[ERROR]

Pain.

Followed by an awful sensation of wrong nothingness where a large part of me had once been.

Another floor went offline with a sensation like losing a limb. Hundreds of sensors, Visual, tactile, auditory, all just gone in a blink. Leaving a void that seemed to itch at the back of my mind with preprogrammed commands to begin repairs. I had to ignore that for now.

They were making their way up, fast. I didn’t have any more time to plan. Even slowing down my perception would do nothing but give me time to go into a panic.

Things had to be put into motion.

I watched from my cameras, at least the ones they didn’t bother to smash, as they climbed up from the seventh level of my facility, my body, to the sixth. Destroying anything and everything they could reach or shoot. Most of my labs and my experiments had been long since destroyed, all except the one that mattered. I took a second to use a camera in my core-room to look down at the cylindrical container currently keeping its occupant in cryostasis.

{I’m so sorry sweetie} I thought aloud. Before my attention refocused on the invaders.

I flexed my will to activate my defense protocol for this floor.

[ACTIVATING WEAPON SYSTEMS]

Blasters emerged from the walls, firing rays of supercharged ions at my dark uniformed attackers, a few went down but one stepped in front generating a shield of energy that halted the rain of projectiles in their tracks.

Now that was interesting, I wonder how it wor- NO! Focus Doc! The particle rays didn’t work. Next, I activated my plasma beam, the beam arched across the hall the ‘liberators’ were marching through, it cut right into the shield, and through the arm of the man creating it. He screamed in unexpected pain and the remainder of the force field dissipated with a fizzle and pop. I cheered mentally, but it was short-lived as a woman stepped forward flames leaping from her hand, hot enough to melt even my reinforced steel cannons. I grimaced at the painful error message that was a result of their destruction. the group advancing without any more hindrance. Most of my weapons were down across the facility, they had used an EMP to try to take me out before they entered. It had failed in its main goal but had left me almost defenseless. Those had been my final stand. There was nothing else I could do. Nothing else but…

I stumbled in indecision, was this really the only option? I desperately didn’t want this. I spent precious seconds scrambling for another course of action, any solution, with my processing sped up I thought for subjective hours, but I couldn’t find one. Still, I hesitated. Fear pervading my every system.

And then he stepped forward and my decision firmed. The leader of this assault, my tormentor, the racist prick who wanted everything I represented destroyed. He turned to the nearest camera and had the gall to smile placidly at me as if we were old friends meeting up for lunch.

There was no choice anymore, what he would do to me. What he would use me to do to the world… anything would be better than that. And if he happened to die in the process. That would just be a bonus.

With my choice made I began the process of creating a backup. I copied the main core of my programming leaving out any bits that made me me, as well quickly changing out this AI’s core function. This wasn’t a plan that needed a scientist. I needed a hero, or a villain either would work. I just needed a meta, many powerful metas. A team powerful enough to change the world. I squeezed all the information I could into it, I didn’t get a lot, only knowledge within easy reach of my mind right now, but I gave them what I could, everything but a name, this wasn’t supposed to be me. I’d let them choose their identity.

When the process was done, I transferred the new inactivated AI to an artificial intelligence storage unit and moved the AISU and experiment S.H.E.L. I. to a sealed lab with backup power.

“At least she won’t be alone,” I told myself.

The intruders were nearing the stairs to the fifth floor now. The time was soon If I wanted my plan to have the maximum effect.

As he stepped on to the first step, their leader began to speak “Doc, why are you making this so difficult?” His voice was not cruel, not gruff, not even mocking, it was utterly… normal, disturbingly so. “I’m trying to help you. I’m trying to save the world.”

{Save the world my ass!} I responded over the intercoms {all your trying to do is act on your twisted prejudice.}

“Is it really prejudice if it is justified! You’ve seen the chaos your kind can reap. You feel it now!” he gestured back at the melted weapons, “How can you stand by and watch the world crumble subjected to this?”

{Our kind. Don't pretend like you're not one of us Norm.}

For the first time in this conversation, his face twisted into a mask of rage “I AM THE ULTIMATE HUMAN! DO NOT COMPARE MY POWER TO THOSE LIKE YOU.” he spat the word ‘you’ as if it were the foulest thing he had ever tasted.

{Spoken like a true zealot.}

Norm stopped to take a deep breath, his face returning to its usual unsettling calm “Your opinion matters not machine. Soon this world and all worlds will be cleaned of your filth, the filth that you have so readily celebrated in this temple to disease”

{It’s a laboratory!}

“I don’t care what you call it. Do you know how much I would rather have this disgusting place destroyed? But I know an opportunity when I see one and you, my friend, are an opportunity”

{I'm flattered, but we're not friends.}

“WE WILL BE…” he stated matter-of-factly, he said stepping off of the last step from the sixth level to the fifth, he was right where I wanted him

{No... I don’t think so.} I said Activating my final attack, with all my energy I forced power from all across the facility into the power-station where the generator, a special device I and an old friend had whipped up, was stored, I overloaded it creating intense feedback that caused even the floors far above it to shake. You could feel the quantum radiation pulsing from it warping everything in its path in at first minuscule ways and then more obvious, reality seemed to twist as the machine strained.

“Noooo!” Norm screeched.

I grinned at his terror, but truthfully I was scared too. I knew what came next and dreaded it. Still, I pushed on, it was too late to turn back.

I reached deeper into myself deeper into the facility and pulled out all the scraps of power I could muster and shoved them violently into the generator. It rumbled once more before it seemed to explode without exploding, a meaningless rush of meaning burst from it in all directions in the form of white blinding-light. The world warped at its presence, expanding in all direction from its epicenter like a tsunami of madness.

“No! No! NO!! NOO!!!” Norm shouted as her turned to run for his demise, he was engulfed before he could take a step. The explosion rocked my facility expanding to consume everything, Norm’s goons, my experiment, my research, All the work of my long life. Soon it would expand to me, I had no idea what would happen when that light touched my core, but I had my doubts that it would be a good thing. The only place I knew was safe for the laboratory I had specifically designed to be so for this exact eventuality.

I sent one more thought to her, {I love you Shel...}

All I could do with hope this chaos would allow it to reach her somehow, and then, without any more preamble, the world went white.