Mcmolly

Amygdala Circuit

The submerged anger grew fiercer, but Quinn could feel it tugging on the strings of her own panic as well. They were on the backfoot, disarmed and outnumbered, and every second that passed saw their body whittled down more and more. Her sides flamed, her ankles were cut up and her balance suffered. Blood dripped down over her eyes, stung, messed with her vision.

Surely the phase was close; the static was louder, sure, but the truth was that time protracted in such close quarters. She still needed a minute, maybe more. Too long.

The bladed Modir kept on her, swiping and slicing, and whenever it missed, or Quinn managed to deflect its attacks, the spearman slunk in and jabbed to cover it. Its point caught her twice, thrice in the gut and chest, piercing organs that only people like Tillie really understood, but linked up with Ablaze Quinn could feel they were vital in some fashion. Modium poured from her, dousing the fire and salting the earth with poison where it landed.

We don’t die! came the indignant roar from within. We don’t give!

If she could only summon her cannon.

“Quinn! Two more!”

Two more.

They emerged, one bolting forth with an axe taller than it was raised above its head. The second took a knee far back, and though Quinn might have been preoccupied, she flared with urgency.

Quinn—!

But she was too late this time. A beam of energy, fired from a rifle of some kind, blasted through the gut of the bladed Modir, who staggered but did not die, and impacted Ablaze’s hand, shearing three of her fingers clean off. Quinnlash couldn’t catch it all, and pain, true pain, shot all the way up her shoulder and into her heart.

The rifleman stayed put, perhaps lining up another shot, but the spearman obfuscated her. The bladed Modir got back to its feet with an angry growl, gaping hole in its stomach.

Thirty seconds was an optimistic count.

“Quinn get up!” Besca shouted over the comms, desperate. “Get up, hun, just run! Just buy time, you gotta—”

The comms stuttered, and then there was the ping of someone joining their channel. Was it Deelie? No, a mental glance registered the newcomer as…

“ESC? Who is this?”

And, in a voice utterly wrecked by static and volume peaking, Besca got her answer.

“WOO—o…OOO—oOOO—H…oO—HOOOOOOO!

Sort of.

The quartet of Modir all stopped, their eyes turned skyward. A meteor plummeted to the earth, consumed by fire, and impacted the field between Quinn and the two newcoming Modir. The ground erupted in a geyser of dirt and fire, and as the smoke cleared, a lone figure rose within the crater.

It was a Savior, not quite as lean as Ablaze, but sleek and powerful. Its plating was red as fire, accented ivory over the modium-black flesh. A pair of horns, not too dissimilar to those on Dragon’s head struck out from its skull, and though all Modir wore a flayed rictus, this one truly seemed to grin as though exhilarated by every breath.

It reached an arm up, and yanked down a greatsword to rival itself in height. Yet, with the grace and ease with which one might wield a baton, it twirled the thing up and let it come to rest across its shoulders. Lazily, it glanced back to Quinn. If it weren’t for the fact that Saviors didn’t have eyelids, she might have been able to swear it winked at her.

“ESC Firebrand, reporting for duty.” A woman’s voice, though there was the pep and excitement of someone Quinn’s age in it. “Hope you don’t mind sharing some of the glory with me, Sparky.”

Firebrand shrugged the sword down like she was striking a match, and, appropriately, white fire burst to life and consumed the blade almost entirely. Ducking low, she dashed towards the axe-wielder and the rifleman. The latter wasted no time, taking aim and firing a round directly for her head. But she was low then, and quick as a wick, she rose up and leapt, torquing herself around into an aerial as the bullet sailed beneath her and into the ground. Landing with all the deftness of a dancer, she spun, brought her sword around with both hands and met the other Modir’s axe with a powerful swing, cleaving straight through its haft and turning it to ash just as they’d done to Quinn’s cannon.

Speaking of.

The tether reformed as the numbing wall around Quinn shrank considerably, but she would know instantly why. All of her effort went straight to the static that had grown deafening in the meanwhile, and while Quinn felt power both familiar and unimaginable flood through her, she was also granted the precious clarity to focus it.

Quinnlash phased.

Amygdala Circuit

The Modir let off one more salvo, but Quinn’s shot was dead-on, striking the missiles as they clustered and blowing the monster’s chest apart, only for it to be utterly mulched in the explosion of its own artillery.

Two... came a gutteral anger so visceral Quinn could hear clear as day.

