Something rips at Lanis’ mind, tearing her from Ether, from the Assault Unit’s admin system, and from her own sense of self. She’s dimly aware of her body thrashing in the command pod’s dark viscous fluid, hands instinctively grasping toward her helmeted neural shunt—no matter that pulling it out without a proper decoupling could easily send her into catatonic shock.

  But it’s already too late—her body goes limp, her hoarse scream chokes into silence and her eyes roll back. Outside, the Assault Unit’s optics flicker and go black, the Grav-maul releasing from the Unit’s hands and slowly clattering into the earth like an old-growth tree.

  Darkness, disorientation, gnawing, hunger—

  Lanis kicks out, her unconscious mind still struggling, still fleeing, still fighting—

  “Come,” a voice rumbles out of the darkness that surrounds here. She has a sense of tumbling, as if she’s been casually thrown across a room by a barroom brawler, spinning through the blackness. She feels her body slam into something hard.

  She opens her eyes.

  She lies face-up on a cold grey floor. Overhead, the darkness has unraveled into drifting white fog. Lanis groans as she turns herself over onto her hands and knees, stumbling as she stands. She stares, uncomprehending, at the grey floor, fighting down a wave of nausea as she tries to reorient herself. It’s as if she’s a Suit after an emergency shutdown, and now each subsystem is being carefully rebooted, trying to sort out the errors. She feels so odd. So… empty.

  Oh my god.

  It all comes rushing back—the Assault Unit, the battle, the overwhelming rage, Ether’s scream as the glowing hand of the Insertion Unit reached toward her back.

  She spins in a frantic circle, wondering how long she’s been unconscious. For one terrifying moment she fears that days have passed; perhaps she’s in some room under Fleet Academy, an interrogation cell awaiting death, or corruption?

  A realization hits her. Where she is might be worse than any cell.

  An interface module.

  Like the dreamscape that she created when she first met Ether, interface modules are meeting-points, safe places of examination between a human and AI mind during the first sessions of tentative integration. This one is a blank canvas.

  It must be something standard. Maybe the Assault Unit’s own onboarding module? Lanis thinks, turning around again and trying to peer into the liminal space. Beneath her is grey concrete, and all around her is a drifting white mist. She steps forward, her hand outraised, waving it, and encounters nothing. She pulls her arm back, examining it, surprised.

  Interesting. She’s wearing her old deep-blue Navigator cadet uniform. So then I’m almost certainly still inside the Assault Unit. The Fleet Unit’s admin system must be recognizing some rank that she still carries, buried deep within the sub-strata of her Fleet-augmented mind.

  “Ether?” Lanis yells, her voice swallowed in the nothingness.

  Tentatively, she tries to extend her mind.

  “Damn,” she mutters, rubbing the neural-shunt side of her head. She feels a buzzing sensation when she tries to reach out, like she’s encountered a unpleasant electrical charge.

  “Ok, think,” she whispers to herself, swallowing.

  If this is an integration module, I should be able to access my own construct. She takes a steadying breath, trying to push the buzzing sensation aside, and reaches for the dream-construct that she so carefully curated over her years at Fleet Academy. If she’s right about this place being an onboarding module, then it should be eager to accept her own construct; and once that’s in place, it should be easier to gain some purchase to pull herself out of whatever sort of coma she’s in.

  She imagines the meadow and the forest behind her, just as she’s done countless times, attempting to impose her imagination on the blank canvas that surrounds her.

  The buzzing in her head grows louder. Forming the construct is like trying to mold clay out of brittle dirt while someone jackhammers nearby, each thought crumbling before it has time to set. The buzzing grows louder, no longer an annoyance, but a full-on migraine. She gasps with pain, hands on her knees, and lets go of the effort.

  She feels a sick sense of foreboding as she catches her breath, staring out ahead into the blank space that surrounds her. A waft of something foul reaches her, a mix of burnt plastic and decay.

  Something has trapped her.

  And it’s here. Both in her pilot-pod and in her mind.

  She steps back, unsteadily. The mist in front of her begins to churns, a whirlpool of smoke. A figure begins to emerge.

  Its form shifts like black smoke as it moves toward her, one moment monstrously tall and thick-bellied, like an Ursox glaive-warrior ready to split her in two, then slim and alluring, with long fingers that reach out to caress her face. It’s as if it’s deciding which form will horrify her most, and is reading the trembling of her hands to choose its champion.

