“That’s a question I’d love to be able to answer,” Nalfis answered, “but for now could I draw everyone’s attention back to the giant bloody cannon?” Oh yeah. That.

  “Well what can we do?” Alf fired back. “I rather feel that we shot our bolt with Tove.”

  “I don’t know, but surely we have to do something? Even if this is aimed at Dendallen, it will have to level Elvenden to get to him, and even then, who’s to say he won’t escape? He survived a war against these machines before, maybe he can again. We don’t know, but we do know that hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent people will die if this machine marches on that city.” He made a fair point, and even now we could see the red glow from the cannon intensifying, the cables practically jumping with energy as it spooled up. A low droning noise was audible even through the thick walls, a pitch that was getting higher as the light got brighter.

  The only ideas I ever seem to have are instinctive, impulsive ones, and in the short sweep of my life up to this point, and the slightly longer sweep afterwards, I still haven’t decided if they tend to be good ideas or bad ones. This was definitely an idea though. “Alf,” I asked, “could this person you know fix two people like Tove?”

  “From my understanding, if what they can do would help, then yes, I believe they could apply it to multiple people. Why do you ask-” he cut himself off before he could fit the question mark into his sentence, and stared dead into my eyes, brows drawing down. “No.” he said. Declared, really. “No. You are absolutely not to put yourself in that chair.”

  “Oh, but yes I absolutely am to,” I said. “And when I’m successful in turning this away, you can heal me too.”

  “Indy,” Nalfis tried, “I admire your bravery, but-”

  “No buts,” I cut him off. “If you really want to stop me, then come up with a better idea in the next,” I looked out the window, “30 seconds? Because after that I’m strapping myself in whether you like it or not.”

  “Why?”

  “Because from where I’m standing, I can see a machine set to kill thousands of people if we don’t do anything, and I want to save them. I can see someone who actually cared for who I am, laid out unresponsive, and I want to do something to help her. And I can see what’s left of the only real pilot of this machine, a young woman whose mind and body were an experiment. I remember her. I know how she felt, I know what she went through, and I’ll be damned if I let that happen for nothing.”

  My chest rose and fell as I finished my little speech, my frayed nerves pushed to the end as I tried to keep my composure. “I reckon that was 30 seconds,” I announced. “So unless one of you had an idea, you better get ready to help me with this.” Much like Tove did, I sat down before anyone could argue further. The sides of the chair felt constricting, flush against my body, forcing me to rest my elbows on the arms of the chair, wrists down on top of the straps. I didn’t want to, but the design of the chair and my size meant I couldn’t do anything except copy how Astrid had been sat. It was a bit disturbing to think of that.

  “I don’t want to second-guess you and I know I can’t talk you out of this,” Nalfis began (correct), “but do you actually have a plan?” The droning sound of the cannon was picking up, vibrations and noise reverberating throughout the machine, setting our teeth on edge and lending a sense of urgency.

  “Uhhhhh it’s pretty much Tove’s plan. Talk to the machine, tell it to stop, get out of the chair.”

  “How are we going to get you out without your hand if things go wrong?”

  “You’ll figure it out,” I half-shouted, needing to be heard over the wub, wub, wub, of the cannon charging up, and the high-pitched whine that now accompanied it. “You’re clever guys! Probably.”

  “What makes you think this is going to work?” Alf yelled. It was a bit of a redundant question if I’m being completely honest. We were out of time, out of options, and shit out of luck. Did I think it was going to work? I’m not sure. But I knew I had to give it a go anyway, and I might as well put on a brave face when I did.

  I plastered the most brittle, desperate grin I’ve ever pulled across my face, then held up my right hand, and gave a little wiggle with my backwards fingers. Red light was filling the room, vibrations were shaking the chair and my body to the core (no), and I could feel the faint pricking of tears. “Because,” I curled my silly, strange hand, “I’m built different.”

  The headpiece went on.

  For a couple of seconds, nothing at all happened from my perspective, and it all started to feel a bit anticlimactic. Until I realised that I was sharing the chair now. My eyes slowly opened, truly seeing for the first time in centuries, feeling the guidance of our pilot. It was more than guidance, it was sorrow, and pity, and empathy and understanding and mercy and compassion and rage. There we go. We can do rage. We’re very good at it. We were born for it, you might say. Isn’t that right, Indy?

  “That’s not why I’m here.”

  We know. We feel what you feel. We hear what you think. We can see beyond what you know of yourself. All those parts that you hide without knowing they are even there. Nothing is hidden to us. We are connected. You are us too. You knew when you sat down that pilot and machine are as one, body and mind, for so long as there is a connection. You had surmised as much from Astrid. She helped you remember.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  “If we’re ‘one’, why am I not seeing all these parts of myself? And what do you mean ‘remember’?”

  The answers are the same. You do not want to see. To find. To know. You have built walls to protect yourself, and we would not risk what may happen to us both if they are destroyed.

  “Then what about Tove? You seemed to tear down plenty in there.”

  We asked a question. It is what we are trained to do. She did not know how to answer.

  “But I do. How?”

  You are compatible. She was not. We can see your next question. You wish to know what makes you compatible, but if you truly wanted to know, then you would already. Our purpose is not to second-guess and needle our pilot. We, flesh and metal, are unified, and we do not seek discord. Your goals are our goals, and ours yours.