Not so clear was her view of the two newcomers. The second Modir’s demise had left a sizeable cloud of smoke and ash in its wake. Fire was beginning to spread through the fields, catching red once it touched the wheat and turning the ground into a carpet of flame.

Aside from the thundering footsteps growing ever closer, and the encroaching static of something beyond, these moments were nearly peaceful. Nearly.

Quinn!

An alien reflex wrestled with her, and managed just enough control to lurch her sidelong as a modium spear pierced the smoke like a bolt of lightning. It had been aimed for her head, but blessedly it missed; instead, it struck her cannon, right through the barrel. There was a low whine almost like that of a living thing, and then Quinn’s weapon burst into flames and crumbled into ash in her hands.

Inside her it was like a tether had snapped, but she knew it wasn’t permanent. Already it was reforming, strand by strand, but it would be some time before she could wrench her cannon back from the void—if she was lucky, it would be as she phased.

But as the agony of combat was keen to keep reminding her, minutes did always feel so long.

The two Modir cleared the smoke and charged her. The one who’d thrown the spear manifested it once again in its hands, and lunged to stab at her. The other, whose weapons appeared to be a pair of long blades extending backwards down its forearms, skirted around to flank her before dashing in as well.

Amygdala Circuit

As the smoldering remains of the first Modir crumpled to the fields, the second took aim again. This time the salvo was much closer and angled much lower—so low in fact, that the first round of it impacted the brief stretch of dirt between them instantly in a bright, furious explosion that engulfed the monster entirely. The next volley came barreling at her through the heat and smoke, much too quickly for another interception, but also with less care given to aim. Many of the rounds flew past her, blasting her back with earth from behind but doing little else. Some, however, did hit their mark.

The briefest shock of pain exploded from her leg as a missile landed home at her thigh, before that hissing guard took hold and numbed it to an uncomfortable heat. Another hit her in the shoulder, tearing off a chunk of bicep, and another still burst beside her, scorching her ribs.

Quinnlash’s influence strained, the venom of agony seeped through, but only just.

Suddenly the Modir came charging through the smoke, colliding head-on with Ablaze and, being much heavier, tackled her easily to the ground. It did not, however, have the mind to pin her, or get her into a hold of any sort. It simply threw itself on top of her and began to wail on her with its claws, snarling and growling like a rapid animal.

“We’ve got more Modir coming!”

Through the numbing field, Quinn could feel her fury boiling. Of course there’s more.

And sure enough, two more Modir came rushing out of the singularity, full-tilt and bloodthirsty.

Amygdala Circuit

Born ready.

“You’re free-range, Ablaze.”

The Modir closed in, the distance much shorter than she might have anticipated. She could see them clearly, both them were already armed. The closer of the two was sleek, built for speed and agility. Its clawed feet tore into the earth and propelled it with the gait of a career sprinter. Wrapped around its forearm was a chain, leading to an orb clutched in one hand.

The second was more heavily armored, but by no means slow, and would reach them within moments of the first. Its maw was uneven, its lower jaw jutted and more plentifully-teethed. It held nothing in its massive hands, but fixed to either shoulder were a pair of modium-marbled cannons, not quite to the size of Quinn’s, but still large and already filled with white fire. Still a ways back, it loosed a barrage of missles, each trailed by comets of ivory light. A few landed early, exploding like grenades into the fields, showering Ablaze with wheat and molten dirt, but the lion’s share of them stayed true to course.

The first Modir, now closing in, poised to collide with her immediately after the salvo would hit, released the ball from its grasp. White light flared from dozens of holes bored into its surface, creating spikes of energy like the head of a mace. It whipped its arm back, and with a vicious flick, sent the ball hurtling towards her.

An anticipatory hiss ghosted Quinn’s ears, and she felt a sort of shelling around her consciousness, not unlike at the duel. A barrier ready to catch as much pain for her as it could.

Make them pay.

Amygdala Circuit

She wasn’t alone in the dark, less now than almost ever. A shape manifested imperceptibly across from her, glinting off of light that wasn’t there before the shadows claimed it again, and left it hardly more than a smudge against the black.

But Quinn could feel it. Could feel her there. Fingers raked gently through her brain, picking at the thoughts submerged so deeply therein that she wouldn’t be able to tell if they were truly hers or nor—only that she felt them.

“Now we feel real,” she said, excitement shaking her voice. “Now we show them why.”

Besca’s voice piped up in her ear. “You girls in?”

“We’re ready,” Dahlia answered. Quinn might have seen that little shape grin at the sound of their sister’s voice.