  At last it chooses a face that will break her, stepping so close that Lanis can feel its sickly sweet breath upon her paralyzed face.

  It looks like Mirem.

  This version of her lover has ruined pits of darkness in place of eyes. Rivulets of black blood run down her cheeks like ruined mascara, dripping soundlessly on the floor. There is nothing of Mirem’s smile as the thing's sharp-toothed grin widens, reveling in the scream that never escapes Lanis’ mouth as its long fingers reach out, delicately clasping themselves around her slim neck.

  “I’ve been looking for you, my sweet,” the thing whispers. Its voice is like the rustling of maggots consuming flesh, but the last word turns into a lover’s moan as it draws Lanis close, its black pits boring into the crying whites of Lanis’ eyes.

  Stolen story; please report.

  “You escaped me once. But there’s no escape now, little sweetling. Here I can take my time with you. I’ve had my practice, and I know your scent. I’ll pluck apart your mind’s eyes, and stitch them to my use,” it groans, lifting Lanis up off the ground, its right hand burning like a branding iron into her neck. It wiggles its left hand in front of Lanis' face with mock titillation, and Lanis watches, suffocating with terror, as the fingers grow into blades, some long and boring, others fat and crude, each dripping blackness onto the floor.

  Lanis kicks out, grasping the thing's arms with both of her hands as she struggles. Her mouth moves in soundless prayer, and the thing tilts its head, Mirem’s over-wide mouth torn between a laugh and a snarl.

  “You think your pathetic prayers can help you? I am your God now. I will eat this world, and then I will—”

  With an ear-splitting roar, the Anomaly drops Lanis, who tumbles to the floor in a choking heap. It steps back, snarling with murderous rage, its right arm separated at the elbow from its body, black fluid dripping from its stump. Its hand, still latched to Lanis’ throat, dissolves into the air like black mist. Lanis gasps up to the shimmering form that looms over her.

  “Keep your hands off of her!” Ether shouts, standing over Lanis. She’s dressed in Fleet-pilot blue, and holds a glittering sword in both hands. As Lanis watches though, a strand of blue smoke curls from where the blade met the Anomaly’s arm, quickly eating away at the sword until Ether is forced to drop it. It clatters to the ground, and slowly melts into nothingness.

  Lanis tries to scramble to her feet, but Ether pushes her back behind her, standing between her and the snarling Anomaly, her fists clenched in defiance. Lanis desperately tries to trace back the point of Ether’s entry into the construct-space—if only she can reach through too, maybe she could escape, or even fight back...

  The Anomaly shakes its head, its black-stained snarl turning into a triumphant grin.

  “Ah, I was wondering where you’d gone. So good at hiding, are we? And even better at playing the hero?” it growls. It raises its stump of an arm, smirking as it grows back into place. Except now, it holds a long, black blade.

  The anomaly’s smirk turns to a mocking face of sadness.

  “I wish I could take your mind too, but I’m afraid you’ll just have to die. Any last tender words?” The anomaly whispers, advancing slowly.

  Ether raises her middle finger and spits.

  The Anomaly’s smile widens as it raises its sword, ready to split Ether in two with a casual swipe, but then it hesitates. Its smile falters, and its brows knit together in confusion.

  Too late does it attempt to lunge forward toward Ether, but its sword cleaves empty space as Ether dances back. It turns and twists, its feet rooted to the spot, bellowing in rage, scratching and stabbing as two murky forms coil about its feet, like puddles of sticky tar arising into human shape.

  The first, judging from his proud uniform, is an Insertion Unit pilot. Nikolai, Lanis realizes, staring, wide-eyed, as a young, muscular man with a black beard struggles with the snarling form of Mirem. The other form is also a man, and also dressed in a Fleet uniform much like Ether’s. He’s tall and slim where Nikolai is broad, and older than the young pilot, with a bald head that is now creased with straining effort.

  The Suit’s previous AI, Lanis thinks. The ghosts in the admin system.

  “Now!” the imprint of Nikolai yells as they wrestle with the Anomaly, who tears at them with newly-formed claws, pulling out glittering chunks of their artificial flesh.

  Ether’s eyes meet Lanis’, and she suddenly knows what to do. The buzzing in her head is gone, and it's as if a shackle around her mind has been loosened. Lanis pulls back her fist and punches downward with all her strength, her fist cracking against the floor. Again she strikes, and again, the cracks widening and splintering, until her fist goes straight through the floor, revealing a transparent green space underneath.

