.

“The hell are you doing?” barked Director Burrell.

Clearing his throat, Aderhold replied. “For your threats on my life and your inability to honor our contract, I've decided to loose the rest of my creations upon the world. Even as we speak I have technicians the world over waking such beasts as you can scarcely imagine from their slumbers. There are things up my sleeve that make the Colossus appear as harmless as a cat. What a shame, for all of you. It's true that I created the villains, but I also developed a hero for you. ARTEMIS will never be able to handle my entire family of beasts, however. You could have had the remedy, could have worked with me to develop new technologies. Instead, you are all responsible for forcing my hand and seeing the world overrun by new and more terrible things. Mankind is truly irredeemable.”

With a casual wave, the screen went blank.

The assembly was still as the grave. Every brow in the room was pale and damp with sweat at the implications of this exchange.

Coleman looked to the others at his table, panting. “Do you... do you think the bastard is bluffing?”

29

The sound of the ventilator had melted into the ambient din. The hospital room felt cold, and the scent of antiseptic stung at her nostrils.

Dr. Deal looked down at Silvio, the bags under her eyes growing increasingly heavy, and waited. He'd been comatose for days. After that fight against the Colossus, he'd been left in terrible shape. The beast had thrown ARTEMIS into the ocean, cast it away like a worthless stone. Silvio had been inside, however. It was only through a miracle that he'd stayed alive. Though unable to breathe on his own, ARTEMIS' systems had flooded the cockpit with concentrated oxygen that sustained him until help arrived. She could still remember the way they'd labored, after the Colossus had disappeared into the ocean, to recover ARTEMIS and her sword from the ocean floor.

Last she'd heard, the Colossus had fled to the Mariana Trench. It was probably nursing its wounds there, resting, waiting for the day when it might rise again and wage its campaign of revenge against the surface-dwelling species that'd so gravely injured it.

Silvio, though, hadn't regained consciousness. He was deep into a coma. It was possible he would never wake up. This would be a difficult thing for her and the rest of their small team, but for mankind, who'd been depending on his training, it would be a far heavier burden to bear. Without Silvio at ARTEMIS' helm, there could be no defending against the Colossus, should it return.

There was a soft knock at the door.

Dr. Deal looked up to find a young woman standing there. In tow was a girl, no more than three years old. She smiled at them, though their expressions were anything but happy.

“Dr. Kim Deal?” asked the woman, sauntering into the hospital room and going white-faced.

Dr. Deal rushed towards her and offered her a seat. “Y-you must be Sarah, is that right?” She gave a weak smile, placing a hand upon the visitor's shoulder and supporting her as she swayed. The woman was about to faint, caught up in a panic.

“T-that's right,” Sarah finally said. “You were... you were the one who called and said that Silvio was here...?” She gulped and led the child closer to the bed.

Silvio was still, his face obscured by various tubes and bruises.

Sarah began to weep. “I've... I've seen him banged up before,” she sobbed, “but never this bad. What... what happened?”

Dr. Deal wasn't sure just how much she could say. Could she admit to this woman that Silvio had been the heroic pilot at ARTEMIS' helm, trying to save the world from the Colossus? Would it have been a breach of her contract to fill in Silvio's loved ones in such a way? She hesitated. “Well, I'm the doctor who's been assigned to his care. He's fallen into a deep coma after sustaining extremely severe injuries. I'm sorry to say we don't know whether he'll ever awaken...”

Sarah's arms went slack so that she could scarcely hold her daughter's hand. “How... how did this happen?”

You have to tell her. You can't just let her live in the dark. Not about something like this. She deserves to know what he was doing. Dr. Deal was about to speak when the door opened and a stern-faced solider peered inside the room.

“Dr. Kimberly Deal?” said the man, a rifle slung over his shoulder.

She startled at the sight of him. “Y-yes?”

“Come with me,” he ordered, opening the door a bit further and revealing a number of other soldiers waiting in the hall.

Dr. Deal excused herself and ambled slowly through the door, where she found both Conway and Emil waiting. They were surrounded by armed soldiers, and stood silently. Conway, in particular, looked positively enraged, but he said nothing and hovered near Emil. There was another man there, too, whose uniform was covered in medals. She thought she recognized him as the General they'd been assigned to work under by Mr. Aderhold.

“You're all here,” said the General, closing the door to Silvio's room. “I'm General Coleman, member of the NDC. From here on out, anything we discuss is to be kept classified. Understood?”

The trio nodded.

“You three comprise the team lent to us by Aderhold Corp. for maintaining the ARTEMIS unit. I am here to tell you that the US government's relationship with Aderhold Corp. has ended. Technically speaking, as important members of Aderhold's R&D team, you are all criminals in the eyes of the law.”

Dr. Deal gasped. “Wait, what?”

“This is ridiculous,” spat Conway, stepping towards the General. A pair of soldiers got in his way, however, and he got the hint, skulking back a few paces.

“Mayer Aderhold has been found out as the creator of the Colossus. You'll all be briefed on that matter later. In the meantime, I'm here to make an offer. Take it or leave it. You three can either surrender yourselves and all research surrounding the X-001 ARTEMIS unit, and work for us in developing new technology in that vein, or you can rot for the rest of your lives in a jail cell where no one will find you.”

Though she was outraged at the threat, Dr. Deal was even more floored at the notion that her boss, Aderhold, had had a hand in creating the Colossus. “That can't be... Mr. Aderhold would never... I mean, how could he possibly have...”

Conway threw up his hands. “Threats of this kind are illegal. I know my rights, and will not be forced to work against my will for you government pigs. Why should I put my years of expertise to work for the likes of you?” he said, pointing crookedly at the General.

General Coleman grimaced. “Because your old employer has more up his sleeve than the Colossus. He's just gone and released all of his little projects across the globe. We're talking an imminent wave of monster-related violence. If we're going to stand a chance... if we're going to survive as a species, then you will need to develop more of these machines, Dr. Conway. And train up pilots who can actually handle them.”

Conway was flabbergasted. Looking to Emil and the doctor, he shook his head. “This is madness. Surely that isn't the case. Aderhold would never--”

“Listen,” interrupted the General. “You can either surrender yourselves and the ARTEMIS as government property, or we can do this the hard way. Whatever you choose, just remember what's at stake here. If you're on board, then we need to get moving right away with selecting a new pilot for ARTEMIS. Something has reportedly emerged from the middle of the Atlantic. Three hours ago, it destroyed an aircraft carrier.”

“The Colossus?” chanced Emil.

The General shook his head.

There was apparently a lot more going on within Aderhold Corp. than any of them had realized. Dr. Deal peered back at the room where Silvio was, could still hear the faint sounds of his ventilator, along with the sobs of his girlfriend and child. She would do everything she could to help him recover; not solely because of their mission and his importance to it, but because he was a good man that deserved to see his family again.

“Well?” asked Coleman, growing impatient. “What's it going to be, you three?”

TO BE CONTINUED...

Thank you for reading! I hope you've enjoyed BONECRUSHER. The next volume in this series, EARTHSHAKER, is coming soon! Consider joining my mailing list below for news and updates on the Armageddon Tetralogy!

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