Eris' eyes went wide as saucers as the blade sank deep... Into what she could only describe as a monster of a Masouki. It rose off its flatbed, towering over the Medius, twin cannons glowing as it prepared her annihilation. A growl started in the back of her throat as she clenched the controls, preparing to throw the black Personal Trooper into an evasive dive-
"You are one ugly son of a-"
...But the threat died in her throat, terminating instead in a strangled gasp, as a wave of the negative energies pulsing through the Bulldog spread into her own machine, transmitting through the alloys, the humble, earth-hewn materials that made up the protective entity that was her shell... And into the woman within the cockpit.
It was just... a taste. The smallest, slightest touch... But with it came a rush of emotion, plunging her into...
Somewhere else.
What was that term again? Ah... Yes.
Void Memory.
OE ???
Time: Unknown
Location: Unknown
"Why didn't we realize it sooner...?"
A voice, tinged with anxiety. One she wasn't supposed to ever hear. She stood, surrounded in the gloom, by several other forms, disembodied constructs that loomed overhead... Save one.
"You're saying a foreign body escaped detection until now?"
"It was concealed within the Observational Unit we picked up... the one-off."
"How is that possible...? Are you saying... It was tampered with?"
"Speculation is hardly my function of expertise. Aristarch, please recommend a course of action."
"Notify Censor. Expunge it immediately."
A burst of static-
Static?
She was in the dark - somewhere... clinical, somewhere contained... Yet it was wholly unlike any medical facility on Earth, or even in the vast, techno-utopian halls of Luna. Suddenly, a bright, white light, and then... pain. The worst, most agonizing pain she had ever known. A thin ray of light, a laser, punctured her chest - the agony was indescribable, and her back arched against the restraints that bound her as it began to trace a line slowly upward, between her ribs, the scent of sundered flesh mingling with burning bone.
They weren't supposed to feel pain, she recalled in that instant.
The normal ones, at least.
At last, it stopped, only inches from her neckline... and she lay, gasping for air, trying to curl up into a ball. The voices started low, and began to rise in pitch and tempo, terminating in what could only be described as panic.
"There's a reaction. It's-!"
At length, she managed to look down.
Something jet black dribbled out from the wound. It wasn't blood... Nor, for that matter, was it oil - its surface was tinged with swirls of pale crimson, and it glowed with an eerie, unusual light. Tiny, thin transparent tendrils spreading out into the world, oozing a liquid that corroded everything it touched. Even as she brushed it with her fingertips... It began to drip from beneath her fingernails, and an inky, metallic tang filled her mouth as she tried to speak, feeling something now running in rivulets from her nose, her ears, the corners of her eyes-
"Oh God." She heard herself whisper.
What emerged...
What came out of her...
A pitch blackness, so vile, so foul -
It blotted out the light, touching, corrupting everything in sight.
It choked the room.
It enveloped the other figures, swallowing them like a gluttonous swarm, leaving nothing but crumpled husks in its wake.
Everything went dark.
It was far from the reassuring blackness of unconsciousness. Rather, it represented a precipice of sorts - the beginning of a steep trench in her memory, where a series of events had transpired... Ones which she was not beholden, only to be glimpsed as half-truths, mired in nightmares.
Two figures, standing among flames. Both of them bloodied and beaten, circling one another.
"We should never have taken you in." Said one, in a stern voice that seemed... Familiar, as if she had glimpsed it in a happier dream.
"You're not one of us. You wear our skin, but you're nothing like us."
A voice - one that sounded like hers, yet which spoke words she could never once recall uttering... and which sent a chill down her spine, for the playful way in which it had intoned:
"You're right. Because, at the end of all this... I'll still be alive. You'll all be dead."
...
From out the other end had emerged a dazed, confused, and badly bloodied woman staggering across the surface of Mars, with no memory of how she had got there, only barely remembering a name when asked:
"Eris Pseudea."
In that moment, the assassin should have died. Fear, paralyzing fear, held her so fast in its grip that even faced with total obliteration, she couldn't will herself to move. All she could do was clutch at her chest, in recollection of the razor-thin, bleach white scar that she knew lurked beneath the pilot suit.
Yet, in defiance of fate... the Medius moved, its motions guided by an intellect far removed from the shackles of human frailty. AI1, perhaps sensing with whatever mechanical means it had been designed, wisely took that moment to intervene.
The Medius released its hold on the glittering blade, thrusters flaring as it rolled down to the earth below, letting the twin blasts punch overhead, leaving only the scent of burning ozone on the air. On its left arm, the Coating Sword jutted out from its casing as the Medius slashed up and out, ripping it across the Bulldog's belly in an attempt to disembowel it - pilot and all.