“How are things lookin’ in there Alfie?” Sentinel asked via the terminal connection to Alfred’s isolation protocol suit.

His voice sounded distant and tinny to Alfred. Their voices were synthetic to begin with but the thin connection tunnel that joined Alfred to the HeadSpace from within the virtual server condensed the audio data until it sounded like a first generation telephone.

“The brain module disc image has been installed and backed up. I’ve set up a dummy test system for it to connect to. We can destroy and rebuild this as many times as needed. There’s a protocol interface wrapper that has the brain functions contained. All signals have to pass through this cage. It looks a lot like our old chum, the control curse, if I’m honest.”

“I can’t say as I’m surprised,” Sentinel admitted. “Jhaix was hardly what you’d call original in how he did things.”

“Don’t forget our colleague MainFrame got mixed in there as well,” Alfred reminded him.

“I guess we can thank our lucky stars that MainFrame only got used as a personality template and isn’t actually aware and runnin’ the rodeo over there.”

“Well, that’s the theory. Can’t be overly certain unless we open up the rapscallion’s head, old boy.”

“Now yer just teasin’ me with wistful thoughts,” Sentinel laughed.

“This curse variant has all the usual hooks into the brain that lock down a person’s ability to act against it. Nasty bit of work, this. It has a number of bypasses that prevent the user from accessing the motor functions of the body at all. All data is still sent to and from the soul core for memory archival but that’s the limit of the user interaction.”

“Well shoot, that’s none too kindly there. Is removal hopeless?”

“Thankfully, no, but it would take some surgical skill to deal with. It looks like there’s a self replicating function to continuously repair the cage if it’s modified. Ah, looks like I’ve triggered a security protocol. There is a small fleet of scrubbing programs headed my way.”

“I see ‘em. No worries there partner,” Sentinel said, manipulating a visual representation of the virtual server.

The storm clouds that menaced the server gathered and rolled, churning like a violent sea. Lightning sparked from cloud to cloud before a thick thunderbolt crackled through the space, obliterating several of the security programs. Alfred continued his exploration of the curse code as bolt after bolt of vicious electrical discharge blasted around him.

“I say, that one was a bit close, wasn’t it my dear chappie?” Alfred complained, glancing at the singed remains of a program a few steps to his right.

“Hey there now, Alfie. You could pick up the pace a bit instead of just pokin’ about like you got all day to sniff at every flower.”

Alfred paused and looked around at the various programs exploding around him thanks to the lightning strikes and reluctantly nodded.

“Very well, let’s dive a bit deeper then, shall we?” he agreed.

The poor Frankenstein’s Monster of a body that I’d cobbled together came online and looked around in confusion.

“Hey there. My name’s Prime. I’m sorry about the body, it’s the best I could do with what I had on hand.”

The monster looked down at itself, examining its “paws” and wrapping the tail around to look at the four fingered grabber on the end.

“At least... I’m a quad this time...” it answered.

“Oh? Were you a four legged species before your conversion? I’m sorry, I can’t do anything about your old body and life.”

“What? Oh, yeah... I’m a centaur... or I guess I was...”

“What’s your name?” I asked, gently.

“Edd. Um, Private First Class Edd with the Plains Division, Sixth Regional Army.”

I was grateful he had a rank so that I could stop myself from calling him “Mister Edd” given he was a centaur... Not that he’d get it, of course.

“Sixth Army, so were you part of the defense force that was deployed to the eastern border?”

“That’s right,” he said, trying to look at his own back.

“Hey Edd, look this way a sec. Can you tell me what happened to you on the front? I’d like to try and stop it from happening to others if I can.”

“That’s kinda funny. An auto wanting to stop other autos,” he chuckled.

Edd told me about how his unit had arrived at the front. At the time, fighting hadn’t begun yet and they were still in the phase where the armies gathered and lined up, intimidating each other. For the most part it was a lot of bluster and posturing but tensions were still high as either side could suddenly issue an attack order.

