Everything slows down.

The city reappears at the sidelines. Cracked spires cast their silhouettes across the yellow sand and gray fog. Z’s skyscraper descends some miles behind me and shrouds the sector in a brilliant wave of storm clouds, deafening the war overhead. My instincts tell me to run, to escape the oncoming shadows and their promise of destruction, but I stare at the empty sky where the white star ship disappears beyond a blue horizon.

Interesting how, when the mind refuses to understand the present, the body shuts down. My knees meet the ground without my command, I see my hands against the asphalt but I’m not the one who put them there. Bits of gravel roll between my numbed fingertips and press until they make dents between the creases. My injuries carry a heavy weight, sweat drips off my forehead and dots the cracks in the pavement, and something cold fills my chest

“One hundred and sixty five,” I say to no one. “One hundred and sixty five.”

Footsteps make the small pebbles jump beneath me. I don’t care to count them, I don’t care to look and see the soldiers flank my sides. Radio static shouts at me from glass tablets, their green glow shining against the blacktop as they send reports in a language I used to understand. Shadows blot out the sunlight and block any means of escape, with a dozen black boots crowding my periphery, I know my odds are close to none.

“One hundred and sixty-five. One hundred and sixty-five.”

Metal drags against the concrete, heavy with a hollow echo. I flinch; the muscles in my back tighten with a certain hellish memory, one many of us Ancients share. How it comes with shredded skin and blackened bones, paired with wretched screams; the depths of human agony are not unfamiliar to my people. When it comes to the Martians and their methods of execution, however, not even the anguish of Corruption compares.

A spear, energized by lightning, designed to tear the flesh of any Beast yet so often shoved through the bodies of those most innocent and vulnerable. And the Minister dares to call himself an ally.

I rake the pebbles across my ground into piles, then clutch them between my fingers as if the asphalt were made of sand. “One hundred and sixty-five. One hundred and sixty-five.”

Electricity snaps and pops, the spear active and ready to pierce my back. The asphalt reflects a different light, blue sparks jumping off tiny shards of quartz and mica to join the green glow of their glass radio soundwaves. Two sets of boots clip the ground in perfect sync with one another. I don’t flinch, nor do I attempt to face them, I simply roll the pebbles between my fingertips and hum under my breath.

“One hundred and sixty-five. One hundred and sixty-five.”

“Stop,” a soldier says, his voice distorted by his mask, low and strange like a machine. He speaks with a Martian accent so thick it cuts through the filters of his helmet. The footsteps pause in perfect unison, with only the buzz of electricity to take their place. “What are you doing?”

“We found a resident, sir,” a second soldier replies, his tone no different than the other’s, except it doesn’t carry the same sophisticated Elite timbre.

“Under whose orders were you instructed to attack?”

“It’s just a precaution, sir.”

“I said, under whose orders?”

Silence. I laugh to myself. “One hundred and sixty-five. One hundred and sixty-five.”

“Answer me, soldier,” the other shouts. “Under whose orders?”

“Titan’s, sir.”

“Titan ordered you to attack?”

“If hostile, sir.”

“Well, is this one hostile?”

“Not yet, sir.”

“Then what are you doing?”

I look out the corner of my eye. A crowd of white-clad soldiers stare down at me through their pointed black helmets, each one armed with light guns and spears. Two stand with lightning dancing up and down their metal staffs, leather gloves wrapped around plastic handles. They clutch thick clear shields at their sides and stand like those evil knights from one of Eli’s dumb medieval history books. Between them towers a high-ranking officer, covered in gray scales with a red phoenix painted across his chest, a stupid-ass design that represents the brainless people he serves. He wears a small line of numbers stamped beneath his collarbone: 155 No. 34. Ah, the one-hundred series, a human unit, Elite through and through. What an honor.

“Stand down,” the officer says. He brushes past them and crouches beside me, then offers me his hand. “Ma’am, are you alright?” he asks.

“Sir, it might be infected,” says one of the others.

“They all are,” he snaps, then returns his attention to me, the sun reflecting a glare against the dark shield of his mask. “Ma’am are you okay?”

More sweat drips off the end of my nose and splashes the shiny blacktop.

