Like a panther, the iSoldier leapt from the wall. Snap. Its wrist-gun retracted. Reaching out, he touched its chestplate. “Identify.”

A buzzing. “Niner-niner-triple-three-delta.”

“Right,” he said, almost relaxing. “As you were.”

Its hand shot out, grabbing his vest, knocking all the air out of his lungs. He cried out, gabbling nonsense like, “Friend!” and “On your side!” and “Reds, see? Reds!”

It tugged aside the strap of his vest to get a visual reading of his rank insignia. Private Carter, Tracey. F-Tech.

Thump. He dropped to the ground like a discarded sack. In a single leap, the iSoldier bounded over the wall.

“Wanker,” Tracey said aloud. It didn’t make him feel any better. He adjusted the straps of his vest and levered himself upright.

He checked his scope. Point two klicks. Signal still fuzzy.

He ducked between barbed wire and broken masonry into the chewed-up remains of what had been a car park. He crouched, scanning the open space.

There. A pair of metallic legs spilling out from behind the skeleton of a car. He picked his way over, staying low, and stared at what was left of the iSoldier he’d been sent to patch up.

The legs—just the legs, and a spray of still-hissing fluid. For a happy moment he thought that was all that was left, that the rest of the iSoldier was being ground to dust in the belly of a Beast.

But maybe ten metres further he saw the arms and torso, wires and nerve-enhancements spilling out like tentacles. It was like a broken toy, a rag doll torn in half and left in the dirt.

“Well,” he said, “That’s going to take some fixing.”

Crouching to inspect the legs, he saw the tail end of the spinal cord, white bones visible within the dense circuitry. The only thing left to do was call salvage.

His scope clicked. Signal online. He spat a curse. Now he had to check its neural functioning.

The torso was motionless, ragged, but procedure was procedure. He crawled to it. “Identify.”

No response. He put his hand on its chestplate.

“Identify, soldier.”

Nothing. Sometimes skin contact helped, when the sensors weren’t at optimum. He stripped off his glove, but jerked back. The armour was searing hot.

Groping at his belt, he unhooked his probe and forced the helmet open. The face beneath was pale and screwed up, the sound of its panting high and dull in the murky air.

“Identify! Hey!” He patted at the side of its skull. “Status report.”

Its eyes opened. “What?” Its voice was an echo of itself, electronics and human vocal cords.

“Identify.”

“I don’t understand.” The electronic voice was flat. The human voice was thick with pain.

Tracey should have realised, then, what had happened. “Identify yourself.” Nothing. He detached his scope and held it over the iSoldier’s eye, trying for a retinal scan. “Hold still.”

976-555- λ.

Oh, no. Jesus, Mary, Joseph and all the Saints in heaven, no. He closed his eyes, swallowed, his throat clasping, dry. It didn’t matter, it couldn’t matter. The iSoldier didn’t even remember.

“I can’t feel my legs.” Tracey looked down at it hazily, thinking the status report command had kicked in at last and wondering why it wasn’t following procedure. “Why can’t I feel my legs?”

One last time. “Identify.”

“What?” The iSoldier made a noise like it was trying to clear its throat. It was confused by the crackly echo.

“Who are you? What’s your name?”

“Private McCray. Eight-oh-oh-niner-fifty.”

Tracy almost threw up. Right there, on top of the iSoldier. This couldn’t be real. His brain was helpfully scrolling through all the reasons why this shouldn’t be possible, all the safeguards in place to ensure iSoldiers never did this, ever.

“Why can’t I,” said the iSoldier, “What –” It shuddered, and screamed—half staticky roar of electronics, half animal pain.

Tracey covered his ears.

He’d scrapped iSoldiers before. He ought to call salvage, the iSoldier was a tattered mess of fractured spine and chewed-up neural circuits. All he had to do was make the call.

The ever-present rumbling was growing louder. As he dithered, the iSoldier’s static-riddled cries were drowned out by the screeeeech of bladed wheels chewing through concrete.

“Oh, God!”

The Beast loomed, a misty, disjointed shadow in the fog. He could hear its jaws clashing.

“Oh, Jesus Christ.”

Was it Red or Blue? It didn’t matter. It didn’t care, he didn’t care. He was on his feet, ready to run like hell for base, when hot metal closed around his ankle. The iSoldier’s hand. It couldn’t have seen the Beast, but could hear it, feel it shaking the ground.

“Don’t leave me here, you can’t leave me here–”

“You’re scrap iron!” He didn’t know if the iSoldier heard him over the pulsing roar of oncoming blades but its brown eyes stared up at him, jerking back and forth in their sockets, alive.

It was the eyes that did it.

Tracey heaved the iSoldier across the tarmac, towards the wreck of the nearest building. It was dead weight, so hot he could feel the heat radiating through his gloves. It was screaming. He thought it was screaming at the Beast but it was screaming at itself. He’d lifted its shoulders and it was looking down at its body, looking at the mass of cables trailing from its severed abdomen, at the void where its legs had been, and its chest plate was vibrating with its screams.

The Beast was almost on them, churning a path through the city, flames and smoke belching out of its grilled mouth. It ate. It gorged itself on rubble and concrete and steel and toxic goo. Tightening his grip, Tracey staggered fast as he could for shelter.

The ground rocked, cracks opened up in the hellish force of its approach, and he fell.

He tumbled down a rubbly slope into the black emptiness that had once been the basement. Gravel and dust fell around him and he curled in on himself, covering his airways. The stink of the fumes, the agonising roar in his lungs, the heat, the dampness of the concrete, the noise. It was so loud it wasn’t even sound, it was pure, vile sensation pounding at his eardrums, incessant.

When it quieted, he found with dull surprise that he was still alive. He took deep breaths, sobbing in relief, coughing up mouthfuls of dust. He opened his eyes. The Beast hadn’t crushed the wall completely. Here and there shafts of sunlight branched through. He might be able to dig himself out.

He heard the iSoldier, still screaming at the top of its lungs. Tracey checked his scope. It was flickery, but functional. Two Red blips, Blues all around them. iSoldiers from the belly of the Beast. If they’d picked up Tracey’s signal they’d have come for him already. Sooner or later they’d hear the noise.