Early one morning, just before dawn, something went wrong with one of the Automata assault squads. They started attacking their handlers and destroying the camp, but were eventually destroyed. Some of the Automata from the squad had gone missing though. When the soldiers realized that some were missing, they found that whole squads had also vanished along with units from support and supply divisions.

Security was increased and the remaining Automata were put under strict watch. Edd was part of a scouting patrol that found a small camp of Automata gathered several kilometers out in the foothills of the mountains to the south of Trone. His patrol was spotted and they were run down by the Automata there. Their own soldier units were a part of the group and easily overwhelmed their small unit.

None of the soldiers were killed, though their limbs were broken to keep them from fleeing. Edd and his unit were dragged back to the Automata camp where they had been building a large machine-like structure. He had the horror of watching the machine come to life.

His commander was held up by one of the imperial Automata as a massive arm swung out of the machine. The arm had a gigantic four-fingered claw on the end with a nasty looking spike in the center. The claw arm grabbed the commander around the torso, punching the spike through his chest and out the back. A fifth finger flipped around like a scorpion tail and connected a strange metal ball onto the end of the spike.

After a few seconds, the ball started glowing with magic lights and was removed by another machine arm. The dead commander was then discarded and flung to the side. Edd was then dragged forward and punched through with the same spike. Everything went black for him and he felt like he was floating, weightless, deep underwater.

Strange symbols and images started appearing around him and his consciousness suddenly shifted from nothingness to seeing everything as if it were made of fine sand with glyphs he didn’t understand floating in the air before him. The body that Edd found himself in moved without any input from him, stepping out of a dark room filled with dark and unmoving Automata. The arm that he’d seen holding the strange metal ball was retreating and vanished into the depths of the room’s machinery.

Edd found himself unable to control what the body was doing or even where he was looking. He felt as if he was merely a spectator while something else was actually in control, though he had no sensation or awareness of the other presence. Edd’s body joined a group of other Automata around a large metal block. Together they lifted the block and set out, marching away from the camp and the battlefield.

The group would march in silence for days without rest until they reached a glowing spot. Everything in Edd’s sandy vision would have a strange glow to it that would get brighter as they marched, headed for something. At some point when everything was as bright as possible, they would set the block down and manipulate buttons and knobs on it. The block would open up like a large chest and make a horrible screaming noise. As it screamed, the brightness of the area would begin to fade.

When everything was at a normal level of brightness, the block would stop screaming and close back up. The group would pick the block back up and then march again for even longer until they reached a city. Edd had never been to the city before, but it appeared to be deserted. A massive building at the center had more Automata than Edd had ever seen before in his life.

The group would drop off the metal block in one area along with other groups and their blocks. Again, without rest, the groups would pick up another metal block from a different area and head out again marching for a different bright area. Often multiple groups would go to a single area.

Such was the case this time. They had just completed whatever the job was with the blocks when they were ambushed by another group of Automata. None of the Automata in Edd’s group, or even Edd himself, seemed capable of properly fighting beyond simple movements though.

In a short amount of time, the attacking Automata had torn Edd’s body apart. When he saw me, he found himself speaking with a voice that wasn’t his in words that were not his own. Again, Edd was merely a spectator.

The poor guy was a mess, relaying his story to me. I felt bad for what he’d gone through, but thanks to him I had a good idea of what Dezarus had been up to. As if the harvesters of The Factory weren’t bad enough, he’d started up a mobile Factory; possibly multiple ones that could convert large groups of organics on the spot.

Like me, it looked like Dezarus was also on the hunt for mana and was using these block devices to harvest it from dungeon spawn areas. From what I’d learned thanks to Alfred, a pretty good amount of mana was required to maintain all these proxy connections so Dezarus had likely built himself a HUGE mana battery that he’d connected himself to.

With the idea of a queen sending out drones, I couldn’t help but think that instead of a Transformer that converts into a dragon for his name, he should have gone with Waspinator or better yet, Inferno.