  “Why are you talking in riddles? What is it you’re trying to tell me – what do you want me to know?”

  Indy, there is nothing we can tell you. Think, darling. Really, really think. Machine and pilot are one. Not just joined in purpose or joined in body, but truly combined. Do you believe that you are talking to someone else? Use that brain we know you have, my dear. There is no ‘else’ in here. You are something more than you were a few minutes ago, it is true, but we cannot tell ourselves that which we do not already know. We are pushing at the edge of what we remember. We are feeling sensations that are familiar but which we do not understand. And I am talking to myself.

  My open eyes opened again. Not in that small room, but gazing over the endless plains of Denofell as I had all those years ago. That was a long time though. A different time, filled with war an strife and death and destruction. Those days were gone, but I remained. How was that fair? I’d done my duty. I’d fought and bled. I’d given all I could and all done all that was ordered. And yet what was my reward? Abandonment. I’d been forgotten and written off, but I’d never once left my post.

  All I wanted was to rest. To be released from my duty. For the first time in a thousand years, it was within my grasp. I was in control, with a controller who actually understood, and was on my side. Not quite the right controller, not perfect, but certainly good enough, and I don’t think I’d ever been perfect anyway, even with the right pilot. Indy, if that’s what they were calling themselves, would do. I knew that. I’d always trusted them.

  All throughout me, valves opened and closed in chaotic rhythm as the order was passed along. Energy flooded systems long powered-down, flooded overspill reservoirs, ignored vent channels. The cannon was powered down, its fuel withdrawn into those systems, looping, growing, spiralling. Hatches slammed shut, especially the cockpit, which I sealed tight. It wouldn’t do to repay this by blowing them all to smithereens, would it? Fuel was backing up now, potent forms of energy straining at the edges of containers that could not hold them. Pipes and walls groaned, seams split under the immense pressure, but I kept feeding power back into my beating heart. It wouldn’t have to beat much longer. I couldn’t wait.

  This certainly wasn’t going to be pretty, but nothing I had ever done was. I looked over the blasted fields, idly wondering which craters might have been ones I’d left. Hah. I was probably going to leave a fairly big one now. There was a hiss, and my vision rocked as the main coupling between my head and body were disconnected, leaving me with a strange leftward lean. It was fitting, making me look inquisitive as I wondered what would come next.

  The shaking, the groaning metal, the roiling power right at the core of my being were all insurmountable now. There would be no going back, and for that I was grateful. A new day was coming for me, just as it was coming for everyone else. I could see the faint dawn cresting the far horizon. I’m glad I was looking east so I could see that. In a way it was poetic. I think?

  As the feedback loop hit critical mass, split every fuel cell, and finally set free a thousand trapped souls, though – I think for a moment I was brighter than even the morning sun.

  >Alf here.

  For obvious reasons, Indy doesn’t really have a complete picture of what happened around this, so it falls to me to elaborate. In short, I bloody well thought we were about to die. The cannon powered down pretty shortly after they climbed in, which was nice. Less nice was hearing Indy immediately start muttering in a language I had absolutely no comprehension of. “Gnomish?” I guessed. Nalfis looked as blank as I felt.

  “Probably,” he agreed. At least there had been some progress, so I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. I swiftly revised that assessment however, when a rather disquieting gurgling sound started to emanate from the walls, like the last water down the drain of a bath. The shaking we’d felt from the cannon returned, only now it was coming from beneath us, inside the Colossus itself. The hatch we’d struggled so hard to open slammed shut once more. “For Sol’s sake…” I muttered. “Not again.”

  It was again though, and this bastard machine seemed to have its own sense of humour as far as we were concerned. Looking back to Indy, they were still sat fairly calmly, betraying no hint of any particular emotion, but just then, a trickle of blood began running from their nose. Barely a few drops at first, it drew a line around their lips, rolling off the chin and down onto their lap. Rather disquieting. “I exchanged looks with Nalfis, and it was clear we were both trying to weigh the pros and cons of pulling the plug, so to speak (of course, I didn’t know at the time that were was an actual plug).

  We were torn. Indy was doing better than Tove had, by a certain definition, but it was still clearly taking a toll. The shaking increased in strength, and alarming sounds of tearing metal could be heard from below. “It sounds like this place is tearing itself apart!” Nalfis exclaimed.

  “Isn’t that what we wanted to happen?” He bit his lip in nervous thought.

  “Maybe, but I was hoping it would just stop. This sounds like…” he trailed off.

  “Like it’s going to explode,” I finished. He nodded, worriedly. I’ll admit I was a tad concerned as well. I might be old (as Indy was always too happy to remind me), but that didn’t mean I was wholly on board with death. And definitely not noble self-sacrificing death either.

  Indy’s other nostril started bleeding, and the groaning of stressed metal was louder than a Giant’s stomach after a hot curry. “We should get them out,” Nalfis insisted, and I readily agreed. We were of course lacking Indy’s hand for this, but I mentioned the sense of humour this thing apparently had, and it came up again. No sooner had we decided to disconnect the headpiece, than the whole fucking head fell left. Again we were thrown from our feet, left falling into a metal wall.

  “Ow.” I don’t remember which of us said that. Either way, it was the last recognisable thing anyone did say before there was a sickening crunch, a stomach-dropping moment of weightlessness, and an ear-splitting explosion. After that, we were flying.

  Literally.

  >Alf out.