The officer takes out a glass tablet and summons a myriad of green lights. They move above the clear surface in a flat-line, then bounce to emulate the soundwaves of his voice. “Resident found, adult female, injured and very small.”

This catches my attention, I glare at him until I give myself a headache. Very small?

“I need medical here, now. Sending you my coordinates.” He taps the hologram, punching numbers into a green keypad--the glow makes my headache worse. His leather gloves creak; he curls them into fists and rests them on his iron-clad knees. “Ma’am, are there others like you here in the city still? Can you tell us where they went?”

I don’t move a muscle. He turns to one of his soldiers and gestures for something. “I think she’s suffered a head injury. Give me a torch, mine is broken.”

A shy recruit shuffles forward and hands him a small black flashlight, then stands by his side at attention. The officer snatches the torch away from him, shakes his head, and mutters something under his breath. He stands and walks to my head, I keep my eyes on the ground and study his metal boots. The pebbles crunch beneath them as he crouches before me again and shoves his hand under my chin. He wrenches my head to the sun, leather stitches rough against my skin, then sticks the light into my face. Blue spots explode in my vision, covering up his pointed black helmet; I squeeze my eyes shut and watch the sparks dance behind my eyelids. They linger for a moment, then disappear when he takes the flashlight away.

“I can’t help you if you don’t cooperate,” he says. “But maybe I couldn’t if I tried. Look at those silver irises, this one’s as infected as they come.” He sticks his fingers between my brow and cheekbone to pull my left eye open. I look into his mask to see if there is anything under there, the helmet might as well be empty with a visor so dark. “There’s definitely damage, either from an impact or the Corruption’s gotten to its head. Load it with the others, it's harmless—“

I snatch him away from my chin, fingers wrapped tight around the leather of his long gloves, thumb placed in the center on his forearm. The armor over his chest freezes at the top of an inhale, and oh, how I wish I could see his eyes. My thumb presses to meet my palm on the other side of his arm, and his bones crack and pop in between. Ivory spears punch through the metal scales, then crumble in my grasp like the sand beneath my feet. Blood courses down his elbow to meet the dots of sweat I put on the asphalt moments before. Frozen, he doesn’t cry just yet, he doesn’t dare to reach for a weapon as I mix his metal plates with hardened muscle and loosened tendons. A dozen guns click all around me, coupled with the buzz of lightning spears reactivated and poised at my neck.

My fist finds his visor before they load their charges. Glass splinters stick shards into the spaces between my knuckles. Black shavings reflect the desert sunlight with their delicate twists and turns, showering the two of us in an artificial rain. A pale face stares back at me, scars and wires set deep inside cheeks that stick to their bones, his eyes an unfamiliar hazel tone. He carries a conglomerate of flesh and metal from all the times my people picked him apart so that Mars could put him back together again, a price for immortality far higher than my own.

A dozen lightning spears race for my back, followed by the surge of soldiers. The first gleams out the corner of my eye, bolts of electricity spitting sparks onto my shoulder. Poor Martian wretch, confidence placed in subpar training, he doesn’t stand a chance. I catch the spear and drag it through his hands until the plastic gives way and the scent of burnt flesh permeates the air. A bolt of light shoots up my arm, my muscles freeze, fingers clasped tight to the metal bar.

The electricity rockets through the ground, through my limbs, then reaches for my heart, enough voltage to kill a man three-times over--but I have redefined the limitations of humanity. Instead of paralysis I find strength; power courses through my veins. The spear casts a shadow across the bright asphalt as I pull it behind me, gaze locked onto those hazel eyes inside the remnants of his mask. Lightning cracks, sparks fly then explode--I thrust the spear between his brows and slam him to the ground. He spatters the asphalt with shattered glass and crimson, unrecognizable, forever anchored to a world that doesn’t belong to him.

My body moves on its own accord, mind numbed by the thrill of an outnumbered fight. I rip his lightgun off his shoulders and empty the cartridge into the oncoming wave of Cockroaches. One long ray of white light is all it takes to sever limbs from joints, rib cages from torsos. Their metal armor melts into their skin, be it synthetic or flesh, to reveal softness underneath. Some collapse and reach for missing arms, others fall into a pile of spare parts, screws, and iron skeletons--Titan’s automatons. Those cheap fucks! Aren’t I worth real soldiers?

