Carys waited behind an unnaturally geometric outcropping near the Armed Forces base. She peered toward her destination with grim, tired eyes. “You remember the blind spots Xavier talked about?” she muttered to the other two members of her assigned team, pointing ahead with her metal arm. The enigmatic ambient lighting of the maze reflected strangely off the crevices and dents in her artificial limb, a subtle but aggravating oversight by the developers of this hellish place. Digitalization technology had certainly improved over the past decade, but it was nowhere near where it needed to be for any semblance of comfort or normalcy.

“We just have to stay away from the watchtower, right?” Aster frowned, keeping his voice low. Carys wasn’t particularly close to Aster, but he was generally less obnoxious than the majority of the test subjects, which she appreciated greatly. He was currently borrowing a sword from their other teammate, a red-haired AI called Biyu. Biyu had an uncanny way of moving her lips that distracted Carys every time she spoke.

“Yeah, basically,” Carys nodded, giving the base another quick peek. It looked pathetically understaffed, a miserable shell of its former might. They only needed to wait a few more moments for the diversion team to start attacking. Anticipation tingled her bones, and she found herself growing impatient. She never liked the moments right before a battle—standing around, struggling to hold a conversation. It made her feel useless.

A chorus of war cries suddenly, thankfully interrupted the budding silence. Carys watched from concealment as a mismatched collection of rebels dressed in various neon colors charged recklessly toward the outer walls of the base, hurling grenades and other explosives won in Explicator tests, screaming at the tops of their lungs. Around half of the surviving soldiers abandoned their posts to deal with this inconvenience, leaving a good chunk of the base exposed. It was time to turn those unguarded walls into a fitting memorial for the people nobody else would mourn. Her metal leg clanged on the ground as she dashed out of hiding. The soldier stationed at the nearest watchtower was facing toward the commotion, completely oblivious. 

Carys was very much a cyborg. Approximately half of her body was mechanized. She wasn’t sure whether the other test subjects knew this. The Initiative scientists certainly did, with all the poking and prodding they liked to engage in. Somehow, the enhancements to her physical strength these prostheses provided her in the real world had not carried over into the cyber realm, and she was certain one particular tall, blond, smug, disgusting Colonist was to blame.…

She stood quietly behind Aster as he began passionately carving and slashing the names of the friends he had lost into one of the sturdy, dark slabs that sheltered the base from any unwanted visitors. Rebels had scaled these walls several times before, and one day, they would do it again—to finally overwhelm the soldiers and win this damn war. But for now, Carys and Biyu were merely on guard duty, watching the landscape for threats and making sure Aster remained out of the soldiers’ line of sight. If all went well, it would be a boring job.

In the distance, Carys could see Vade, Xavier and a quiet AI named Madon working on their own set of names. That meant the soldier in the tower could probably see them, too. She grimaced as her body glitched. Cycles of simulated breathing jittered erratically for several seconds, leaving her nauseous. Biyu stopped and stared for a moment, noticing the irregularity. She opened her mouth to speak, and Carys quickly shut her down.

“What’s your problem?” the test subject snapped at the AI, making it very clear that she did not want to talk about it. This was far from Carys’s first time in the cyber dimension, and no matter how much tweaking the Initiative did, they could never fully erase the damage that had been done. Subject 1 suffered from similar complications, but he was much better at hiding them.

Her throat seemed to constrict, and her mind began cycling through the events that led to her capture—and eventual exile to this virtual nightmare. Thirty years ago, the Cyber Initiative had tested emerging digitalization technology on young children, with a variety of devastating consequences. One such consequence was Carys, in a roundabout way. Her biological parents had been attempting to replicate Initiative technology to sell to the Enemy, or so she’d heard from her foster family. It was convenient that they’d had a daughter right there to serve as a test case. What did it matter that she kept leaving vital biological components behind in the cyber realm? The black market was bursting with every type of biomechatronic limb and organ a pair of treasonous entrepreneurs could ever need.

Her hands flickered into a strange mishmash of colors, then returned to normal. It was funny, how things came full-circle sometimes—here she was, a cyber experiment once more. She’d managed to evade the Initiative for such a long time that she’d begun to think she was invincible. She had underestimated just how badly they wanted her.

“Hey!” an unfamiliar voice shouted from above. Carys jolted out of her thoughts and whirled around to find a young soldier perched on the wall nearby, laser rifle at the ready. Her shiny dark hair was impractically long, tucked up in a messy bun.

“Shit!” Aster yelled as he dove to the side, fumbling for his handgun. Carys didn’t move, regarding the stranger coolly. She could hear the exaggerated sound of Biyu unsheathing her second sword in the background.

“If you’re really fighting for the good of humanity or whatever, you’ll turn right around and pretend you never saw us,” Carys growled in an imposing tone. Pretending to be confident was a skill she’d developed over many long, treacherous years.

“Do you practice that expression in the mirror?” the soldier rolled her eyes. She calmly pressed the trigger, and a thin, steady beam of light sliced through the air, carving a sharp curve into the floor mere inches from where Carys stood.

The test subject didn’t flinch. She flicked a hidden switch on her wrist, and an electric spear unfurled from her metal arm. A thin line of glowing, insubstantial string trailed from the lower end of the weapon, ‘attaching’ it to the palm of her hand.

“Oh, pretty,” the soldier quipped with a smirk. “Won’t do much against anything from this century, though.”

Carys decided then that she disliked this person, and would very much enjoy beating her up. She attacked immediately, throwing her spear through the air. She aimed off-center, hoping to predict where the soldier would dodge. The tip clanged off her light armor, and Carys quickly activated the spear’s homing feature, yanking on the golden string as it fell. The spear snapped back into her hand and she began to run, shouting to the others, “Back me up here, will you?!”

