Shades Of Forever

I regain consciousness in an impossibly alert state. Specks of ash drift glacially down the frozen stillness of my current wasteland, blazing bits of unrecognizable wreckage surrounding my hyperaware senses like the deepest winter blizzard. It seems to take everything a lifetime to move.

Calibrating local temporal values... Resolving... Local temporal values resolved

The ashes resume falling at a pace consistent with what I've considered all my life to be the normal passing of time, but I have bigger questions on my mind.

"Gahhhh, what the shit?! How am I alive?!"

Calibrating local reality interpreter... Resolving dialects... dialects resolved. Updating Bridge.exe

The ashes suddenly slow down once more, and I finally register the weird as fuck box in front of me, its obviously unreal texture ignoring all of the destruction surrounding us.

How may I assist you, Sky?

I scramble backwards, trying to put some distance between myself and the reality-breaking thing occupying my vision, but it maintains its unerring closeness.

"What..."

I suck in a forever breath, several pertinent facts colliding in my mind at once.

I'm moving on four limbs. Nothing hurts. My hands and feet are back and I'm moving on four limbs that aren't my hands and feet. An ocean of terror roars through my body, threatening to crack my mind completely. I want to look but I can't, my vision narrowing and darkening at the edges... muscles tensing...

Executing SanityBarrier.exe... Resolving... Resolved

Warning: Host stability resources approaching critical levels. You need to acquire more biomass, Sky.

An equally powerful wave of calm washes over me, driving away the raw dread freezing me in place. I can worry about my new appendages later. The chitin-metal-covered assailants who killed Wires are still making their way down the hillside in bounding leaps, rectangular devices-

Hypertron Mark Four Rapid Hardlight Emission Platform, more commonly known as a "pulse rifle," rated for-

-tracking my erratic movements.

"I told you not to kill the dirt-eaters," an aggrieved voice barks out from one of them to another. I'm pretty sure it's coming from the one who was initially yelling at us.

...how am I understanding them now?

...they murdered Wires.

...I know where my malfunctioning pistol is.

Executing BasicSurvival1.0.exe

I flip over to the side in a blur of movement, grabbing my discarded pistol and ejecting the jammed bullet, then clearing the receiver of mud impossibly quick.

None of this involves my hands.

CRACKCRACKCRACK

One of the metal-chitin figures goes down as I finish my tight roll, bright red blood disappearing into the blazing air just like Wires' last breaths, and something ugly tells me he's never getting back up.

Good.

CRACKCRACKCRACK

The second one stumbles forward another few steps, pulse rifle obliterating an inoffensive chunk of landscape, then faceplants into the dirt, more crimson painting the brown hill slope. I kneel in sticky mud, hands clenched at my sides, pistol tracking the remaining pair.

CRACKCRACKclick

The third figure spins as they die, both rounds impacting the tiny gaps I now know exist at their neck plates, and I throw the empty pistol at the last figure in anger, watching him bring his pulse rifle to bear on me. How can I get to him? He's too far away.

Executing Dash.exe

A finger tightens on what I now know is a trigger, but I'm already sliding next to him in a horrific violation of causality that fills me with excitement. The fssswhp of his disintegrator round missing anything important is music to my ears.

Warning: Dash.exe recharging

It doesn't matter that I need to wait to move like that again. Right now, I'm standing next to my target, and he's just become aware of my presence, weapon cycling for another shot in a low whine.

Executing Execute.exe

I use my limbs to finish him, some part of my memory letting me know that he was the one who murdered Wires so casually. Ruby sheets flow from his neck and face as he slumps into the blasted wasteland, desperately trying to keep his life from ending. I kick his hands away from the ragged tears covering his entire body, watching him fall still in cold satisfaction.

Dash.exe recharged. Warning: Additional hostiles deploying

Another ten metal cylinders-

Lockmartin Mark Eight Extreme Orbital Insertion Vehicles, commonly known as "assault pods," rated for-

-slam into the blasted landscape surrounding me with rippling thumps. I flex my limbs, then my arms, then my legs. Let them come. I need more bodies to build a proper forest for Wires.

Warning: Current biomass reserves insufficient for unlimited combat operations. reality reserves insufficient for unlimited causal violations. I recommend a fighting withdrawal, Sky.

I ignore the words scrolling across my vision. Forty chitin-clad figures roll out of their vapor-wrapped conveyances, pulse rifles and plasma shotguns and vortex launchers tracking unerringly where I stand. I scream my defiance in throat-rasping howls. They're all the same as the ones who murdered Wires.

...I'll kill them.

Analyzing... sufficient biomass reserves available for limited combat... Executing PyrrhicVictory.exe

I dash forwards into the group, scooping up two of the fallen pulse rifles as I close. My limbs make quick work of the biometrics trying to keep me from using them, and half of me starts launching fssswhp snakes of disintegrating energy into scrambling invaders-

Privately operated security forces answerable only to the appropriate board, commonly known as "Corporate Marauders," generally aligned with-

-as my other two limbs grab anyone close enough to tear out their throats. Howling laughter fills the air, and it takes me a dozen kills to realize it's my own.

The Corporate Marauders try to rally, well-trained as they are, but the demon-

I am a shade.

-driving me suffers no surcease, plunging us again and again into the fray. The hollow runs with more blood than dirt when the last of them falls, and I roar my triumph to the empty night sky.

Unspooling causal violations... Re-establishing reality baselines... reality restored

An overwhelming wave of nausea smothers me, accompanied by even more exhaustion. Suddenly, it's all I can do to stay upright, my arms and legs dangling towards the ground as two of my limbs keep me upright. The other two...

I try not to think about what's happening with my other two limbs and the dead bodies.

Biomass reserves at 2%. Warning: Biomass reserves below critical levels. You really should consider a fighting withdrawal, Sky.

Warning: Hostiles inbound

Bright red squares appear in my vision, brackets illuminating as of yet invisible threats plummeting from above.

Warning: Current biomass reserves insufficient for limited combat operations. reality reserves insufficient for unlimited causal violations. We will die if you do not retreat, Sky.

I hack out some phlegm from my throat, ignoring the vermilion speckles tainting it.

"We're..." I clear my throat again, "we're gonna build Wires the forest he deserves... and then we're gonna go... see the stars..."

I hang above the ground, staring at the bloody mud, arms and legs unusable, my limbs the only things keeping me upright. When did I start talking to the box?

Another twenty cylinders smash into the hollow, the force of their impacts obliterating what little scrubgrass managed to spread past the valley and sending plumes of despoiled soil high into the air. More invaders-

I told you, they are Corporate Marauders.

-pile out, weapons already rising towards me. The smoldering fire of the starfly backlights them in ruddy shades, painting their chitinous armor a false layer of gore.

"Yeah," I stagger drunkenly, "those fuckers, whoever they are, they just keep coming, don't they?"

Warning: Hostile causal violations

A host of tar-slick monstrosities melt out of the shadows around the Marauders, writhing limbs already lashing at the churned up ground, faceless sense organs twisting reality wherever they look. The two sides begin instantly laying into each other, an explosion of indiscriminate violence impossible to make sense of, the furious melee immediately spilling over in my direction.

"Okay, then! Let's fucking gooooo!" I howl, floating on a sea of surreality, feeling myself drifting away to somewhere else. I stare down the onrushing horde, pain and madness boiling across my mind. "Fuck you all!"

fssswhp fssswhp fhssswhp

Darkness seizes me and-

Activating emergency reality reserves... Executing BugOut.exe

Time to go, Sky. You'll thank me later.