“Good. Listen, CSC’s all occupied, so you both are gonna have to handle one of the singularities each. Deelie you’ve got the northern one, we’re lining up…now. Get into position, you’re shock-dropping in. There’ll be a town about four miles south of you, but north past the singularity there’s nothing, you’re free-range that direction.”

“Got it.”

There was a shaking outside, a heavy thumping Quinn could feel even through the cockpit as Dragon got into position. Shortly, a siren blared—the lift hatch opening, followed by the sharp hiss of the hard-light barrier keeping everything from being sucked out into the void of space.

“And…go, go, go!” A scraping sound, another blaring as the hatch resealed moments later. Besca’s voice came again, this time over the speakers. “Brace for redirection.” Again the Aerie shifted, though inside the Savior it was nowhere near as jarring.

“Quinn,” Besca said, back in her ear again on the pilots’ comms. The ways he sounded, it seemed like she’d wanted to say hun’. “We’ve got two Modir coming out of a singularity in the west, heading towards a city about thirty miles south. It’s farmland out there, lot of flat ground, not a lot of cover. You’re gonna have to shock-drop, alright? You’ve gotta get yourself through the hatch, then disconnect—don’t reconnect until you’re through the atmosphere, got it? Try to cushion your fall if you can, but if you can’t, then ball up, disconnect and lock yourself into the seat. Ablaze can take the impact, just reconnect once you’ve actually landed.”

The siren blared again.

“We’re lining up…and…good to go. On you, Quinn.”

Amygdala Circuit

Besca watched as the pair of fresh Casobani pilots charged courageously at the singularity as it spewed forth a deluge of ink-black creatures. Most were crushed underfoot, and what surged past them was mopped up by the lines of military barricades waiting behind. Eventually a sizable beast, nearly half as tall as the Saviors, breached the void, rushing one of them on four legs, with a wickedly-horned head leading the way. A Modir clawed its way out shortly after to engaged the other one.

The news feed quickly became inundated with drone-feeds, cycling between close-ups and wide-shots, while the anchors rattled off play-by-plays like sports commentators. For a brief moment that whole country held its breath, waiting to see if the newcomers would fold in their first battle. Even Besca found herself worried, instinctually.

But there was no need. The pilots were swift, graceful, and they were obviously toying with their opponents—likely as they’d been instructed to. The pageantry of it all never failed to frustrated her; at least with someone like Dahlia, things were over quickly and without theatrics.

They’ll be in a good mood after this, she thought, but it wasn’t reassuring. This demonstration was as much for the people of Casoban as it was for the ESC. Eusero’s space station was parked right by Casoban’s, watching, assessing. This was an audition; that they would ally themselves was practically given, but the unspoken question of what Casoban brought to their allegiance had yet to be answered. They had to prove that their poor performance at the duel wasn’t a systemic weakness.

Well, good for them.

She’d been trying to ring the CSC station all morning with no luck. All week, really. There’d been no formal severing of ties, nothing in writing to say ‘You fucked up, that’s it,’ but the message was clear nevertheless. She almost felt bad for Toussaint; the man was likely still fighting for their alliance with Runa, and it would undoubtedly cost him his job. Some new Euseran shill would be at the helm soon enough, then there’d be no conversations at all.

Besca had half a mind to just leave. Why did she need to be here for this? The Board was looking for her replacement, and there was nothing she could do about it—there was nothing she could do about anything. So why not leave? Why not just go spend what time she had left up here with Quinn, and Deelie, and just enjoy herself?

With a resigned sigh, Besca started for the door. Fuck it, she’d take the girls to CB Danes, browse some online shops. They’d make an afternoon out of it.

Then she heard it—the beeping. The chatter in the room fell instantly quiet, and everyone went still. Except Besca.

“Where?” she asked, whirling back around. She pulled up the tracking map of Runa, scanning furiously for blips signaling a singularity. But there were none—at least, not here.

On the TV, news stations scrambled, their anchors speaking so quickly and anxiously that the auto-translate struggled to keep up. But she caught enough: Two more singularities were opening in Casoban.

---

“That’s scary,” one of the technicians said. “They showed up fast.”

“Happened during the duel, too, remember?” said another.

“Didn’t even have time to set up barricades.”

The crew was split, gathered into clots around TV screens across the hangar. They watched, muttering and worried, as the news showed the CSC station lowering its elevator on the outskirts of Gontiard, where already a small horde of creatures was charging towards the city.

