Sunlight streamed in from the holes the bullets left. We scrambled down the hall on all fours, desperately trying to get to the back door. Were it not for Auntie Em, I would have stayed at the kitchen island, and been torn to shreds by bullets and shrapnel.

  As it was, the wound in my forearm bled a lot but didn’t seem to be too bad. It made the floor slick as I crawled, but I only slipped once.

  The gunshots rolled in intermittently. They came in waves, almost with a musicality to it. If I wasn’t scared out of my mind, maybe I could have found some kind of pattern.

  My breath came in ragged, staccato bursts. I was a distance runner. I should be good at this. But I’d never crawled across the floor while being shot at. It was way different.

  Auntie Em threw the backdoor open without waiting, or stopping to look through the shattered window. She stood up, keeping my hand the entire time. We ran together.

  I could see the bullets hitting the ground next to us as we ran to the front of her truck.

  We ducked near the engine.

  Auntie Em let go of my hand.

  The gunfire stopped. For a burst of seconds, maybe half a dozen, it was just the ringing in my ears. Maybe they ran out of ammo?

  Or maybe they were just waiting for a clear shot.

  “Stay here,” Auntie Em said.

  As if I was going anywhere.

  She ducked around the front of the truck. I kept my head down. It was everything I had to keep standing. I pressed my head up against the hood of the truck, and stared at my feet. I focused on my breathing.

  Auntie Em would come back for me.

  The gunfire started again. I could feel myself scream, but couldn’t hear it against the sound of the machine guns rattling from somewhere in the woods.

  I didn’t know what to do. I was so exposed out here. If I ran to the barn they would get me for sure.

  I didn’t want to die.

  Then came the distinctive roar of a coilgun. A wave of sound rocked me to my core. It came from my left. Had they circled us?!

  That wouldn’t make any sense. They were firing on us from the west. It came from the east. They’d be shooting at each other.

  If it wasn’t the robots…

  Emma slid around the front of the truck, and fell at my feet. I helped her up, instinctively.

  She had a large pistol in her armored fist. The armor stopped at her elbow and connected to a basic exoskeletal brace that went from her elbow to her shoulder. It looked like her old Knight armor. But it couldn’t be. If it was, it was just a part of it.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  She laughed, wildly. Her eyes were filled with some kind of crazy emotion I’d never seen before.

  “Probably dislocated my shoulder with this junk! But that shut them up for a bit, yeah?”

  I just stared at her.

  “Well,” she said, “run for the fucking barn!”

  She pulled me to my feet and flung me towards the barn.

  I ran.

  The space between her truck and the barn must have been no more than twenty feet, but it felt like an insurmountable distance when I expected hot lead in my back. My skin itched where I expected the bullet to go. My bare feet pounded into the grass. Wisps of my hair streamed behind me.

  I don’t think I’d ever run so fast. I crashed into the barn door, flinging it open.

  Sunlight painted the floor in alternating stripes of color. Dustmotes hung in the air. It was peaceful here.

  Saanvi was at her laptop. I didn’t have time to be embarrassed that I had forgotten she was here. She had one hand on the keyboard, typing, while the other hung at her side, limp. Blood poured from her shoulder to a pool on the floor.

  “Come on, you little chutiya!” she said, then looking at me said, “it’s almost ready! Go!”

  A bundle of cords ran from the laptop to Morrigan.

  Morrigan.

  There she was. I could hear a hum emanate from it as the machinery warmed up. I looked to Saanvi.

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  “Are you okay?”

  “Just get in! You’re the only way we make it out of this!”

  She was right.

  Morrigan stood there for me, waiting.

  She was beautiful, and strange. Mostly midnight blue with black and violet highlights, she reminded me of the sky at night. Intricate copper designs scrolled across her plates. Here and there, I could make out raven feathers, or gaelic script. Her hips were a little wide from where the nanite fabricators were, and she had a very pleasing organic shape to her. Auntie Em’s sword hung from her waist.

  Everything else in the barn seemed to fade away.

  How did I open it? How did I get in?

  I felt my feet carrying me to it. A song sprang to my mind. Not Morrigan’s song, but something else.

  I peeled out of my sweater, just in my leggings and sports bra. I didn’t feel exposed at all though. It wasn’t the sophisticated underlayer, but I hoped it would work just fine.

  She opened up for me, plates sliding, and blooming open of its own accord. As I approached her, I could see that it would fit me snuggly. I put my back to it, and I could feel it shift over me gently, as if enveloping me in a gentle hug. The armor’s helm beamed a Visual Projection directly into my visual cortex via the neural assessors that gently cupped my face, and touched my body at very specific intervals. A Heads Up Display gave me the time, and outlined potential threats as they popped up. Decades ago, something like this had to be attached directly to the nerves at the base of your spine, but now it was extradermal.

