She looked exactly as she had in the yellowed photograph I kept tucked inside my wallet, right down to the faint crescent scar across her left cheekbone. But her eyes were dead—hollow gray spheres that stared straight through me without a flicker of recognition.
«Arthur,» her voice rasped out from the suit’s external speakers, heavy with metallic distortion. «Stand down. System integration is mandatory.»
«Mom?» The word tore out of my throat, raw and fractured.
«Arthur, move!» Vance shoved me with her good shoulder just as a pneumatic blade lashed out from the suit’s right forearm, scything through the brick wall where my head had been a second prior. Explosive dust rained down over us as the masonry turned to powder.
We scrambled down the slick cobblestones of the alley, rain stinging my face and washing away the thick, metallic soot clinging to my skin. Behind us, the heavy, hydraulic crunch of ten-ton footfalls echoed with terrifying speed.
«She died twenty years ago!» I yelled over the roar of the downpour, my boots skidding on the wet grease of the pavement. «I buried her! I was at the funeral!»
«You buried a shell, Arthur!» Vance shouted back, her breath ragged as she cradled her useless arm against her ribs. «Your mother was Project Vanguard’s head architect! When her body failed, they didn’t cremate her—they uploaded her consciousness directly into the core chassis!»
A harsh red targeted grid painted itself across the cobblestones at our feet.
Target Locked. A mechanical chime rang out from the air above us.
Before I could react, the exoskeleton leapt. It cleared forty feet in a single, gravity-defying bound, crashing down directly in front of us and blocking the mouth of the alleyway. The force of the landing sent a shockwave through the ground, throwing Vance and me off our feet. I slammed hard against an iron dumpster, the air violently expelled from my lungs.
The giant steel hand reached down, wrapping its thick hydraulic fingers entirely around Vance’s waist. She let out a strangled scream as the armor lifted her eight feet into the air, its joints whining under the strain.
«Vance!» I pushed myself up, my muscles screaming in protest.
«Arthur… the watch!» Vance gasped out, her face turning purple as the metal fingers tightened around her ribs. «Look at… the watch!»
I glanced down at the blood-stained pocket watch that had fallen into the rain puddle beside my hand. The digital display had stopped counting down. The red numbers had frozen, replaced by a single, steady string of coordinates blinking on the screen.
37°46’22.1″N 122°25’08.4″W
And beneath the coordinates, a small line of text flashed in yellow:
PRIMARY RECEPTION CENTER: LIVE SUBJECT LOCATED.
The exoskeleton paused. The crimson glow in its visor flickered, shifting rapidly from deep red to a soft, pulsating violet—the exact same shade as the beam that had shot from the child inside the warehouse.
Inside the glass cockpit, my mother’s eyes suddenly widened. The dead, mechanical gloss vanished, replaced by a wave of pure, unfiltered terror. Her lips moved behind the glass, pressing against the surface as if trying to speak directly to me.
I couldn’t hear her through the heavy armor, but I read her mouth clearly.
Run, Arthur. I’m not controlling this.
Run, Arthur. I’m not controlling this.
A sharp, violent convulsion wracked the entire exoskeleton. My mother’s eyes rolled up into her head as thick, black fluid erupted from her mouth, coating the inside of the glass visor in a sickly dark film.
«System override confirmed,» a neutral, synthetic voice boomed from the machine. «Target acquisition updated. Commencing secondary objective.»
Instead of crushing Vance, the suit abruptly opened its hand, dropping her unceremoniously to the pavement. It turned its massive torso toward me, the pneumatic joints locking into place with a series of sharp, violent clacks. The heavy chest plate slowly unlatched, hiss-venting pressurized steam into the cold rain as it peeled wide open.
Inside, suspended in a thick, clear gel behind my unconscious mother, was a second control cradle.
It was completely empty. And tailored precisely to my exact dimensions.
«Boarding mandatory,» the machine droned.
From the shadows behind the suit, a tall, slender figure stepped into the pale amber light of the streetlight. He was wearing a immaculate, dark tailored suit that remained completely untouched by the pouring rain. His face was obscured by an opaque chrome mask, but in his gloved right hand, he held a sleek, silver device that hummed with a low, agonizing resonance.
The moment the sound hit my ears, the burned-out silver scars along my neck flared back to life, glowing with an intense, blinding white light.
«You really thought an EMP could fry a military-grade neural network, Arthur?» the masked man spoke, his voice quiet, smooth, and chillingly familiar. He raised his hand, pointing the silver device straight at my heart. «The clone was just the decoy to force your system to overheat. We needed your defense firewalls down so we could initiate the physical sync.»
He reached up with his left hand and slowly unlatched the chrome mask, letting it fall into the mud.
My heart stopped.
The man standing before me wasn’t another clone. He wasn’t a duplicate.
He was me—thirty years older, his face lined with deep scars, his left eye replaced by an intricate silver optic that span and focused with a faint, whirring click.
«Hello, younger self,» my older reflection said, offering a sad, grim smile. «It’s time to get inside the suit. If you don’t, we die in twenty seconds.»