The cartridge fizzles out, the rest buried beneath the officer’s body--the Legion doesn’t give me time to find them. The roaches replace their fallen soldiers as if the others never lived, weapons at full charge, lighting up my combat suit in a myriad of laser sights.

“On your knees, hands on your head!” they shout, too afraid of my infection to come close. I rip the lightning spear from what’s left of the officer’s face, wrap the emptied light gun around my shoulders, and plant my feet.

“Take your shot,” I say. “I won’t surrender.”

A second gray-clad Roach raises his fist in the air. The others stop their circling, visors pressed close to sights, spears activated and spewing sparks across the sidewalks.

"Ah, you're not a fool like the rest," I tell the new officer. "You know how this works, injure me and I mutate, then we're all in trouble. So, filthy Roach, what's your move?"

He crouches and doesn’t say a word, hiding his right arm inside his black cape.

“What’s that you have?” I say. “Something for me? Let me see it.”

“Take cover!” he shouts.

The asphalt explodes beneath my feet, sliced to pieces by a storm of green light. The lasers shoot from the dirt as if planted beneath the crust. They scourge my skin and peel the hairs from my arms, then relapse into a thick barrel of smoke. I cover my face and dodge the vicious beams. Thunder cracks and echoes through the empty city streets as the skyscrapers fill their windows with that haunting shade of green. The lights converge in a spiral, then a dome, it expands to touch an unseen barrier, and ruptures into flames.

The blast shatters the windows of the buildings--they rain glass onto the busted streets and armored soldiers, who cower behind clear shields and weapons that can’t save them. Smoke follows and hides them away, I stand within the blackened rubble and dust myself off, unscathed. A crater stems from my feet full of gushing pipes and sand, in the center among the carnage sits the remains of a small grenade. I pick up the pieces and observe the wires and broken shells, then make my way through the haze. Smoke sticks to my burns and curls to the sky as my wounds heal one by one. The pieces of my cheek reach for one another, wrenched open by the blast, now closing around open teeth and an exposed jaw. I touch the wound to feel it mend beneath my fingertips, then hold tight to my spear and ascend the crater.

“Impressive,” I say. The dust clears. I walk from the ash straight to the line of soldiers and stare down the gray-clad officer, who gasps and fumbles with his gun. His visor reflects a terrifying creature, drenched in blood and half-healed lesions, like an undead crawling from the grave. My spear buries itself into his insides before he has the chance to fire, before the others realize their shock and attack. Lightning churns through metal guts this time, the spear screeches past iron vertebrae and slams through the armor of his back. He sinks to his knees and cranes his neck to look at me, brutal rays of electricity swarming his body and shutting it down. “But your efforts are not nearly good enough.”

The company showers us with rays of light and sheets of bullets. I pull the spear from my victim and face the Legion, dodging wave after wave of gunfire. One-by-one they fall, I pump their bodies full of light and tear each one apart. When bullets connect with my skin the wounds heal to be reopened, but I suffer far less than what I put them through. One soldier made of metal melts under the spear, another made of flesh and bone collapses to a blow to his head, helmet combined with his skull. When the smoke clears I stand alone, the sidewalk littered with the dead, gutters overflowing with orange oil, black ink, and blood.

Silence returns to Colossus once again.

My footsteps echo from one alleyway to another. I wade through the pile of soldiers and pause over a red manhole, breathless and covered in debris. I turn my attention to the stars, set my sights above the skyscrapers, fill my lungs with hot desert air, and scream at the top of my lungs.

“Graves!”

The sound carries to the mountains in the distance. A great bird takes to the sky, what kind I’ll never know, startled by my damning invocation. He spreads tattered feathers against the sun and drags his shadow above my head, disappearing into the destruction of the city to pursue the Wastes on the other side.

“One hundred and sixty five million miles! That’s how far away your world is from mine.”

Buildings creak with the threat of collapse, flames devour metal beams and brick walls. Colossus falls to Mars and all its fury, a chilling promise from the Minister of all that is to come. I shout to the stars to make a promise to him in return.

“But the distance can’t protect you. There is nothing between our worlds that can keep you safe from me.”