Standing in front of the mound of twisted, burned and deformed alloy, she was dead on target for the corpore’s core signal, less than a seven away from it. She felt her fingers twitch, felt a shiver run up her spine. Soon – soon her mind would be welcoming the codestream again. Soon all this horror would be done with.

The asymmetrical chunk was still hot, steaming when she reached it. Althea had to scramble swiftly over the twisted, tortured metal and composite to avoid being burned, to reach the most obvious connections to the central units. One functional core would be enough to do allow her to do her work. Surprisingly, some of the material was already freezing cold, greedily sucking the warmth out of her fingers. The rest, steaming or smoking, was painfully hot to the touch or producing smoke too toxic to breathe in. She tried not to let it slow her down.

Behind, below, she heard the sound of approaching footsteps, labored breath.

“It’s all the way up there?” Traejan called out, seeming surprised. She spared a look back, to see him at the wreckage’s base, staring up, trying to shield his eyes from the streams of smoke.

“It’s where it came down,” she told him, trying to figure her way into the mess. “Don’t worry, I’ve been through worse.”

Squeezing through the twisted framework, struggling for a short but seemingly interminable period, Althea reached the main communications core. It still glowed – brightly – in the three-dimensional webs of fibers, conduits. Her eyes widened, taking in its delicate, complex intricacy, noted the bracing holding it to the framework, pulled out her projector to cut it away; to cut the core free.

The wreckage shuddered around her as she cut through the unit’s bracing. It was still settling, live lines around her spraying sparks as they stretched, cracked and broke. Althea refocused, controlled her progress, forced herself to slow down, be careful enough to ensure safety, and not create an explosion, or give herself a fatal jolt from crossed circuits.

Where to drag the unit after she cut it free? The fields of wreckage were still subject to random explosions. An interface location needed to be safe, at least for a few hundred beats. Althea hoped there was enough time.

Dorian, however, was more concerned with another potential threat.

Traejan is still implanted.

She paused for a moment, collected herself.

“I’ve done enough killing,” she told him. “It’s not even a Macro implant?”

No, but that does not mean it is inaccessible to the Macro.

She didn’t need any more pain, didn’t need to inflict more horror, on Traejan, on herself.

“I am not going to kill anyone else!”

Althea was growing to hate hearing Dorian’s words, hearing his thoughts only buzzing in her ear. She wished, at this time of all times, that he was inside her, voice in her mind – not something separate, different, outside. It simply did not feel like he was listening to her, that he understood.

Gritting her teeth, gripping the core’s braces, Althea pulled the heavy unit on its difficult path out of the wreckage. She backed down the hot metal surfaces gingerly, negotiating it through with only a couple missteps, curses of pain and frustration. With a last heave, she pulled the block over the bent composite girder and it hit the snow with a thump. Traejan made a motion to help. She waved him off.

She dragged the gleaming thing a few feet, leaving a trail of burnt bits, dirty snow and earth scraped up from beneath, along with a tangle of cables and network fibers. With suddenly little strength left, Althea collapsed, kneeling before it, holding herself up against the unit’s solidity.

You must at least tell him to keep his distance.

“Fine,” she breathed. “Fine.”

But first – the core. She recovered, pushed herself up, began examining its faintly pulsing, vibrating surface. It was dying, but not dead, not yet. Still warm, still under power, still a living component of the Macro’s network, still a window into its being – an unarmored gateway, that she could thrust herself, a cold blade through, into its heart. Win the battle – free the world – touch oneness. Excitement, anxiety made her body tremble – her fingers shook, but she knew her work – hadn’t forgotten how to construct the interface. She would be inside it; it would be inside her, so… so soon.