She skidded to a stop as the soldier’s laser cut through the air, slicing another groove into the artificial landscape. Those lasers had essentially infinite range, but they were thin and easy to avoid if the wielder couldn’t predict their target’s movements. This girl was clearly still a novice. She should have hung back and picked them off from a distance.

Aster began to shoot at the soldier, and she turned her attention to him, flicking her laser on and off rapidly in an attempt to drive him off. He struggled to avoid the deadly ray. Several of his bullets were caught by the razor-thin beam and shredded. Carys took the opportunity to ready her spear again, activating its electric shock feature and aiming for the young soldier’s leg. The sleek weapon sailed through the air and hit its mark, embedding itself into the girl’s exposed calf and shocking her entire body. Carys yanked on the string, and sent the soldier tumbling down the wall. The spear returned to her hand. 

Biyu twisted the hilt of her sword. The glowing blade went up in flames. This digital fire gave off no heat, until it needed to burn an enemy. The AI dove at the soldier while she was down, slashing in a blinding arc of phantom plasma. The soldier reacted quickly, holding her heavy gun sideways like a shield to block the attack. She shoved the AI backward with a determined smile on her face, then limped to her feet. “The captain’s really pissed, you know,” she said with a small laugh. “If I were you, I’d run.”

“I could say the same to you!” Aster snapped, lining up his next shot. The girl was faster, burning a hole straight through his hand in an instant. Her aim was much better up-close. He dropped his gun, shouting and cursing. Carys rushed to shield him as the soldier went in for the kill. The cyborg managed to knock him to the ground, sacrificing a few metal fingers in the process. Her spear fell to the floor. Biyu immediately kneeled down to tend to the injured test subject, turning her back on the fight. It was up to Carys to finish this, as usual.

She curled her remaining fingers into a tight fist and punched the young, eager soldier in the face, sending her careening back into the wall. She grabbed her by that ridiculous hair of hers and threw her to the ground, pinning her there in an instant. The soldier attempted to fire another laser, twisting and struggling, but Carys was stronger. She pulled on the string and the spear returned to her hand. Her metal fingers reattached themselves in a series of glitchy contortions, and she wordlessly twirled her weapon until the tip hovered just above the soldier’s left eye.

Strangely, the soldier was still grinning, staring up at her with what could only be described as delight. “What’s your name?” she asked, tilting her head. “I’m Yingyue. You’ve been doing this a lot longer than I have, huh?”

Carys furrowed her brow, caught off-guard by this unexpected reaction. “Excuse me?” she glowered.

“We should do this again sometime,” Yingyue said. Was this a thinly veiled plea for her life? No, she seemed genuinely invested in the idea of fighting Carys another time. A dark, terrifying emotion bloomed in Carys’s chest. Aster and Biyu watched as the woman froze, allowing the soldier to slip out from her grasp and make a run for it.

“She’s getting away!” Biyu called out, stating the obvious without moving from the spot.

“Maybe if I’d gotten even a little help from you, she wouldn’t be,” Carys retorted, rising to her feet. “C’mon, let’s get out of here.” She surveyed the mere two names Aster had scratched into the wall with only the barest hint of satisfaction. Xavier had a lot of ideas and schemes, but none of them ever amounted to much. He was similar to Captain Android that way. Of course, she would never make the mistake of telling him that.

Carys was all set to disappear back into the maze, when an AI ally with flowing white hair suddenly came sprinting toward her. If Carys recalled correctly, her name was Vega. 

“Carys!” she gasped, doubling over and coughing. She was in pretty bad shape, bleeding an eerie, luminescent, golden variety of blood from several laser slices on her face and torso. “The captain, she’s here! She’s fighting Xavier, and it’s not looking good—”

Carys cursed, pressing a hand over her eyes. The soldiers’ leader hardly ever emerged from the safety of the inner base, preferring to send her subordinates out to die for her. If she was really out here, attacking personally – maybe Xavier did know what he was doing. But although Xavier had the charisma and patience to keep the test subjects organized, his combat skills were severely lacking. He wouldn’t hold out against a fighter like Dara Kravchenko for long.

“I’m on it,” Carys nodded. “You and Aster should get some rest. We’ll try and find you something to heal with.” The Explicator occasionally dropped first aid equipment or game-like healing items in random areas. Half the time, they were nothing but a trap, but Carys was pretty good at retrieving them.

“Thank you-!” Vega called out to her as she darted away. Carys ignored the AI, focused solely on her next destination, her next fight. This was what she was good at. This was what she knew and understood.

As she drew closer to the small, chaotic battle, she immediately spotted Leonela clinging to a soldier’s back, screaming obscenities in his ears. She appeared to be using him as some sort of human shield. Carys recognized this unfortunate man as one of the people who’d held her and Xavier down during the first Explicator test. Any trace of sympathy she might have felt for him instantly dissolved. Another soldier, sporting loud blue hair that clashed profoundly against his red-and-black uniform, was flaunting his non-standard twin guns with obvious pride, shooting in two directions at once without looking toward either. Carys scanned the area for Xavier’s distinctive pink hair, and quickly found him. He was staggering backward, clutching his modded sword in unsteady hands. The infamous leader of the maze’s self-appointed law enforcement advanced on him with a condescending, righteous stride.

Captain “Android” Kravchenko – that woman reminded Carys of Arilus Kallo to a haunting extent. Her posture, her expression… Unwanted memories of cold, dead eyes and a sick little smile tore through Carys’s mind, and she was immediately seized by the desire to kill this woman.

“Okay,” she sighed to herself, checking her spear to make sure that it was fully charged. Her face flickered in and out for a moment, and she stood tall, readying herself for the coming challenge. It was time to rid the world of one self-important monster—it would be good practice for, someday, taking on the other.