“That’s Château,” Tillie said, pointing to the Savior that leapt from the platform. Looking down at Quinn, she realized the girl might not have been as thoroughly invested in pilots from other nations. “He’s probably their best when it comes to handling Modir. But with the new guys still on the coast, that only leaves Foudre to deal with the other singularity—she’s more of a duelist.”

Usually, whenever she went off spouting trivia, people just told her to shut up. Now, though, the eyes that turned to her did so deference, and she felt suddenly burdened with responsibility.

“S-She’s fought Modir before, though, I’m sure she’ll be fine. Plus, the others will be done soon, then they can help.”

“No they can’t,” someone said.

The news went hysteric; a fourth and fifth singularity were opening.

Static crackled overhead, then a voice thundered throughout the Aerie’s comms—it was Besca.

“Brace for redirection.”

A moment later the Aerie shuddered and lurched. The crew grabbed onto railings, the wall, or got low to the floor. Tillie was unlucky, stumbling to the ground alongside a slew of smaller, unsecured tools and devices. Before the general air of surprise could shift into anger, the intercoms sounded again.

“All hands to stations. Pilots, prepare to disembark.”

All eyes turned briefly to Quinn, but unlike some of the looks she would and had been getting from the staff in other areas of the ship, everyone here seemed to hold her in confidence. As the crew split up and hurried to their stations, she got nods and assured pats on the shoulder. Go get’em, girl, they seemed to say.

Tillie was much more forthright. “Okay! Uhm! Go get changed, I’ll finish up getting Ablaze ready for you!” She reached out awkwardly, miraculously still unsure of just how to operate her hands at a time like this, and wound up settling for a firm grasping of Quinn’s shoulders and a smile, before she darted off.

Down below, shouts of encouragement rang out as a familiar face dashed across the hanger on a full-tilt sprint for the lockers—Dahlia.

Amygdala Circuit

Tillie blinked. “Huh?”

She realized she must have sounded rather rude, but, in her defense—huh?. The perception of pilots in the public sector versus governmental was often contradictory, but Tillie had always been immune to it. She’d managed to carry that starry-eyed adoration with her from her childhood bedroom all the way up to the Aerie. In part she figured that was due to Runa’s pilots being generally well-liked; certain social histories documented that the earliest batches of a nation’s pilots were often the most well-regarded, followed by the pilots who came in to replace those who were especially ill-regarded. Had she grown up somewhere like Eusero, or Helburke, where pilots were often seen doing less-than-heroic things—case-in-point being their newest guest—she might have had an entirely different view of things.

For instance, she might not have trusted that Quinn really did just want a hug. Thankfully though, Tillie found herself utterly incapable of imagining any other possibility.

“Oh—uhm! Sure! Sure let me just…” she fumbled with the suit, prying it off her legs and feet. “Still sticky, wouldn’t want to—there we go!” Tossing it onto a wheeled table, Tillie darted over and wrapped her arms around Quinn. Another embarrassingly high-pitched sound escaped her, but she ignored it.

The girl wasn’t very tall, all told. It was a bit like hugging her niece. Tillie liked to imagine they’d have gotten on—then again, Quinn could probably get on with just about anyone.

Stepping back, she let out a long, contented sigh. “Gosh, I don’t even know what to say! Some places, people have to pay out the nose just stand near pilots! Uhm! Not that I wouldn’t!”

Amygdala Circuit

Relieved that she was neither about to die, or worse, annoying Quinn, Tillie pulled herself back up to her feet and brushed herself off. It was so easy to get ahead of herself I this job; some people spent their whole lives only ever seeing a Savior from miles away, behind a military barricade. Here she was, getting to work on them every day, and better than that, working with the pilots too! It absolutely would not do to go about taking such a life for granted.

That said, when Quinn praised her work, she felt her mind shorting out again, and her cheeks went red as her hair. “O-oh gosh, uhm! Wow, really? Well, I had really good teachers, and I watched a lot of those, y’know, instructional videos. But it’s neat stuff! I mean, have you ever seen the inside of one of these guys before?”

She scooped up the device dropped to the ground in their collision, scrolling quickly through dozens of slides of data she’d recorded. She found a page detailing the assimilation rates once everything was said and done, and turned the screen excitedly over to Quinn. It was, really, just a spreadsheet of numbers—albeit all meticulously categorized and color-coded, but numbers nonetheless.