  The song was in my head now. The incessant ringing from earlier was washed away by Morrigan’s aural interface. Now, I could just hear her music, her song.

  I took my first step.

  It was like walking on land for the first time after spending a lot of time in the ocean, or in a river. I could feel the armor move around me at first. Then I took another step. Then another. And suddenly it was like Morrigan wasn’t even there at all anymore.

  I was in my own little world, but at the same time, keenly aware of all kinds of things I shouldn't have. I could see in front of me, and behind at the same time. When I walked, in some ways it felt like the world moved, not me. And then, all at once, I was used to it.

  Bullets shredded the barn door. Saanvi ducked under her folding table, cursing to herself in an incessant stream.

  I ran to the door, and did the first thing I could think of.

  Morrigan, and I ran right through it.

  The heavy wooden door felt like barely anything, it was almost comical. I almost laughed. But there was the robot. He had his combustion rifle pointed right at me. The rifle cracked as it fired.

  The bullets slid right off of Morrigin’s plating. Her aural dampeners told me that he was firing his gun, but it didn’t hurt my hearing. His black metal eyes narrowed.

  I drew my sword, and brought it down in a single overhead chop. He frantically put his gun over his head to block it.

  Crap. I’d heard edge alignment was important.

  The edge of the sword skipped off the gun, but I’d hit it with enough force that it tumbled out of his hands. My sword blade was already pointed at his chest, so I lunged forward, and buried the point of it right through where I guessed his heart would have been. Had he been human. The tip of my sword kept going, and I felt it enter the side of Emma’s truck.

  I blinked once. He scrambled against my sword but I had him well and truly pinned. My HUD lit up as gunfire came in from the treeline.

  It took some effort, but I yanked my sword free, and swung for his head, separating it from his shoulders in one efficient movement.

  “Get down you idiot!” Emma screamed.

  I could feel the bullets ping against me, rattling the suit no harder than heavy drops of rain against a plastic sheet. Until one found its way past a plate, and punched into Morrigan’s liquid-crystal polymer skin. It felt like being punched in the chest. I tumbled over, and scrambled behind the engine black next to Emma.

  Morrigan threw up a reading in my hud that said:

  LCP dermal integrity 98%.

  “Yeah thanks,” I muttered to myself.

  I had only been with Morrigan less than a minute, and already she’d started to develop a sense of humor.

  “You’re not invincible out there!” Emma yelled. “Pay attention!”

  “Got it,” I said, the sound of my voice distorted by the speaker.

  All the technology in the world, and the speaker distorted my voice? Maybe it was a deliberate choice. Not every Knight died on the battlefield.

  Being in the suit was disorienting. I had so much information coming in. From my HUD, to the music, to the sound of Emma’s voice. It was all so much. I focused my vision on Emma. The music changed.

  What song was that? Was it Emma’s?

  “Here,” she said, pressing her oversized pistol to my hand, “take this.”

  I didn’t want it. I’d always been a little scared of pistols.

  “Just point, and shoot!”

  I waited for the break in gunfire, stood, and leveled the weapon at the treeline. The roar of the handcannon was immense, overloading my aural dampeners and sending my ears ringing again. I dropped my sword, and it skidded away somewhere behind me.

  The treeline exploded. I could hear Emma trying to say something. More gunfire from over the ridge. I moved the barrel over to the hill, and closed my eyes.

  The gun fired, recoil pushing me back on my heels. I opened my eyes. The top of the hill was gone.

  More gunfire from the house. I turned towards it. Emma said something again that I couldn’t hear. I pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.

  “You overheated it, you idiot!” she said.

  A reading in my HUD read:

  Weapon thermal capacity at 120%.

  Crap.

  Two robots spilled from the backdoor. I dropped the gun, and ran forward. If I spent even a moment thinking, it wouldn’t happen. The only thing that kept me on my feet was motion.

  I scooped my sword from the ground, and slid across the gravel toward the two robots. They cast aside their guns, and drew some kind of makeshift weapons, steel shafts sharpened to a point. I batted aside the first thrust, and stepped inside the reach of the other.

  My sword blade jerked in my hands as it met the resistance of the metal exoskeleton. I kept hold as I followed through with the swing, and cut him in half. Black oil spurt into the air. Shoulder checking the one to my left to make a little space, I stepped in with an overhead swing that cut him from shoulder to hip.

  Then, just like that, it was over.

  Sword red hot from the friction, I stood there for a moment, listening to the victory fanfare. It was nice. I’d earned that.