  “Shit!” Ether yells, raising her fists again as the anomaly plunges a clawed hand through Nikolai’s throat. Still the man holds onto the thing’s arm, spitting black blood at it through his gritted teeth.

  “Go back to Hell!” Lanis hears him yell, but those are his last words. The anomaly saws his head clean from his body, and his body dissipates in a swirl of blackness against the white background.

  “PILOT! NO!” the other man screams, his teeth gnashing together as he strangles the anomaly in impotent rage.

  Lanis reaches through the cracked hole in the floor as the Anomaly turns to the ghost of the Unit's AI with a wicked grin. A twist of its claws, and the older man’s face, full of anger and sorrow, dissolves into nothingness.

  The black blade shimmers back into the Anomaly's hand as it turns its attention back to Lanis, its triumphant smile curdling into rage as it sees Lanis’ hand plunged through the floor of the construct.

  Almost there, Lanis frantically thinks, her jaw clenched with exertion. Her effort races along the pathways of her memory, pulling at every Fleet-curated prayer as she grasps at an archetype-weapon from the deepest recesses of her imagination.

  The black blade falls, but Ether is faster, stepping into its path in a streak of blue. Sparks of gold and silver erupt from where Ether’s hands grasp against the anomaly’s arm, and Lanis hears her high-pitched scream as her hands begin to burn, melting beneath the ego-rending force of the Anomaly .

  There! Lanis thinks, seizing an object in her hand.

  She turns as she rises, pulling Ether back with one hand while raising a gold and white sword to meet the descending arc of the Anomaly’s blade with the other.

  She pushes the black blade to the side with a grinding wail, and then ripostes into the creature’s belly. The Anomaly’s pitted eyes widen fractionally as it stares down at the blade, black blood spilling from the wound. Lanis pushes her entire weight behind the sword, grinding it forward.

  The anomaly’s roar is a thunderclap against Lanis’ ears, and Lanis feels it struggling, its claws slashing at her face. They don’t meet her flesh, but rather grind against a newly-formed shield of shimmering armor that protects her. Behind her, the hole that she punched into the ground widens, the grey floor dissolving in chunks to reveal the green field of Lanis’ dream construct. Overhead, the white mist unravels into a blue sky, and as Lanis leans into her blade the Anomaly it is no longer able to stumble back, but is rather pinned against a massive, gnarled Oak tree at the edge of the forest.

  More black blood erupts from the anomaly’s belly, and its form shifts, madly transforming from a winged monster to a giant, whimpering child, then to an Ursox larva, then a Bellitran Gor-Knight, then a tentacled nightmare. It makes no difference: Lanis keeps twisting the blade in against the tree, widening the hole in the thing's belly. Then, seized by instinct, she plunges in a hand, now encased in a golden gauntlet, deep inside the thrashing forms of the Anomaly.

  She feels it: a sinewy thread, racing back from the Anomaly’s presence inside the Assault Unit, inside her mind, to the enemy Unit, to the corrupted Kaisho leadership, and to the twisted starships overhead. It’s like the root of a plant, each tendril burrowed into a different mind, or a cancerous tumor.

  But here, in her own mind—where it had tried to make her its slave—she holds the full grasp of its stem, the jugular vein of its blood supply to this dimension. It writhes, desperate to escape, but this is her domain. Her rules. She has bound it here, and there’s nowhere to run.

  With a heaving pull, she rips the root free, flinging a writhing mass of flesh and bloody darkness onto the grass before the tree. She pulls her sword from the beast’s belly with both hands and plunges it into the mass, making the interdimensional severance real through the psychic power of her Fleet-trained imagination.

  The black mass curls in on itself with a scream like cold water poured onto blistering metal; the Anomaly falls to the ground, and the Oak tree trembles, its leaves turning silver; her dream-construct begins to quake, blurring at the edges of her imagination.

  Lungs burning, Lanis staggers toward the motionless form of Ether. The AI lies crumpled in the newly-formed meadow where she grappled with the Anomaly, smoke hissing from the stumps of her hands.

  “Ether?” Lanis croaks, reaching for her. But the more she reaches, the farther Ether seems to slip away.

  A pulse of pain sears through Lanis’ skull. Her knees buckle.

  Still reaching toward Ether, the world around her collapses.