“Look how healthy it is! Like, up here is the regenerative rate, right? And here’s the assimilative rate, here—look at the difference! We dropped tungsten into its stomach, and it converted that into tissue matter way faster than it would have just healed on its own! I mean yeah the rate tanks with larger injuries but still! It’s like alchemy!”

She pulled the device, scrolling again just to double-check herself, only to remember that she was, in fact, party to her favorite pilot.

“Ohmigosh! Uhm! I’m so sorry—how are you? How’s it goin’ today? Anythin’ I can help you with? Anything you need?”

Amygdala Circuit

Tillie had had many adjectives attributed to her over the years. Quiet, dorky, boring, pasty, pretty—once, by college boy who stopped talking to her after she’d won the grant they’d both applied for. More recently things had taken a positive tilt; they called her diligent, dependable, antsy, which she chose to interpret as a good thing. But for everything she’d been called, never, not once in her life, had she ever been accused of being ‘sturdy’.

So, when Quinn barreled into her at the closest human’s could reach to mach-speed, despite the girl’s meager stature, she sent both of them sprawling to the floor. Tillie let out a yelp not unlike a small dog, but was too concerned with her immediate fate to be embarrassed.

Her first thought was: Shoot, I’ve upset her somehow and now I’m going to die. After all, everyone she’d ever spoken to about it had told her that pilots were fickle. That the weight of heroism caused them such mental strain they could be given to fits of violence at even the most minor of provocations. However, as she realized that Quinn’s grip around her was not, in fact, an attempt at snapped her spine in half, she considered the idea that she was not in trouble.

“Tillie Tillie are you--are you okay—are you okay—”

Huh?

She felt rather silly then. How could she think Quinn would try to kill her—Quinnlash Loughvein! Yet, somehow just as unlikely in her mind was the idea that the girl would be hugging her so tightly, either. When that reality made itself apparent as well, she felt like her mind might just stop working.

“Eeee—” she said—or squealed, really, as it was not words she produced. Unsure of what to do with her hands, they flittered around like hummingbirds, too afraid to actually touch her and hug back.

Blessedly, her composure did eventually return and she managed to wrestle back her grasp of language. “O-okay? Uhm! Oh gosh, I’m so much more than okay! Wow!” She pulled herself upright, momentarily mortified by the look her supervisor shot her, before they walked off. “I was just, uhm! I was just testing Ablaze’s assimilative functions. I’ve never gotten to perform it myself, it’s exhilarating! Oh—uhm! I’m sorry, were you going to do it yourself? We can totally run it again if you want!”

Amygdala Circuit

That Quinn’s celebrity status was in flux across the Aerie—and most of Illun, for that matter—was more statement than question. However, in the hangar things were stubbornly unchanged. For certain some of that starry-eyed adoration had mellowed over the months as the crew saw her more often, but unlike some of the staff in security or logistics or wherever else, here none of the faces soured at her.

They were like this with Dahlia as well. For the hangar crew, who spent most of their days laboring over the Saviors, the pilots—at least, the ones they liked—wound up as close as colleagues.

Ablaze stood in its usual spot, flanked by a pair of walls that doubled as supports. Scaffold platforms were wheeled up and anchored around its legs, though only one or two people manned them. It seemed that whatever maintenance was being run on it had already concluded, while down the way, Dragon’s was just starting.

But as she got closer, Quinn could spot a brace fixed to Ablaze’s mouth, holding its mouth open. Had Quinn ever looked into her Savior’s mouth before? Beyond those gleaming razor teeth there seemed to be nothing but blackness. Saliva, dark but not quite so much as modium, dripped in long strands to the ground, vanishing into the drainage system built into the floor.

What sort of horror must it have been, to be eaten by a monster?

It seemed she’d have an answer. A long cable attached to the brace went taut, and slowly, something crawled its way out of Ablaze’s throat. Bright orange and drenched in fluid, limbs thick, hands grasping—it was a person. They wore some sort of hazard suit, holding the cable linked to a harness on their chest with one hand, and a strange device in the other.

Even the passenger in her mind recoiled. Some maniac had gone down inside the Savior? Why? Who?

Suddenly, the alien spelunker seemed to notice Quinn approaching. They jolted, nearly dropping their machine down Ablaze’s throat, and waved with an almost hysteric excitement. They made their way out of the mouth, ducking expertly beneath the teeth and onto one of the platforms. They vanished behind the Savior’s neck, then emerged on the other side, suit undone to their waist, and waved at her again. This time, without layers of modium-resistant material blocking the way, her voice was loud and clear.

“Quinn!”